Page 44 of Slow Burn

After only about thirty seconds, she stepped back up to the door and banged again, loudly, though he couldn’t have failed to hear her the first four times. The echo rolled thickly through the dark warehouse. Things shifted and rattled in its wake … rats, maybe. She knocked again, harder.

Dumb. This is dumb, she told herself.He’s angry about Velvet. He’s gone off with someone else. He’s—

Jim wouldn’t let any personal disagreements affect professional relationships. They worked well together. It was profitable for everybody. Then where was he?

The street door opened with a rusty squeal, sending her heart thumping frantically. Robby stepped back into the shadows, glad she’d worn black to Velvet’s idiotic funeral, and watched the man come closer.

“Jim?” she said softly. He spun awkwardly, almost losing the sacks he was holding. “Sorry. It’s me.”

“Kid, don’t scare me like that.” His voice was rough silk, a little sharp with alarm, but already welcoming. She came closer, and he handed her one of the sacks—heavy, filled with cans and bottles. “Sorry I’m late. The market was crazy.”

He unlocked the door and stood aside to let her in first, a bit of unconscious courtesy or chauvinism all out of proportion to who they were, what they did.

“Hot cocoa?” He pulled a box out of the sack. She smiled and nodded. “You’re here early. What, being roomies with the hooker wasn’t quite the picnic you thought it might be?”

“She’s just fine.” Robby’s ambivalence about Velvet melted instantly under the heat of Jim’s disapproval. “It was nice to have a guest. I enjoyed it.”

“Oh, really.” He put blue cups of water in the microwave. “No accounting for taste. What’d you do with her, give her the keys and tell her not to steal anything over a thousand?”

“Just because you and I are thieves doesn’t mean everyone is,” she countered. The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

“She’d screw a priest for bus fare and you know it. Have a cookie.”

Store-bought and not quite up to homemade standards, no matter what the advertising said. She licked crumbs from her lips.

“Heard from Mark?” She took another cookie from the box. “We need some more home cooking around here.”

“He’s taking his physics and literature finals this week. You know how he gets at the end of the semester. He swears he’ll never steal again as long as he gets A’s on the tests, then next thing you know he’s pulling twenties out of somebody’s backpack in lab class. The kid’s incorrigible.” Jim’s smile faded like an old photograph. “He could have been good, you know. Really good.”

“He doesn’t have it,” Robby said. “The touch. The patience. You know that.”

The microwave binged for attention. Jim turned away and mixed cocoa, then handed her a cup breathing thick milky steam. She stripped off her gloves and wrapped her cold fingers around it gratefully.

“I know,” he said. “You’re the only one I know whodoeshave it. The rest of them, they’re good and lucky, but they’ll get popped. Not you. Never you.”

“You’re jinxing me.”

“Maybe.” He leaned against a counter and watched her, smiling. He had on his professorial look today: a turtleneck sweater, a tweedy jacket with patches on the elbows, conservative slacks. All he needed was a thick book of literature, and the coeds would swarm. “Maybe the hooker’s all the jinx you need.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t.” His smile disappeared. “Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it, and I don’t think you do. You like her, and that’s fine. So don’t apologize for liking her. I won’t apologize for thinking she’s a worm.”

“It wasn’t about her, not really. You know that. I just couldn’t take the idea of waiting while he beat her.”

A cocoa-warm silence filled the cool fluorescent kitchen. Jim reached over and traced the line of her cheek with one finger.

“I know,” he said. His finger found the bump at her jaw where the break hadn’t healed cleanly. “Funny, even when you talk about him, you sound like you love him.”

“He was my father,” she said, as if that explained something. She leaned her cheek against his hand, closing her eyes. “Which mall today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’re going after the blue-collars at the hockey game tomorrow, want to go after the ladies who lunch? I like playing Robin Hood. Rob from the rich, give to us.”

She felt her lips lift in a grin. His warm thumb traced them; she opened her mouth and nipped it lightly.

“Not fair,” he said, and she opened her eyes to his smile. Warm, so warm.

With a surge of wickedness she had never known she had, she licked his thumb and took it in her mouth, sliding down to the base. His eyes widened. She flicked his thumb lightly with her tongue, let it slide out again, and said, “Is that better?”

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