The Big Heat

Sunny laughed, her imagination running with that scenario, casting herself and her billboard man in the starring roles. At this point, the only way to get over her thing for Cade Stone required either professional help or to seriously get laid. Sure he had that I-can-rock-your-world-baby look, but he also had that I’m-in-charge look and after growing up with her overbearing parents, Sunny didn’t need anyone else in charge of her. Ever.

“I want him to know that twenty years doesn’t mean things have to be boring.”

“Have things gotten boring?” she asked as Sheila munched corn bread. Sheila gave her the wait-a-minute-while-I-chew-and-swallow-my-food sign, so Sunny sampled the yams.

She’d been there, done that, got the T-shirt for boring sex. Maybe it’s because you always pick men you can push around, an annoying little voice whispered inside her.

Sheila took a sip of tea. “Not exactly boring. Maybe a little routine. Proactive is better than reactive.”

“I’m sure Dan will enjoy your proactive stance. You don’t need for me to look after your plants while you’re gone or check the mail or anything?” Sheila had done so much for her, giving advice and time freely, Sunny wanted to do something in return.

“Dan’s cousin’s got it covered.” Dan’s cousin would spend the next week refinishing the hardwood floors in their house and remodeling the bathroom while they were gone. “The only thing you need to look after is yourself. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve been worried about you.” Sheila shot her an admonishing look. “And you know I would’ve dragged you to the Kincaids’ with us last week if I’d known you were staying home alone on Thanksgiving.”

Sunny grinned. “Which is precisely why I didn’t mention it. I was infinitely happier at home working on my wolf than enduring another round of disapproval and I-told-you-so’s at the Templeton family table.”

Actually, working on her stained-glass wolf had kept her sane and grounded in the last month. It had given her a creative outlet to focus on and lose herself in. She smiled to herself. Her wolf had stood guard for her, against the rest of the world. Her, her semiconstructed stained-glass wolf, and a take-out dinner from her grocer’s deli had suited her Thanksgiving just fine. Traipsing along to Shelia’s in-laws’ during a family holiday or intruding on any of her other friends hadn’t felt right.

“I just don’t get your family. They drive me crazy.” Poor Sheila. They did drive her crazy. It frustrated Sheila that Sunny’s parents and her sister, Nadine, weren’t more supportive. It didn’t particularly bother Sunny anymore. She’d moved beyond needing their approval years ago, which was a damn good thing, all things considered.

They disapproved of her job as a Web designer—no stability in computer-related self-employment, according to her dad. They disdained the row house she’d bought as an investment in a rundown section of the city on the edge of revitalization. According to them, a new cookie-cutter house in a cookie-cutter subdivision was what she should’ve bought as a surer return on her money. Actually, in their book, marrying an accountant the way her sister, Nadine, had was the real bankable investment. They considered Sunny’s volunteer work a waste of time. And they’d never understood her running for city council since they’d been sure she’d lose to Cecil Meeks.

“Please tell me they’ve risen to the occasion during all of this,” Sheila said.

Sunny shrugged. “They’ve been embarrassed.”

“I can read between those lines.”

Growing up, she’d been the odd man out, determined even as a child to walk her own path. Her overbearing parents, however, had never embraced her independence, spontaneity or free thinking. “Remember the Pearls of Wisdom. It is what it is.”

“Okay, okay. I’m letting it go based on the Pearls of Wisdom.”

The summer she’d been ten, they’d moved and her life had changed. Despite their disparate ages, she’d found a kindred spirit in an elderly widow next door. Mrs. Pearl had spent a lifetime studying Native Americans and particularly the Chickasaw of western Tennessee.

Sunny had spent hours in Mrs. Pearl’s backyard and at her kitchen table absorbing Native American culture and developing a deep and abiding love for nature and community.

Sunny had been particularly fascinated by and seemed to have a gift for understanding and identifying animal totems, her own and others. On Sunny’s twelfth birthday, Mrs. Pearl had given her a hummingbird ring—the hummingbird being Sunny’s animal totem. Sunny treasured the simple sterling-silver design of a hummingbird drinking from a flower. Her long-standing favorite piece of jewelry, she’d resized it twice as she’d grown and always wore it on her right hand.

Mrs. Pearl had exerted the most influence in shaping Sunny’s life. She’d helped her move beyond her need for her parents’ approval, teaching her to embrace who and what she was, and likewise accepting her parents in the same vein. It was a gift Sunny had carried with her into adulthood even though the dear woman had died during Sunny’s junior year in college. She’d dubbed Mrs. Pearl’s life lessons Pearls of Wisdom, and she’d shared them with Sheila on several occasions.

She sure didn’t want Shelia worrying about her on her anniversary trip. “Go. Have a good time. I’m fine.” She was done wallowing in this disaster. From here on she was employing positive thinking. “The worst is behind me, now it’s smooth sailing.”

“ANY NEWS YET?” Cade propped the phone against his shoulder as he leaned back in his near-ancient office chair.

“I’ve had a couple of leads that wound up to be dead ends. Meeks is a slippery guy,” said Danny Jones, the private eye Cade had contacted the day Sunny Templeton’s flyer had hit. Every once in a while he and Linc needed a little private eye help, and Danny was their go-to man—one of the best in the business. If there was dirt, Danny’d dig it up. “It’s been a month. Want me to give it a rest?”

“Nope. Stay on it. Sooner or later he’ll slip or something will turn up.”

“You’re the boss. I’ll touch base with you next week.”

“Good deal.”

He hung up and found Linc leaning against his door frame. “Did you sic Jones on Meeks?”

“He’s just doing a little digging.”

Linc grinned. “You couldn’t stand it, could you?”

Cade shrugged. “Just nosing around.” His brother knew him as well as anyone. And no, it was genetically impossible for him to sit around and do nothing to help Sunny Templeton when he felt responsible for aiding and abetting Meeks in defeating her. His guilt and sense of responsibility had escalated with every incident reported in the paper, on the Internet, and each damned late-night show.

And honest to God, she was driving him crazy. She’d looked like trouble the first time he’d seen that damn flyer. How he felt about her was…complicated…which was stupid considering he’d never met her, didn’t want to meet her. He’d found it impossible to toss that sheet of paper. Instead he’d stuck it in his desk. Every time he opened his drawer and saw it, something inside him shifted. He didn’t like things shifting inside him. He ought to just toss it but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Sunny Templeton had become a phantom PITA—a real Pain In The Ass.

The sooner Jones found something on Meeks, and his gut told him there was something to be found, the sooner he could turn it over to Sunny Templeton to use and then wash his hands of her. Then he’d toss the flyer.

“By the way, Georgia wanted me to remind you that you need to stop by the formal wear shop to be fitted for the tux. My best man’s got to be jam up on the big day and she says we big boys are gonna require special orders.”

Okay, once upon a time he and Linc had known one another well but his brother in love was something of a stranger at times. Linc was yet another cautionary tale in Cade’s life. This was what love reduced men to. He was tempted to ask Linc if he still actually had a dick but that would only piss him off. Instead Cade stood and stretched. “Yeah, I’ll get by there sometime this week.”

“I’ll let Georgia know,” Linc said, wandering back to his office, doubtless to call Georgia.

Cade supposed if Linc had to be an idiot in love at least he’d chosen well. Cade liked Georgia. He also liked Gracie’s fiancé well enough. He grabbed the paperwork on his latest FTA apprehension off his desk and walked it out to Marlene.

“Thanks,” she said, without looking up from the computer monitor. “You know, I’m thinking about signing up for one of those online dating things.”

Cade shook his head. That was random. Had he just heard her correctly? “Did you say online dating?”

“Yeah. You know, one of those Internet matchmaking things.”

He had heard right.

“The hell you say!” Martin bellowed from his office. Apparently his father had heard, as well. Great. Martin stomped out to join them, a bottled Coke in his hand. At six foot six he stood two inches taller than Cade and still didn’t carry an ounce of spare flesh. “What’s wrong with you, woman?”

Marlene merely quirked an eyebrow at Martin’s outburst. “I’m ready for some excitement. All my friends want to introduce me to boring men.”

Linc strolled out of his office. He didn’t like to miss out on anything.

Marlene eyed all of them. “What? We’re not exactly overrun with eligible men walking through the door here. Online dating seems a reasonable vetting process. I want excitement, romance.” Martin started to smirk. “I want to get remarried,” she tacked on the final installment. Cade’s cringe echoed Martin’s.

Had everyone lost their minds? Between Linc and Georgia and Gracie and Mark and all the wedding mumbo jumbo floating around the office, Marlene had got caught up in it.

Linc shook his head. “You got rid of one rat-bastard husband. What are you thinking, Marlene?”

Maybe Linc wasn’t as far gone as Cade had thought. He did still have an ounce of sense left.

“I’m not cut out for one-night stands. I’m not a love ’em and leave ’em kind of woman. But I have to tell you boys, I miss sex.”

Martin snorted his swallow of Coke through his nose, choking and coughing. “Now I know you’re one can shy of a six-pack if you want to get remarried so you can have sex.”

Cade disagreed with Martin more often than not. In fact, they’d coexisted in an uneasy truce the past twenty years since Cade’s mother died, but he had to throw his towel in with the old man on this one.