Heat Up the Night (8 page)

She wondered how much more awkward it would make things if she asked to sleep on the couch.

He set his keys down on the glass entryway table and turned to her. “Tovia…”

One hand up, she silenced him. “Please, Keilor, not tonight. Please.” She didn’t want to hear his words, selected and assembled to let her down gently. If he loved her too, he would have already said it. Whatever sense of closure he needed could wait until morning. She’d give herself the night to pretend none of this had happened and savor his presence for a few more hours.

Mouth set in a grim line, he nodded.

“I’ll sleep on the couch if that’s better, or take a cab—”

He cut her off with a searing kiss, backing her against the front door and boxing her in with his body. “You’re not going anywhere, Tovia. I’ll respect your wishes to talk about this tomorrow, but I’ll be damned if you leave tonight.”

Too weary to begin deciphering his hot and cold reactions, Tovia nodded and let Keilor lead her across the expansive main room and into the bedroom, dropping her purse on the kitchen bar top as they passed. As soon as she glimpsed the warm, waiting comfort of his memory foam bed, the day exacted its revenge on her.

Eyes heavy, she somehow shucked her clothes, leaving them in a pile she vowed to fold in the morning. At this point, she didn’t care whether or not Keilor followed. She crawled under the covers and let sleep take over, only barely conscious when his strong arms surrounded her.

After tossing and turning until five a.m., Keilor gave up on sleep. Tovia, once she’d drifted off, had snuggled deeper into his embrace, and he found himself studying the curve of her jaw, the fine red hair spilling across her cheek.

I love you…

Her voice echoed through his head on repeat. Why hadn’t he replied? He did love her. After seeing decades of his parents’ fairy-tale romance, it was a given that he’d have no problem offering those three words to his other half. Then Tovia let them slip while heavy into subspace and his reply choked on self-doubt. She’d gone all deer-in-the-headlights after saying the words and the last thing he wanted was to confess his feelings then have her pull away because her
I love you
had slipped out on a subspace endorphin rush, not truth.

Then things got awkward and he tried to play it cool even as his palms got clammy and all his “Dommy Self-Assurance,” as Samantha liked to say, slid through his fingers. Just as he feared Tovia would. What he wouldn’t give to read her mind…

Keilor slipped out of bed and headed for the balcony jutting off his kitchen. He looked over the strip, letting the city sounds wash away his racing thoughts. It was like scrubbing at a grease stain with water—useless, spreading the stain around.

Okay, Branson, get your shit together.

If Tovia said the words accidentally and he told her he loved her, she could cut and run. Though she had been spending more and more time with him, building what he would normally classify as a relationship, they’d never really talked about what their intentions were. It wasn’t something he’d thought necessary, but maybe it was. He’d seen everything through the lens of his parents’ perfect courtship.

Damnit.

And if Tovia had meant the words, and he didn’t reply, he was the worst sort of ass for not being honest when he demanded the same from her.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, Keilor set aside the brooding and decided a run would clear his head. He’d figure it out, though it was cold comfort at the moment.

Moving silently through his bedroom, he slipped into track pants and a
Viva Las Vegas
T-shirt his old kitchen staff had given him as a going away gift. Aside from the moment the tee slipped over his head, he couldn’t tear his gaze from Tovia, still and at peace in his bed. A little smile curved her lips.

She looked right, lying there. Her arm reached across the bed to his empty spot and under other circumstances he’d say she looked like a woman in love with her bed partner.

With a frown, he unearthed his running shoes from the pile of clothes Tovia had dropped the night before. Knowing how she hated mess, he took a moment and folded everything atop his dresser, then left.

He debated leaving her a note, but he’d only be gone an hour, and Tovia would sleep late. She’d confessed, during one of their late-night chats, that she loved working the mid shift so she could sleep in and stay up late. The Vegas life suited his woman.

Besides, given everything he needed so say, a note just wouldn’t suffice.

With a soft click, he closed the door behind him and headed for the stairs, eager for his run to begin. He needed a little clarity, and it could come none too soon.

A ringing phone yanked her from a dream chock full of warm fuzzies. She fumbled for it, not wanting the noise to wake Keilor. Through bleary eyes, she checked the caller ID and saw her sister.

“’Lo?” She cleared her throat and shoved a hand through her hair to get it out of her face.

“Oh thank God!” Her melodramatic sister had an added panic to her voice this morning. If this was the result of her first breakup, maybe Amelia Douglas was right to keep her youngest daughter away from men.

“You know it’s the asscrack of dawn, right?”
Not a morning person
was an overly generous description of Tovia, who didn’t quite feel human until after long, hot shower and industrial-strength coffee ran through her veins. She turned over to make sure she hadn’t woken Keilor, then frowned at the empty bed.

It was only seven a.m., so he should still be asleep. They kept near the same schedule, and he didn’t have a crazy sister calling him at all hours. She thought.

Her frown deepened. They hadn’t really talked about family. She’d always steered away from that conversation, not wanting to explain…any of it, not more than she had during The Great TearFest.

“…Mom’s in the hospital!” Her sister’s dog-whistle exclamation retracted Tovia’s attention from her missing…lover? Partner? Dom? In a chill rush, last night’s events flooded her, superseded only by her sister’s last statement.

The hospital?
“Rachel, calm down. Amelia checked herself in just a couple weeks ago for nothing.” If this was another bid for attention, then Tovia didn’t have one ounce of guilt over their conversation yesterday.

Silence. Dread pooled in her stomach. Rachel was never silent. One sniffle, then another, came through the line. “She had a heart attack.”

Rachel’s statement was so soft, so unbelievable, that Tovia did a mental double take. As the avalanche of panic started falling on her, Tovia partitioned, walling herself off from everything—her sister’s panic, her mother’s health, Keilor—except the facts. “Rachel, where are you now?”

Another sob. “Spring Valley Hospital.”

What the fuck? “Why are you here and not in Boston? Don’t you have exams coming up?”

“They called me last night and I caught a red-eye. They said they couldn’t get hold of you.”

Guilt crashed through her triage walls. “When is your next final?” Tovia put her cell on speakerphone and searched the room for the clothes she’d balled up on the floor, supremely confused when she found them folded on the dresser.

“My econ professor is letting me take the final tomorrow. But I don’t know if I can make it and I haven’t finished studying and they won’t tell me when Mom’s getting out and I had no idea where you were and—”

“Rachel!” Tovia let her eyes sink closed. Her sister’s panic sank teeth into her neck, which was already prickling from the state of her clothes. Her neatly folded outfit, the empty bed, the silent apartment, all implied a polite
get out
. Whether she was reading into it or not, she needed to leave, now. Glancing around the room, then poking her head out to look over the main room, Tovia hoped she’d see a note from him. She wanted certainty. Closure, maybe.

He’d left nothing and she wouldn’t wait around for Keilor to return. She’d put him before her mother once already, and that had blown up in her face.

Fuck. Tears built behind her eyes. “Rachel, I am on my way.” It would take ten, maybe twenty minutes to get over there. Cabs were dime a dozen on Keilor’s street, and at this hour, traffic should be light. “Book your flight home, I don’t care how much it costs, just put it on my credit card.” She winced at the added cost to her balance, but prioritized. Tovia had made Rachel an authorized user for emergencies, and this certainly counted. She’d simply need to eat a few more home-cooked dinners for the next, oh, four months.

“Oh…okay. I put my plane ticket here on it too.”

Okay, eight months. She pushed back at her anger. Yes, Rachel had a job on campus but she’d needed to fly out here in the first place because of Tovia’s irresponsibility. That felt better—guilt was so much more appropriate than anger.

She grabbed her purse and flew from the apartment, taking the stairs down to ground level. She ruthlessly ignored the hurt that Keilor had left before he talked to her. She could be disappointed in him—and in her shitty loose-lipped relationship faux pas—later.

While she hailed a cab and instructed Rachel to head back to their mother’s room once she had her flight information, Tovia pulled her wallet from her back pocket and snagged a twenty, not wanting a single thing slowing her from reaching the hospital.

A yellow taxi pulled up to the curb as she hung up with Rachel. Tovia hopped in the backseat. “Spring Valley Hospital. And please, for the love of God, avoid the Strip.”

As the cab wove through the side streets, she stared out the window and tried to ignore the too-cheerful video that played on a backseat screen. Hotelier Irving Carraway welcomed tourists to his fair city, enumerating the amenities at his various hotels. When he mentioned “celebrity chef Keilor Branson,” her heart stopped.

For the rest of the ride, she did her best to clear her head, employing all the deep breathing and meditation tricks she’d tried to learn. Nothing worked like she needed and after seeing what Master Keilor could do for her, she doubted anything else would ever be enough relief.

With sweat beading down his back and glistening on his scalp, Keilor knew he didn’t exactly cut a romantic picture, but after his moment of clarity, he refused to wait another minute. He’d made Tovia promise to be truthful to him during their scenes and out. She deserved no less than equal treatment, even when the timing sucked and the stakes towered high. His thighs burned as he took the stairs two at a time, not wanting to wait for the elevator, and jogged down to the end of the hall.

At his door, he stopped to catch his breath, tugging off his T-shirt and using it to swipe at his face. Being shirtless couldn’t hurt his chances, could it? If it would tilt things in his favor, he’d use any trick in the book at this point. Keilor turned the knob and stepped into his apartment, letting the door swing shut behind him. Halfway to the bedroom, he paused. It was too still. The hum of his refrigerator filled the space, but that was it. No rustle of sheets or deep, dreamy breaths.

Foreboding weighed down his feet as he paced across the main room, noting the counter and Tovia’s absent purse. He took stock of the room: no cell phone on her bedside table. No clothes on the dresser. No shower running.

He’d fucked this one up but good.

Sinking onto his side of the bed, he gripped his head in his hands and took deep breaths. As soon as he could think past the blood roaring in his ears, he’d make this right, somehow.

Once he’d pulled himself together for the second time that day, he searched the condo for a note but found no trace of her in the whole place, save for her lingering scent on one pillow. No text messages or phone calls either. The pieces inside him, the ones he’d haphazardly shoved back into place, gaped at the edges and tore at his insides.

He sent her a text.
Where are you?

His phone beeped and his heart caught in his throat.
I can’t do this right now.

Curses flew from his mouth. From deep in the cabinet under his sink, he pulled out a bottle of Macallan 21 Year he’d been saving for a celebration. He’d just cut into the bottleneck wrapper when his phone rang. He snatched at the device from the bar top counter, sending the bottle of whiskey rolling off until it clattered into his sink.

Maybe Tovia wanted to talk to him, not text her explanation. “Hello?”

A deep cough pierced the line. “Keilor, man, the fucking flu…”

“You know you’re not coming in tonight, Trey.”

His reply was swallowed by a hacking, phlegmy cough. “I called Salvatore to have him cover, but he’s out of town until Thursday.”

Trey’s assistant would have been able to cover the shift, but maybe his absence was good. “I’ll come in.”

“But you’re not working Wednesdays anymore.”

No, he’d switched the schedule so his days off overlapped with Tovia’s, but he hadn’t had a chance to tell her. “It’s okay. I’ll be in. It’s not a problem.” In fact, it was just what he needed—pure, physical distraction.

He told Trey to rest up, then took a cold quick shower to clear away the fog that muzzled his mind. He still looked like shit afterwards. The kitchen staff would talk, though no one would say anything. Trey was the only one who would dare rib the “great Chef Branson” and he was gone. Hopefully by the time his sous chef kicked the flu, things with him and Tovia would be fixed.

If not, he’d have to find some collected mask to slip behind. No way did he want to relive his massive fuck-ups to anyone else. It was bad enough they were on repeat in his head.

Exhaustion clawed at Tovia. She’d played guilty nursemaid to her mother for the five days since her release from the hospital. Amelia had been sweet as Splenda to the doctors and nurses, but as soon as it was just her and Tovia, Mommy Dearest was back in rare form, ensuring she never let Tovia forget her role in the whole fiasco, even going to far as to spread the blame around to “that man” who had tempted her—the man whose text still swirled in her head.

Where are you?
Not the words of a man who’d washed his hands of her. But since that morning, she hadn’t had a moment to breathe without her mother demanding something else, which meant she hadn’t been able to sort through her jumbled feelings toward Keilor.