The Heat Is On (Boston Five Book 1) (5 page)

He didn’t know whether to regret or rejoice that Shane wasn’t speaking to him at all. His brother was barely a year younger than himself, and thanks to his police training and various brawls, he was an expert in close combat. So far, they hadn’t wrestled each other, but Heath had witnessed his brother knock someone’s teeth out more than once. Heath was no weakling, either, and could surely have given Shane a run for his money, but he wasn’t keen on instigating that particular confrontation.

He was still thinking about Shane and grabbing several lasagna microwave dinners when he heard someone clear his throat behind him.

“If Mom knew you stuffed yourself with crap like that, she’d have a seizure.”

Just great!
Heath pulled a face. Here he was, purposely staying away from the pub and its home-cooked burgers to avoid running into his brothers, and he had to meet one of them while picking his meal alternative out of the store freezer.

“Hi, Ryan.” He dropped the lasagnas into his cart and turned to face his youngest brother, who was wearing his police uniform and carrying a bottle of Gatorade. “How are you, Officer?”

“Better than you, I believe.” His baby brother gave him a meaningful look and pointed at the beers in his cart.

Even though Ryan was trying to play the adult, wearing the severe face of an officer who had just discovered a dealer’s two-pound stash of heroin, he couldn’t impress Heath. After all, Heath remembered things like that time in sixth grade when Ryan puked up his sandwich while dissecting a frog and he’d had to comfort the little wimp.

“Don’t firemen know they’re not supposed to drink on active duty?”

Heath crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at the jester. “I seem to recall that you graduated from the police academy barely four months ago,
little
brother.”

“Please don’t tell me you intend to drink all that beer on your own,” Ryan pleaded. “You can’t get drunk when you’re on duty, Heath.”

“Whoa, stop right there,” Heath countered. “What I can do or can’t do is none of your business. But if you must know, my shift is over, and I’m actually off for the next forty-eight hours.”

“Then you should pay Mom a visit instead of getting wasted. Again.”

Heath shook his head and sighed heavily. “Would you please leave me alone?”

“Maybe you haven’t heard yet, but I’m back living at home, to be closer to Mom and help her around the house. We all pitch in to help, actually. You’re the only one who’s never there.”

“Are you trying to guilt-trip me?” Heath asked morosely.

“Seriously, Heath. Mom would just like to see you more often.”

Instead of taking the bait, Heath nodded toward the exit. “How’s life as a patrolman?”

Ryan rolled his eyes but answered placidly, “So far, it’s fine. How’re things at the station?”

“Just dandy.”

Ryan scrutinized him, wrinkling his nose. “Hayden told us you’re sleeping with other women.”

Even though he’d been a member of this family for twenty-eight years and knew they didn’t beat around the bush, Heath was dumbfounded, struck speechless.

Did Ryan really have to broach this subject right here in the grocery store aisle, between frozen TV dinners and toilet paper? His fingers gripped the handle of the cart. “What?”

“We heard it at Sunday dinner …”

His throat went dry. “Are you telling me Hayden said that
over
dinner
?”

“Don’t be a douchebag. Hayden confided in Kayleigh when she came home from your little talk in tears. And Kayleigh told Shane and then Kyle, who told me. Other women? Seriously, Heath? Have you lost your mind?”

Heath pulled himself together as best he could. “It’s none of your goddamned business.”

“If you can’t keep your pants on, you could at least have the decency not to go bragging and telling her straightaway. Do you have any idea what she’s going through right now?”

An icy hand grabbed at Heath’s heart. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Hayden. Why did his brothers think he went to great lengths to stay away from her and his family? Of course he didn’t mean to hurt her, just to keep heartache and sorrow away from her as much as possible.

He had a mind to punch his little brother, but instead he just glared at him. “You can shove your shitty advice where the sun don’t shine, Ryan. Just leave me alone.”

“Oh, and while we’re at it—”

“No, we’re not at it!”

Ryan was persistent. He pushed the shopping cart aside and stepped closer to face Heath. “I’m dead serious. You need to pull yourself together. At the very least, you have to call Mom more often. She doesn’t look well, she barely sleeps, and eats even less.”

“It’s called grieving.” Frowning, Heath leaned his back against one of the giant freezer doors.

“And that’s why you should take care of her, instead of getting drunk and chasing skirts.”

It took all his restraint not to grab his brother by his uniform collar. “You watch your mouth—”

At that moment, there was a loud crackle from the radio clipped to Ryan’s front pocket, and then an irritated voice came on.
“Fitzpatrick, do I have to file a missing person’s report?”

The shutters went down over Ryan’s face, and he lowered his head, pushing a button on the radio. “I’ll be out immediately.”

“Don’t forget my candy bar,”
the aggrieved voice of his partner sounded from the tiny speaker.

Ryan didn’t answer that, but it was obvious he was irritated as well. Once his finger had left the button on the radio, he looked back at Heath. In a more placatory voice, he said, “Heath … I’m not stupid. I know what you’re going through.”

“Oh? You think you do?”

Ryan nodded, his face drawn and tense. He shifted the bottle of Gatorade from one hand to the other. “We’re all sad and messed up over Dad, and we’re also worried about you. Couldn’t you at least come by to put Mom’s mind just a little bit at ease? She’s really deeply concerned about you.”

“Fine.” Heath swallowed and added hoarsely, “I’ll come by tomorrow. Okay?”

“And about Hayden—”

“I don’t want to talk about Hayden,” Heath cut him off. “You’re all going to have to accept that we are no longer a couple. It’s really none of your business.”

His brother looked as if he was going to argue that point, but then his radio crackled again.
“Patrol car 302? We just got a report in for a burglary …”

Outside the store, a horn sounded impatiently.

Ryan threw his bottle into Heath’s cart. “I gotta go. Do me and your liver a favor, and drink the colorful stuff instead of the beer.”

Heath gave a sigh for an answer. “Take care of yourself, Officer.”

“You, too, Lieutenant.”

Chapter 3

Hayden would never understand why fourth graders weren’t able to write at least somewhat legibly. She didn’t remember giving a lesson on hieroglyphics, but one look at Justin Miller’s handwriting made her wonder whether this boy’s essay on his favorite book was penned in some mysterious, ancient language. Or perhaps an alien language. She wouldn’t be surprised, given the way he acted both in class and at recess. It was plausible he’d been abducted by aliens, who’d performed weird experiments on him.

She felt slightly guilty about the direction her musings had taken. The fact that he behaved like the worst urchin of them all was really not the boy’s fault, given his parents. She had only met his father twice, which was definitely twice too often. The man was surely an alcoholic, and she could easily imagine him getting violent with the child. With a shudder, she remembered his angry outburst when she had politely advised him that his son could barely spell basic vocabulary words and might need extra tutoring. Two days ago, she’d called child protective services after the raging man had smashed a chair and slammed her classroom door closed, leaving behind only the whiskey fumes from his breath. She hoped they would check on the family. A teacher was not supposed to play favorites, but she had to admit that it was hard to like Justin Miller or be patient with him. The days when he was absent happened to be her quietest and most productive school days. The minute he walked through the door in the morning, he was insolent, up to no good, immune to any admonition, and kept disturbing her lessons. He didn’t do his homework, or any extra work she might assign, and his parents could never be reached by phone, so she had to conclude that his actions didn’t have consequences. How, then, would he ever learn? Hayden loved her job, and her students were close to her heart, but when confronted with cases like Justin’s, she found herself wishing for an office job that didn’t involve getting smeared with ink by a fidgety kid or screamed at by a grouchy parent.

She wrinkled her nose and stared in exasperation at the paper in front of her.

I hate boks and don’t reed. Boks are dumb. I don’t wanna reed. I wanna watch tv and like to watch horor moovies wiz a lod of blod …

She would need a whole bottle of red wine to correct this essay, Hayden thought in frustration, sipping her iced tea instead and looking out over her garden. In the distance, she could hear a lawnmower and the excited barking of a happy dog. The day could not have been any nicer. The sun was out, barely a cloud was in the sky, and the soothing peace and quiet of her well-tended garden surrounded her. But the stack of essays on her wrought-iron deck table kept working her last nerve.

If there were any more papers like Justin’s waiting for her in that pile, it would take forever to correct and grade them. It was only Wednesday, but she was already worried she would have to spend her whole weekend grading and decline Kayleigh’s invitation to go out for a beer Saturday night.

When there was a soft knock on her front door, she set her glass on the table and padded barefoot in the back door, through the house, and to the front door. Shane and another man were standing on her front porch.

Automatically, she zipped up her powder-blue cardigan and opened the screen door. “Hi, Shane. What’s up?”

He shrugged, leaned forward, and kissed her on the cheek before stepping inside. “We were in the area, so I thought we’d drop by and check the leaky faucet you mentioned Sunday.”

She could easily guess the real reason for his visit. Shane often ‘dropped by’ when he was on duty, hoping to find food in her fridge.

She rolled her eyes and gave a theatrical sigh, and then she studied the second man, who held out his hand with a friendly smile.

“This is my new partner,” Shane added, stretching his arms behind him.

The blond-haired man took her hand. “Alec Alexander.”

Blinking, Hayden shook his hand and, before she could stop herself, repeated, “Alec Alexander?”

“My parents have a weird sense of humor, I guess.” He stepped in after Shane and closed the screen door behind him.

Hayden turned back to Shane, who was pointing expectantly toward the kitchen, and raised her hands in resignation. “There should be some leftover casserole and apple pie in the fridge. Just help yourselves.”

“Awesome.” A triumphant smile on his face, Shane nodded at his partner. “I told you we’d find something to eat here.”

Feeling less than thrilled at the intrusion, she followed the two tall men into her kitchen. “Is the pay really that low that Boston Police detectives have to keep raiding my fridge?”

Shane grinned and shrugged off his jacket, revealing the gun in his shoulder holster and the badge at his belt. Hayden couldn’t get used to seeing a weapon displayed so openly, even though now both Ryan and Shane were part of the police force. As a firefighter, Heath had always come home smelling of smoke and wearing sooty clothes, but at least he didn’t have guns lying around the house.

“Alec and I didn’t really feel like having the usual hot dogs.”

“And apart from that, as a cop, you can never eat your lunch in peace anywhere,” Shane’s new partner explained with a wink. “All the donut shop guys, the deli people, they always ask us to help them with issues like graffiti or petty theft.”

“True.” Shane was already stuffing his face with pie. “They don’t get that we’re the wrong guys for that. We’re the homicide squad, for Christ’s sake.”

Hayden was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. “I’m sure the hot dog guy couldn’t care less what squad you’re on. I bet he gives you hot dogs for free anyway, doesn’t he?”

Shane rolled his eyes. “That would be called bribery, Hayden.”

She snorted. “I don’t think internal affairs is interested in the wieners you didn’t pay for, Shane.” She grabbed a bottle of water and sat down at her kitchen table as the guys microwaved and then began devouring what was left of her casserole.

“A bribe is still a bribe, no matter how small.”

His partner was leaning against the fridge, studying her over the rim of his water glass. “Are you on the force, too?”

“Hayden’s a schoolteacher,“ Shane answered for her. His offhanded tone riled her for some reason.

She made a face. “You can get off your high horse now. I don’t get issued a gun to help me maintain peace and quiet.”