Holiday Heat

Jane

I wake up,stretching and yawning. My eyes open and I panic for a minute. Where the hell am I?

But then I remember what I spent the whole day doing. Namely Ryker.

I smile and reach out for him and find the bed empty yet again. “Are you kidding me?” I growl.

He can’t use the girls as an excuse. I stand up and pick up my jean shorts, looking for the rest of my clothes.

“Shit!” I close my eyes and realize that my sweater is in the living room. I can’t find my bra at all no matter how much I scour the corners of the room.

“Fine. Talk about the walk of shame,” I grumble.

I grab one of Ryker’s flannel shirts out of the drawer and wince when I smell him on the shirt.

But I tug it on and run out to the living room, finding my sweater bundled up in a corner of the room. I pull on my shoes and then head for the door.

I look around, wondering if I just missed him. But he’s nowhere to be found and the house has that empty, lonely feeling to it.

Fuck! I can’t believe I let him get to me again.

I stomp over to the door and pull it open, screeching like a howler monkey when I come face to face with Promise and Caitlyn.

“What the hell are you guys doing here?” I close the door behind me and stomp over to the steps.

“We have something you need to hear.”

“Can’t it wait until we get back to the cabin? I’m exhausted.”

Promise shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Remember me talking about the company that was looking to buy out Mr. Henderson?”

I nod my head, tapping my foot jerkily. “Yeah. But really… I just want to get out of here.”

Caitlyn holds up her hand. “Just wait. You need to hear this.”

“We got an email with the news. It’s final. And the company is Hawke’s Inc. And Ryker is the owner.”

“I know he owns Hawke’s Inc. He already told me that.”

“But did he tell you why he’s out here instead of at his corporate headquarters running his company from there?”

A trickle of unease runs down my spine when I remember that I asked him that and he never answered me. “No. He didn’t.”

“About three and a half years ago, when he was only twenty-five, he had a heart attack.”

“He had a what!” I scream, a light-headed feeling washing over me. Blackness coats my vision and I can’t feel my arms and legs anymore. Weightless, dazed, I slip to the ground.

“Shit!” Caitlyn screams. “Why the hell did you say it like that?” she hollers at Promise.

“How the hell am I supposed to say it? There’s no nice way to say your new younger boyfriend had a near-death experience and he didn’t mention it!” she screams, her red hair flying, her cheeks flushed and her eyes panicked.

“What the hell did you two do?” Hawke’s angry voice shouts from the woods. He stalks up to the cabin, his fishing line full of fish. He drops them to the ground and runs to me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.

“Tell you what?” he asks, eyeing the girls with barely-concealed fury.

“That you had a heart attack. At twenty-five. Didn’t you think that was something you should mention?”