The Hotter You Burn (The Original Heartbreakers 2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BECK HAD NEVER been so close to losing his mind.

Harlow had vanished. After she’d left him, she’d moved into the Strawberry Inn, one week quickly turning into two. He’d hung out in town as much as possible, needing to see her—needing her to see him—but sightings of her had become fewer and for the past week, there hadn’t been a single one.

Seven entire days without knowing where she was or if she was okay.

He’d scoured every inch of his land. He’d talked to—yelled at—the locals. He’d called the PI who’d finally, at long last, found the person responsible for her attack, and asked the guy to search Oklahoma City, thinking, fearing, she might have hitched a ride to get as far away from him as possible. If anything had happened to her...

He would want to die. But first, he would kill whoever caused the hurt. The way he’d wanted to kill the girl who’d set her on fire. Stacy Kellogg. Once a clerk at a little boutique in Dallas. Now dead, but not by his hand. Two years ago, she lit a coworker on fire, was caught, but hung herself before being sentenced to jail time.

Beck’s movements were jerky as he tugged on his pants, buttoned up his shirt. He’d thought he would give Harlow a few days to cool down, to think about things and realize she was miserable without him. She was supposed to come crawling back and plead with him to forgive her for leaving in the first place. She was supposed to forget her questions and his answers and accept what he could offer.

Damn her!

He was skipping work—again—to go hunting for her. If necessary, he would tear this town apart. He just— He had to see her, had to talk to her and perhaps shake some sense into her. He couldn’t go on like this.

He missed her. Missed her smile and her laugh. Her spirit. She challenged him. Made him step up and be a better man.

One taste hadn’t been enough. For the first time in his life, he’d had a woman once and it had only made him want her more. Her scent in his nose. Her body flush against his. Her breasts in his hands. Her—everything. Only her.

Another change, the biggest of all, and one that freaked him out now that she was gone, making it a little harder to breathe, but it was a change he couldn’t regret. If he had her, nothing else mattered.

As he swiped up his socks, Brook Lynn stormed into his bedroom without knocking. She stopped directly in front of him to poke him in the chest. “You idiot!”

“Exactly right.” A fact he’d lamented many times the past week. “But I’m not sure what crime I committed against you.”

Brook Lynn poked him a second time. “You see doom and gloom with Harlow. You think relationships are a cage. No wonder she left you.”

His every muscle tightened, ready to spring into action. “You talked to her?” He yanked the socks into place, demanding, “Where is she?”

“I’ll tell you,” she said, pure Southern tenacity, “after you sit your butt down and listen to me.”

Jase heard the commotion and flew out of his bedroom. “What’s wrong, angel?”

“Beck is an idiot, that’s what.”

“Where is Harlow?” Beck demanded, losing patience. “Tell me before I do something we’ll both regret.” If he had to shake Brook Lynn, he would. He would probably lose both of his hands when Jase ripped them off his arms, but that would be a small price to pay.

“Sit!” Brook Lynn shrieked.

All right. So she’d turned into a shrew. Got it. He sat.

“I get that you three boys have problems because of your pasts,” she said, pacing in front of him. “But do you really think you’ve cornered the market on them? That Harlow doesn’t have her fair share?”

Jase held up his hands, all innocence, and backed out of the room. “Sorry, my man. I’d jump on this grenade for you, but...I don’t want to.” He smacked into West, who’d just come out of his own room to investigate. “Run,” Jase told him, and he did.

“Some friends you are,” Beck called.

“Well,” Brook Lynn insisted.

“No?” he said.

“That’s right. No. Harlow has problems, too. While you had to deal with crappy parents and foster care, she had to deal with her father’s cruelty and death, then her mother’s death, a woman who was her only means of support, all while the entire town hated on her. You think that was easy for her?”

“No,” he said more firmly. “Now where the hell is she?”

“Maybe she’s in your stupid cage,” she snarled, stuck on the word. “A cage? Seriously?”

His teeth gnashed together. “Feelings are a cage.” One he’d successfully avoided for most of his adult life. Then Harlow had come along and showed him just how unfulfilled he actually was, how unsatisfied. He wanted to hate her for it, but damn if he didn’t like her more.

“Well, at least we now know you have feelings,” Brook Lynn grumbled. “What about the doom and gloom you see in your future?”

“It’s not specific to her, but to me. I don’t know how to expect anything else.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “You could have been a little more clear to your girlfriend. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Niether one of them had been in the right frame of mind. Accusation had taken the place of listening.

“Harlow is miserable without you, Beck.”

“Good.” If he had to suffer, she should, too.