Some Like It Hott (Hott Springs Eternal #3)

Chapter 1

1

Natalie

I t’s a beautiful June day, I finally got a job, and between the sunshine and the victory, I feel like skipping up the street. Except I’m really not wearing the right bra.

Instead, I do an internal happy dance while walking like a calm, dignified adult toward Bon Chance Coffee to tell my boyfriend, Lloyd, my good news.

Lloyd works out of Bon Chance most days, with his coworker, Susie. We jokingly refer to it as his office and Susie as his work wife because he spends so much time with her.

Every once in a while, I feel a stab of jealousy, even if I’m the one making the joke, because Susie sees Lloyd more than I do, but he always reassures me that I get the best of him. And the rest of me, he says, generally right before he demonstrates how there’s a part of him only I get. He showers me with reminders of how sexy he thinks I am and how much fun we have together, and at that point, I usually push the remaining self-doubt out of my head and let myself fall straight into the sexy fun-times.

I know we’ll have sex tonight to celebrate my win. Because after a few painful months of being unemployed, today I took the first step on my Plan to Get Serious About a Career.

I tug open the front door of Bon Chance and enter the fray. It’s still the coffee rush, with store owners from all around Bend’s bustling downtown coming in for their fix—and a pastry or two.

I scan the coffee shop for Lloyd, but I don’t see him.

There’s a table of teenagers who seem thrilled to be done with school for the summer.

There’s a happy couple holding hands. I can’t see their faces, but they’re curled in toward each other with that kind of new-love intimacy that gives me a hefty dose of warm fuzzies.

There’s a table of gray-haired grandma types, laughing and chatting like they’ve known each other for decades.

There are two men in button-downs having a Very Earnest Business Meeting.

But no Lloyd.

I pull out my phone to text him. Not at Bon Chance today??? I’m here and you’re not!

The man in the happy couple lifts his head from the new-love tilt and reaches for his phone, which is face down on the table.

Two things happen at once.

Alarm clouds his expression.

And I recognize his very, very familiar face.

Lloyd.

His eyes meet mine.

I’m frozen in place, all the joy and excitement I’d felt a few minutes ago washed out of me.

Lloyd lets go of Susie’s hand. He says something to her, and her hand snaps to her side like a retracted tape measure. She turns around, and the look on her face?—

It’s raw, unfiltered guilt.

I take a step back.

Lloyd leaps up from the table and hurries toward me. “Natalie?—”

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t.”

I’m still backing up. I nearly run over two moms with their preschool-aged kids, who give me a dirty look and shepherd their precious ones out of my path. I trip over my own feet trying to push through the coffee shop door and stumble as I break free onto the Bend sidewalk.

“Natalie!” Lloyd says. “Natalie, stop. Please. Stop. Listen.”

“I don’t want to listen,” I say. “I don’t want to listen to you tell me that it didn’t mean anything that you were holding hands with her. God, I’ve been so dumb. I can’t believe I?—”

I think about all the times I made Lloyd reassure me that there was nothing going on between him and Susie, when all along?—

“There’s nothing like that going on between me and Susie,” he says. “I swear it. She’s having a tough morning, and I was trying to give her some comfort. Susie and I—we’re just—” He puts a hand on my arm. “I swear to you. There’s nothing physical between us.”

I freeze, not because of his hand on my arm but because I’ve finally absorbed where he put the emphasis in that sentence. Not on nothing , but on physical . And something in my chest clenches, hard, and…breaks.

“Nothing physical ,” I repeat, barely managing to keep my voice from cracking.

“I swear it.”

I will not cry. I will not. “I saw you, Lloyd. I walked in and I saw you together, and I didn’t even recognize you because I was looking for my boyfriend who was here with his coworker, and what I saw was two people holding hands with their heads tilted close together, looking like they were head over heels for each other. So maybe you should explain that.”

“It’s not what you think. We’re not—we haven’t crossed any lines…” he says.

“Cheating doesn’t have to be physical.”

Lloyd’s eyes flick guiltily from side to side. “It’s not cheating to get different things from different people,” he says. “You and I, we’re good together.”

I know he means in bed , and for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a compliment. How many times has he told me I’m getting the best of him and the rest of him…and meant the leftovers?

I close my eyes and groan inwardly.

So, so many times.

“We have fun together, Natalie. Don’t throw that away because there are some things I can talk about more easily with someone who isn’t you. I mean, wouldn’t you rather be the fun girl than the one who has to listen to me blather about heavy shit?”

He’s earnest. He means it. He’s looking at me with big pleading eyes, while he tells me that I’m the sexy fun-times girl and she’s the real thing.

God. Ow. All the joy I felt twenty minutes earlier has been sucked out of me, leaving behind the pain in my chest and a big, empty feeling.

“What you’re saying,” I say slowly, so there won’t be any confusion, “is that you’re in love with her but fucking me?”

He tilts his head, like he’s giving it some thought. “I mean, that’s a strong way to put it. I think you’re emotional right now.”

Oh, no, he didn’t.

At least I’m not empty now. I’m mad.

He nods, like he’s agreeing with himself. “If I were characterizing it, I’d say I’m getting different things from each of you. Which is what relationships are about, right? Different people give you different things. It’s not healthy to get everything you need from one person.”

Someday , I tell myself, you will think of this moment and laugh .

Today is not that day.

“Go to hell, Lloyd.”

“Natalie,” he says, both hands out. Placating.

“Don’t,” I say again.

The anger morphs back into pain—and fear—as I slowly register my situation.

My boyfriend is emotionally cheating on me.

My boyfriend is also my roommate—and the apartment where we live is my home.

My bank account is in the single digits. Not only do I not have the money to go back to school (step two in the Get Serious About a Career Plan), but I have no money for first and last months’ rent plus a security deposit.

There’s no way I’m asking my parents for money or a place to stay. My pride won’t let me. I know how they feel about me, my job, my choices. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to know?—

But I do.

Which means I have nowhere to live.

Unless…

Hmm.

I do have a job.

And—as far as I’ve been able to tell—a very nice new boss. Her name is Hanna, and she’s a business-owning, name-taking badass. We hit it off from our first conversation.

Out of the wreckage of my plans comes a new idea, rising like a phoenix. Because, let’s face it, I’m not one to sit around crying into my coffee. Also, I didn’t have time to order coffee before my life went to shit.

I want to pick myself up, dust myself off, and move on, and I really, really don’t want to give Lloyd the satisfaction of knowing about the ache in my chest. The one that says, sounding like my parents, When are you going to get your life together, Natalie Archer?

“Look,” I say, pleased to discover my voice is nice and steady, despite the low-grade full-body tremor I’m fighting. “I came here to tell you I got the Hott Springs Eternal job. The resort-activities-coordinator job.”

“That’s amazing, Natalie! I know you were really excited about that one?—”

I came here for Lloyd’s praise, but now it’s hollow, like all the times he told me how sexy and fun I was.

There’s relief on his face; I can tell he thinks he’s defused this situation. Defused me.

That would be a big, fat nope.

I spin through messages, looking for the contact I need. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” I mutter.

“What’s in there?”

“My new boss’s number. I need to call her.”

“Why?”

I stare at him and say, “I want to ask her if I can get on-site housing.”

“But you live with me,” he says, giving me a doe-eyed look of hurt and confusion.

For a second I remember the day Lloyd asked me to move in with him. How good it felt to be asked, to be chosen. To be put first like that.

I wasn’t first, though. I was, quite possibly, never first.

“No,” I say, lifting the phone to my ear and listening to it ring through to Hanna’s desk. Breathing through the hurt. Savoring the words even before I say them, as calmly as I can:

“I lived with you. Before I dumped your emotionally cheating ass.”