18. All The Heat （Ethan）
ALL THE HEAT (ETHAN)
T here’s nothing worse than New York when a summer heat wave hits.
Give me Phoenix or Las Vegas any day, where people have a real excuse to huddle inside their air-conditioned caves until the desert goes dark, and nobody questions it.
New York City is at its best in the cooler months, when the asphalt doesn’t turn into an oven and the trash in the alleys doesn’t leave your nose reeling.
The sun brings out the worst in the people, too. Grouchy tourists and overactive kids, plus frustrated residents who just wish the seasonal drop-in crowd would fucking disappear.
I don’t like New York in hell mode.
I especially don’t like being stuck here, sorting out office business at our headquarters in Manhattan. Gramps needed a proper office within striking distance of Maine for his large prestigious firm, even if he called most of the shots from Portland.
I also hate the minefield that’s staying with my parents—and knowing they’ll skewer me alive if they find out I’m crashing in a hotel or Airbnb.
For all their selfish distance, they take it weirdly personally if I’m in town and I don’t come home.
With Hattie by my side, though, the whole affair feels tolerable.
Since her bookstore hasn’t had its grand reopening yet, she has the luxury of traveling along like a second shadow.
Perks of fake engagement, I guess.
My relationships were never this sticky before.
She doesn’t seem to mind the heat either.
Hell, it’s like she thrives in it, dressed down in airy summer dresses that cling to her curves or tiny shorts that make my teeth clench.
It’s almost enough that I don’t want her leaving the house without me because I know what sort of attention she’ll attract from men who need to learn to keep their eyes riveted to their sockets.
Yes, I know.
That kind of psycho possessive behavior won’t go down well if I actually try to put her under house arrest—even the sexy kind.
She made that very clear at the power dinner where I caught Cooper Daley moving in. And that was before we were together the way we are now.
Not a relationship, exactly, but it sure as hell feels like one as she clings to my arm, feasting on the cityscape’s sights and sounds like it’s all new to her.
“Is it even a real visit if we don’t get a hot dog from a street vendor?” she asks as she passes a loaded dog over, licking mustard from her fingers.
“Careful, we’re in public,” I say wryly, trying to ignore the pull in my dick that reminds me how much I love watching her suck her fingers.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.” She beams.
“With you and that hot dog, Pages, that’s where it lives.”
With a dramatic sigh, she leads me around the corner, into Times Square. The massive billboards flash all around us, and she pauses to take everything in.
“You know, I always think it’ll be less impressive in person.” There’s awe etched on her face.
Figures.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been here.
You get plenty of tourists, people like Hattie standing with their faces turned up and eyes shining. But mostly, the people there are like me—just trying to get somewhere.
“This isn’t your first time?” I ask.
“Pretty much my first as a grown-up,” she says, spinning in a circle. She stops abruptly. “I haven’t been here since I was little. Mom never wanted to come back after Dad left.”
“Left?” I look at her gently, curious because it’s the first time she’s mentioned her father and I know it can’t be good.
“I barely remember him and that’s for the best. Aside from our little trips, they fought all the time.” She smiles bitterly, lost somewhere in the past. “One day, Mom told me he decided to go on a really long trip. She didn’t know when he was coming back. A couple years later, that became never.”
“Shit, Hattie. I’m sorry.”
“That’s life.” She shrugs. “People make mistakes and they don’t get a chance to fix them.
When I was older, I found out the truth.
He was having an affair with a woman in Vancouver for years.
He’d make a lot of trips there for fishing crab some seasons.
After Mom told him they were done, he moved in with the other woman and kept working there.
Heart attack hit him on one of those fishing jobs and… yeah.”
Yeah.
She doesn’t need to say more.
My embrace senses the rest when I pull her into my arms, realizing how special this day must be for her, coming back to confront memories that are almost as dark and confusing as mine.
“He never contacted you?”
“I think he meant to. Years later, Mom said he was asking about me, after he knew they were over. He was human. He screwed up a lot, but I’ll always love how he’d take story time so seriously and act out the books he read to me before I’d go to sleep.
He helped me love reading. And he also passed along this bucket list he always said I had to finish if he couldn’t. ”
“Mundane bucket list?”
“Yeah, um, the ordinary places you want to visit that aren’t totally crazy—the places most people have a chance at before they die.
Like, I want to go on a date and watch the sun rise in Maui, and I want to eat gelato made by an actual Italian under an orange tree in Sicily.
Dad never made it to Hawaii or Italy, and I guess I got a little more specific.
But they’re in the crazy bucket for sure. ”
“Not crazy. You’ll find plenty of gelato places in New York, as good as Palermo or Catania,” I say, unable to stop looking at the woman in my arms. “What else is on the list? Yours, I mean, not the one you inherited.”
“I want to buy a book from fifty independent bookstores,” she says, totally seriously. “Oh, and I want to get cotton candy at a real fair!”
“You’ve never done that?”
“I went to county fairs when I was little, but I never got cotton candy any time. So I added it on my little mundane list.”
I grit my teeth, knowing that was probably her mother’s doing.
I also wonder if her marriage falling apart fed Julia Sage’s health mania.
“What else is on the crazy list? The interesting one.”
She steps out of my arms and looks at her phone, bringing up the next bookstore on her list, finding directions to it and leading me in that direction.
“Just the usual stuff. Pretty mountains, picturesque oceans, lots of pampering. I want to swim with dolphins or check out sea lions up close. I’d love to see New Zealand if I’m really lucky. But honestly, I’ll settle for anything with cool history or movie scene vibes.”
“Never took you for a dolphin girl, Pages.”
She wrinkles her nose as she grins up at me, her skin freckling from the summer sun. “Maybe you don’t know me that well yet.”
“Book nerd on the outside, marine biologist on the inside. Got it.”
She laughs, and the sound warms me.
“You make me sound more interesting than I am.”
“Not fucking possible.” Before she can drag me too far out of my way, I lean down and kiss her forehead. “I need to head in to the office for a meeting, though. A couple presentations on deck for the ski lodge plans. You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own?”
She raises her eyebrows.
“With books? I’ll be fine, Ethan.”
“See you at home, then. Try not to lose track of time and end up in another dimension.”
“No promises, but go!” She flashes me an adorably wicked look before she waves and runs across the road with her bag knocking against her hip.
Reluctantly, I turn and head to the office several blocks away, speedwalking through the sweltering midday crowds.
Five tortuous hours later—after it feels like my head’s been pushed through a paper shredder and set on fire—I return to my parents’ house via Uber.
Hattie’s still lost in the city’s bookstores. I’m not worried since she’s been sending me photos of her finds nonstop.
When I get home, Margot waits in the living room, a tablet on her lap with some shoe design feeding her damned obsession.
“Hello, Brother,” she says with a sharp smile.
Great.
The last thing I want to deal with right now is my sister and her snide comments about my fake engagement.
“Why are you here?”
“Flew in to help Mom round out her shoe choices for the next charity bash. I convinced her to go custom and I have an eye for it. Good thing too since it’s never been her strong point.” She rolls her eyes, and I roll mine back. “What about you?”
“Business.”
“Okay. Is that why you brought Hattie?”
I glare at her. “Leave her out of this.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you were the clingy type. Man, you’re taking this seriously.” Margot grins. At least someone’s having fun at my expense. “Dragging her around to boring meetings while she drags you to bookstores. How many have you been to so far? Thirty?”
“Fuck off, Margot.”
“You realize books are her passion, right? You’ll never compare.”
If I didn’t know how much she loves them, I’d have figured it out after the first half-dozen bookstores this morning.
That’s when I checked out—partly because I had a meeting, partly because the smell of old pages activates new allergies after a while.
But I don’t miss the way Hattie’s face lights up when she’s with her true love. And I’ll do just about anything to see her like that again.
No way in iced-over hell will I breathe a word of that to Margot, though.
“She’s a booklover,” I snap. “So what?”
“It’s not the book lovin’, dearest Brother. It’s the fact that you’re humoring her.”
I scowl. “Do you really expect me to be an asshole constantly?”
“You’ve had a lifetime of practice.”
“Pot and kettle,” I snarl, heading past her to make a drink from the wet bar. “You want anything? I’m ready to cool off and calm down. It’s been hot as hell today.”
“I’m good.” She yawns and follows me over to the bar, sitting on the counter and watching me as I pour some of Dad’s scotch.
Ending the day with Margot requires something strong.
“Why don’t you go dig out your old dollhouse and stop bothering me?”