Free Too Hot to Hold by Stephanie Tyler Page A

he wasn’t sorry, but nothing came out. He didn’t want to feel anything for the woman. Shouldn’t. And he closed his eyes and pictured Maggie’s face, her warm smile, and let himself remember the woman he’d always think of as Mom.
    Maggie was there when he’d developed bronchitis, when he’d bucked at going to the hospital. She’d stayed with him non-stop, got him through the worst of the illness. She spun him stories, read him poetry and sang songs she’d written. He still remembered that comfort, wondered if Deidre had ever done that for Eric or for Cass.
    Maggie, cremated, ashes spread— So you can come visit me anywhere and everywhere , she’d told her sons. And yes, that had been a terrible day, a terrible time.
    Still, to know the love of a good mother for nine months was better than never knowing it.
    “It’s okay to be upset over this. I’d be worried if you weren’t.” Kenny paused. “I’ve seen the reports, the papers.”
    “They’re bullshit,” Nick retorted, threw the now sodden paper he’d still been holding in his palm in the nearest trash bin and headed toward his car. He was soaked to the skin. “I’m not worried.”
    “And you’re sure you don’t want me to fly in?”
    “I’ll be fine, Dad. I’ve got some things I’ve got to take care of anyway.”
    Being all alone gave him that powerless feeling he remembered all too clearly.
    He did not do alone well, not off the job. Jake and Chris got along just fine with solitude but Nick needed something to fill up the silence.
    Going back to Kaylee’s place wasn’t an option, no matter how easy it would be to put himself into her care for another night or two or more, to drown his grief inside of her.
    He already knew more about her than he wanted to. Her apartment was clean and sleek and modern, but it wasn’t a home. There were no pictures that he saw and nothing looked lived in. The furniture still appeared to be new. Maybe she’d just moved in recently, maybe she’d come from California or Seattle and had ten brothers and sisters and went home to visit every Christmas and Thanksgiving.
    Maybe he had to stop thinking about her before he got himself into some real trouble.
    Six shots of the local pombay did nothing to her, and yet Sarah Cameron had to practically carry one of the male doctors back to his tent after he’d had half that amount. He’d been attempting to win the bet forged around the open area of the refugee camp as midnight approached.
    “You could join me, you know,” he murmured against her now, his skin damp from the humidity, his body hard against her own.
    And yes, joining him would be easy—would help them both to forget that they were in the middle of a refugee camp in the DRC, and it would mean nothing to her but a release of the relentless, restless energy that had pervaded her since the man she loved had disappeared.
    “You’ll be passed out before you get your pants off,” she told him. “By the way, you owe me. Ten dollars. American money.”
    She’d never see that money, was only a guest here and would be gone long before this man was able to drag himself out of the bed. Vince, the American reporter she’d been working with for the past week, would want to stay here through the night and be on the road by dawn. She hadn’t been able to sleep and spent most of the evening trading stories with the locals and the doctors.
    They’d begun telling ghost stories around the campfire, fueled by the locals’ tales of the living dead—zombies—that they swore were true. The superstition went that once you heard the story, you needed to tell it to another person to rid yourself of the bad karma that went with it.
    Sarah understood superstitions, understood karma and Africa and its many facets as well as she understood her own soul. She’d grown up here and when she was little—maybe five or six or seven—she’d loved ghost stories. She and her sister would sit under the old porch on the