Free Heat Wave by Judith Arnold

where your incident occurred?”
he asked.
    “A little further north,” she told him.
Brogan’s Point’s public beach stretched on and on, abutted by a
stone and concrete sea wall. Further away from the fishing wharves,
the sand was paler, more pristine. In the very far distance, she
could just barely make out a collection of smaller docks protruding
into the water, a marina where private boats were tethered, luxury
cruisers and sailboats. The beaches around the marina were private;
the northern end of Brogan’s Point was an enclave of mansions.
People who lived there didn’t need to mingle with the riffraff on
the town beach. They didn’t have to risk being exposed to the naked
bosom of a harassed local school teacher.
    She wondered if Caleb lived in the northern
end of town. He was a lawyer, after all, and she supposed most of
his clients didn’t pay him with Lobster Shack meals. He might have
a wife waiting for him in one of those mansions. He might—
    “I know it was humiliating for you,” he
said, “but I wouldn’t have minded being on the beach that day. You
must have put on quite a show.”
    She shot him a sharp look. He was grinning
mischievously.
    His smile turned sheepish. “Out of line,” he
apologized, holding up his hands as if to ward off a slap. “I’m
sorry.”
    She felt her shoulders relax. The breeze
rising off the ocean cooled her cheeks. “My audience was
unfortunately large. You would have been just one more gawker.”
    “I wouldn’t have gawked,” he said. His voice
was softer, almost tender. “I would have tossed you a towel—before
Sulkowski did. I would have kept you from getting that stupid
citation in the first place.”
    “My hero,” she said, her tone swoony enough
for him to understand she was being sarcastic.
    He was still smiling. “I’m going to be out
of line again,” he warned, “but you’re…” His smile faded and he
turned away, staring out at the darkening horizon. “Never
mind.”
    “What?”
    He shook his head. “Way out of line.”
    A wave of heat swelled
inside her, one that had nothing to do with the mild evening
air. Burning in her heart. Tearing her
apart.
    Why did that song suddenly start spinning
through her mind? Why did her heart start pounding in the song’s
driving rhythm? Why did her cheeks warm again, not from
embarrassment but from yearning?
    A yearning for Caleb. Her lawyer. With a
possible wife in a mansion on the north end of town.
    Way out of line, indeed.
    She gazed at his back, the contours of his
broad shoulders beneath his shirt, the sleek lines of his torso,
his narrow hips. His free hand was barely an inch from her free
hand. She fell back a step, then forced her eyes toward the
restaurant, the solid ground beyond it, the asphalt of the small
parking lot. Which car was his? What kind of car did his wife
drive?
    Oh, for heaven’s sake. Whether or not he was
married was irrelevant. He’d made a silly, flirty comment about the
show she’d put on when she’d run topless down the beach, and he’d
apologized for it. He was a man. Most men were hung up on women’s
breasts. Heterosexual men, anyway. All she could conclude from the
past couple of minutes was that Caleb was heterosexual.
    That, and the fact that that
song she’d heard at the Faulk Street Tavern yesterday was still
thundering through her head. Tearing her
apart .
    “I should get home,” she said, her voice
harsher than she’d intended. She needed to jolt herself out of the
wistfulness that had overtaken her, her wholly inappropriate
awareness of Caleb’s sex appeal. When he turned back to her, she
forced a lame smile. “I have a stack of student essays to
grade.”
    “You’re making your students write essays
this close to the end of the school year?”
    “I’m a sadist,” she said. Her smile felt a
little less forced.
    “Yeah, I can tell. That steely look of yours
has me quaking in my boots.” He had dimples. She wished she hadn’t
noticed that.
    Her