Page 13 of Turning Up the Heat

CHAPTER FIVE

LATERTHATAFTERNOON, Gemma was running late, and Lila and Celia were already seated when she walked into the restaurant. She’d made plans to meet her brothers’ partners for lunch to celebrate Reid and Lila’s engagement. She should have been there earlier, but there’d been a small hiccup with an order that she had to smooth over.

When she saw the girls, she almost ran over to the table in her excitement, and she squealed when she saw the smile on her future sister-in-law’s face. And then again when she saw the large diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand.

“I can’t believe you two are getting married. I never thought I would see the day that Reid settled down again.”

“Yeah, especially after what his ex did to him and your family,” Lila said, with one perfect raised eyebrow. “With how she left Reid and stole your recipes. Not that I’m upset that she left Reid—it certainly worked out for me—but I just can’t get past that betrayal.”

Gemma exhaled, blowing out a breath. Lila was the only one who knew that she had hooked up with Tom. “Yeah,” she added, quietly, feeling terrible about her dalliance with Tom in Jamaica. His family could have destroyed hers, and she hadn’t been able to look past her own hormones.

“And yet, I saw you coming out of his room...”

Celia perked up. “What’s going on? What did I miss?”

“Why don’t we talk about you?” Gemma suggested, as she poured herself a glass of champagne from the bottle they girls had ordered. “Tell us all about the proposal.”

But Lila ignored the request. “Should I tell Celia?” Lila asked. “Or do you want to?”

“If someone doesn’t start talking soon, I’m going to scream,” Celia warned. “What’s going on?”

“On our last night in Jamaica, I happened to see Gemma kissing someone outside of my and Reid’s room.”

“Who were you kissing?”

Gemma opened her mouth to respond, but Lila beat her to it. “Tom Cain,” she revealed with a smile.

“Cain? As in Cain Rum?” Celia asked, her eyes wide. “That really sexy guy that Quin and Reid were grousing about the whole conference?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Gemma sipped her wine and hoped they would continue talking among themselves and not turn their attention back to her. But no chance of that happening.

“So, come on, dish, Gem,” Lila said. “I’ve been holding on to this for two days now, and I’m about to explode. What is going on?”

“You haven’t told Reid, have you?”

“Of course not. He’d freak, and I wanted to get the story from you. So, what happened? How did you end up making out with Tom Cain?”

“Well,” Gemma started, unsure where to begin. Should she start with the hotel room? The small storage room in the banquet hall? The heated looks they’d exchanged for several years...?

She shrugged. “We hooked up,” she said simply. “That’s it.” Keep it vague.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Celia told her. “Hooked up can mean any number of things.”

“Fine. We had sex,” she told them. “It was dumb, it shouldn’t have happened, but it did. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Was it good?” Celia asked.

Gemma felt her temperature rise—whether it was the wine or the memories of being with Tom. “It was—” she searched for the words, but couldn’t come up with anything better than “—really goddamn good.”

“So, are you going to see him again?” Lila asked.

“I’m sure we’ll cross paths at some point. You know how the business is. But no, I’m not going to do that again.”

“If it was so good, why not?”

“You both know what went down with the Cains. You said it yourself. Do you think for a second that Reid and Quin would condone that happening?”

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