Page 4 of Ice Cold, Red Hot
Celeste was carrying a huge mirror from the back of the Tahoe to the front doors of the building. She glanced up at us and spotted me, her face going cold.
“Nat’s friend is pretty cute,” Hashimoto said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Got a mouth on her, too.”
I lifted a shoulder and finished my beer.
“Whatsamatter Renshaw, the blond twins tire you out this summer?” Burns was chirping in my ear. I held back the urge to punch him and pushed myself to act normal. Play it off.
I shot a glance down at Celeste, worried she might’ve heard that before I remembered that I didn’t care.
“You know me. In and out. Hit it and quit it.” The guys hooted and slapped my back, but I was exhausted by the usual macho banter bullshit. I hadn’t been with the blond twins except to walk them back to their car after the expo game and wish them a good night.
There’d been only one girl on my mind all summer. At least since we got back from the lake. She stayed there no matter what I did to try to banish her. And she was 100 percent off limits.
When moving day quieted down, and it was just Griff and me in the apartment, I lay in my room staring at the ceiling. I tried to stop the constant replay on loop in my head, but I couldn’t. Celeste coming around my truck and calling my name, the hopeful look on her face at seeing me again, and then that look dropping when I pretended I had no idea who she was.
Fuck, she knew it was an act. You didn’t spend the kind of time together we had and just forget about it.
The week we had this summer wasn’t like anything I’dexperienced before. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. She was fierce and tender, sweet and determined… so fucking sexy. Her body, yeah—that was one thing. But it was everything else about Celeste Moreno that had gotten under my skin. The way she fought for what she had, the way she worked for what she wanted…
And then I’d just left.
Before I’d seen her this afternoon, I’d hoped the worst thing I’d ever do would be to just walk away from a girl I could have fallen for. Maybe did fall for… But now? The worst thing I’d done was treating that same girl like a piece of trash when everything inside me wanted to reach for her and thank heaven and earth I’d found her again.
I thought I’d prepared myself to see her this fall.
But I was wrong.
I was completely fucked.
CHAPTER 3
CELES CELESTE TE
I should never have let Nat convince me to come to school for welcome week. It would have been just as well to check in the day before classes began and get to work. I’d find my buildings, meet my professors. It would have been fine.
“You’re wearing that?” Nat burst into my room and immediately began her fashion assessment. “I don’t think ratty cargo pants and that oversized sweatshirt really say, ‘available and fun,’ Celeste.”
“Do they say, ‘stay the fuck away because I need to work?’ Cuz that’s what I’m going for.”
Nat shook her head. “They might, but they do not say, ‘I’m Nat’s awesome wingwoman.’”
Ugh. “Fine. Pick something.” It was probably a mistake, but Nat had great fashion sense and could usually assemble something decent even when she had only my bargain basement wardrobe to work with.
“These,” she said, pulling out a pair of wide leg jeans in a light wash. “And this.” A cropped long-sleeved top thatwas a little too tight and showed a lot of midriff. “Keep the sneaks.”
I wrinkled my nose at her.
“Trust me.”
I did not want to trust her, but a small part of me also didn’t want to alienate any potential friends or allies by looking like I didn’t care or like I was just plain unapproachable. I changed clothes.
Nat wore a pair of relaxed jeans and a tight tank top with an off the shoulder top over it and her long dark hair pulled high into a top pony that fell over one shoulder in a braid.
“You’re leaving your hair down,” she told me as I began to gather the unruly waves into a loose bun.
“I am, huh?”
“Trust.”
