Page 59 of Turn Up The Heat

God, they felt good there.

“Let me get this right. You want to go grocery shopping at seven o’clock on a Tuesday night?”

Bellamy’s lips curved into a devilish smile. “If we can’t go to dinner, then dinner is going to come to us instead.”

* * *

“Cart or basket?”Shane asked, surveying the front of Joe’s Grocery.

Bellamy chewed her lip before caving in. “We’d better go with a cart. I need some stuff for my room back at the resort, too. You’re the car guy, so you can drive.”

He pulled a cart from the row where they were lined up by the entrance. “So, what’d you have in mind for dinner?”

“I’m not sure yet. I want to let the food talk to me.”

“You want to what?” Shane laughed.

Bellamy’s face flushed with heat, and she walked over to the first row of produce, lined up in baskets by the front window. “I want to get a feel for what’s good, what I’m in the mood for. Sometimes I don’t know until I see it. Like the other day when I was in here, the Brie and figs looked so good, I just couldn’t say no.” She scanned the pears and navel oranges carefully, but gave them a reverent pass-by.

“So, the food talks to you?” Shane creased his brow, trying not to crash the cart into anything as he watched her moving along. Damned if she wasn’t just as captivating as the first time he’d seen her here.

“Well, not literally. I’m not crazy.” She stopped to give him a healthy nudge, then reached past him. A flicker of interest passed over her face, like a light on a dimmer being turned up to a soft glow. “But look. These are just so pretty.”

Bellamy’s fingers brushed over a handful of deep red fruit, the look on her face shifting from honesty to pure, pared down beauty and back again. She scooped one up, cradling its weight in her palm. “See? The color is perfect. And here,” she murmured, reaching down to place the ruby-colored globe in his hand. “It just feels right. So, no, this pomegranate isn’t sprouting lips and starting casual conversation with me right here in the produce aisle, but it’s speaking to me all the same.”

Shane knew that he should be saying something to Bellamy, making some kind of witty remark or flirty banter. At this point, even a grunt or nod would do the trick. But he couldn’t.

He was too busy wondering how the hell he’d met a woman who looked at food—hell, atanything—the exact same way he looked at cars, and trying with all his might not to fall in love with her on the spot.

“Sorry. I’m sure that just sounds weird to you.” She slid the pomegranate from his hand and gently put it in the cart, then turned toward the apples with a sheepish look that bordered on embarrassed.

“It doesn’t sound weird to me at all.” Oh, thank God. He had a voice box after all.

Her laugh stirred around in his chest. “Really? It sounds a little weird to me, and I’m the one who said it. But it’s really how I look at the whole thing, so…” She trailed off to fill a bag halfway with apples, placing them in the cart.

“That’s how I knew I was meant to work on cars.” The words slipped out of him quietly, but they stopped Bellamy in her tracks.

“It is?” she asked, her eyes on him like emerald velvet over steel, both soft and unyielding.

The logical part of his brain, the one that had ruled everything about him until the minute he’d laid eyes on her, told him without hesitation to close his mouth. He shouldn’t dive into any of this with her, because it was going to open up a big, fat can of Don’t Go There that he’d jammed a lid over a long time ago, one he swore would never get opened again.

But the words came out anyway.

“Just because I always knew I loved cars doesn’t mean I always knew I’d be a mechanic. For a while, I wasn’t. But I was never happy, not like I am now, because nothing else ever spoke to me the way cars do. They feel right under my hands, and the complexities that turn a lot of people around when they look under the hood just make sense to me.”

Shane registered her lips parting in surprise, but kept on regardless. “So, while there are plenty of things I could do with my life, a bunch of things I’m good at, I had to pick the one that spoke to me. The one I just knew was a part of me. So, no. That doesn’t sound weird to me at all. In fact, it makes perfect sense.”

They stood there in front of the baskets of apples for a long minute, just looking at each other. Bellamy’s eyes never moved from his, and even though his mind screamed with vulnerability, the only thing that passed between them was understanding. Finally, she gave a tiny nod and spoke.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

And in that moment, Shane knew he was in over his head with Bellamy Blake.

20

“Whoa. You really weren’t kidding when you said all you had was ketchup and a frying pan.” Bellamy took a step back and put her hands on her hips, surveying Shane’s kitchen with a sinking heart. This wasn’t going to be easy.

He gave her an apologetic grin. “Yes, but there’s wine.” He bent down and rummaged through the bags at their feet until one hand shot up, victorious.

---