Turn Up the Heat by Serena Bell Read Free Book Online

farewell, and then walked away, down the alley they’d come from, and disappeared.

Chapter 6
    “There’s nothing I can do,” Kincaid’s lawyer, Grant Devin, said for the third or fourth time.
    “It doesn’t belong to him. He stole it.” Kincaid tried to make it a dry recitation of facts, but his anger rang through.
    “So you say,” Grant said.
    “Are you on my side, or not?” Kincaid demanded, then was pissed at himself, because of course Grant was on his side. No one could be more on anyone’s side than Grant had been on his.
    Grant winced. “I’m sorry, I was just—it’s habit. Cataloguing what’s court-admitted fact and what’s hearsay. You know how I feel about him. I hate him every bit as much as you do.”
    “No,
I’m
sorry.” Kincaid thumped himself on the chest, a
my bad
gesture.
    Grant stroked one side of his mustache, a habit he’d had as long as Kincaid had known him. Grant and his now-ex-wife Jeannie owned land near his grandparents’. They’d been his grandparents’ close friends, and after Kincaid’s grandfather’s death, Grant had played surrogate to Kincaid, taking him fishing and mountain biking from time to time on the conservation land that bordered both properties. Kincaid had always liked Grant a lot—he allowed no bullshit and treated him like an adult. And Kincaid liked him even more now, because the guy had given up so much—everything, really—to try to save Kincaid’s ass.
    “He abused her. And now he’s living in her house—”
    My home.
    Most of the time, Kincaid tried to blot out the sights and scents, but when his defenses were down at night, they crowded his mind. As a child, he’d played soldier, cop, adventurer, pirate, on his grandparents’ land, heavily forested, rich with fir, spruce, and ponderosa pine, and still worth a fortune to the timber company that had unsuccessfully wooed his family. When he was done playing, he ran to the small house, where his grandfather had cleared trees long ago to create an oasis of sun in the middle of the woods. His grandmother—Nan, he’d called her, because her name was Nancy, and she was too young for “Grandma”—fed him chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven, or, at dinnertime, long-simmered stews, roasted chicken, meaty Bolognese. As he drifted to sleep, strawberry bubble bath wafted down the hall, the scent of his grandmother taking a much-needed moment to herself.
    “Caid,” Grant said gently. He was in his late sixties, bitterly divorced, deeply invested in his work. In fact, Grant’s endless devotion to Kincaid’s case had been the final straw for his beleaguered wife, who had gotten herself a dental degree, opened up shop as a dentist, and declared that she’d be happier—and better cared for—on her own.
    Kincaid was fairly certain Grant hadn’t bought new clothes since Jeannie left, if the jeans and flannel shirt he was wearing were any indication. Seven years after the fact, Grant still had a quality of bleary post-divorce confusion about him, but Kincaid got the feeling he was happy to be able to work any hours he wanted without harassment.
    Kincaid shook his head. “There was a will. I know there was. Nan talked about it all the time. She wanted everything to go to Safe Haven.”
    From the time Kincaid was a young teenager, his grandmother had volunteered at Safe Haven, a shelter where homeless kids could also receive an elementary education. She ran clothing drives, assisted in classrooms, and eventually served on the board.
    I take care of strays of all kinds,
she would tell him, patting him on the head—that was when she was still a couple of inches taller than he was, which didn’t last long. And she did. Not just the children at Safe Haven, but him, of course, as well as dogs, cats, and small wild creatures. She took them in, healed them, fed them, loved them.
    She’d tried her best to fill all the gaps and patch up all his wounds. Still, he’d gotten scared sometimes, because