Fade the Heat Read Online Free PDF

“You need a ride? I’ll even spring for dinner if you can stand a frozen pizza.”
    Maybe then she would tell him what, besides her car, was wrong and help take his mind off his own problems.
    Shaking her head, she settled into a stained, off-kilter desk chair and rubbed her palms on her jeans. “Frozen pizza, huh? It’s no wonder you’re not dating.”
    He’d taken a break from women after his last couple of girlfriends, having figured out what a doctor’s life was all about, decided to shoot for oil-company executives instead. “Hey, if you were a real girl instead of just a sister, I’d bite the bullet and call out for delivery.”
    She didn’t even crack a smile, and her gaze slid away from his. “Yeah, well, all I can say is Sergio’s gonna have to spring for something better if he knows what’s good for him. He’s an hour late to pick me up.”
    No wonder she was brooding. Sergio Cardenas was the latest love of Luz Maria’s life. She’d been going on about him for several months now, a marked change from her previous relationships, some of which had lasted only hours. Jack tamped down a comment. Luz Maria often reminded him that he was her older brother, not her papa. Still, he figured that Sergio’s standing her up on a Friday evening didn’t bode well for their future.
    Though he hated to see her hurting, Jack didn’t worry much about her love life. She was still too young, in both years and maturity, to get serious about any one man.
    Jack perched on the edge of a scuffed and dented metal desk and resigned himself to waiting. No waywas he leaving his sister alone in this neighborhood. Even his mother had finally given up on the area, at his and Luz Maria’s urging, and moved to a small house in a safer location, nearer to her shop.
    “Sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asked. “Rockets are on the tube tonight, and there’s cold beer in the fridge. If you need a break from Mama, you’re welcome to crash on the pull-out tonight.”
    “No, thanks. Sergio called with some story about being stuck in traffic. He should be here in about ten minutes, and I really need to talk to him.” As if her thoughts had wandered somewhere she didn’t want her brother following, she abruptly changed the subject. “Did you say somebody messed up your Explorer?”
    “Pissed-off patient, I think.”
    “The rubia? ” she guessed—the blonde. “I was greeting a client when I saw her storm out. She looked mad enough to stomp kittens. What’d you do to her? Is she a psych case or a druggie or what?”
    Jack frowned at the memory of Reagan Hurley, that unsettling combination of guileless beauty and hair-trigger temper. It came as no surprise that his sister didn’t recall Reagan, as Luz Maria had been no more than three the year Mrs. Hurley had moved her daughter to the suburbs.
    “She needed me to sign a return-to-work release, and I couldn’t do it.”
    “How come?”
    Jack shook his head. “Can’t discuss it,” he said, and she nodded in understanding. Though she’d only worked in social services for eighteen months and inside this clinic for the last three, she had professional confidences of her own she must keep private.
    Like a drop of oil on a puddle’s surface, a slow smilespread across Luz Maria’s face. She grabbed the slip of paper on top of Reagan’s chart. “Well, well. What do we have here? Is Dr. Big Spender planning a personal peace mission? She might have been pissed, but she was hot—very caliente. Even I could see that.”
    Before Jack could toss off a denial, Luz Maria suddenly added, “Wait a minute. You didn’t hit on her, did you? That wasn’t why she was so—”
    “What do you take me for? She’s a patient —and a deranged one, if the damage to my Explorer’s any proof.”
    Yet something inside him whispered that Reagan Hurley was not his patient, that he’d refused her service here today. To his chagrin, it was the same normally penned-up something that