Hot and Bothered by Linda Cajio Page A

house, determined to get very drunk. Booze never got rid of the memories or the pain; it magnified them. Tonight he wanted to wallow in them.
    Judith stood in front of Paul’s darkened front door. She smoothed down her clean shirt, then made a face. Her current wardrobe might mean freedom, but she wished she were in a Chanel suit. Looking extra good gave a certain girding-of-the-loins affect. She took a deep breath and knocked on Paul’s door.
    No one answered.
    She knocked again, then again, louder each time.
    The door suddenly swung open and Paul leaned out. She could barely make out his face in the dark, but she sensed immediately something wasn’t quite right.
    “Ah … the mystery woman,” he said, speaking very precisely. He held a telltale long-necked bottle in one hand. “Back to open the other vein?”
    He was drunk. Judith’s confidence deflated like a tire on a nail-strewn road. “I just wanted to apologize. I’ll come back later.”
    “No. Hell, no.” He waved a hand. “Come on in.”

FOUR
    Judith hesitated, then crossed the threshold. She knew she had entered unknown, dangerous territory and wanted to run the other way. Yet she didn’t know what else to do. Chalk up another lack of curriculum at finishing school, she thought. How did one handle a drunk?
    “Sit down, sit down,” Paul said. “I can’t wait to hear this. Wanna drink?” He looked at the bottle in his hand and snorted. “If there is any.”
    “No thanks. I don’t drink.”
    “Sanctimony isn’t an apology.”
    “Of course it isn’t.” She hugged her arms, hoping somehow to make herself smaller and disappear. After his confession, she hadn’t been able to do anything, knowing what he had to live with. She had to see him, to give him a different kind of apology. “This isn’t a good time for you, Paul. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
    He leaned back against the door and took a swig from the bottle. “You came all this way to say something. Now say it.”
    She sighed, knowing she’d caused this pain. After what he’d gone through, he was justified in being drunk all the time. She would be. Her own problems were trivial next to his. She felt ashamed of them. But he was right; she had come to say something, so she had best say it and go. “I’m so sorry I pried, Paul. I never should have.”
    “Nope, you shouldn’t never.”
    “Can I go now?”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    He gazed at her for a long time. “I disgust you now, don’t I?” he asked finally.
    “No. You don’t disgust me.”
    “I know. Damn you, I know. You feel sorry for me.” He pushed himself away from the door, almost tripping over his feet. He righted himself. “I may want your body, but I don’t want your damn pity.”
    Judith gaped at him. She might have wanted him to confess his attraction, but the way in which he was doing it was appalling. “I don’t pity you.”
    “Oh, no? Miss Expensive Clothes and Luxury Car. We all must look pitiful to you.”
    She’d had enough of his nonsense. “You are stinking drunk. Go to bed, Paul.”
    “Is that a proposition?” He leered at her.
    “Now you
are
being disgusting.” She took astep to the door, but he beat her there. He put a hand over the knob, forestalling her own. Even in his condition he was quicker than she could ever hope to be.
    “Don’t leave,” he said.
    She gazed up at him, seeing the naked pain in his eyes. She said the only thing she could think of. “You’re a good man, Paul.”
    “How can you say that when you know what I did?”
    She had never felt so inadequate in her life. “But you said the bust went wrong. It was an accident. Wasn’t it?”
    “Doesn’t matter. It was a kid. A kid! I might have been exonerated, but no one looked at me the same after that. Hell,
I
can’t look at me the same. I should have been killed that day, not some kid.”
    She wanted to put her arms around him, but sensed that he would just throw her off. “Maybe if you talked with a