Turn Up the Heat by Serena Bell

dinner—but by Thursday she’d had to admit that it was much more likely that he was avoiding her.
    That didn’t stop her from jumping a foot every time the door opened.
    And Sierra had noticed.
    Lily set down the plates she was carrying—scrambled eggs and bacon for the kids, an avocado, bacon, and cheddar omelet for Reg, and French toast for Sierra—and ignored her sister’s question.
    “Can I get anyone anything else?”
    Her nieces and nephew shook their heads, and Reg smiled at her. She was glad her sister had married such a nice guy, a towhead with a perpetual smile and a personality to match.
    “I think we’re set. Don’t play and eat,” Sierra said absently to her youngest, Ben, who was tapping on the screen of an aging iPod touch with his right hand and shoveling eggs into his mouth with his left.
    “I’m making a pig volcano,” Ben said, proudly.
    “What’s a pig volcano?” Lily asked.
    Blond-haired, angelic Ben and his equally blond sisters, Alana and Joelle, all began talking at once. Alana, the oldest at ten, won out and explained. A pig volcano, she said, was when you mined a hole in the ground, filled it with pigs, and pumped it full of water. Because the hole was already chock-full of pigs, it could accept only so much water before it would erupt, shooting pigs skyward.
    “Of course. Didn’t you tell me Minecraft was educational?” Lily inquired of her sister.
    “It is,” Sierra said. “They have to solve problems. In order to make a pig volcano, first they need stone, and in order to get stone, they need a pickaxe, and in order to get a pickaxe they have to get wood and craft it—”
    “Excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said dryly. “Pig volcanos are very important for survival.”
    Alana crossed her arms. “You’re supposed to take our side. You’re our auntie. If you tell her it’s not educational, she won’t let us play.”
    “I said it was excellent preparation for real life,” Lily said.
    “You were being
sarcastic,
” Alana said, but she leaned her head against Lily. She smelled like sunscreen and breakfast and child, and when Lily bent to kiss her, her blond hair was soft and silky against Lily’s cheek.
    “You can play Minecraft after you’ve finished,” Sierra said. “Just don’t fight over the iPod. Take turns nicely. Use the timer.”
    “We always take turns nicely,” Ben said.
    Lily turned to go back to the kitchen.
    “You didn’t answer my question,” Sierra said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
    Lily pretended not to hear, but she knew Sierra saw right through her.
    Later that evening, Lily joined Sierra on the couch with two glasses of red wine, knowing it was time to pay the piper.
    “I’m still waiting,” Sierra said, accepting a glass.
    Lily sighed. “Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Maybe you do.”
    She did and she didn’t. She wanted fiercely to talk about
him,
to make him real again in some way, if only by putting words to him. She’d tried all week to stalk him online, but no dice—no Facebook profile, and even though she didn’t use Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Pinterest, she’d searched for him there, too, just in case.
Nada.
Well, she couldn’t blame him; she wasn’t too keen on social media herself, only used Facebook to keep up with old friends and rarely posted—he was probably just a private type.
    “Remember I told you there was a guy? The weird mysterious one at the diner?” Lily spoke in a hush. The kids were reading in bed down the hall, and Reg was in the kitchen, working at his laptop.
    “With the light blue eyes and the tattoos?”
    Lily nodded.
    “I remember.”
    “I kissed him.”
    She wasn’t
lying
exactly, just
editing.
    Sierra whistled. “How exactly did that come about?”
    Lily told the story of her brief stint in the kitchen, Markos’s rage, and the gauntlet Kincaid had thrown down on her behalf. “And then he stuck around to help me clean up, which was really