Heatwave by Jamie Denton

the more traditional wedding gifts for the wedding the following weekend. Even the cake Drew had picked up that morning for his aunt was non-traditional, bearing a caricature of a man running from a burning building with a redhead slung over his shoulder. The balloon caption over the woman’s head read, “Who am I?”
    Amanda blushed prettily as Cale held up a scrap of black lace in one hand and a large cardboard rendition of a Viagra prescription in the other, while his aunt snapped another picture.
    Drew spied Scorch, lounging against the newel-post, a bottle of beer in his hand. He blamed Tilly for the miserable expression on his pal’s heavily freckled face.
    He turned to face her. “How long do you plan on making him suffer?” he asked her, referring to Scorch’s admission of forgetting her birthday the previous week.
    Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I haven’t decided,” she said as she reached for her wineglass on the counter beside her.
    Poor Scorch, he thought, unable to stifle a grin. He’d known Tilly long enough to know firsthand she could be one stubborn woman. “Is it serious?”
    “Dating is like shopping for shoes,” she said airily. “You have to try on a few styles to find the right fit.”
    He wasn’t buying her noncommittal response. “That’s no answer.”
    “Well,” she said, after devouring another miniquiche.“It’s all you’re going to get for the time being. Unless you tell me about Emily Dugan.”
    “You go first.”
    She laughed. “Nice try, pal, but I haven’t fallen for that one since the fourth grade. What’s going on, Drew?” The laughter faded, replaced by genuine concern. “I can’t remember a time when you ever offered more than dinner and a movie—or a night of hot sex—to any woman.”
    Neither could he, for that matter. Maybe a kernel of truth did exist in Tilly’s shoe analogy. He sure wouldn’t walk into a store and buy a new pair of sneakers or work boots without trying them on first. Just because he’d gone above and beyond his standard operating procedure with the opposite sex this time, didn’t necessarily mean Emily was the right fit, even if he did find her a whole lot more comfortable than his usual style.
    Tilly exchanged her now-empty plate for her wineglass. She took a sip and peered at him quizzically over the rim. “She’s different, isn’t she?” she finally asked when he remained silent.
    He shrugged as more laughter filled his aunt’s house. How exactly did he explain his interest in Emily? Nothing about his behavior made sense, yet everything about her made perfect sense. Family had always been important to him and he respected her devotion to her grandmother. There was a deep inner strength about her he admired, even though her stubbornness frustrated him. Never had any woman he’d dated ever stood up to him the way Emily had done, but thenagain, he hadn’t let one get close enough or hang around long enough to push his buttons before, either.
    “Drew?”
    He lifted his gaze to Tilly’s, fearful of the answers attempting to take root in his mind. “Yeah,” he reluctantly admitted. “She’s different.”
    The admission made him edgy, unsettled. Until Emily, he’d always thought of women as an amusement, a source of entertainment…for brief periods of time.
    Tilly took another sip of wine. “Is that such a bad thing?”
    Hell yes, his conscience roared. He didn’t get involved. His relationships, such as they were, remained short and sweet. Never had he allowed a woman to occupy his mind. Not in the way Emily had done.
    “It’d never work,” he said. The sharp stab of disappointment was as foreign to him as a second language.
    “Why wouldn’t it? Granted, I haven’t spent all that much time with her, just when you brought her into the ER, but my first impression is that I liked her.” She drained the last of her wine and set the glass on the counter beside her empty plate. “I can’t say that about most of the