Sweet Heat by Elena Brown

hurried into her bedroom to change out of her work clothes, her heart pounding and her skin hot.
    Her fingers were trembling so badly she had trouble with the hook fastener on her skirt.
    “God damn it.” She shook her hands out. Suddenly, she remembered the first time, as a teenager, she’d heard her grandmother curse. She had been shocked to hear the older woman’s hissed expletive when she burned her hand through a too thin potholder.
    “I know it’s not proper or lady-like,” her grandmother had said with a little wink, “but damn it, sometimes it just makes me feel better.”
    Either the memory or her own curse had the desired effect of releasing some of the tension making her shake. She reached for the hook a second time, but her fingers froze as the doorbell chimed.
    Surprise and a tiny spark of apprehension kindled in her belly as she made her way back down to the apartment door.
    Maybe it was Christine? Her friend had been known to drop by occasionally. And it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the other woman might show up to get another look at Brandon… but it didn’t seem likely. Christine had known they were having a ‘date’ night.
    All her worries were born out as soon as she pulled open the door.
    “Mom. Daddy.” She had to force the words out of her throat. “What are you doing here?”
    Her father smiled, stepping inside to pull her into a brief but warm hug. Over his shoulder, she watched her mother’s whisky brown eyes narrow as they swept the apartment behind her. From her vantage point near the door, she couldn’t see anything untoward, but she would be able to hear the music and smell the jambalaya cooking just as Suzanne had when she first entered.
    “Well, we had a few extra minutes before we needed to get to the restaurant so your mother suggested we drop by and just see if you’d gotten home early. And here you are!”
    “Here I am.” She chuckled, though it sounded awkward even to her own ears.
    Monique Headley’s pointed chin — the same pointed chin Suzanne saw in the mirror every morning — lifted and her nostrils flared. “Have you been taking cooking classes, Suzanne? You haven’t mentioned anything like that in our conversations.”
    Her mother was a master at the guilt trip, and Suzanne felt the slimy emotion well within her at the veiled words. She’d been avoiding her mother’s calls for days, or cutting their phone conversations short with flimsy excuses when they did talk.
    “Oh… well, no. That is, I…” She glanced back toward to kitchen, as if she might find some sort of explanation to give to her parents written in invisible ink above the archway.
    “It smells delicious, pumpkin.” Her father patted her shoulder, obviously sensing that she was uncomfortable but misunderstanding why.
    Suzanne tried to smile, but her brain was too busy scrambling for a way to get her parents back out the door without them growing suspicious. Or any more suspicious, in her mother’s case.
    This was not how she had planned on telling them about Brandon. She was going to ease them into it, start off by mentioning she’d met someone, and then selling them on his many amazing points before slowly and subtly adjusting them in to the fact that he was a bit different from the type of guys she usually dated.
    How much longer did she have until Brandon was done in the bathroom?
    In answer to her unspoken question, she heard his bare feet on the steps behind her. Her heart seized in her chest. She wished, in that frantic moment, that she could somehow freeze time and rearrange this moment to avoid the inevitable awkwardness of the situation.
    “Babe, I don’t suppose you have… Oh.” Brandon froze at the bottom of the stairs, his blue eyes widening as he took in the sight of her parents, her father in a three-piece suit, and her mother in a sleek designer silk sheath dress.
    He was bare-chested, wearing only his worn jeans, his blond hair still damp from the