White Hot by Sandra Brown Page B

more so.”
    She stopped fiddling with the lace-trimmed pillowcases and looked at him. “No one doubts that you’re a top man at that foundry, George. I’m the first to know all the long hours you give that place.” Pouting, she said, “I know, because every hour you’re there, you’re not here with me.”
    Smiling, she pulled her nightgown over her head, then teasingly dragged it across his chest. His small penis stretched with excitement. “Got something for Lila tonight, George? Hm?” she purred.
    Sliding her hand into the fly of his shorts, she applied herself to pleasing him, and she knew how. When he caressed her in turn, she moaned as though deriving as much pleasure from their foreplay as he.
    Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just being paranoid and imagining things, picking up clues and catching vibes that weren’t really there. He was short, pudgy, and pink; Chris Hoyle was tall, dark, and handsome. He had a reputation for taking whatever woman he wanted.
    George knew several men at the plant whose marriages had either suffered or ended over the wives’ infidelity with Chris. Naturally a man would feel a little insecure whenever his wife was around such a notorious womanizer.
    He had worked for the Hoyles over twenty years. He’d given them so much of himself—time, integrity, pride. But the more you gave them, the more they took. They fed on people, on lives, on a man’s soul. George had accepted that a long time ago. He was willing to be a yes-man.
    But, by God, the line had to be drawn somewhere. And with George Robson, it was his wife.
     
    Wearing only his boxer shorts and an old-fashioned, ribbed cotton undershirt, Huff descended the wide staircase. He tried to tread lightly, but several of the stairs squeaked anyway, and sure enough, by the time he reached the ground floor, Selma was already there wrapped in a robe that was too thick and fuzzy for the season.
    “Do you need something, Mr. Hoyle?”
    “Some privacy in my own goddamn house would be nice. Do you keep your ear to the floor?”
    “Well excuse me for being worried about you.”
    “I told you a thousand times today that I’m fine.”
    “You’re not fine, you just don’t let on.”
    “Can we save this conversation for some other time? I’m in my drawers.”
    “I have to pick up and wash those drawers. You think seeing you in them is going to put me in a swoon? Besides that, it ain’t a’tall a pretty sight.”
    “Go back to bed before I fire you.”
    With the hauteur of a prima ballerina, she did a pirouette on her terry-cloth scuffs and retreated into the darkness at the back of the house.
    For a while Huff had lain in bed, wakeful and alert. Although, even when he was asleep, his brain didn’t shut down entirely. Like the furnaces in his foundry, his mind burned just as hotly through the night as it did by day. Some of his knottiest problems had unraveled while he was asleep. He would go to bed with a dilemma and wake up the following morning with a solution worked out for him by his active subconscious.
    But tonight’s problems were particularly disturbing, and sleep had eluded him completely. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see an image of Danny’s fresh grave. Even dressed up with flowers, a grave was a hole in the ground, and there was nothing dignified about that.
    The walls of his bedroom had seemed to be closing in on him, like the walls of earth inside Danny’s grave, like the satin lining of his casket. Huff had never been claustrophobic before, especially not in his own house. Even though the air-conditioning vents were directed toward his bed, the linens were damp with his sweat, so clingy that even though he’d thrashed his legs he couldn’t kick off the sheets.
    He had a bad case of heartburn to boot. So rather than lie there and nurse these miseries until dawn, he’d decided to get up and go outside. Perhaps the tranquillity of the countryside at night would calm him enough to bring on