Page 6 of Heat Advisory

He could have just asked me to hand him the remote. Instead, he put his body in front of mine and seemed to take his time returning to his position next to me.

I didn’t mind, though. I got an up close and personal look at his face, broad shoulders, and hair. Oh, how I wished so badly I could run my fingers through it.

He changed the channel from the movie and switched it to ESPN. I took that as my cue to wake Morgan up and head up to her room for sleep, even though I wasn’t really tired yet.

Just as I started to rise, Jay put his hand on my thigh. It was a soft touch, but the tingles that radiated on my leg were intense. I had pink plaid flannel pajama bottoms on, and I could still feel the heat on my skin from his palm.

“You don’t need to leave,” he whispered. “We can watch another movie or something if you don’t want to watch sports.”

I really wanted to stay. To be close to him. But it also felt weird with Morgan sitting next to us, even if she was asleep.

“Umm…”

“Chill for a bit. It’s not even eleven o’clock,” he said, his hand still resting on my thigh, practically burning a hole through my skin. “I’ll help you carry her up later.”

“Okay.” My mouth responded for me since my brain was currently freaking out and in panic mode.

He winked back at me. Again.

A tic. It had to be some kind of tic. That’s why he winked at me so often.

Ultimately, we never ended up watching another movie. We sat there and quietly talked about the movie we’d just watched, which transitioned into our favorite action movies and then our favorite movies in general.

We chatted together for over an hour about a variety of things. It was shortly after midnight when Jay made a comment about one of his teammates accidentally dropping a weight on his foot because he was trying to show off to some girl who walked by. I laughed, which in turn woke Morgan up.

There were more than half a dozen other sleepovers I had at Morgan’s house over the next few months where Jay joined us for a movie night. Some of them really were chick flicks, and I was surprised to find he watched them with us. More importantly, after each one of them, Jay and I stayed up to talk together after Morgan had fallen asleep—right on cue—during the best part of the movie.

I found myself convincing Morgan more and more to watch movies every time I stayed at her house, just in the hope that Jay might join us.

3

“Storm chasing is just extreme dating for weather nerds.”

—It’s science

Jay

I still couldn’t believe Cora had been at that event in Las Vegas. The same one I’d been at.

In hindsight, I should have known, given her job and the event being filled with emergency management and planners, but I had been so focused on my job that I had almost missed her.

Almost.

Though not because she was someone you could miss. She had always been on the slightly taller side. My guess was she was close to five foot seven or eight. Her long dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, but all that did was highlight those gorgeous teal eyes. I’d spent many hours as a teenager staring into those eyes and even more hours dreaming about them.

I had intended to reach out to Cora right away after I got back to Reno, but I’d learned she was sticking around an extra day in Vegas with her sister, so I held off. Two days seemed long enough to let her get settled back home, but not too long for her to think I had forgotten about her.

Plus, I didn’t want to wait too long. I had waited years to get Cora to go on a date with me—officially—and I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity.

In high school, there had been two things I thought about constantly. Two things I wanted most in my young teenage life. The first was to become a professional baseball player. The second was my sister’s best friend—Cora.

However, everything seemed to have gotten in the way. Not just years ago, but even now.

As soon as I returned, I was thrown into the fire—literally. I had gotten the call from Hal Thompson—my future boss if I secured this fire investigator role I really wanted—who requested I shadow this particular fire inspection.

Two people had died in a fire a few days ago, and it was looking more and more like another fire from earlier this month, under suspiciously similar circumstances. That meant they wanted all hands on deck—even people like me—for the investigation.

For me, being able to observe and train on a real case was crucial. I went along with the crew as they assessed the scene and learned the ropes. It was exactly what I had wanted to do, and it looked great to my boss. The only downfall: I was delayed in reaching out to Cora.