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morning, Laurie would have to bite the bullet and replace the piece of crap air-conditioning unit, she couldn’t justify two hundred dollars for a night at the Omni. And even eighty bucks at the skeevy place by Love Field was too much to spend. No, she’d just lie here with her trusty ceiling fan, a spray bottle of water, and meditate on the luxury of cool.
    Lord help her if the electricity went out, too.
    It was quiet without the ancient AC unit running nonstop, though through her open window she could hear the soft whir of the other unit. It had been replaced last summer. She now regretted the frugal and prudent decision to not replace them both at the same time. Laurie gave a brief thought to using the master key and hanging out in her downstairs tenant’s still cheerfully air-conditioned apartment. She spent a somewhat longer time thinking about the ice maker her brother had installed in the kitchen in the last renovation. And that king-sized bed she’d seen the movers lug in took up an extra-large space in her fantasy. Just think of all those miles and miles of cool cotton to roll on.
    Maybe she could—
    No. Grant Everton didn’t strike her as the accommodating type. In fact, in the weeks since he’d moved in, they’d exchanged possibly fourteen sentences in passing. Most of them at their siblings’ wedding last month. Most of them hey, how are you? Good. Good, I’m good, too. Good.
    Did it count as conversation if they just said the same words to each other over and over again?
    And even if they’d been on the best terms, she wouldn’t dream of violating his privacy—and the rental agreement—by going into his apartment without cause.
    Although maybe she should check his AC filter just in case.
    Curses, he wasn’t even home to enjoy the perfection of chilled air. Probably wouldn’t be home tonight at all. He seemed to be a fan of working late. And by working late, he was probably working some graceful, statuesque blonde over while the steady whir of her penthouse apartment air conditioning brought chill bumps to their sweat-slickened bodies.
    She’d feel the heat of his lips feasting on the soft underside of a breast, a kiss of wet heat followed by a lick of—
    Okay, no. Nope. Not going to happen. Laurie was most certainly not going to fantasize about that. Was definitely not going to let her hand wander down a body slicked by the non-sexy kind of sweat and wallow in the center of her heat.
    If it was too hot to breathe, it was too hot for that .
    And certainly not to fantasies of her new neighbor! A sort-of-kind-of-not-really-but-almost relative. When her brother married his half-sister, what did that make them?
    People who barely spoke to each other . That’s what it made them.
    Laurie peeled herself off her bed and moseyed into the bathroom. Mr. Rochester had claimed a coolish spot draped over the lip of the old cast iron tub. He peered balefully at her through his one seeing eye.
    “Well, you’re just going to have to move or get wet,” she said to the big grey beast, leaning over to turn the lever entirely to the right and push in the stopper. No sense in messing with a shower again. The three quickies she’d taken already today clearly hadn’t done much to cool her. She drew a bath and plunged herself in before it had filled halfway.
    The water was cool…ish. Texas ground water was never truly cool after a summer of skyrocketing temperatures, but if she moved her legs every so often, a pocket of cool water would fill the space. A kind of flip-side-of-the-pillow effect. Probably placebo. But it worked. Even if it hurt her to think how much water she was wasting.
    But dying of heatstroke would kind of be a waste, too.
    Tipping her head back, she imaged ice baths. Or just ice cubes. Melting, dripping, cooling and pooling on her hot skin. Starting at her temple, easing down her cheek, anointing her lips with a kiss of frost before a hot mouth licked and sucked at her full lower lip.
    A thumb