Burning Lust (An MMF Bisexual Threesome) Read online

  The tight little circles now filled another page of her legal pad, and Katie clenched her teeth before flipping it over. She had the odd sensation that Dr. Malcolm was looking directly at her, specifically waiting to see if she, Katie Callahan, could handle this challenge, but when she finally looked up, everyone seemed to be looking over their meeting notes.

  It’s your imagination, she reminded herself. Here, you’re just another competent member of the team, okay?

  Still, she was the first one to stand and file out of the room, trying to force herself not to run. She had no idea which firefighters she’d be assigned, but it probably wouldn’t be Patrick, right? What were the odds?

  It had crossed her mind from time to time that Patrick might still live in Montpelier, sure, and it had crossed her mind that she’d probably run into him sooner or later. After all, Montpelier just wasn’t that big, but she hadn’t thought it was be only a few days after moving in, and she definitely hadn’t thought that it would be under such embarrassing circumstances.

  The fireplace flue. Who forgot about that?

  In high school, Katie didn’t think she’d spoken two whole sentences to Patrick Tahoe. They’d had a few classes together, and he’d always been perfectly nice to her, but he’d always been dating some cheerleader or other. Fitting, since he was in varsity football his freshman and was starting quarterback by his senior year, and he fit the stereotype to a T. He was blond, blue eyed, handsome, the archetypical all-American high school athlete.

  And Katie had been madly in love with him for years, always from the shadows. After all, she was a chubby brown-haired girl with glasses and braces. She was president of the debate team and the honor society and valedictorian, but those things didn’t add up to dating a football player, not even a little bit. She’d been shocked when he recognized her at all, and even more shocked that he remembered her.

  Still, she knew he was probably married with a kid by now. Men like him didn’t just stay single. Even if he hadn’t been any good at college, his father owned half the condos and rental houses in the ski resort town of Stowe, about half an hour away, and she was sure that Patrick was doing quite well for himself working at the family business.

  This other guy, though. Sam. He was new to town and cute in an entirely different way — rakish but cute, and Katie kept finding herself thinking about the way his fair had fallen into his eyes when he took his helmet off, the way he’d looked at her when he introduced himself.

  Maybe he was single, she thought.

  By Friday, Katie was beat. Her phone rang around lunchtime, and she recognized the number: her old friend Ashley. They’d been in separable in high school, but then they’d grown apart when Katie moved away, like people do. But not that Katie was back in town, they’d hung out a few times, and it turned out that Ashley was still really fun. Most of her high school crowd — the ones who’d stuck around, anyway — had kids and husbands, and some were even on their second kid or husband, but Ashley was still single, and she still loved to party.

  “You have to come out,” Ashley was saying over the phone as Katie ate the turkey sandwich she’d brought from home.

  “MMMfff smmff trrrd,” Katie protested, her mouth full.

  “What?”

  Katie swallowed her bite of sandwich and took a quick swig of her diet coke. “I’m so tired,” she said.

  “Well, get over it, girl, because it is ladies’ night tonight at The Mad Patriot!”

  Katie groaned. “Is that place still open?”

  “The owners redid it and it’s way better now, I swear. And on Fridays, women get all drinks half-price.”

  The clock on the wall caught Katie’s eye. She only had about ten more minutes of lunch and then her next client.

  “You’ll have so much fun, I promise,” Ashley said.

  “Is it just going to be weird old guys hitting on me while their wives sit at home?” Katie said. She didn’t know what the dating scene in Montpelier was going to be like, but she didn’t have particularly high hopes for it.

  “No!” Ashley said, a little too eagerly. “No, there’s plenty of... you know, hot young guys around?”

  She didn’t sound that confident.

  “Please?” Ashley said. “We’ll still have fun.”

  “All right,” Katie said. “I’ll come. We’ll have a good time. I can’t believe the Patriot is still open, for the record.”

  Ashley laughed. “I know, right? See you at seven?”

  “Isn’t that kind of early?”

  “You’re in Montpelier now, baby,” said Ashley. “Our party is over by midnight.”

  “All right, seven,” Katie said, and they hung up the phone.

  She quickly put her lunch utensils into her purse, then lit a candle by the armchair where people sat when they came to talk to her. One of the nice things about being a psychologist, she thought, was that she could do things like that — have candles and comfy chairs.

  A five ’til one, she hit the intercom on her phone.

  “Hey Mike,” she said to the receptionist. “Who’s next?”

  “One of the firefighters,” he said. “Patrick Tahoe?”

  The turkey sandwich in Katie’s stomach rebelled a little.

  “I see,” she said, as neutrally as possible. “Thanks, Mike. Tell him I’ll be out in a moment.”

  Very calmly, she hung up the phone and stared at her desk for one moment.

  “Shit,” she muttered to herself.

  Then she practically dove into her purse, searching frantically for the stick of gum she knew had to be in there somewhere.

  At last, she found it, half mushed up and gross on the bottom, but she still jammed it into her mouth and chewed like a madwoman for thirty seconds, before spitting it into a tissue and tossing it into the trash.

  Then she stood, brushed herself off, smoothed her skirt, and strode to her office door, trying to look her most competent and confident.

  “Patrick?” she said to the waiting area.

  He was sitting in one of the chair, idly flipping through a car magazine.

  “Hey, doc,” he said, smiling.

  Dimples.

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said, holding open the door to her office for him, and waiting for him to settle in one of the chairs before sitting in the other and crossing her legs, praying he couldn’t tell how nervous he was making her. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m good, doc,” he said, his hands flat on his knees. “I don’t know why they send us in for these things. The most exciting thing we do most months is rescue kittens from trees. Well, besides setting up your fans.”

  Katie tried not to blush, but she could feel the redness spreading up her cheeks.

  “Firefighting is a stressful job,” she said. “They just want to make sure you’re all handling it well.”

  Patrick shrugged.

  “What else do you do?” she asked, pretending to write something down on her pad.

  For twenty minutes they talked, Patrick telling Katie all about staying in Montpelier, about how he was slowly taking over his father’s property management business in Stowe, how sometimes he felt like he should have left Vermont to see the world but he didn’t actually want to leave, he actually liked the small-town life of Montpelier.

  He talked a little about firefighting, about the one time he’d brought a two-year-old out of her bedroom to her nearly-hysterical parents, “Not even a real fire, just a bunch of smoke everywhere, the house wasn’t gonna go up,” and it had felt so good to help someone that he wanted to do it forever.

  Katie nodded along. He seemed fine, really.

  “Well,” she said when their time was finished. “You seem to be dealing with your jobs pretty well, to be honest.”

  “Thanks, doc.”

  “You can just call me Katie,” she said. “The title’s not necessary.”

  “Sure thing, doctor Katie,” he said, giving her a teasing smile.

  Don’t let it
fluster you, Katie told herself.

  “Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss with me?” she asked, keeping her back straight, her professional demeanor on.

  “How about drinks?”

  Katie blinked. “Do you think you have a problem?”

  Now he laughed, a real, genuine laugh. “I mean you and me, getting drinks,” he said.

  Katie’s stomach turned right over inside her, the turkey sandwich suddenly feeling very funny. “Are you asking me out?” she said.

  That’s the least graceful thing you’ve ever said, she thought.

  “I guess I am,” Patrick said.

  “I can’t,” she said, quickly, her nerves getting the better of her. “I can’t date patients, it’s wildly unethical.”

  Patrick tilted his head to one side, thinking. “Am I still your patient?” he asked. “I thought you just cleared me.”

  Katie’s heart was beating so loudly in her chest that she was positive Patrick could hear it from where he sat.

  “It’s still unethical,” she said. “I might see you at next review, and we just had a long session, and there’s an issue of confidentiality and I only just got here and don’t want to get fired and—“

  Patrick held up his hands and stood, still smiling even if he looked kind of disappointed. “Hey, it’s all right. It was just a question,” he said.

  “Thanks for coming in for your review,” Katie said, also standing. She could feel the nervous sweat in her armpits and prayed it wasn’t visible on the outside.

  “Not a problem,” he said, opening the door to leave.

  Then he turned and looked back at her.

  “But don’t think I won’t try to get you to change your mind,” he said, and then left her offices.

  Katie closed her office door and collapsed back into her chair, mind racing.

  As soon as she was done with all her patients, Katie called Ashley again and tried to cancel their night out, but Ashley wasn’t having any of it.

  “I’ll come to your house and kidnap you myself,” she said. “I’ll find you and I will take you out tonight.”

  There was really no protest that Katie could make against that kind of fierce determination, so she acquiesced.

  When Ashley had said that the Mad Patriot, Montpelier’s finest drinking establishment if what you considered fine was no windows, bottom-shelf vodka, and carpet that dated from at least the 1970s, had been redone, Katie had been expecting something different. A nice wood floor, maybe, some mood lighting, new tables.

  It had been redone, that was true. The bar and the tables and most of the interior were all new, and everything seemed to be backlit by neon: pink behind the bar, blue under the bar. Bright purple neon lined the ceiling.

  Katie felt like she was in a 1980s-themed nightmare.

  “I thought you said this was a nice place now,” she said to Ashley over the blare of the dance music. There was a vast space with huge speakers and a DJ booth, a young white guy standing behind it, messing with his laptop.

  “I said they redid it,” said Ashley, taking Katie by the elbow and steering her toward the garish bar. “First drink’s on me, what do you want?”

  “What wines do they have?”

  Ashley looked at Katie for a moment like she had grown a second head. Then, she turned to the bartender.

  “Two Long Island iced teas, please,” she said.

  The bartender just nodded and got to work.

  “What?” said Katie. “No, I just want a regular drink...” she trailed off, because from the corner of her eyes, she’d spotted someone: Sam, sitting in a booth over to one side, sipping on a small glass of brown liquid. Whiskey, probably.

  Ashley, no idiot, followed her eyes until she also saw Sam, sitting there, alone, with his drink. She turned back to Katie and raised both her eyebrows.

  “Sam Mendel, huh?” she said.

  “He was one of the guys who... came to my house, the other day.”

  “One of your two valiant heroes, you mean? Who rescued you from certain death at the hands of your fireplace?”

  The drinks arrived, and Ashley handed over a credit card. Katie took a sip, and was surprised: she’d never had a Long Island iced tea before, always assuming that they were for party girls who just wanted to get drunk, but it wasn’t bad.

  “He’s already seen my bedroom,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at Ashley, trying to get the other girl to laugh. “Got a fan out of there for the smoke.”

  “So he won’t be shocked by your mess when he goes in there again,” Ashley said, grinning. “He’s single, you know.”

  Of course Katie hadn’t known that. “Are you sure?”

  Ashley laughed. “Just because I’m dating someone right now doesn’t mean I don’t know the status of every eligible man in Montpelier.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Come on,” Ashley said, pulling Katie along again. “Let’s go say hi.”

  “I—“ Katie tried to protest, but Ashley was already pulling her along.

  As they approached, Ashley in front, Katie behind, trying very much to look like she’d gotten there under her own power and not by being dragged along, Sam looked up, calmly taking a sip as he did.

  “Hey, Sam,” Ashley said brightly. “Remember Katie? You saved her heroically.”

  Katie wrenched her arm free, spilling a little of her drink in the process.

  “I just set up some fans,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, but Katie thought she could read the amusement in the crinkles around his eyes. “Doug Classen, her neighbor, probably overreacted. The house would have been fine in thirty more minutes.”

  Katie shook her head. “How long is it going to take me to live that down?” she asked, sheepishly.

  Now Sam smiled. “Until someone else forgets to open their flue. Winter’s coming, just give it a few weeks.”

  “So at least I’m not the only one?” Katie asked.

  “Definitely not.” He paused. “You guys want to sit?”

  Ashley gave Katie a not-so-gentle nudge in the back, and Katie got into the big round booth first, her drink still sloshing a little. The bartender definitely hadn’t skimped on anything.

  “So you just moved back home?” Sam asked.

  Katie nodded, in the middle of taking another sip of her over-full drink, trying to get the level down a little so she wouldn’t spill it.

  “Yeah, Patrick was saying that you two went to high school together, but then you left for college in New York and he stayed here.”

  “I had no idea he remembered me,” Katie said. She felt the tiniest bit buzzed — her head was floaty, and she felt quite brave. “I don’t think we said more than two sentences to each other.”

  Because I was madly in love with him, she thought but didn’t say out loud.

  “He said he almost didn’t recognize you,” Sam said. He took another sip of his whiskey, and a few strands of his curly dark hair fell in his face. “Said you ‘got hot.’”

  Katie’s mouth fell open.

  PATRICK TAHOE SAID I GOT HOT!!!??! Screamed a little voice inside her head, her sixteen-year-old self practically fainting with excitement.

  The outside Katie stayed in control of herself and laughed. “Tell him I said thanks,” she told Sam. “But it’s mostly the contact lenses.”

  “Is it?” asked Sam.

  There was a brief pause. Ashley, halfway through her drink already, was ready.

  “Tell her what you do,” she said.

  Sam shrugged. “I’m a ski instructor and lift operator in the winter,” he said. “Summers I head a little west and do whitewater rafting tours on the northern part of the Hudson.”

  “Wow, that sounds exciting,” Katie said.

  Sam shrugged. “I love it, but it’s not the kind of life I can keep up forever,” he said. “Moving every six months, sleeping in a dorm all winter and a tent all summer.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  “You get used to it, but my back wo
n’t hold out forever,” he said. “I’m thinking of staying in Montpelier after this winter, actually. Probably time to settle down.”

  “It’s a nice place,” Katie said. “I really missed it.”

  He nodded, then looked at her, leaning back against the fake leather of the booth. “I do wish there was somewhere else to drink,” he said. “It’s this place or the wine tasting room a couple of blocks away.”

  “You could open a real bar,” Katie suggested. “Do you like drinking?”

  Sam laughed. “As much as anyone,” he said.

  Katie shook her head, trying to get the alcohol out of it, she felt like. “I just mean, it’s something you could do. Open a normal bar that’s not—“ she waved her hands around —“this, and you’ll be golden.”

  “That could be nice,” he mused. His eyes flicked up to hers and held them there, still. “What else do you like to do in Montpelier?”

  “There’s skiiing of course,” Katie said. “And, it’s dorky, but I love all the historical tours and stuff that you can do. If you’re looking for a day trip, you could drive over to Fort Ticonderoga, which Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured during the American Revolution. It was a big turning point, and — oh, my god, I’m going on about this.”

  “I like to hear you talk,” Sam said. “I don’t know much about American history, actually.”

  Katie shrugged, embarrassed. She could feel his eyes on her, and they felt warm and... well, sexy. She swallowed and touched her neck with one hand, taking one more sip of her stupid drink. It was only about a third gone, but it was strong.

  “It’s the main reason that Benedict Arnold became a traitor,” she said. “He didn’t get promoted afterward, so he defected.”

  “Bad sport,” said Sam. He sipped the last of his whiskey and put the glass down on the table.

  “Yeah,” said Katie, spinning her glass between her fingers. “But kind of understandable, you know?”

  “I guess.”

  Katie looked over at Ashley, who was simultaneously amused, bored, and angry, probably because Katie was supposed to be flirting with this guy, and here she was talking about American history.