Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(6)

After all, disaster was the Clarkson way.

When Rita was sixteen, Miriam had taken the four of them camping. For their family, camping had roughly translated into a borrowed Winnebago parked beside Carlsbad Beach, mere feet from convenience stores and a busy highway. Not exactly braving the harsh conditions of nature. Although, after one night, they could have fooled the emergency room staff at TriCity Medical Center into thinking they’d just spent a week in the swamp.

Peggy had sneaked off with the son of their neighboring campers, skinny-dipping in restricted waters, leading to a nasty jellyfish sting. Upon hearing his sister’s distressed screams, Aaron had sprinted toward the beach and carried a towel-wrapped Peggy back to the Winnebago, stepping in a gopher hole on the way and spraining his ankle.

That was the Clarksons’ first and last family vacation, but the misfortunes hadn’t started or ended there. Belmont had fallen into a well on a class field trip in third grade and stayed missing for four days. Later, they’d found out he’d shouted himself hoarse on the first day, leaving him unable to call out to the search party that passed by. On the fourth day, when firemen had managed to extricate him from the obscured thirty-foot-deep well, the media attention had been intense, complete with cameras and flashes going off and questions being hurled at young, filthy, and starving Belmont. At the time Rita had been too young to process why Belmont had withdrawn into himself after that, but the television footage she’d found on the Internet as an adult explained a lot.

Rita’s personal misfortunes had once occurred with less notoriety or incurred medical costs, but were no less imprinted on her psyche. Such as slugging a classmate for Photoshopping her head onto a porn star's body and circulating it online. Hello, expulsion.

Little did she know her claim to fame would also come once again via the Internet a decade later. And for the first time, irony didn’t amuse her.

Now, at the unmistakable sounds of car engine trouble, Rita shot up in the far backseat and pushed her dark hair out of her face. “The hell happened?”

Belmont jerked the Suburban into park and sat perfectly still, white-knuckling the cracked steering wheel. Peggy sat up slowly from where she’d been sleeping in the middle row. She sent Rita a troubled glance over her shoulder, then returned her attention to Belmont. Rita’s concern for her oldest brother laced through her alarm. Ever since Peggy had shown up without her friend, Sage Alexander, Belmont had been wound more tightly than usual. Rita had been able to glean only a fraction of the story from Peggy before they’d been locked up in the car and private conversation had become impossible.

Sage had been Peggy’s wedding planner for all four failed wedding attempts, and they’d become close friends. Best friends. As the standin for their absent father who would walk Peggy down the aisle, apparently Belmont had developed some sort of attachment to Sage, too. Because his reaction when Peggy apologized and told him Sage couldn’t make the trip had been nothing short of extraordinary.

Rita wasn’t being insensitive in using that description. Belmont rarely showed a reaction to anything, let alone women, whom he barely gave the time of day. But something about being without this Sage girl had turned him to ice.

Aaron roused in the passenger seat, tugging the headphones from his ears. “Is there something wrong?” He looked out the windshield just in time to see smoke curl from under the hood. “Oh, for the love of God. Tell me you have Triple A.”

“Nope,” Belmont said, his voice sounding rusty. “I have a toolbox in back, but that isn’t going to help if we need a new part.”

“Let’s just call a tow truck.” Rita was already searching through her purse for her cell. “Anyone know where we are?”

“Hopefully near a bridge, so I can throw myself off of it,” Aaron answered briskly before pushing open his door and climbing out. They all watched as he rolled up his tailored sleeves, mouth moving to form what were obviously curse words.

When Aaron popped the hood, Belmont shook his head. “He has no idea what to look for, but I’m going to give him a minute to try.”

Peggy popped a stick of gum into her mouth. “Didn’t he negotiate his way out of shop class in high school?”

“No, that was Ethics,” Rita said. She held up her phone, trying to map their location, but was thwarted by the lack of a signal. “Kind of gives him plausible deniability as a politician.”

Belmont sighed when Aaron started to pace, holding his cell phone up in the air much the way Rita was doing. He shoved open the door and went to join his brother outside the car, followed a moment later by Peggy and Rita. When the sun hit Rita, she cowered back into the Suburban’s shade. Sunshine was not her thing. Really, being outside at all went against her entire life philosophy. Inside good. Nature bad. Trips to the farmers’ market for cooking ingredients was the typical extent of her excursions, and even then she rushed through the process as if she had a sun allergy. Those trips to purchase vegetables were over now, though, weren’t they? Experiencing a rush of buoyancy at the thought, Rita peeked around the lifted hood into the steaming engine, where Belmont was busy waving smoke aside to inspect the damage.

“What’s the verdict?”

“Not good.” In a familiar gesture, Belmont rubbed his thumb along the crease in his chin. “There was a town about three miles back. Small. But probably has a garage. I’ll go.”