Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

“Okay—I’m glad you’re having a nice time up there, but if you’re finished I’m gonna—”

Angie’s knees suddenly clenched around my head. “Wait, Riley. They’re dudes… Four of them. They look like lumberjacks or something. Here, you can see too.” She dove a hand into the side pocket of her dress and slipped out her phone. “That’s what a zoom lens is for… Still got a bit of battery left.” A sharp click sounded as Angie’s phone camera went off.

“Okay, geddown now,” I growled, tugging at her ankle.

She acquiesced, sliding down me with a self-satisfied look on her face. She squinted down at her phone to check out the photo she’d just taken, but it was far too bright to see the screen properly.

“Well, now we all have an extra incentive to hurry up and get back to the house.” She winked at me, before donning her hat and continuing to pick corn.

Smirking, I rolled my eyes and picked up my hat, then moved to return to my spot in the field, when Lauren suddenly materialized out of the bushes in front of me. Her faded blue dungarees looked decidedly grubbier than when we had started, and her coffee-colored ponytail was a tangled mess, but her brown eyes sparkled with mild interest. Adjusting her spectacles primly, she flashed us a sardonic smile.

“Did I hear someone say ‘lumberjacks’?”



Water was more than enough of an incentive for me to finish the job quickly. After my little break, I worked at twice the speed and managed to pick enough corn to fill all three of our sacks within the next fifteen minutes. Then, lugging each sack over our shoulders, we traipsed back to the wooden two-story house that stood at the edge of the cornfields.

We mounted the steps to the porch, passing the Churnleys’ three lazy golden retrievers, who barely raised an eyelid as we reached the door. It had been left on the latch, and Angie pushed it open with a creak. We stepped directly into the kitchen/dining area, where we were met with the pungent smell of Mrs. Churnley’s cooking, and the short, podgy lady herself standing in front of a stove, her bouncy gray hair cooped up in a brown bonnet, while her bald husband sat at the dining table dutifully peeling potatoes.

Their eyes shot to us as we strode in and planted our sacks down on the wooden floorboards.

“Where should we leave these, ma’am?” Angie asked, panting.

“Oh, good girls!” Mrs. Churnley left the frying pan she had been monitoring and bustled over to examine our finds. “You got some real beauties here! I’ll have Mr. Churnley skin some for lunch.”

Mr. Churnley, who was of a similar height and build to his wife, waddled over to join her in examining the corn with his monobrow furrowed, while Lauren, Angie, and I hurried to the sink. We each grabbed a metal cup from the drainer and quickly served ourselves water from a large pitcher. Once we’d swallowed two cups in a row, Angie remarked to the couple, “Seems like you might have new neighbors, by the way.”

Mrs. Churnley turned, her rheumy eyes widening as she made her way back to the frying pan. “Hmm?”

“Yeah,” Angie replied, “we—or I—saw four guys lounging around in the field next door. They were shirtless, so I assumed they were sunbathing…” She set her cup down and dove her hand back into her pocket to retrieve her phone. But as she navigated to her photo app and touched the screen to zoom in, she frowned. “Huh. That’s real weird.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she squinted at the screen.

“What?” Lauren and I asked.

“I can’t, uh, make them out in the photo,” she replied, still looking befuddled. “There’s just logs. Odd. I could have sworn I saw dudes there too.”

Lauren’s lips twitched in a wry smile as she took the phone from Angie. “Yup,” she confirmed. “Logs.”

I peered over Lauren’s shoulder to take a look at the photo for myself. A cluster of four logs lay near the edge of a flat field, right near the woods’ border… Definitely no shirtless lumberjacks.

Mrs. Churnley chortled, nudging Angie in the arm with her elbow. “Seems we all react to the heat differently, eh? The only ‘shirtless dude’ I’ve seen around here in the last twenty years, other than Mr. Churnley, is Mr. Doherty, our neighbor on the southern side of the fence, and I wouldn’t say he’s anything to get excited about—unless curly white chest hairs are your thing.” To our alarm, she threw us a salacious wink.

“Now, Nora,” her husband spoke up in a gruff voice, “don’t get the ladies too excited.”

I felt myself turn as red as the tomatoes on the kitchen counter as Mr. and Mrs. Churnley erupted into raucous laughter. Angie, Lauren, and I cleared our throats in an attempt to join in, before inching toward the door.

“We’re just gonna go and rest a bit before lunch if that’s okay,” Angie said with a plastic smile.

“Of course!” Mrs. Churnley replied, and the three of us swiftly took our leave. “It’ll be ready within the hour!”

I let out a breath as we entered the narrow corridor. They were definitely an unusual couple. Apparently they used to live in the city, and worked as bankers before they got so burned out on metropolitan life that they had a midlife crisis and swung the other way—completely the other way. They bought this patch of land decades ago, and judging by the state of the house, they probably hadn’t renovated it since they moved in.

We climbed the rickety staircase that led to the second floor, where the three of us shared a bedroom fitted with three single beds. Although the Churnleys had space for guests, it was quite obvious they weren’t used to having any. There were two other bedrooms on our level—one belonging to the old couple, and another that had fallen into disrepair. Angie suspected the latter had belonged to their only child, a boy who had died at the age of thirteen from a rare form of cancer.

Angie’s grandmother was convinced they were terribly lonely, but would never admit to it, since they’d “rather rot” than go back to living like the rest of the world. So when she learned that Angie, Lauren, and I wanted to do something memorable this summer, she had been quick to think of her old friends, and had contacted them by snail mail.

Lauren was the first to use the en-suite bathroom when we entered our musty-smelling room, while Angie and I flopped back on our creaky beds. The shower started, and we sniggered as Lauren stepped in and sighed to herself, “Ah, luxury.”

It was kind of amazing the things you appreciated when everything got stripped from you. I imagined I’d feel utterly spoiled when I returned home in a month.

Angie blew out softly, staring up at the bare wooden beams strutted across the cobwebbed ceiling. “I could have sworn I saw dudes there,” she mumbled.

I smiled to myself. “It was an illusion, Angie,” I said in a dreamy voice. “A mirage… Where normal people would see an oasis of water in a desert, you would see an oasis of, well…” My tone dropped. “I do kind of worry what that says about you.”