Hot Mama Read online

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Estep.

  Cover art by Stanley Chow.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Text design by Kristin del Rosario.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Estep, Jennifer.

  Hot mama / Jennifer Estep.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Heroines—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3605.S687H68 2007

  813'.6—dc22

  2007025825

  ISBN: 1-4295-5622-6

  To my mom, the best person I know.

  And to Andre, who coined the phrase “So, are you going to eat that?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, this book would not have been possible without the help of many people.

  Thanks again to my super agent, Kelly Harms, and fantastic editor, Cindy Hwang. You both help me make my books the very best they can be, for which I am always grateful.

  To artist Stanley Chow. Thanks for another great Bigtime cover. They just keep getting better.

  To all the readers out there who wrote, e-mailed, and talked to me about Karma Girl. Thank you for your kind words. Your enjoyment and enthusiasm mean more to me than you know.

  Happy reading!

  PART ONE

  Wedding Bells

  1

  My wedding day.

  It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. A time of joy and celebration and new beginnings. The day every girl dreams of from the time she’s old enough to play dressup in her mother’s clothes.

  It was exactly that sort of day.

  Joy. Hope. New beginnings.

  But it wasn’t mine.

  Carmen Cole twirled in front of the full-length mirror.

  Her white satin wedding dress swung out in an arc then gathered back in on itself. Thousands of Swarovski crystals dotted the fitted bodice and full skirt, giving the dress a shimmering, ethereal air. A matching crystal necklace sparkled like a ring of stars around her neck.

  “How do I look, Fiona?” Carmen turned her blue eyes to mine.

  I hated to admit it, but Carmen looked fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. A rosy flush tinted her cheeks. Excitement brightened her eyes. Even her auburn hair glistened underneath her simple lace veil.

  “You look fabulous. After all, you’re wearing a Fiona Fine original.”

  Carmen frowned at her reflection. “I know it’s one of your more subdued designs, but I still think it’s a little much.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. An errant spark flew from my thumb and landed on the beige carpet. I squashed it with my stiletto. A little much? Please. If Carmen had gotten her way, she would have worn holey jeans, worn-out sneakers, and a ratty T-shirt with some cutesy saying on it to the wedding.

  Luckily, hotter heads had prevailed. Mine. Then again, it was easy to get your way when you had the ability to shoot fire out of your fingertips. Getting my way was one of the prime benefits of being a superhero. My favorite benefit.

  Just because I moonlight as a superhero doesn’t mean I can’t be a little selfish—or enjoy the perks of having superpowers.

  Usually, I’m perfectly happy just being Fiera, one of many superheroes in Bigtime, New York, fighting evil, cracking skulls, and making life miserable for all those pesky ubervillains who want to take over the city, then the world. But every once in a while, I enjoy showing off my fiery skills, especially when it’s for the greater good, such as making sure Carmen didn’t look like a bag lady at her own wedding.

  A knock sounded on the door, the knob turned, and Lulu Lo zipped her motorized wheelchair into the room. A royal blue dress covered the Asian woman’s slender form, bringing out the smoothness of her porcelain skin and the cobalt streaks in her spiky black hair. Since we were both bridesmaids, I wore a matching gown, but with a few modifications—a lower bodice, a tighter fit, and a higher slit up the side.

  “Nice dress, Sister Carmen.” Lulu whistled. “That’ll make Sam sit up and take notice.”

  Carmen grinned. Another spark shot out from my thumb. Sam had already taken plenty of notice of Carmen, despite my efforts to the contrary. The two of them were always sneaking off to have wild sex in some corner of the manor house.

  “Of course Sam will notice,” I snapped. “I designed the dress. Ours too, if you’ll remember. They’re all fabulous.”

  “Well, you do look very hot, Fiona.” Lulu laughed.

  I glowered at Lulu. Just because I was a member of the Fearless Five, one of the most esteemed superhero teams in the world, didn’t mean that I didn’t get snarly from time to time—or that civilians like Lulu had the right to poke fun at me.

  Of course, none of this would be happening if Carmen, aka Karma Girl, hadn’t insisted we tell Lulu our secret, superhero identities. Carmen had argued that Lulu deserved to know the truth, since she’d helped save us from the Terrible Triad, a group of ubervillains. Lulu was also the main squeeze of Henry Harris, aka Hermit of the Fearless Five, and he’d wanted to tell her the truth as well. The other two members of the Fearless Five, Sam “Striker” Sloane and Sean “Mr. Sage” Newman, had agreed with Carmen.

  So the four of them told Lulu everything, despite my protests. Once the shock wore off, Lulu ingratiated herself with the rest of the Fearless Five. Now, everybody else treated her like one of the gang. She even had her own room in the top-secret, underground compound with the rest of us.

  I ignored Lulu whenever possible. It was bad enough she knew our real identities. I didn’t want to invite her any more into our lives. Lulu was a computer hacker. She did all sorts of highly illegal things, like breaking into the FBI mainframe and swapping corporate secrets, but nobody cared except me. Not even my father, the esteemed police chief of Bigtime as well as a member of the Fearless Five.

&nbs
p; In return for my blatant hostility, Lulu zinged me with heat-related puns whenever we crossed paths. Fiona’s hot. Fiona’s smokin’. Fiona’s on fire. Like I hadn’t heard them all a hundred thousand times before. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Lulu could have at least come up with something original, if she was going to mock me on a daily basis.

  My eyes fixed on Lulu’s hair. I could turn those blue streaks red in a heartbeat. Heat pulsed through my body.

  My fingers twitched. Just one little spark…

  “Fiona,” Carmen warned. “There will be no flare-ups today. You promised Sam.”

  I had promised Sam. And my father. And Henry. And even Carmen. Three times each. I let go of the fire coursing through my veins and banked it deep inside me. It didn’t matter anyway. Carmen would have just done her empathy thing and used the ambient energy in the room to buffer Lulu and herself from my heat. Carmen had the ability to tap into other people and use their own energy against them. I hated her power, mainly because I hadn’t figured out a way to counteract it yet. Most of the time, I either punched or flambéed my way through danger. But I couldn’t do that with Carmen, because she gave just as good as she got.

  Lulu smirked at me and motored away. She’d probably max out my credit cards or do some other devious, identitytheft thing as soon as the wedding ended. I didn’t know what Henry saw in her. Maybe he was just glad that he’d finally found someone who understood all the techno-babble he spouted on a daily basis.

  Lulu left the door open, and classical music drifted in, along with the murmur of distant conversations. I eyed the clock on the wall. Five minutes to go. Good. The sooner this spectacle was over with, the better. I wasn’t in the mood for a wedding today. Not any day. Not anymore.

  Carmen picked up on my dark thoughts and stared at me in the mirror. “I know this has been hard for you, Fiona. The engagement, the wedding, everything. I’m sorry. I wish things were different. I wish Tornado was still here…”

  Her soft Southern twang trailed off under my hot gaze.

  Hard for me? She had no idea.

  It’d been over a year since my fiancé, Tornado, had been murdered. Carmen had exposed the superhero’s secret identity as Travis Teague to the world, including our archenemies, the Terrible Triad. The ubervillains had killed Travis and used Carmen to get to the rest of us. We’d been captured, stuffed in glass tubes, and almost sucked dry of our superpowers, before Carmen had saved us by getting dumped into a vat of radioactive goo and developing superpowers herself.

  Sometimes, I couldn’t believe the irony of it. Carmen exposing superheroes, becoming one herself, and now marrying one. Things never seemed to turn out the way you thought they would, especially in Bigtime.

  Mostly, though, I still couldn’t believe Travis was gone.

  Forever. My heart twisted, and the burning fire inside me flickered and dimmed. My eyes dropped to the square, diamond engagement ring on my finger. Travis had given it to me a week before he’d died. I hadn’t taken it off since.

  “Fiona? Are you okay?” Carmen asked.

  I wasn’t. Not even close. But this was Carmen’s big day, and I didn’t want to ruin it for her.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “In fact, I was thinking that it’s time for me to get out and start dating again. I’ve done the men of Bigtime a cruel, heartless injustice, depriving them of my fabulous company all this time.” I tossed my long blond hair over my shoulder for effect.

  Carmen’s face lit up like I’d just hit her with a fireball between the eyes. “That’s wonderful, Fiona! Just wonderful!”

  Her blue eyes grew cloudy and distant, the way they always did when she was listening to the strange whispers in her head. Carmen called them her inner voice, her instincts.

  I thought she had more than a few loose rocks rattling around in all that empty space.

  “Maybe you’ll meet somebody at the reception,” she murmured.

  I huffed. Please. I’d been active on the social scene ever since I’d moved to Bigtime some fifteen years ago, and I knew everybody invited to the wedding. There wasn’t a man among them that I’d date, let alone sleep with.

  I twisted the ring on my finger. The silver solidium band heated up on my hot hand, and the diamond glowed like a tiny moon. Still, I would like to find somebody. It’d be nice to be part of a couple again. To laugh and talk and have dinner with someone who wasn’t a relative or an employee or a fellow superhero. To find somebody who looked at me the way that Sam looked at Carmen.

  Plus, I liked sex. A lot. It sucked to go without.

  My hand stilled. Maybe that’s what I should do. Get drunk at the reception, have a one-night stand with some anonymous guy to take the edge off, and then start looking for someone suitable. Someone more long-term. The only problem with my plan was that it would take an ocean of champagne to get me drunk, given my fast-burning metabolism.

  Well, it was a good thing Sam was richer than almost everyone else on the planet put together. He could afford a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bubbly if it meant me getting lucky.

  The music quickened and swelled, and the conversations faded away. The air hummed with energy and anticipation.

  “Time to go.” Carmen smoothed down her billowing skirt. Her hand trembled just a bit.

  I picked up her long train, careful not to singe the fabric with my fingers. I’d spent too much time sewing the damn thing to ruin it now. Carmen turned and grabbed my arm.

  “Do you think this is the right thing to do? Do you think we should go through with it? Do you think we’re ready? You know how badly my last wedding turned out.”

  Panic filled her blue eyes.

  Badly was the understatement of the century. Right before the wedding, Carmen had found her fiancé boinking her best friend and discovered that the two were her town’s resident superhero and ubervillain. That, of course, had set Carmen off on her little mission to expose the identity of every superhero and ubervillain who crossed her path. Which, of course, is how Carmen had met Sam and the rest of us.

  Karma, she called it. Destiny, kismet, fate. I just thought of it as bad luck on our part.

  But I bit back the sarcastic retort I’d been ready to let loose. The nosy reporter had grown on me, despite my best efforts. And she had saved my life and everyone else’s. I owed her for that. Plus, it was my solemn duty as a bridesmaid to support the bride—even if Carmen occasionally made me want to put my fist through a wall.

  “Do you love Sam?”

  Carmen nodded. Some of the tension left her body.

  “With all my heart.”

  “Then, it’ll be fine,” I said. “Sam loves you, and you love him. You’re going to have a fabulous wedding, a fantastic honeymoon, and a wonderful life together. Plus, you’re wearing a Fiona Fine original couture gown. And what could possibly be better than that?”

  2

  After Carmen calmed down, we made our way through Sublime, Sam’s mansion on the outskirts of Bigtime. Roughly the size of a small country, the manor house contained just about every antique and art object known to man and superhero.

  Polished suits of armor, colorful paintings, detailed sculptures, exquisite tapestries. Even though I’d been prowling the halls for years now, the rich furnishings still impressed me. And it took a lot to impress me.

  Carmen tiptoed her way through the manor, struggling to stay upright in her towering heels. I stalked along behind, holding up the train so it wouldn’t get snagged on a piece of furniture, and wishing the bride-to-be would move a little faster. I could always zing Carmen with a hot flash.

  That would get her moving. But I couldn’t risk ruining the gown. Not now. I’d already had to redo it twice because of some temperamental flare-ups on my part.

  Carmen stumbled on the edge of an Oriental rug and almost fell on her face.

  “Stupid shoes,” she muttered, glaring at me.

  Her three-inch strappy sandals had been another hotly contested point between us. Carmen had wanted to wear these u
gly, flat, ballet slippers that had gone out of style twenty years ago. I’d told her point-blank that she wasn’t wearing those monstrosities with a Fiona Fine wedding gown. She wasn’t ruining my hard work with her fashion faux pas. Of course, I had to roast most of Carmen’s wornout tennis shoes before she agreed to wear the sandals, but the important thing was that I, and designer fashion, had triumphed yet again.

  “I don’t see how you walk in these things,” Carmen said, tugging on one of the white straps wrapped around her ankle.

  “It’s easy,” I snapped. “Millions of women do it every day. Now quit whining and walk. You’ve got a superhero to marry.”

  Carmen gave me another annoyed glance, but she shuffled forward. Despite Carmen’s time covering the Bigtime society beat, fashion wasn’t her forte. That was my domain.

  And I knew, like all good designers know, that no outfit is complete without a pair of killer shoes, preferably stilettos.

  The higher, the better.

  After a couple more stumbles and a string of curses, we stopped in front of a pair of doors that led outside. Lulu sat there waiting, along with Chief Sean Newman. Sunlight streamed in through the glass, warming the alcove where we stood. The ceremony was taking place in the luscious gardens that surrounded the enormous estate, as befit a traditional May wedding.

  I peeked through the doors. Henry Harris, the best man, and Sam Sloane, the anxious groom, had already taken their places in front of the minister at the far end of the long aisle.

  “Carmen, Fiona,” Chief Newman rumbled in his deep Irish brogue. “You both look beautiful.”

  “Chief.” I kissed my father on the cheek.

  I’d always called my father Chief, ever since I was a little girl and had first seen him in his police uniform. It was a habit I continued out of necessity. Nobody knew about our family connection, except the other members of the Fearless Five and now Lulu. It was safer that way. Since people, and more importantly ubervillains, didn’t know about our relationship, they couldn’t kidnap and use us against each other, either in our real lives or as our superhero alter egos, Fiera and Mr. Sage.