Author: Bella Andre

“How did you start dating?”

He didn’t want to tell her the truth. But his mother hadn’t raised him to be a liar. “She came by the station. To thank me.”

Megan flushed. “Of course she did. I should have guessed.”

“She was nothing like you.”

“Right,” she said in that same clipped voice, so at odds with its husky warmth when she was pleading with him to make love to her. “Strange how similar it all seems, though.” Her eyes were overly bright as she looked back at him. “Did she have a child, too?”

“No. She was young. Only twenty. Still in college.”

“Was she pretty?” She held up her hand. “No. Don’t answer that. Of course she was pretty.” She took a deep breath. “So, what happened?”

“We broke up.”

Just like that, the strong woman moved back to the forefront. “You told me, and I quote, ‘It never works out.’ Why not?”

“She was young. We both were.”

“Sure,” she said, “I believe that. But I’m pretty sure this whole firefighter–victim thing is bigger than just you and Kate and how young you were.” She looked like she’d tasted something rotten as she said his ex’s name. “Tell me exactly why being with a fire victim you’ve saved is such a bad situation. I want to hear why it never works out.”

Damn it, this was the problem with smart women. They knew how to box a guy into a corner.

“Do you know why I’m a firefighter?”

“Because you love to help people.” She paused a beat, then lifted her chin in a clear challenge. “And you love the thrill of danger, too.”

“Most people, once they learn what I do for a living, that’s all they see. The firefighter.” Damn it, he didn’t want to tell her this, not when he knew exactly what she was planning to do with the information. “When that moment where their life is on the line is the first time you meet—”

“It’s all they ever see.”

He wasn’t at all surprised that she understood. “But no one can be a hero twenty-four seven.”

“Of course you can’t.”

He should have known she’d see too much, that she’d hear all the things he wasn’t saying. Because even though she wanted him just to go away, she was watching him carefully as they spoke about his ex.

“There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

Shit. He didn’t want to tell her this, didn’t ever like to talk about it. Even his family didn’t know how bad things had gotten with Kate. Only Zach, who had been with him when they’d found her.

“She didn’t take the breakup well.”

Megan’s eyes widened and for a moment he thought she was going to come over to him. Instead, she simply asked, “What happened, Gabe?”

He swallowed, those horrible minutes when he’d found Kate bleeding in his house coming back to him as if five minutes instead of five years had passed.

“She said she couldn’t live without me. That I was the only reason she was still alive. I found her in my apartment just in time.”

“Gabe.” Megan’s voice was hollow around his name. “My God, how could she have done that to you?”

How, Gabe had to wonder, had he ever compared this strong, magnificent woman standing before him to the girl he’d stupidly dated half a decade ago?

“You’re nothing like her, Megan,” he told her, believing it more every time he said it. “You’re strong. She wasn’t. You’re not looking for anyone to take care of you. I think,” he paused, weighing his words carefully before saying them, “that was all she ever wanted from me.”

“I’m sorry, Gabe, so sorry you had to go through that.” She shook her head. “No wonder you’ve got that rule about fire victims. It makes perfect sense.” She blinked at him. “I’d have the same rule. And I wouldn’t break it. Not for anyone.”

“Megan,” he began, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to say to her. All he knew was that she had to stop painting everything so black and white.

She moved one hand from his shirt to hold it up in classic Stop position.

“The fact remains that you saved my life. And my daughter’s. I’ll never be able to forget what you did for us. You’re right that I would never do anything like that to you, but how am I supposed to stop seeing you as a hero for what you did?” He hadn’t made a move toward her, so she dropped her hand. “You’ll always be the larger-than-life firefighter who risked his life for me, Gabe.”

Damn it. Everything she said was making sense, but all those moments when they hadn’t been talking had made sense, too. So much sense that he still couldn’t quite wrap his brain around the magnitude of the fireworks that had lit and exploded between them.

“You deserve to be with a woman who sees you for everything you are.” She swallowed hard. “And I deserve a long life with a man that isn’t bound and tied to chasing danger. I can’t go through what I went through with David. I just can’t. Please,” she said softly, “don’t make this harder on both of us than it needs to be. We shared one incredible night.” She looked out toward the window. “Part of a morning, too, and that’s going to have to be enough.” She turned back to him. “I need to check out of my room and go pick up Summer soon.”

“You’re leaving this morning?”

“Yes. As soon as I get Summer.”

“Do I get to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye,” she said, purposely misunderstanding him.

Gabe had heard the word heartbroken many times, but he’d never understood it until today.

Thinking of the rest of the week in Lake Tahoe without Megan and Summer made his chest feel like it was cracking open, right in the center.

“Summer will wonder what happened.”

“You’re bigger than that,” she told him in a soft voice. “Please don’t use my daughter to try to get me to change my mind about us.”

Was he really bigger than that?

What rules would he break for the chance to be with this woman?

His?

Hers?

All of them?

Suddenly, she seemed to realize that she was wearing his shirt. A small sound of dismay came from her lips as she pulled it tighter around her. “You need your shirt.”

Gabe knew he should tell her he didn’t need the shirt to make his way back to his room. Barring that, he should turn and let her strip it off in private.

But for all the times he’d been called a hero, right now he was just a man.

And if he was being kicked out of her life, if never was all that he had to look forward to, he wanted one last look at her. One final chance to imprint the most beautiful woman he’d ever known into his memory.

“Yes, if I’m leaving, I guess I do.”

She blinked at him, a doe caught in the headlights. “I didn’t realize I’d grabbed it.” She was biting her lip and flushing at the thought of being naked in front of him again. As if she didn’t want him to think she’d purposely put on his shirt because she wanted a part of him around her, she added, “It was the closest thing to the bed.”

A half-dozen thoughts shot through his brain at once.

He wanted to pull her into him, take her back to bed, and remind her how good they were together.

He wanted to tell her he didn’t have any of this figured out, either, that it didn’t make any more sense to him than it made to her, but he didn’t care.

He wanted to bring her dead husband back, wanted to erase the ghost from her life so that he could at least be on a level playing field with the man.

He wished he could become someone who liked suits and cubicles and computers.

But, as Megan started to come toward him, he couldn’t do any of those things. All he could do was watch her, drink her in, memorize every line and contour on her beautiful face. Her eyes were too bright, but her shoulders were back and her chin was still up as she moved out of the corner.

From the first moment he’d seen her, he’d known how brave she was. Nothing had changed between then and now, nothing but the knowledge of how soft, how giving, how sweet she was, in addition to all that bravery. All that strength.

She opened the shirt and let it fall from her shoulders. Her mouth was open slightly, her eyes big, her skin flushed.

Sparks jumped between them and he knew all the nevers in the world couldn’t make their perfect chemistry any less.

Completely naked again, she gathered up his shirt in one hand and held it out to him. “Here.”

He took the shirt from her, their fingertips touching as they made the transfer. He waited for her to turn, to gather up her clothes from the floor, to cover herself with something, anything.

Instead, she stood there naked before him.

“Never,” he said softly, needing to reclaim that word and turn it around. “I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.”

She put both of her hands over her heart as if she were trying to hold it inside. “Please.”

One word had never held so many potential meanings, but Gabe knew the room was in danger of backdraft if he stayed to try to figure out which please this was—the one that was begging him to stay...or begging him to go.

He’d learned early on in his firefighting career when to go deeper into the flames...and when to retreat to reassess.

Gabe forced himself to put his shirt on, walk to the door, open it, and leave the room.

But he refused to say goodbye.

* * *

She had done the right thing.

The smart thing.

The only thing she could do in good conscience as the mother of a little girl who had already lost one man who was important to her.

But none of those truths made watching Gabe leave hurt any less.

Especially since she also knew she’d done the stupidest possible thing by sleeping with him in the first place...by becoming just like all those other firehouse girls who lived just for the chance to share a bed with a firefighter.

Megan didn’t know how long she stood in the middle of her hotel room, naked, lost.

Empty.

The sound of a shower going on in the room upstairs jarred her back to life.

Her fantasy night was over. Fantasies, she told herself, were like dessert. Delicious, but you couldn’t eat chocolate and whipped cream for every single meal without getting really sick.

Finally, Megan lifted her hands from her chest and ran them through her hair. It was time to get back to her real life, a life she loved, with a seven-year-old who kept her on her toes. As she stepped into the shower, Megan told herself that everything would go back to normal now and she’d be fine.

More importantly, now that she’d made the very difficult decision to stay away from Gabe, her heart—and Summer’s, too—would remain safe from harm.

* * *

An hour later she was standing at Julie’s cabin, ringing the doorbell, shivering in the cold.

“Megan, good morning! Perfect timing. Come on in and have breakfast with us.”

She pasted a smile on her lips. “Thank you.” She wouldn’t be able to eat a single bite, she already knew that. She stepped inside the warm cabin, but even though she was no longer standing in the snow, she still felt ice cold.

It wasn’t until she found Summer hanging from the ladder that went up to the loft like a little monkey—”Hey Mommy! I had the best time ever last night!”—that Megan’s heart finally expanded back to the right size.

This time it was a little easier to tell herself that she’d done the right thing...and that the two of them were going to be just fine.

Without Gabe Sullivan in their lives.

Chapter Fifteen

Gabe’s days passed one after the other in a snowy blur as he drove his body to the limits of its endurance. Even the mini-blizzard that had everyone tucked warm and dry into the lodge at the base of the mountain hadn’t stopped him from going out. But no matter how hard he pushed himself, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how unwavering Megan had been about the two of them not seeing each other again.