Somehow, a noise from down the hall broke through the fog of lust clouding his brain. He knew better than to put on a public sex show with Megan when her daughter was only a couple of rooms away.
In sync, they moved apart, both of them breathing hard.
“That was the last one,” she said in a shaky voice. “The very last kiss we can have.”
Somehow, he managed to turn away, to get his feet to move. But with every step that he took away from her, Gabe had a feeling that not kissing Megan again just might prove to be the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
* * *
Megan closed her front door and leaned against it, closing her eyes as she fought to deal with what had just happened. She brought her fingers back up to her lips. They were tingling, burning up from his kiss.
She couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone the way she wanted him. She’d had a couple of lovers since David had passed away five years ago, but none of them had imprinted themselves on her body like this. In fact, she suddenly realized the faces of her past lovers were cloudy in her memory.
After David, it wasn’t like she’d sat down one day and made the decision to stay away from men with dangerous, deadly jobs. She hadn’t been thinking about other men at all, actually. She’d been trying to raise her daughter on one income with only so many hours in the day while going back to school to get her degree in accounting.
It had been more of a gradual realization as she’d surfaced from her grief that she couldn’t go through all that again. Yes, she understood that a businessman could get hit by a car and die. But she was a numbers girl and it didn’t take a statistician to calculate that the odds of an early death were a heck of a lot lower for a man who sat behind a desk nine to five than they were for a fighter pilot.
Or a firefighter.
Still, she couldn’t help but remember the way he’d carried Summer out of his mother’s basement and then into their apartment a little while earlier. It had been utterly different from the way he’d carried her daughter out of the burning building. He’d been one hundred percent firefighter then. Tonight, he’d looked more like a father taking care of his sleeping daughter.
Her hands shook slightly as she locked the front door and turned off the lights in the kitchen and living room before heading to the bathroom to get ready for bed. She knew better than to make the mistake of thinking of Gabe as anything but an off-limits firefighter. They shouldn’t have shared those two kisses. But, since they had, at least they’d been smart enough to stop.
A few minutes later, as she crawled into her big, empty bed, she refused to let herself imagine what it might have been like to have Gabe there with her, his strong muscles pressing hers down into the mattress as he came over her.
Into her.
No, she thought as she buried her face beneath her pillow to try and block out the far-too-potent images, she couldn’t let herself imagine that.
Chapter Nine
“Mommy, what’s the name of the place we skied at last year?” Summer asked as they sat down to bowls of cereal the next morning.
“Heavenly.” Megan had hoped to make it up to the snow again this year, but things had been so crazy since the fire that she hadn’t had a chance to think about holiday plans.
“I love snow.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I really, really love snow! And I wish we could see some soon.”
Megan grinned at her daughter. Summer not only loved snow, she loved sun and wind and rain. She was an equal-opportunity outdoor girl. Although more than once Megan had thought that her daughter preferred the more extreme weather simply for the thrill of it.
Because of the fire and the time it had taken to find and move into another apartment, they’d had to cancel Summer’s birthday party. They’d taken a few of her friends out to pizza, but Megan knew it hadn’t been the same as a full-blown party with games and homemade cake. She couldn’t throw a party together with so little notice, but they didn’t have anything planned for the next couple of days. An impromptu ski trip was the perfect birthday gift.
Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that if they didn’t get out of town, Summer might very well request another trip to the fire station to see Gabe.
And Megan definitely couldn’t see him again anytime soon.
Not until she was holding much firmer reins on her self-control.
Despite being high season in Lake Tahoe, Megan figured they were due a little good luck. She picked up the phone. Summer watched her with wide, excited eyes as she was connected through to the Heavenly Ski Resort.
“Hi. I know this is last minute, but I was wondering if you might have a room that we could rent?” She gave her daughter a thumbs-up. “You just got a cancellation for tonight? And tomorrow night, too? Fantastic!”
By the time she’d given the reservations person her credit card information, Summer had run back to her room and was gathering up her new winter clothes.
Megan stood in her doorway and said, “Is that what you were hoping for?”
Her daughter almost tackled her with a hug. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Funny, Megan thought as she hugged her back, Summer had never been this excited about skiing before.
“Oh no,” Megan thought aloud, “I forgot all about the tire. I doubt anyone will be open to fix it on a Sunday.” Summer’s mouth turned down so fast that Megan knew she was in for the second part of yesterday’s partial tantrum. “What a minute. Zach said he could fix it.”