Never Too Hot (21 page)

ALL HIS life, people had told Connor how brave he was. And he’d believed them. He’d done things no one else could, faced impossible risks and walked out grinning on the other side. He’d skimmed off the surface of life’s high moments. Moved from one victory to another.

No question, the fire in Desolation had rocked his world. It was his first-ever brush with his mortality. The first time it had ever occurred to him that he wasn’t Superman. And still, he’d thought—no, he’d known—that once he got back out there things would be just as they had been before. That he’d be afraid of nothing. That he’d still be invincible, and when push came to shove he’d still know how to make all the right decisions, every single time.

The Forest Service phone call had been the start of his fall. But it was hearing Ginger say “I love you” that had sent him all the way over the edge.

Because the truth was that he’d never wanted anything, never needed anyone as much as he needed Ginger. He’d never been completely ruled by something that he couldn’t control. Even fire had rules. Sure it stunned you every now and again, but for the most part you only paid the price when you’d pushed the boundaries.

But what he felt for Ginger had no boundaries.

Which was why he’d tried to fuck away his feelings for her. It was why he’d tried to make her run. And when she hadn’t, he’d done the very thing he’d been afraid of all along, the very thing he’d seen coming.

He’d hurt her.

“Why haven’t you come upstairs?” she’d asked him that morning when she’d come down to the living room.

He sat up on the couch in the living room, stunned to see Ginger standing at the foot of the stairs as faint light from the rising sun came in the windows.

God, she was beautiful.

So damn beautiful.

“I can’t trust myself with you.”

Not after last night. And still, she’d told him she loved him. When he’d deserved it the least.

He stood up, told her, “I can’t take the chance that I’d hurt you again. You’re the last person on the planet that I’d ever want to hurt.”

She came at him as if she didn’t hear him, didn’t understand that he was trying to protect her from the deep, dark rage that he’d couldn’t push down. He hadn’t known how bad it was until last night.

The bruises on her wrists had showed him the truth.

She stopped just inches from him, so close that all he could think about was pulling her against him, begging her forgiveness with his mouth, his hands, worshipping her the way he should have last night.

“I’ve been waiting for you to come to bed, Connor. All night. To come upstairs and talk to me. To talk with me. I didn’t want to have to do this. To come down here and force you.”

Suddenly, she seemed to realize how close they were, and took one step back, then another. Every inch she put between them made the ache inside his chest grow bigger.

And then her hands moved to her chest, almost as if she were shielding herself from him and she said, “I wanted sharing yourself with me to be your choice.” He watched her walk out the door, heard her car start, pull out of the gravel driveway.

Everything had been a blur since she’d left. He’d gone out to the workshop, grabbed the heaviest ax he could find, and started slamming it into a thick tree trunk. But all the sweat in the world couldn’t push Ginger out of his head, couldn’t erase the feeling that everything he wanted was right within his grasp.

Only, in the end, he didn’t have a damn clue how to hold on to any of it.

*   *   *

Stepping out of his rental car behind Poplar Cove, Andrew saw Connor dragging a huge tree stump out of the woods onto the beach. He rushed over to help.

“I’ll grab this end.”

Connor didn’t say anything, but he did wait for Andrew to grab the log. Sweet Lord, Andrew thought as he heaved the tree up off the ground, it was heavy. Within seconds he was breathing hard, sweat pouring into his eyes. It was all he could do just to try to keep pace with his son. At the same time, he relished the work.

This was the first time he and Connor had ever worked together as a team.

Finally, they put down the log in front of the cabin. Andrew wanted to throw himself down on the sand and figure out how to breathe again, but Connor was already heading back into the woods.

When he’d offered to help out with the cabin, he’d been thinking about a hammer and nails. Not this he-man stuff.

Time to suck it up, he quickly decided as he watched his son disappear between trees.

But two hours later, Andrew was pretty damn sure he was going to have a heart attack. The pain in his arms and shoulders and legs was relentless. A grunt accompanied every step. But he refused to give up, to cry uncle, to show his son just how weak he was.

And then, Connor dropped the log they were carrying, so suddenly it almost broke Andrew’s foot. Cursing as he jumped out of the way, he scowled at his son. “Damn it, you should have said something before you dropped it like that.”

But instead of tossing back a retort, Connor was standing in the sand clenching his hands into fists, then flexing his fingers over and over again.

Oh shit. Connor’s hands. They’d been wrecked after the fire, were still badly scarred, but Andrew had assumed they were okay now. Because Connor had never said otherwise.

And he’d never asked.

Moving to his son’s side, he said, “It’s your hands, isn’t it?”

“Comes and goes,” Connor grunted.

“What does?”

“The numbness. The pain.”

Andrew’s first instinct was to protect his son. To take care of him in all the ways he hadn’t as a boy.

“We should hire someone to do this.”

“Like hell we will.”

Andrew nearly jumped back at the ferocity in his son’s voice. “Not that you can’t do it all. I know you can. Just that maybe it’ll be easier if—”

“Fuck easy,” Connor said.

But Andrew had seen the pain on Connor’s face. “Don’t be an idiot. You could do more damage to your hands.”

“I’m fine.”

“No,” Andrew said, looking his son straight in the eye. “You’re not.”

Connor started to walk away, but Andrew grabbed his son’s arm and didn’t let go.

“Do you have any idea what it was like to see you in that hospital? Lying there wrapped in bandages. Not knowing how bad the damage was. If you’d ever be able to use your hands again or if they were gone. Do you have any idea how hard it is to see your own kid hooked up to machines in that amount of pain?”

Saying the words brought it all back, took Andrew back into those first few horrible hours, where the only thing he did was make deals with God.

“I wanted to be there, in your place. I told God I’d give myself up for you, that he could take me right then if only we could trade places, but he wasn’t listening, didn’t seem to care that my son was lying there unconscious. I saw everything so clearly. All those years, all those Little League games, Halloween costumes, they were all gone.”

He tightened his grip on Connor’s arm, gave silent thanks to the man in heaven he’d cursed so thoroughly that Connor was here at all.

“I don’t want to lose the next thirty years too.”

Connor shook his hand off. “You want to come back here, be a hero, say how sorry you are. But sometimes sorry isn’t enough. I should know.”

His son’s message couldn’t have been clearer. Didn’t matter what he said, how hard he tried, Connor wasn’t going to forgive him. Fine, then there was no reason to pussyfoot around. He hadn’t forgotten how upset Ginger had looked in the diner’s parking lot that morning.

“What happened with you and your girlfriend?”

Connor had started walking away, but now he stopped cold, turned around. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw Ginger this morning. At the diner. She looked upset. Something happened between you two, didn’t it?”

“You want to know what the hell happened? Last night she asked me how things had gone with you.”

“With me?”

“She didn’t like my answer. Didn’t believe a word I said. And when she was right about it all, I lost it. Attacked her.”

Andrew recognized the remorse ravaging his son. Thirty years ago, it had been him, hating himself with every breath.

“You were angry at me, so you hurt her?”

“Angry at every fucking thing.”

This conversation was like quicksand. But that was good. Because it meant he and Connor were going to have a hell of a time trying to get out of it without each other’s help.

“What else happened, Connor? Tell me.”

“She said she loves me.” Connor stood perfectly still now, almost as if he were bracing himself for impact. “She can’t love me. It isn’t possible.”

“Jesus, Connor. You can’t think like that. Can’t go into a relationship with a wonderful woman thinking love is impossible. Go to her. Tell her you fucked up. Tell her you’re sorry. That you’ll spend the rest of your life making it up to her.”

They were all the things he’d wanted to tell Isabel. But it had already been too late by then. Because Connor’s mother had come to him with the news that she was pregnant.

“Do you seriously expect me to take advice from you about relationships?”

And this time when his son walked away, Andrew had to let him go. Because Connor was right.

He didn’t know the first thing about love.

THE DINER was slammed through breakfast and lunch, but after the last customer left, Isabel said, “Looks like it’s time for our regularly scheduled afternoon chat, isn’t it?”

Without waiting for Ginger’s response, Isabel put her hand on the small of her friend’s back and pushed her out the door.

“Let’s take it down to the lake this time. Get a little change of scenery.”

Families were playing along the shore. Babies splashing. Mothers tickling tummies. Fathers encouraging sons to swim all the way to the buoy. Brothers and sisters goofing around on the floating docks out in the water, hooting with laughter as they shoved each other off.

“That’s what I want,” Ginger said wistfully.

Isabel lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “It’s not always this perfect, you know. Later tonight the kids will be bickering in the backseat, while the husband and wife bite each other’s heads off over something stupid.”

“I’m not asking for perfect,” Ginger said. “Just for the chance to have a few moments like these.”

“What about Connor? Is there some reason he can’t give all that to you?”

Ginger half laughed then. “I come in here looking like this,” she gestured to her still puffy eyes, her blotchy skin, “and you actually ask me that. As if there’s some way I’ll go home today and find Connor waiting for me with roses.”

“Roses aren’t your style. If he knows you at all, he’ll be waiting with a fistful of wildflowers.”

“Trust me, there aren’t going to be any flowers.”

“Tell me something, when you first got involved with Connor, what did you think was going to happen? Because correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t exactly get the sense that he was riding in on his white steed like Prince Charming. More like he was the villain coming to pillage Poplar Cove.”

Ginger flashed back to the first night. To his nightmare.

“You’re right,” she said slowly. “I knew, right from the beginning, who he was.”

Who he couldn’t possibly be.

“And you chose to spend time with him anyway. To sleep with him.”

Yes. It had been her choice. The same one she’d made again and again, the choice to be with Connor.

He’d never lied to her. Never made her promises he hadn’t kept. From that first night, all the way through, he’d been brutally honest.

“We shouldn’t do this. I don’t have anything to give to you, Ginger. Nothing at all.”

She’d told herself that as long as she walked into Connor’s arms, eyes wide open, it wouldn’t hurt. She’d let herself fall in love with him knowing he couldn’t love her back.

But then, last night, when she’d offered herself to him completely, nearly bled with love for him, something had shifted around inside her heart. Because even after she’d told him over and over that she wanted him just the way he was, he’d still stayed away.

Isabel studied her in silence. “Look, I know you’ve got really strong feelings for him. Maybe you even love him. But honey, you’re worth so much more than you know. I thought you realized that by now, that moving to Blue Mountain Lake and starting your life over showed you just how fantastic you are. Any guy you’re with damn well should consider himself the luckiest person in the world.”

Ginger pulled her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around her legs. “After I left Jeremy, I promised myself the next time would be different. That I’d wait patiently until the right guy came. I thought for sure I’d know the real thing when I saw it.”

And then Connor had walked in through her door and she’d been lost.

“We all think that,” Isabel said with a rueful smile.

“And even though I know better,” Ginger found herself saying aloud, “a part of me keeps hoping Connor will turn into that guy. If I just give him enough time. If I just love him enough.”

Isabel’s look of concern intensified into worry. “No. No. And no. Listen to me, you cannot change him. He’s the only one who can do that.”

And that was when Ginger saw the real problem, as clear to her as the blue sky, the sparkling ripples on the water, the happy sounds all around her.

Just as she’d told him again and again, she wasn’t hurting from the way she and Connor had come together the previous night. He hadn’t been nearly as rough as he’d thought and she really was tougher than she looked. The problem wasn’t even that he’d hurt her feelings by choosing to stay downstairs on the couch last night rather than open himself up to her.

No, she was hurting for another reason entirely. And it had just become so painfully obvious that she wondered how she could have gone on this long without seeing it.

The real problem wasn’t the way Connor had treated her. It was the way she’d been treating herself.

She’d ached so badly for him, had wanted so badly to help heal his wounds, that she hadn’t spared a second thought for herself. She’d put Connor first, just like she’d always put her ex-husband first, her parents, her causes.

Only this time it was worse. Because she’d secretly believed that Connor would see all she was doing for him and reward her with his love. Love she wanted more than anything in the world.

“Have I changed at all, Isabel?” she asked now. “Since you first met me?”

“So much. I’ve been so proud of you. Especially since I know firsthand how hard it can be to start over after a divorce. You’ve done a great job of moving on, Ginger.”

“If that’s true then why am I falling into all the same traps? Why am I working so hard to make everyone else happy?”

Why had she told herself she could feed off scraps? That a little affection was better than none at all?

Isabel’s arm came around her. “Oh honey, that’s just human nature. You can’t beat yourself up for it. All you can do is hope that maybe it’ll be easier next time.”

“Is it?” Ginger asked her friend. “Easier next time?”

Isabel snorted. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear the answer.”

“I guess I already know.”

The images were still with Ginger: Andrew looking broken as he’d left Isabel’s house, Isabel more pale and shaken than Ginger had ever thought to find her strong friend.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Isabel said, “I’ve been giving myself the same advice since yesterday when Andrew blindsided me at my house. I’m working like hell right now not to beat myself up for still having all these stupid feelings for a guy I haven’t seen in thirty years. I was so sure it would be different this time. That I could just put up a wall he couldn’t cross. That it wouldn’t hurt so bad just to be near him.”

“I’m sorry that it does,” Ginger told her friend, reaching out to hug Isabel back.

“Me too. Especially since I just agreed to cater his son’s wedding. The very son he got that girl pregnant with the night he cheated on me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Isabel was standing in the paint aisle of the hardware store staring at a dozen different greens that all looked the same when Connor came fast around the corner. For a moment she was stunned by his resemblance to his father, got such a clear picture of what Andrew must have looked like twenty years ago it took her breath away.

Connor was clearly preoccupied, barely looking at her as he said, “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

He looked tired and beaten down. Pretty much the way Ginger had been all through breakfast and lunch.

She told herself to keep her nose out of their business, but damn it, she cared too much about Ginger to stay quiet. Ginger wasn’t just a friend, she was almost like a daughter.

“Connor.”

He finally realized who she was. “Isabel.”

It wasn’t until then that she thought to wonder if he knew about her and Andrew. But judging by how displeased he looked at seeing her, she guessed he did. She got it that no kid wanted to think of his father having feelings for anyone other than his mother, no matter how old they were.

“How’s work going on Poplar Cove?”

“All right,” he said. “You know how these old camps are.”

She nodded, picked up a paint sample, working to find a tactful way of telling him what he needed to hear.

“Ginger is really important to me.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “I know she is.”

“Coming here after a bad divorce. Starting over. I know how hard that can be. The lake has been good to her. This town. These people. Everyone loves her.”

She paused, let him nod, made sure he got what she was saying.

“Ginger is a wonderful person, Connor. She deserves so much more than she asks for.”

He didn’t move, barely blinked, but the flash of torment in his eyes almost made her regret saying these things to him. Because in a heartbeat, Isabel had seen just how much he cared for Ginger.

And she knew that if he did end up hurting her friend, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t have a heart.

It wouldn’t be because he didn’t care about Ginger.

He did.

But Isabel knew too well that sometimes even loving someone wasn’t enough.

The phone was ringing when Connor walked into the cabin and he nearly pulled it off the wall when he answered it.

His brother’s voice came across the landline. “Had to check in, see how things are going with Dad.”

“You couldn’t stop him from coming?”

“There was no stopping him. He was a man on a mission.”

It was the first time they’d talked since Sam’s message from the Forest Service and Connor knew what was coming next.

“So, how’s it going out there?”

“The cabin is coming together.”

“Not the cabin. You. How are you doing?”

He couldn’t lie to his brother.

“Bad.”

Sam’s response was just as short and to the point. “Shit.”

“I’m fucking everything up.”

“No one gives a damn about the cabin. We’ll have the wedding somewhere else.”

“Not Poplar Cove. Ginger.”

“The renter? Are you getting involved with her?”

Connor had to know. “What made Dianna different?”

“Everything.”

Connor couldn’t have asked anyone but his brother, “How did you know?”

“I couldn’t push her away, couldn’t get her out of my head. Every single second, she was with me.”

Sam and Dianna’s relationship had spanned ten years. Not a week, a sledgehammer falling unexpectedly into the center of Connor’s heart.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he told Sam.

He couldn’t spend another second in this cabin, not when he couldn’t push Ginger away.

Isabel had brought it all home. Her warning couldn’t have been more clear.

Leave Ginger alone. Let her be happy. Without you.

Jesus. How was he going to find the strength to do that?

The wind was strong again today. Cold and biting, perfectly suited for his mood. He needed to get out in the Laser, let the whitecaps whip him around. He went down to the boathouse, stripped down and put on one of the suits hanging from a hook on the wall.

The sail was dusty as he carried it waist deep into the water to the buoy. His abs got a workout as he balanced on top of the boat, unrolled and raised the sail and hooked it into place.

As soon as he unhooked the clip from the buoy, the Laser shot through the water. It took him only a few seconds to find his rhythm. The farther he got from the shore, the faster the wind whipped. He felt the hollow pounding of the fiberglass hull hitting the growing waves, hoping it would numb his mind. Rain had started coming down and he welcomed the storm even as the drops turned into pellets.

He gripped the tiller hard as flew over the water, waiting for the moment when all he’d feel was the hail on his skin, the rough pull of the water beneath the hull. But Ginger was still there, in every swirling whitecap he slammed into.

Just like Sam had felt about Dianna, Connor couldn’t get Ginger out of his head.

Every single second she was with him.

The wind changed directions and he barely caught the boom in time before it slammed into his head. The sheet bit into his hand, but he barely felt it. He couldn’t tell if his hands were growing numb simply from the cold or if it was his usual nerve bullshit. But then he realized it wasn’t just his hands going numb, it was his whole arm. All the way up to his shoulder.

In the split second that he lost his concentration, the wind yanked the boat over. He hiked out as far as he could, his body parallel to the water, his abs hard, his quads flexed as they hooked to the underside of the deck. He tried to right the boat, but once the centerboard was no longer in the water all traction was lost. The sail was already dragging into the water, going under, flipping the boat completely upside down. He lost his grip on the side of the deck as he went under and had to swim hard to keep the wind from moving the boat out of his reach.

Jesus, the water was cold out in the middle of the lake and he didn’t have enough body fat to withstand it for long. Again and again he crawled onto the turtled hull reaching for the centerboard, but it was too damn slippery, too damn slick for his hands to gain any traction.