Never Too Hot (26 page)

Because as long as Ginger was beside him, he could do anything.

Reaching for the tree, he jumped. But once they were in midair, he realized he’d misjudged their combined weight and that they were falling faster than he’d planned. Fortunately, Ginger was one step ahead of him and he felt her let go an instant before he could stop her. Together, they grabbed the only branch left to save them from the final fifteen feet to the ground.

Just as his hands went around the tree, he heard the air knock from Ginger’s body as she slammed into the limb. Tightening his right grip on the tree, he reached out with his left to grab her.

He wanted to tell her a thousand times over how much he loved her but hanging from a tree while a fire raged all around them wasn’t exactly great timing. Especially since two dozen people were rushing under the tree, all talking at once, throwing a ladder against the trunk, reaching for them. He’d have to be happy with once.

“I love you,” he said as he helped her climb down the ladder.

Her lips opened, but all that came out was more ragged coughs, and then the paramedics were taking her from him.

Everything in him wanted to hold on to her, but he couldn’t deny years of disaster experience. The medics needed to check her out ASAP, needed to do something to calm her coughing, to make sure the baby stayed with her through the shock.

One of the local volunteer firefighters was telling everyone to clear the area. Bystanders went back to their boats that were pulled up on shore, but his father remained at his side as the volunteer firefighters crew ran onto the beach in their turnouts and began the work of keeping the fire from spreading.

Connor didn’t let Ginger out of his sight, not for one second, even as the fire chief approached Connor and Andrew on the sand.

“This is your house?”

Even as Andrew said yes, Connor knew what the chief was going to say.

“We’ve got to put our focus on putting the current fire out, so that it doesn’t spread to the other houses down the lake. My gut is that your cabin is already too far gone, but if we’ve got the manpower to work on it later …”

Connor knew that if he stayed to help, with just one more set of hands and legs, he might be able to tip the balance in favor of keeping the house. But he had to take care of the woman he loved.

The paramedics had made her lie down on a stretcher and as they lifted her into the ambulance, her eyes were locked on his.

“I have to go,” he told his father. “I need to stay with Ginger.”

He expected to hear anguish from his father as their family camp burned before them. Instead, Andrew told him, “Ginger needs you far more than a bunch of smoking old logs do.”

Connor pushed through the back of the ambulance just as they were shutting the doors.

“Hey, you can’t—” one of the paramedics started to say, but Ginger’s soft voice cut through his protests.

“I need him,” she managed before she lost her breath again and one of the paramedics covered her mouth and nose with an oxygen mask.

“I’m here, sweetheart,” he said as he slid into the seat beside her.

He held her hand, stroked her hair. They were putting an IV in and her eyes were already closing as the oxygen, the hydration, made their way into her depleted system.

“She’s pregnant,” he warned the paramedics. “Be very careful with her.”

She was asleep by the time they got to the local care center. The paramedics quickly took her away to be examined by a doctor and even though he knew he couldn’t be there, it killed him to have to be separated from her at all. He wanted to be beside her when she opened her eyes. Wanted to keep her safe in his arms and never let her go.

Connor was pacing the small waiting room when Isabel, Josh, and Andrew rushed inside. Isabel threw her arms around him. “You saved her.”

She wasn’t crying as she said it, but it was clear that she’d only just stopped. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not. Not until I know Ginger’s okay.”

“And the baby.”

All he could do was nod.

“Ginger is a tough cookie,” Isabel said as she squeezed his hand. “She’ll be all right. They both will.”

Just then, Josh tugged on his mother’s sleeve. His face was white, his eyes wide, his fists clenched.

“Mom. I need to tell you something.”

“I STARTED the fire,” Josh said.

It was just about the only thing that could have snapped Connor out of his anxiety about how Ginger was doing.

“What happened?”

The kid scrunched up his eyes, a couple of tears squeezing out. “I went out back, to the woodpile behind our houses. To smoke.”

Isabel’s mouth was pinched, her face pale with horror. With fear. Andrew moved behind her, put a hand on her back, and Connor had a feeling his father’s support was the only reason she was able to stay upright.

“But it made me sick, so I ground it out under my shoe. The leaves started smoking and burning so I stomped them out.” Josh took a shaky breath. “But I guess I didn’t get it all out.”

Connor had done this a hundred times, heard the confession of an accidental arsonist, worked to calm the person down. But it was different this time. Not because it was his cabin burning.

“Ginger could have died up there.”

The kid really started crying then, had to wipe his nose on his sweatshirt. “I’m so sorry. It was an accident, I swear. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Especially not Ginger. She’s great. I would never want anything to happen to her.”

That made two of them, Connor thought angrily as Andrew moved between them.

“I’ll go with him to talk to the fire chief. Make sure he doesn’t say anything they can twist later to try to pin this on him as anything other than an accident.” He put his arm around Josh’s shoulders, which were shaking with fear and remorse. “Isabel, you should be there too.”

She nodded, turning to say “I’m so sorry,” to Connor before she followed her son and Andrew back to the car.

The receptionist cleared her throat from behind her desk. “Excuse me, are you Connor MacKenzie? Ms. Sinclair has asked you to come back to see her.”

All his life, Connor thought as he moved through the waiting room and down the hall to the triage area, he’d been the steady one. The guy who everyone could count on to keep it together. Even after his stint in the burn ward, he’d been a rock.

It was almost as if the events of this past two weeks had been put into motion to test him, to see what he was made of.

The Forest Service call.

Losing control every time he touched Ginger.

Learning he was going to be a father.

Ginger throwing back his words of love.

Poplar Cove burning down, one hundred years of history, gone up in smoke.

And now, Ginger lying in a hospital bed.

The curtains were drawn and when he pulled one back to step inside, his heart stopped at the sight of her hooked up to an IV, propped up by pillows, lying beneath a thin white blanket.

“Hi,” she said with a small smile.

It was only then that his heart started beating again. She sounded fine and her color was good. But there was no way that he could look at her as just another fire victim, no way he could scan her stats and be satisfied that she was all right.

He told himself to be gentle with her, but once she was in his arms, he couldn’t stop kissing her, couldn’t help but pull her closer.

His throat was dry, cracked, as he asked, “How is the baby?” His hands automatically moved to her still flat stomach. “Is it—”

She put her hands over his. “Perfectly fine.”

The breath he’d been holding came out in a loud whoosh of air.

“Thank God,” he said, and then, “Seeing you up there on the roof, I’ve never been so scared. And when I realized there was no way to get to you—”

It had been the worst moment of his life.

“Nothing else mattered but getting you off that roof.”

“I had to try to save the cabin,” she said. “Even though I knew you’d be furious with me for not leaving at the first sign of fire.”

“Promise me you’ll never do something that brave—or stupid—again.”

She winced at the “stupid,” but held her ground. “I can’t make you that promise, Connor, not when something I love might be at stake. Are they going to be able to save the cabin?”

“Probably not.”

A tear fell down her cheek. “It’s not fair that the first chance you’ve had to fight fire in two years is because your own home was burning. I’m so sorry, Connor.”

“I don’t care about any of that. Not the cabin. Not even firefighting. The cabin was there when we needed it, to bring us together, to make it impossible for us to ignore our feelings for each other.”

He wasn’t going to hold the words back another second.

“I love you, Ginger. Please, marry me. Not because you’re pregnant, but because we belong together.”

She didn’t pull her hands out of his, but he felt her fingers grow tense.

“I don’t want us to repeat a bad pattern, Connor, to do the same thing as your parents and just get married because I’m pregnant.”

“My father was in love with someone else when he got my mother pregnant. I’m in love with you, Ginger. He was nineteen. I’m thirty. He wasn’t ready to get married, not to my mother, anyway. But I’m ready for this, Ginger. I’m ready for you. For a life with you. With our child.”

He watched her try to take in everything he was saying, but even so he knew he had to give her more. After the way he’d hurt her, she deserved every last piece of him, no matter how hard he’d fought to hold himself back from everyone for so long.

“That night you told me you loved me, I’ve never felt so overwhelmed by sensation before. Not even when my hands were melting. It scared me, Ginger. More than anything else I’ve ever faced. It seemed easier to go numb.”

He lifted her hands to his heart, held them there.

“But now I know I’d rather feel too much than nothing at all.”

She’d made herself say that stuff about repeating a bad pattern, even though her heart wasn’t really in it. Just to make sure they’d covered all the bases. So she’d know that nothing had been left unsaid between them.

Because when she looked deep into her own heart, she believed that he loved her. Connor wasn’t the kind of man who would lie about being in love simply to get what he wanted, to get her to agree to marry him. Connor would never try to keep her in an emotional prison like so many others had.

Connor was her first love.

Her true love.

“I’ve never felt this way before, either,” she admitted. “My feelings for you scare me too. You’re a part of me now. In so deep that I’ll never just be me again. And all I could think as I was up on the roof and the fire was closing in was that I was never going to get the chance to tell you yes.”

Nothing had ever moved her as much as the pure joy on Connor’s face.

“Yes? As in yes, you’ll marry me?”

“There was never any other answer, Connor. No other choice I could have possibly made. I’ve loved you almost from that first moment you walked onto the porch. Every time you lost control, I was right there with you, already lost. But this morning on the beach, my feelings were hurt. I wanted to make you work for it.”

“Believe me, no one is ever going to work as hard as I will at making you happy.”

“No, Connor, you don’t have do anything other than just be who you are. Be the man I already love. Because no matter what happens between us from here on out, I’ll never doubt your love for me again. Not when I’ll always know that we’re both giving each other everything.”

He kissed her, then, slow and sweet.

“Firefighters call it our good-bye list.”

“Good-bye list?”

“If you knew there was no way out, if the fire was closing in and you were about to go, who would you make your last phone call to?”

“You would want to call the people you love most, tell them one more time.”

“Two years ago, Sam and my mother were at the top of that list.”

“And now?”

“It’s you, Ginger. It will always be you.”

ISABEL HAD never felt so wrung out, so utterly depleted. It had seemed as if the day would never end as the fire chief questioned Josh, and then the fire investigator, Andrew standing beside him each time. Protecting her son.

Josh had burned down Poplar Cove. Ginger and Connor had nearly died. Thank God Andrew had been there reminding everyone over and over that it had been an accident. He’d assured her at least a dozen times that nothing was going to happen to Josh, that nothing was going to go on his permanent record, and no charges could possibly be filed by the investigator.

By the time the sun set, Josh was already fast asleep in his room. Andrew was sitting in her kitchen, holding a cup of coffee and she was amazed to find that he looked just right.

Somehow, he fit right into the lakeside world she’d created for herself and her son.

“It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?”

It was the understatement of the century. All Isabel wanted was to get away from it all for a little while.

“How about we row out to the island?”

She looked back at Josh’s room, wondering for a moment if she should stay in the house just in case he woke up, but in truth she knew he was just an excuse not to be alone with Andrew again.

Because she was frightened to death of the depth of her feelings for him. Especially after today.

Andrew grabbed a couple of oversized towels off the porch as they walked out to her dock and climbed into the rowboat. The wooden paddles swooshed through the black water, beneath an equally black sky.

They didn’t speak as he rowed, and she could barely see him in the inky darkness, but it calmed her—pleased her—to know that he was right there with her, sitting only a couple of feet away.

Thirty years ago, he’d been the one man she’d wanted in her lifeboat in an emergency.

For the first time in three decades, she wondered if it were possible that he could be that man again?

After pulling the boat up on shore, he held out his hand and she let him lead her to their “private” beach, the special place they would sneak off to as teenagers when they wanted to be alone. And as he walked beside her, his hand warm over hers, she expected memories to come, one after the other, all the memories she hadn’t wanted to replay.

But instead of retracing their old steps, she realized that they were taking new ones. She would never forget the past, but she could finally see that he hadn’t come back to the lake to revisit the past.

They were here together to build a future.

They spread out the towels over the sand and it was the most natural thing in the world for her to lay her head on Andrew’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry you lost your cabin,” she said and as he pulled her in tighter against him, finally safe in his arms, she let herself crumble.

“I almost lost you today. Up on the roof—” She couldn’t manage to say anything else, not when the sheer thought of Andrew getting caught in the fire made her sick to her stomach.

He shifted them so that her head was cradled beneath his strong forearm and he was looking down at her. His thumb brushed softly across her cheek as he gently wiped away her tears.

“Don’t cry, Izzy. I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“I’ll never be able to apologize enough for what my son did. Before he went to sleep he told me he was wrong about you. That you’re not a bad guy after all. I hope you can find a way to forgive him one day.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it still hasn’t exactly set in that Poplar Cove is gone, but I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s all for the best.”

“How can it possibly be for the best?”

“Well, for one, it’s a new start for me and Connor. Lord knows we both needed it.”

“Ginger too,” Isabel murmured.

And her too, she silently admitted. She hadn’t realized until Andrew’s return just how stuck she’d been in the past.

“Now Connor and I might get a chance to rebuild the cabin together. Spend a few months working as a team on something that matters to both of us. Maybe Josh could help us, work through some of his guilt with a hammer and saw. Might also be a good way to burn off some of that teenage energy, keep him out of trouble for a while.”

“You’re planning to stay?”

And he would actually consider asking her son to work with him after what he’d done?

“I want to, Izzy. More than anything. But I don’t want to hurt you again, so if you don’t want—”

She put a finger to his lips to stop him. “When my son found us …” Her face grew hot. “Well, when he found us kissing, I behaved badly to you. Just because he couldn’t deal with his mother behaving like a normal adult doesn’t mean I should have tried to act like it didn’t happen.” Her eyes moved to his face, held his gaze. “Because the truth is that I wanted it to happen. I wanted you to kiss me.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I did. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. But I was torn, because I still wasn’t sure I could ever trust you again. Until today, when I saw you with my son, the way you protected Josh, even though he was the one responsible for your loss.”

“He’s just a kid who made a mistake. A bad one, but a mistake nonetheless.”

“Watching you with him made me see that I can trust you. I do trust you. Your mistake and his mistake weren’t so different, really. Two kids who didn’t know what to do with all of their energy. Their passion. I keep thinking about those things I said to you that first day you came by the diner, when I said a real man would have made the best of his situation.”

“You were right. Completely right.”

“Maybe I was,” she said, “but if I can dish it out, I should be able to take it, shouldn’t I? Because there I was saying you should have figured out a way to make your marriage work, but did I make mine work? No. Not at all. Because all the time I should have been loving my husband, the father of my child, I was still in love with you.”

“You love me?”

“I’ve always loved you, Andrew. I never stopped loving you, not even for a second, not even when I was so angry with you I wanted to come at you with a kitchen knife.”

She heard him chuckle at her honesty, and then he was whispering, “My sweet Izzy, how I love you,” a moment before his mouth came down over hers.

Their kiss was sweet, gentle, and then, without warning, they were both taking, tasting, testing each other with tongues and lips and teeth, a whole summer’s desperation taking away any hesitancy or patience.

And then he was repositioning her, laying her on her back on the towel and as he stripped off her clothes, she looked up at the moon through the trees, the scent of the blueberry bushes filling the air with sweet perfume. Every patch of skin his fingers touched as he slid off her shirt, and then her bra, and then moved to the waistband of her pants, made her gasp with pleasure. He cupped her breasts and she leaned into his wonderfully large hands wanting more, as much as he could give her. His mouth found her next, his tongue moving in long strokes between her legs and she forgot where she was again, could only focus on the man giving her the kind of pleasure she’d never felt anywhere else.

Higher and higher she climbed as he loved her with his mouth, but she wanted him to share it with her, so she reached for his shoulders and dragged him up her body. Her hands shaking, she fumbled with his pants, but then he was kissing her again and she couldn’t figure out how to make her fingers obey her instructions. Andrew took over where she left off and soon his clothes were off and he was propping himself up over her again, naked this time.

Another time she’d stop, breathe, stare, relearn every inch of his body. But for now, all that mattered was taking him inside, opening herself up to him and feeling the long slide of his shaft take her breath away.

He stilled, asked “How am I ever going to get enough of you?” and then he was thrusting, and they were grabbing at each other’s bodies, trying to get closer, moving together in a rhythm that was sweetly familiar, and yet brand new. He was kissing her like he’d been waiting his whole life to find her and she gave herself completely to him in the very moment that they took each other over the edge. His roar of pleasure was swallowed by the trees and then her mouth as she kissed him.

And as they came back to earth, lying sweating and panting on the twisted towel, she put her hands on his face and kissed him again with all the love in her heart.

No more regrets.

No more anger.

After thirty years, love was what remained.