Can't Help Falling In Love Part 7

"He pa.s.sed away when I was five. She raised us alone."

His father's death was another reason he'd chosen his career. Also trained as a paramedic, many of the calls he went on were medical. He couldn't save everyone's father or mother or child, but he wanted to know, at least, that he'd done everything he could.

Megan's eyes grew big. "Eight children alone?" She put a hand over her heart in a clear gesture of sympathy for his mother. "Half the time Summer feels like too much for me to deal with by myself."

"You're a great mother."

She smiled at that. "Thank you. Although I'm not sure you'd say the same thing if you could see me yelling at her about homework or clothes on the floor or spending too much time on the phone with her friends."

He shouldn't want to see those things, shouldn't want to get any closer to Megan or her daughter. But the longer he sat with her, talking about family, the more that wanting grew.

Quickly downing the rest of his coffee, he got up and put his empty cup on the coffee table. He noticed the window off the kitchen was open a crack and a cold breeze was coming in.

"Do you want this open?"

"No, it's jammed," she replied, coming back into the kitchen with her own still half-full cup of coffee. "The landlord said he'd try to stop by this week to see if he can fix it."

Not wanting her to have to deal with being cold and paying for heat that just seeped outside, Gabe put his hand on it and pushed. Nothing happened. "Do you have a small screwdriver?"

She pulled one out of a well-organized drawer. "Here."

It didn't take him long to fix the problem. "A little glue or paint was stuck in under the metal." As he handed her back the screwdriver, he said, "Your old place must have had a great view."

"That's why I bought that apartment. I knew it was an old building, but I figured the view was worth it." Her green eyes shadowed. "I never thought about how safe it would or wouldn't be in a fire, though."

"Isn't having a view still at the top of the want list for your new place? Along with a backyard for a fire pit?"

"Views aren't worth quite as much as I thought they were," she replied in a soft voice. "And I'm not sure that a fire pit is such a great idea, either."

For all Megan's outward resilience, the way she'd clearly moved past losing her husband so young, how capably she'd recovered from her home going up in flames, Gabe could suddenly see her vulnerability.

Along with the fears she was trying so hard to hide.

As if she suddenly realized she was letting him look too deep, she said, "Well, thanks for fixing the window. And for the ride."

He got the hint. It was time to go.

She was right. He needed to leave before he kissed her again.

She moved to the front door just ahead of him. Opening it, she stood there as he walked out, so close. Too close.

He should have just kept going down the hall and out to his car without looking back or saying anything more, but in the same way that being in her apartment, putting Summer to bed, and staying for coffee had felt so right, leaving felt just as wrong.

"Tell Summer I had a good time playing flashlight tag with her."

He was standing close enough to smell her perfume, something soft and floral that made him want to bury his nose in the curve of her neck until he figured out exactly what kind of flower it was.

"Okay."

The one word was slightly breathless and from the way her eyes were focused on his mouth, he knew she was just as close to that edge of wanting as he was.

Just one kiss. That's all he wanted.

Needed.

Gabe had almost convinced himself it wouldn't hurt anything, that he could stop at one more, when she abruptly lifted her gaze and took a step back on a sharply indrawn breath.

"Just friends." She shook her head. "I like you a lot, Gabe, and that kiss in the kitchen..." Another shake of her head. "Well, we've got to forget that kiss. Because we've both agreed that's how things need to stay. Even if it's not easy, we've got to keep things totally platonic."

When she was done laying out the reminders, she put her fingers over her mouth as if to keep herself from jumping across the threshold between them and kissing him. The problem was, all the good sense in the world couldn't negate the magnetic pull between them.

Compelled to be as honest as they'd been in her kitchen after they'd given in to desire for way too short a time, he said, "I want you. And if you were anyone else, I wouldn't be leaving right now." Her eyes went wide at the shock of his flat-out admission. "But I already know and like you and Summer well enough to know we can't just sleep together."

"No," she said quickly, even more breathlessly, "we can't."

Wanting her more with every word they spoke about the hot s.e.x they weren't going to have, he said, "I'd better go now."

"Yes," she whispered, "you should go."

But then, instead of leaving, he was reaching out and pulling her against him, his hands on the swell of her hips. "One last kiss."

"G.o.d, yes," she gasped out. "One more."

And then her mouth met his and he was backing her up against the open door, pressing himself into the soft heat of her body, taking, giving, falling deeper under the spell that Megan had woven around him from the very first second he'd seen her.

Her taste was addictive, so sweet he couldn't stop himself from going deeper, from moving from her lower lip to her upper, from pulling her so close that he could feel her nipples pressing into his chest even through their layers of clothes. He moved between her thighs and she opened them for him as he pressed her harder into the wall, her hips moving against his groin, making him harder than he could ever remember being in his life.

Here. He could take her right here. Pull up her skirt, unzip his pants, and be in her in seconds, her legs wrapped around his waist.

Somehow, a noise from down the hall broke through the fog of l.u.s.t clouding his brain. He knew better than to put on a public s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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."

She'd had no intention of calling him to come over to fix her tire today, even though he'd offered more than once. Now she found herself going to find his cell phone number in her purse.

How, she wondered, had she gone from zero Sullivans in her life to three in a matter of days?

Five hours later, as they pulled up to the ski resort, Megan couldn't stop thinking what a great idea this trip already was. During the drive from the city, they'd sung along with songs on the radio and then they'd finally had a chance to talk about second grade, everything from the teacher to Summer's friends and even a little bit about boys.

While they checked in, Summer kept scanning the hotel, for what, Megan didn't know. "Look," she said when the man behind the check-in desk switched their room from the second to the first floor, then gave her the schedule of activities, "there's a horse-drawn sleigh ride tonight at six." It was late afternoon already, just about the time the slopes were closing and skiers were coming in looking exhilarated and exhausted from a day in the snow. "This is going to be so much fun."

"Kids only, Mom."

Megan frowned. "Oh. I hadn't noticed that. Well, maybe they can make an exception for me."

Summer didn't say anything for a moment, but she scanned the lobby extra hard. At long last, Megan had to acknowledge that something fishy was going on. Hadn't there been more than one sign that something was up?

"Summer, what aren't you telling me?"

Her daughter pressed her lips together as though that would mean she didn't need to say. Deciding she'd get to the bottom of things after they settled in upstairs, Megan was just about to pick up their bags and head to the elevator when she heard a familiar voice.

The same deep voice she'd been daydreaming about all day long.

"Megan? Summer?"

Oh G.o.d.

Now she knew what was up. Megan didn't have time to shoot a glare at Summer before turning to Gabe.

"Hi."

She was going to kill her daughter!

He was clearly surprised to see them standing there in the lobby. Just as surprised as she was.

Summer, on the other hand, didn't seem the least bit surprised. Relieved was more like it.

"Hi Gabe!"

He turned his frown into a smile for her daughter. "Hey, pretty girl. You going skiing tomorrow?"

She nodded happily. "Actually, I'm hoping to learn how to s...o...b..ard."

This was the first Megan had heard about it.

"Do you know how?" Summer asked him.