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Unfortunately, Summer wasn’t the only one who thought about him all the time. Megan thought about him every day, too. About how grateful she was for what he’d done for them. About how selfless he was to have risked his life for them. And sometimes, late at night, when she was alone in her bed, she might have even thought a couple of times about how good-looking he was and how big his muscles were.
Not that those thoughts were worth anything, though. Even if he hadn’t all but kicked them out of his hospital room, she could never be with a man like him. Not after she’d learned the risks—and the pain—of being with a man who was addicted to danger, the hardest way it was possible to learn those lessons.
Megan wanted a future with a man who would definitely be home every night. She refused to ever spend another day, another night, waiting for the phone to ring, for the knock to come at the door with the news that she’d lost a partner she’d counted on to be there.
It didn’t help when Station 5 sent Summer a birthday gift a couple of weeks after the fire. It was a little firefighter doll with yellow pigtails, a big smile, and a small pet Dalmatian that came with a fire-engine-red leash. Summer dragged that doll and her dog everywhere, sleeping with them under her arm, cuddling up on the couch with them at night. Even now, the doll and stuffed dog were standing watch on the kitchen counter.
“I’m sure they already have plenty to eat for breakfast,” she told her daughter in a gentle voice.
Summer brushed off her hands and grabbed the tray to slide the batter into the oven. “Not as good as my muffins, though.”
Megan couldn’t argue with that. Summer’s chocolate-banana-blueberry muffins were legendary. It was a combination that shouldn’t have worked, but ended up blowing your mind instead.
Lord knew, her daughter hadn’t gotten her cooking prowess from her. Nope, that was all David, who’d had a surprising knack with food. Summer was so much like her father, all the way down to the light blond hair, that sometimes Megan felt as if he were still alive.
“We’ll talk about it after I get dressed.”
“Okay, Mommy,” her daughter chirped, knowing she was on the verge of getting her way. And really, Megan thought with a small sigh, she was all out of excuses for why they couldn’t go and say hello to the firefighters at their local station.
Okay, so they’d drop the muffins off, admire the shiny engines, and then head off to the park for a couple of hours. She wouldn’t let herself get all tied up in knots over the possibility of seeing Gabe. Actually, he’d never told them to call him anything but Mr. Sullivan, even though he couldn’t be much older than she was. In any case, what were the odds that he would be on shift this morning? Or that he’d even remember them?
Megan caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over her dresser and found there was no way to ignore the lies she was piling up one after the other this morning. Just thinking about the firefighter had her tied up in knots and there wasn’t a darn thing she could do about it.
If he was on shift, he’d remember them. Because there’d been an undeniable connection, a palpable spark, between the two of them.
She stepped away from her mirror and pulled open the closet. Whether she was lying to herself or being brutally honest, one fact remained: She had absolutely nothing to wear to a firehouse on a cold Saturday morning in December.
* * *
Summer skipped ahead of Megan, who was carrying the Tupperware container full of warm muffins. At least half a block ahead, Summer disappeared into the open doors of the fire station. Megan knew her heart shouldn’t be beating so hard. Yes, they’d been walking up a hill, but she was in good shape from the yoga DVDs she worked out with in the mornings.
And then her daughter walked outside with him and Megan’s heart pretty much stopped beating altogether. Her feet stopped, too, leaving her to stand awkwardly on the sidewalk holding the muffins with her mouth hanging halfway open.
He’d been gorgeous in the hospital bed with bandages on his head and a sheet covering most of his body. But now...
Oh, now.
There weren’t words—at least, not in her overwhelmed-with-lust brain—for a man like this. Tall, dark, and handsome barely scratched the surface. Gorgeous, beautiful…each of those adjectives were too pedestrian for his strong shoulders, his lean hips, his bright blue eyes set off against the square jaw and full, masculine mouth.
Megan had to forcefully remind herself that she shouldn’t take a running leap and jump this man. Her dormant libido might have—stupidly—taken this moment in time to spring back to life, but that didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. At some point when she was all alone in her big bed, she’d find a way to take care of her newly raging sex drive. But there was no way she would risk her heart or her daughter’s on a man who might not live to see tomorrow.
That thought sobered her up enough to push her past the embarrassment of her super-obvious reaction to his good looks.
Willing her feet to get moving again, she finally walked the last few yards toward him, making sure to keep her shoulders back and her chin up so that he wouldn’t think she was any more of a loser than she already felt like, drooling over him like that.
“Summer made these for you.”
She handed him the container of muffins and he smiled down at Summer. “Thank you.” He lifted the lid and inhaled, clearly surprised by how good they smelled. “These look like they’re going to be great. The rest of the guys here are going to be begging me for them.”
