From the first moment he’d seen her, he’d known how brave she was. Nothing had changed between then and now, nothing but the knowledge of how soft, how giving, how sweet she was, in addition to all that bravery. All that strength.

She opened the shirt and let it fall from her shoulders. Her mouth was open slightly, her eyes big, her skin flushed.

Sparks jumped between them and he knew all the nevers in the world couldn’t make their perfect chemistry any less.

Completely naked again, she gathered up his shirt in one hand and held it out to him. “Here.”

He took the shirt from her, their fingertips touching as they made the transfer. He waited for her to turn, to gather up her clothes from the floor, to cover herself with something, anything.

Instead, she stood there naked before him.

“Never,” he said softly, needing to reclaim that word and turn it around. “I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as you.”

She put both of her hands over her heart as if she were trying to hold it inside. “Please.”

One word had never held so many potential meanings, but Gabe knew the room was in danger of backdraft if he stayed to try to figure out which please this was—the one that was begging him to stay...or begging him to go.

He’d learned early on in his firefighting career when to go deeper into the flames...and when to retreat to reassess.

Gabe forced himself to put his shirt on, walk to the door, open it, and leave the room.

But he refused to say goodbye.

* * *

She had done the right thing.

The smart thing.

The only thing she could do in good conscience as the mother of a little girl who had already lost one man who was important to her.

But none of those truths made watching Gabe leave hurt any less.

Especially since she also knew she’d done the stupidest possible thing by sleeping with him in the first place...by becoming just like all those other firehouse girls who lived just for the chance to share a bed with a firefighter.

Megan didn’t know how long she stood in the middle of her hotel room, naked, lost.

Empty.

The sound of a shower going on in the room upstairs jarred her back to life.

Her fantasy night was over. Fantasies, she told herself, were like dessert. Delicious, but you couldn’t eat chocolate and whipped cream for every single meal without getting really sick.

Finally, Megan lifted her hands from her chest and ran them through her hair. It was time to get back to her real life, a life she loved, with a seven-year-old who kept her on her toes. As she stepped into the shower, Megan told herself that everything would go back to normal now and she’d be fine.

More importantly, now that she’d made the very difficult decision to stay away from Gabe, her heart—and Summer’s, too—would remain safe from harm.

* * *

An hour later she was standing at Julie’s cabin, ringing the doorbell, shivering in the cold.

“Megan, good morning! Perfect timing. Come on in and have breakfast with us.”

She pasted a smile on her lips. “Thank you.” She wouldn’t be able to eat a single bite, she already knew that. She stepped inside the warm cabin, but even though she was no longer standing in the snow, she still felt ice cold.

It wasn’t until she found Summer hanging from the ladder that went up to the loft like a little monkey—”Hey Mommy! I had the best time ever last night!”—that Megan’s heart finally expanded back to the right size.

This time it was a little easier to tell herself that she’d done the right thing...and that the two of them were going to be just fine.

Without Gabe Sullivan in their lives.

Chapter Fifteen

Gabe’s days passed one after the other in a snowy blur as he drove his body to the limits of its endurance. Even the mini-blizzard that had everyone tucked warm and dry into the lodge at the base of the mountain hadn’t stopped him from going out. But no matter how hard he pushed himself, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how unwavering Megan had been about the two of them not seeing each other again.

The women he slept with always wanted to talk about things, always wanted to try and prolong their relationship.

Not Megan.

Sure, at first he’d been committed to steering clear of her. Yes, he’d thought dating her was the path to the dark side. But that was before he got to know her, before he realized she was nothing like Kate...and before he tasted Megan’s sweet lips as their bodies came together in a long, sweet burst of the purest pleasure he’d ever known.

Only, somehow, in the morning he’d been the only one rethinking their “agreement.”

All Megan could say was never and no.

Gabe had rarely heard the word no in his life. Especially not from women.

Didn’t she realize what throwing down a gauntlet like that did to a guy like him? That she might as well have issued him a direct challenge?

“How’s the powder been?”

For the first time in two days, the sky was clear blue and the sun was shining. Zach had decided to come up to his ski condo and the two of them had agreed on some ice fishing for the afternoon.

“Good.”

They didn’t say anything more during the short drive to the iced-over pond. Each grabbing a folding chair, pole, and tackle box out of the truck bed, they headed out onto the ice. They cut open two holes in the ice and sat down in front of them, their lines hanging in the freezing water.

For the first time in days, Gabe stopped to appreciate the silence. He’d always liked the mountains during winter, even navigating the sometimes rough conditions. Although, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking, he’d much rather be here with a seven-year-old who couldn’t stop talking...and her gorgeous mommy.

“How is she?”

When had self-obsessed Zach turned into a mind reader?

Gabe hadn’t forgotten the way Zach had flirted with Megan at the holiday party or that he’d gone over to her house to change her tire.

“None of your goddamned business.”

Zach looked amused as he sat back deeper in his cloth chair. “You don’t know, do you?” Shaking his head, his brother said, “Never even got in her pants, did you, before she kicked you to the curb?”

Gabe sprang from his seat so fast, he had surprise in his corner as he knocked Zach off his chair and onto the ice. The sound of his brother’s skull hitting the ice was the best thing he’d experienced in days.

“I’m going to tear you apart, ass**le,” he promised in a menacing voice.