Chapter Four
Two months later…
Megan wrapped an oversized towel around herself and stepped out of the bathroom to get changed into her clothes. The apartment they were renting until they could find the perfect new place to buy was small enough that she could see into the kitchen as she headed for the master bedroom.
“Summer, what are you working on?” she asked, trying to hold on to her patience as she took in the flour on her daughter’s cheeks and hair...flour that was, no doubt, all over the kitchen floor, too.
In the past two months, whenever Summer did something that made her mad, all Megan had to do was remember how small and fragile her daughter had been during the fire, how much she’d longed for the scrapes and mishaps Summer always managed to get into, and the little frustrations would disappear.
Only, these past few days, it seemed that Summer was more and more intent in her efforts to rile her up—and Megan was holding onto her calm by a very thin thread.
“Making muffins,” Summer hollered back, loud enough for the next apartment building over to know exactly what was going on in 1C across the street.
Although Megan had always loved looking out over the streets of San Francisco, she would never again live anywhere but on the first floor. She’d almost stopped having nightmares about being trapped on the third floor and having to crawl down what had seemed like endless stairs, and she’d take safety over views anytime. If she missed the views, well, that was just something she’d have to suck up and deal with.
“Okay,” she said slowly as she tucked the towel in tighter beneath her arms and stepped barefoot into the kitchen. “But what brought this on at—” She stopped to look at the clock on the oven. “—six-fifteen in the morning?”
They were both early risers, but her daughter wasn’t normally quite so industrious this early, especially not on the first day of winter break.
Summer gave her a wide smile, the one she always used on people to charm them into giving her exactly what she wanted. Megan liked to think it didn’t work on her. Not too often, anyway.
“We can bring them by the fire station.” Summer widened her smile. “For the firefighters to eat for breakfast.”
The first few weeks after the fire, Summer hadn’t stopped asking questions about fire, about fire engines...and about Gabe Sullivan. Megan had answered the technical questions as best she could with the help of the Internet and some books from the library. But she’d done her best to sidestep her daughter’s inquiries about the firefighter who had saved them. Particularly the ones about going to see him again.
In the hospital, she’d seen honest emotion in his eyes when Summer had hugged him. But then he’d closed up on them, so suddenly and so completely she’d actually felt a little hurt by it.
She knew better than to take it personally. Especially when she knew his head had been hit pretty darn hard with the beam. And her emotions had been really close to the surface that day, so close they kept bubbling over. She told herself that had to be the reason she’d felt bad about his behavior.
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.”
“You can share them and I’ll make you more!”
Megan had known this was where things would go, that if she relented and let them come to the station once, it would turn into repeat visits.
Just as she was thinking this, he turned back to her, his expression carefully blank. There were no smiles for her, only her daughter. Clearly, he wasn’t any happier to see her again than she was to see him.
Good. Maybe they could keep this visit short.
Summer tugged on his sleeve. “Thank you for the doll. She’s my favorite present I got for turning seven. Her puppy is so cute, too.”
Her solemn thank you had Gabe squatting down to be at eye level with her. “I’m glad. Seventh birthdays are really important.”
Summer nodded. “Now can you show me the fire engine and all the buttons you push for stuff, Mr. Sullivan?”
Nope, short wasn’t going to happen, Megan thought with a barely suppressed groan. But when that smile came back for her daughter, Megan felt her insides go to mush again despite all the tall, strong walls she’d put up to protect herself against his far too powerful allure.
How long had she been searching for a man who looked at her daughter like that? Like he thought the sun rose with Summer, just as her name indicated it should? As though she were important, rather than just some bothersome kid Megan happened to have had with some other guy?
“Sure thing.” He shot a questioning glance at Megan. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”
She was about to reply when she noticed a fading scar on his forehead that ran from his left eyebrow into his hairline, and her legs weakened. His forehead had been bandaged the last time she’d seen him at the hospital and she knew that was where the beam must have hit him after he’d gotten them down the stairs. She wanted to say something, wanted to thank him again and apologize for putting him in that position, but she knew it would come out all weird and wrong.
Instead, she simply said, “Of course it’s okay with me. Summer loves big machines and finding out how they work, don’t you?”
Just like her father had. Only his machine of choice had been an airplane, rather than a fire engine.
Gabe took Summer’s outstretched hand and walked her over to the shiny historic fire engine in the back corner of the station.
Normally, Megan would have followed them, but she wasn’t sure being that close to him for a prolonged period of time would be a good idea. Not when her hormones were still in crazy overdrive.
Walking further into the fire station, she quickly found herself at the center of a group of big, strapping men. Only, for all the testosterone in the room, despite the preponderance of broad chests and narrow hips and square jaws, her hormones didn’t flutter and her libido didn’t jump to life.
For some reason, only one particular firefighter had that effect on her.
Shaking the useless realization out of her head, she made it a point to meet everyone and to thank them for what they’d all done as a team for her and her daughter. She noticed a few eyebrows rising when she pointed out her daughter over by the antique engine, the way the other firefighters looked at each other as if they were in on a secret she didn’t know.
Summer and the man who made her heart go boom! were laughing together over something and for a moment Megan wanted to pretend they were more than strangers, that her daughter had a father figure to teach her things, to be proud of her, to tell her he loved her at night before tucking her in with a sweet kiss good night.
“Am I smelling blueberry muffins?”
Todd, the captain, came around the corner just then and she smiled at the very nice middle-aged man who had so graciously taken her in to meet her savior in the hospital.
“Summer made them,” she said before moving into the front room to pick up the container with the muffins.
She nearly walked into a pretty woman. “Oh hi, sorry, I didn’t mean to almost knock you ov—” She stopped in the middle of the word. “Sophie? It’s me, Megan Harris.” She shook her head. “Well, I was Megan Green back in college.”
“Megan!” Sophie’s arms came around her and they hugged. Sophie pulled back. “I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen you. Six, seven years?”
They’d both worked part-time in the Stanford library and had spent enough hours shelving and cataloguing books together in the dark stacks that they’d become friends. They probably would have become even closer were it not for Megan getting pregnant with Summer. Once she and David had married, she’d temporarily left school to follow her Navy pilot husband to his new base assignment in San Diego.
“You look great,” she said to Sophie.
“So do you!” Her old friend looked confused. “I haven’t seen you here before. Are you working with the station on something?”
Megan felt bad about not having kept in better touch. “My daughter wanted to come bring muffins over.”
“Oh my gosh, how could I have forgotten that you got married and had a baby? Where is she?”
Megan pointed to the corner where the antique engine was. “Summer is over there with one of the firefighters.”
Sophie frowned again. “Wait a minute. Your daughter’s name is Summer?” She cocked her head to the side. “Are you the mother and daughter Gabe saved a couple of months ago?”
At nearly the exact same moment, Megan realized she’d missed a very important clue along the way. Sullivan was such a common surname that she hadn’t thought to link Sophie and Gabe together.
“Are you his sister?” When Sophie nodded, Megan finally replied, “Yes, your brother saved us. He’s Summer’s hero for life.” She added softly, “Mine, too.” Smiling, she told Sophie, “She baked him muffins this morning and I believe she’s just about to convince him to let her drive that antique fire truck around the block.”
Megan worked to keep her voice light. God forbid Sophie ever realized how ridiculously attracted she was to her brother. Talk about awkward.
“You should see all those buttons and knobs!” Summer ran over at full speed across the cement floor. Gabe was nowhere to be seen for the time being. “It’s so awesome! I love firefighting! Thanks for finally letting me come here!”
Megan caught her daughter’s hand as she gestured excitedly and chattered about the wonders of the fire truck. “Honey, this is a friend of mine from college. Her name is Sophie.”
Sophie bent down to Summer’s level and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re gorgeous!”
Summer beamed her biggest smile at Sophie. “You’re pretty, too.”
Sophie laughed. “What kind of stories do you like?”
The little girl thought about it a minute. “All of them.”
Sophie shot Megan a delighted look. “Perfect.” She quickly explained, “I’m a librarian at the branch just around the corner. I’d love for you two to come in and see me. Especially since I’m always looking for good readers to help with story time for the little ones.”
Her daughter raised her hand. “I can do that. I’m a really good reader.”
“I’ll bet you are, with a mom as smart as yours.”
Just then, tingles moved up Megan’s spine. She looked up and saw Gabe heading toward them.
Megan wished she weren’t quite so aware of him...and that he wasn’t so darn attractive, period. It was a good thing Sophie and Summer were talking about their favorite picture books and didn’t require much participation from her, because Gabe’s nearness always seemed to suck her brain cells dry.
She was surprised to find he didn’t look pleased to see Sophie. Which was confirmed when he said, “Hey Soph, what are you doing here?” in a curt voice.
His sister simply grinned at him, clearly not at all put off by his gruff greeting. “I thought I’d bring you something healthy for breakfast.” She lifted a bag and opened it up so he could see inside. “Whole wheat morning buns. No added sugar or preservatives.”
He grimaced. “I’ve already got some really great muffins waiting for me, but thanks anyway.”
Shrugging, she closed the bag and said, “Can you believe that Megan and I know each other from college? Amazing, isn’t it?”
He looked between the two of them, even less pleased than he had been just moments before. “Amazing.” His voice was flat. And distinctly irritated.
Megan was glad her daughter had been pulled away by the rest of the members of the fire crew, who were telling her she was the best muffin maker who ever lived. Otherwise even Summer couldn’t have missed Gabe’s abrupt shift in demeanor.
This time around Megan wasn’t at all hurt by his hard mask. Not when she’d sailed right past hurt straight to mad. Whatever his problem was, he didn’t know the first thing about her, and she didn’t deserve to be the recipient of his bad attitude.
Yes, she owed him her thanks—forever—for what he’d done for her and Summer. But she could be thankful away from him, privately in her thoughts, when he wasn’t busy staring her down as if she had a contagious disease.
“Thank you for showing Summer the engine,” she said to him in her most polite, distant voice, before turning to his sister with a warm, genuine smile. “I’m so glad we ran into you, Sophie.”
“I know. I can’t believe I didn’t know you were living so close by.”
Megan shook her head. “I’m afraid I didn’t do a good job of keeping in touch with anyone after David and I got married and moved to San Diego.”
“How is David?”
Realizing there was no way Sophie would know about what had happened, she said, “He died.”
“Oh no.” Sophie looked horrified. “I’m so sorry, Megan.”
Wanting to reassure her friend, but not wanting to say too much with Gabe still standing there taking in every word, a glower still on his too-handsome face, she said, “It was a few years ago.”
Sophie looked toward where Summer was still the center of Station 5’s attention. “You’ve raised her all by yourself?” Before Megan could reply, she added, “Or did you remarry?”
“Nope. Just me and Summer.” She forced a smile that she hoped looked somewhat real. “We’ve been doing great.”
“And then that fire burned down your apartment. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
“Honestly, we’re doing just fine,” she said again, as much for Gabe’s benefit as Sophie’s.
Sophie put her hand on her arm. “I just wish things could have been different for you.”
“Soph,” Gabe bit out in a frustrated voice, “how many more times does she have to tell you she’s fine?”
He was clearly trying to warn his sister to back off a bit, and while Megan would have appreciated it another time, she knew Sophie was just expressing her feelings and emotions the way she always had. Straight from her heart.
Sophie simply scrunched up her nose at her brother before turning back to Megan. “You know what? Our mother is having her big annual holiday party this week near our old stomping grounds in Palo Alto. Please tell me you and Summer will come to meet everyone!” Before Megan could reply, Sophie added, “Don’t you think everyone would just love them both, Gabe?”
He was looking past them as he said, “Sure,” with shockingly little interest, just as he had in the hospital when Summer had asked him if he wanted to hear Megan’s frog impersonation.
Well, it was pretty damn clear to all of them what Gabe thought about this plan, wasn’t it? She could feel Sophie’s eyes moving between them, clearly trying to figure out what the deal was...and why he clearly couldn’t stand the sight of her.
In the awkward silence, Sophie finally said, “Actually, a couple of my brothers really love kids.”
Oh God. Sophie wasn’t trying to play matchmaker, was she? More than a little horrified at the thought of more than one man like Gabe in a family, she asked, “How many brothers do you have?”
“Six! But Chase and Marcus are taken and their girlfriends—well, fiancée in Chase’s case—are fantastic. So that leaves Zach and Ryan and Smith. They’re all free. At least as far as I know.”
Another light bulb went off. Smith Sullivan, the movie star, was Sophie’s brother. And so was Ryan Sullivan, the pro baseball player. Clearly, the Sullivan family was way too potent for its own good. Especially since watching Smith up on a big screen in a dark movie theatre and Ryan on the mound had never made her all tingly the way Gabe’s dark gaze was doing right this second as he frowned at her for daring to breathe in his presence.
Sophie continued talking while Megan processed...and worked to keep taking one slow breath after another.
“They’ll all adore you. I have no doubt my brothers will end up fighting over you. Don’t you agree, Gabe?”
“You’re actually trying to set your friend up with Zach and Ryan, two of the biggest players on the planet?” He shook his head. “Smith is even worse. God knows what would happen to a kid in his messed-up movie star world.”
Sophie waved away his concerns with a hand in the air. “I think all of you are awesome. And they’re only players because they haven’t met the right woman yet.”
Megan noticed Sophie said nothing about whether Gabe was a player or not. She hadn’t offered him up as potential boyfriend material, either. Probably because he had a girlfriend.
A girlfriend that Megan was absolutely sure she would hate.
Just because.
“Please tell me you’ll come, Megan? You and Summer would be such a welcome addition to the party.”
Truthfully, Megan didn’t want to have to spend any more time around Gabe than she already had, but the devil that very rarely sat on her shoulder sudden popped up and had her saying, “We’d love to come.” She got way too much enjoyment from the way Gabe’s stance tightened even further beside them. “What can we bring? I’m sure Summer would love to bake something really special for your mother’s holiday party.”
After Megan and Sophie exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, Sophie promised to send her all the information for the party.
With the deed done—and knowing she’d need every single second until Saturday night to make sure she was ready to completely lock down her foolish longings and hormones around Gabe at the party—she said, “Well, I think Summer and I should go and let everyone get back to work.”
She called out her daughter’s name and overrode her pleas to stay “just a little bit longer” because she was “having the best day ever” hanging out with the firefighters.
At long last, Summer finally took her mother’s hand and Megan was able to escape back out to the sidewalk, her heart beating even faster now than it had earlier that morning, even though they were going in the downhill direction.
All because this time she knew for sure that she was going to see Gabe Sullivan again.
* * *
“You’re not actually going to try to set her up with Zach or Ryan, are you?” The thought of either of his brothers touching even one single hair on Megan’s head had Gabe seeing red.
His sister shrugged. “I don’t see why not. She’s very sweet and smart, don’t you think?”
He wasn’t going to answer that. Because he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his sister know that he thought Megan was just about the prettiest thing he’d ever set eyes on.
“They’ll chew her up and spit her out.”
His sister crossed her arms over her chest. “She lost a husband and has raised a child all by herself. And it seems like she’s recovering really well from losing everything in that fire. I think both of those things prove just how strong she is.” Another shrug. “Who knows? Maybe she could be the chink in Ryan’s or Zach’s armor.”
Hell, no. Not when she’d already gotten under his skin. He didn’t need her getting under his brothers’ skins, too.
“I know what you’re doing, Nice.”
Normally, her nickname fit her. Not today. Today his little sister was clearly intent on messing with his mind by inviting Megan and her daughter into their inner circle.
Sophie gave him an innocent look, her brown eyes a little too big. “Megan is a friend from college. I like her a lot. I want to see more of her.”
“So you’re saying inviting her to the party has nothing to do with me?”
His sister pinned him with a gaze that told him she knew exactly what he was feeling for her old friend. “You tell me, Gabe. Does it?”
He grabbed the bag of whole-wheat nastiness from her. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ve got to get back to work.”
Before he could turn and walk away from the sister he normally liked quite a bit, he caught her smile. And knew exactly what she was thinking.
Sophie thought he was going to fall head over heels in love with Megan and her cute daughter.
She was wrong.