Chapter Five
Saturday night…
Megan had never been so happy about a flat tire in all her life.
She and Summer had just finished running one final errand and were pulling into their underground parking garage when she felt her car bump over something. The hiss of the air was loud enough for them to hear even through their closed windows. Knowing the tire repair shop would be closed by eight o’clock on a Saturday, she told Summer there was no way they could drive the thirty-five miles to Palo Alto on a spare.
She felt terrible about Summer’s disappointment at missing Sophie’s mother’s holiday party, but oh well, that was how things rolled!
Despite her daughter’s enormous energy levels, she was normally quite even-keeled about things like this. So Megan was surprised when Summer pitched a full-on fit about not being able to go to the party.
“It’s going to be a bunch of adults.” Megan didn’t get what the problem was. Or, rather, she didn’t want to get it. “I don’t understand what’s so important about this party.”
“You know exactly what’s so important about this party,” Summer accused, before stalking off to her room and slamming the door. “We should have already been there by now, but you kept making us late with your stupid errands that we didn’t even need to do tonight!”
Megan had to take several deep breaths to try and keep her temper in check.
It didn’t work. Not when she’d been riding on nerves all day just thinking about having to go to this party and see Gabe again.
“Don’t you dare slam the door on me, missy!” she yelled through the door. “You’d better open it up right now.”
A few seconds later, the door opened a crack. Megan was about to push it open the rest of the way and demand an apology, but she stopped herself just in time.
They were both making a big deal out of nothing. In a couple of hours, everything would go back to normal, and they’d be snuggling under a blanket on the couch watching a movie about Rudolph.
She walked back to the kitchen and picked up her phone to let her friend know she wouldn’t be able to make it to the party, which was likely already in full swing. Expecting to get Sophie’s voice mail, she was surprised to hear her friend answer.
“Megan, are you and Summer having trouble finding the house?”
“Actually,” she explained, “we won’t be able to make it after all.”
“Oh no! Why not? One of you didn’t come down with a cold, did you?”
Megan suddenly wished she’d thought to fake a cough. Only, she didn’t believe in lying. And she certainly didn’t want to teach her daughter to do something like that. “No, we’re both perfectly healthy. My car isn’t faring quite as well, though. I’ve got a flat tire and I won’t be able to get it fixed until Monday.”
“Can I call you right back?”
Megan agreed and hung up the phone. As she waited for it to ring again, she got a bad feeling about things. A bad feeling she tried to tell herself was ridiculous.
“Great news!” Sophie said a couple of minutes later when she called back. “Gabe hasn’t left yet and he’d love to come pick you guys up.”
Megan leaned her head into the wall and closed her eyes. “That’s really nice of him, but I’d hate for him to go out of his way. We’re really sad about missing the party, but—”
“He lives really close to your place,” Sophie assured her. “It’s no problem at all. Can I give him your address?”
No!
“Okay,” she said, and then, knowing she was doing a terrible job of being grateful, added, “Thanks, Sophie. Summer will be really thrilled to hear that we’re back on.”
It was dark enough outside for Megan to see her own reflection in the kitchen window as she hung up. She wasn’t surprised that she looked shell-shocked. Worried, too. But there was something else in her expression, something that shouldn’t have been there at all.
Anticipation.
She turned quickly from the window. “Good news, Summer,” she called out with forced cheer. “Looks like we’re going to the party, after all.”
Summer let out a happy squeal and then ran into the kitchen to cut up the fudge she’d made that morning into bite-sized pieces for the party.
* * *
Sophie had sounded positively gleeful over Megan’s flat tire, Gabe thought as he double-parked his truck in front of an apartment building and got out to pick up his two impromptu passengers. In fact, while she was at it, his sister had given him hell for not having already offered to take her friend and her daughter to the party.
The worst part about it, of course, was that Sophie was right. He should have offered.
But he hadn’t, because he didn’t trust himself around Megan, didn’t trust their attraction not to flare up and burn both of them.
He knocked on their door, only to have it flung open before his knuckles could make contact more than once.
“Mr. Sullivan!” Summer threw her arms around him.
He hugged her back, looking up into the apartment just as Megan came around the corner...and completely took his breath away.
She looked surprised to see him. “Oh. Hi. I didn’t hear you knock.” Her eyes were soft as she looked at him with her daughter. “Thanks for coming to pick us up on such short notice.”
There were half a dozen things he could have said, at least a handful of replies that would have made sense. But even though he knew better than to go there, all he could get out was, “You’re beautiful.”
And she was. So damn beautiful his heart couldn’t decide between stopping in his chest or racing out of control.
He watched her try to contain her shock at his unexpected compliment. And then her smile.
“Thank you.”
Holy hell.
That smile.
It affected him just as much as it had in the hospital room. He’d seen her determination and tears and forced politeness...but her sweet, genuine smile was what undid him every time.
He felt Summer tug on his arm and barely managed to drag his gaze away from her mother. “You’re gorgeous, too, kid,” he told the little girl, who did a little pirouette to show off her sparkling green dress. “And whenever you say Mr. Sullivan, I think you’re talking about my grandfather, so why don’t you call me Gabe?”
“Okay, Gabe! Can we go now? When did you decide you wanted to be a firefighter? What’s it like having so many brothers and sisters? Was it hard to become a firefighter? Why is your fire hat red?”
The rush of questions from the seven-year-old girl sitting in the middle of the extended cab should have been the perfect way to keep his focus from landing on Megan again and again during the drive out of the city to the suburban home he’d grown up in. Especially since the woman sitting beside him remained nearly perfectly still and silent.
But through the forty-minute trip, despite the mouthwatering smell of the large plate of fudge Summer had made, Gabe was all too aware of Megan’s faint scent, something flowery and clean, along with her gorgeous curves beneath her knee-length velvet dress and those toned legs that he’d been unable to keep from admiring as he’d followed them out to his truck from her apartment.
When he finally pulled up outside his mother’s house to let them out, as he stepped out onto the sidewalk to open their door, Gabe took in a hard breath of cold, crisp air. “I’ll see you both inside in a few minutes, after I park the truck.”
Megan nodded but didn’t make eye contact with him as she helped Summer jump down into her arms.
He hadn’t smoked since his first day in training with the fire crew. But for the first time in years, Gabe would have killed for a cigarette.
* * *
It hadn’t taken more than five minutes to find a space for his truck and walk into his mother’s house, decked out with a ten-foot-tall Christmas tree and carols playing. So then, how the hell could his brothers already have found Megan so quickly?
Ryan and Zach were flanking her on either side and as she laughed at whatever they were telling her, she was beautiful. So beautiful it made something inside him tighten up whenever he looked at her.
He was going to kill his brothers. If they so much as laid a hand on her, they were dead men.
And then, almost in slow motion, he saw Zach’s patented load-for-launch move as his brother reached up to brush a lock of hair away from her eyes.
Gabe was halfway across the room, his hands in tight fists, when his mother stopped him with a hug.
“Honey, I’m so glad you’re finally here.” She looked across the room to where Megan was being entertained by his brothers. “And I’m so glad you brought Megan and Summer with you. They’re both just lovely. Absolutely lovely.”
Gabe tried to get his blood pressure to return to normal. He had no claim on Megan. Maybe Sophie was right. Maybe someone like Megan was just what an asshat like Zach needed to make him see the light and change his ways.
But the thought only made Gabe’s blood boil hotter.
Feeling his mother’s eyes on him, he somehow managed to hold it together enough to grit out the words, “Looks like another great party, Mom.”
“As long as all of you are here, I’m happy. Well, minus one, unfortunately, but I know Smith tried his hardest to get back.”
Smith hadn’t been able to clear his shooting schedule to fly to San Francisco. To his credit, Gabe was fairly impressed with how many family functions Smith managed to attend. They were neck and neck actually—for every movie Smith couldn’t get away from, Gabe dealt with a fire that had to take priority over seeing his family.
Megan’s laughter pulled his gaze back over to her despite his best efforts to look elsewhere. He was torn between wanting to get an emergency fire call so he could get away from temptation...and not wanting to ever stop looking at her.
Judging by the way Zach was hanging on her every word, his brother clearly felt the same way.
“Megan said the sweetest thing to me when we met.” His mother’s hand on his arm had him working to yank his attention back to her. “She thanked me for raising such a wonderful man who made such a difference in her life.” He watched his mother swallow hard. “I almost started crying right there in the kitchen thinking about what would have happened to her and her little girl if you hadn’t been there.”
He knew better than to let himself think about that scenario, about what might have been if he hadn’t gotten to them in time. Instead, he told himself he was glad for the reminder of what they were to each other.
Megan was the woman he’d saved. The one time he’d made the mistake of getting involved with a fire victim he’d saved, things had gone terribly wrong. All these years later, he could hardly believe what Kate had done when he’d broken up with her, that she’d—
“Gabe, honey, are you all right?”
At his mother’s hand on his arm and her soft, but concerned, question, he shoved the memory back down. Still, he needed to get his mother to understand that Megan wasn’t any different from any other fire victim, and that there was nothing special between them.
“She’s still processing the incident. It’s perfectly normal.”
“I suppose so,” she said softly, “but I didn’t expect her to apologize to me.”
He frowned. “She apologized?”
“She feels responsible for you getting hurt. She said if she had moved faster, if she’d just been able to hold it together better, that you wouldn’t have been where you were when the beam fell.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He didn’t realize he’d sworn aloud until his mother looked at him with raised eyebrows, but he couldn’t stand the thought that Megan blamed herself in some way for anything that had happened.
“She was incredibly strong. She should have been unconscious long before then, but she was fighting for her daughter’s life.” He closed his eyes for a brief second and he was right back there in the smoke. “You should have seen her.”
“Sophie is thrilled they’ve reconnected. I hope to see more of her.”
Only Zach knew that he didn’t date fire victims anymore—and the reason why. Which was probably why Zach thought it was safe to make a play for Megan, because he knew being with her would break one of Gabe’s hard and fast rules.
But his mother had never believed in matchmaking, thank God. So he tried not to read anything into her statement.
“What can I get you to drink, honey?”
Man, did he ever need something to take the edge off. The problem was, even though this wasn’t his official shift, the station was short staffed over the winter holidays and he’d agreed to be a backup on the roster. Which meant there’d be no alcohol for him tonight.
“Go ahead and entertain your guests, Mom. I’ll take care of my own drink.”
“Okay, and if you wouldn’t mind starting a fire in the fire pit outside, I’d really appreciate it.”
Any one of his siblings could have started the fire for her, but he knew she liked to have him do it because she—correctly—assumed he was more concerned with fire safety than the others.
“No problem.”
She kissed him on the cheek and moved back into the throng of old friends, but instead of heading over to the bar for a soda, he made a beeline for the woman he’d planned on staying away from the rest of the night.