Waking up in Heather’s arms was just about the nicest thing Ash had experienced in…well, longer than he wanted to remember. Sure, the couch in grande casa wouldn’t have been his first choice for a bed, but given the circumstances, he’d take what he could get. And at that moment, what he could get was the warmth of a woman who felt good in his arms.

No. She felt right.

It had been a long time since a woman had felt right. A really long time. Normally, Ash would fight it. Push it away. Run from it. But with Heather, things were different.

They were easy, comfortable, sexy as hell and…right.

Dammit.

She was sleeping soundly and after the day she’d had before—not to mention the night—she needed her rest. But Ash needed to get up and stretch. And think. He slid his arm out from under her and slipped from the couch. His shorts, which he’d shed in an effort to warm her the night before, were still lying in a crumpled damp ball on the floor, as were her clothes. Ash scooped everything up and left out the garden door.

The sun was shining, the heat of the day already building although it couldn’t be more than seven in the morning. To say it got hot in Panama was a huge understatement. Even after four years, the heat took some getting used to. Living in California most of his adult life, it’s not that he was any stranger to the heat, but it was different. And of course, unlike Panama, there had been a bit of a reprieve from the stifling heat. He’d once enjoyed the cool mornings when the world was still waking up. When everyone, including Carlie, was still in bed and it was only him and the other workaholics on the roads into the office. He’d roll down his window, and let the cool air hit his face on the thirty-minute commute before he spent his entire day inside an air-conditioned building, breathing recycled air, just to turn around and drive home in the dark, long after the sun went down, with the same cooler air hitting him in the face to keep him awake before he got home to his beautiful wife, who more often than not would already be in bed.

Ash hung up the damp clothes on the line and tilted his head to the sun, allowing the heat of the day to warm him while he breathed in fresh, tropical air.

Thinking about Carlie hurt less and less. Maybe his friends—no, he never had friends back home, not really—his coworkers had been on to something. Time did ease the hurt. But it wasn’t just time that had helped him heal from his loss. It was this place. Panama. The jungle. The wildness. The easiness.

It was so different than his old life. It was the exact opposite, really. The change had saved him from total destruction. When he’d lost Carlie, Ash hadn’t thought he’d ever recover. A part of him would never fully heal, and although it had taken awhile, even after he’d landed in Panama City and then found Bocas Town, he’d been able to take a breath without the pain in his chest threatening to destroy him. And then soon, he could take two breaths. And one day, he woke up and it didn’t hurt to live.

It had taken longer to think of Carlie without the hurt dropping him to his knees. A lot longer. It was only recently that he hadn’t needed to lose himself in the arms of another woman just to forget her touch. Things with Heather were different. It wasn’t about forgetting with her. It was about remembering.

Remembering that once upon a time, he’d felt something more than an empty, dull ache.

Holy shit.

The revelation stopped him in his tracks in the middle of the garden. Did being with Heather really do all that for him? Was it more than just a fun fling? He almost laughed at himself. He knew it was more. He’d known since their first kiss. Whether he’d wanted to open his eyes to it or not.

He wouldn’t be able to ignore it forever. More than that, he wasn’t so sure anymore that he wanted to. Ash picked his way through the garden, clearing palm fronds the storm had brought down. He piled them next to the path as he worked in the quiet morning. The storm hadn’t been as destructive as he’d thought it might be. At least, not in the garden. There were a few crushed plants, and an undeniable mess to clear, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and it wouldn’t take long to fix up. When Ash was done in the garden, he moved down the path toward the far bungalow. Heather’s bungalow.

From the outside, it looked like it, too, had weathered the storm. There might have been some water that leaked through, but he couldn’t tell from the outside and he didn’t want to intrude on her privacy. He walked around the deck, untangled one of the hammocks from its support pole and straightened the swing that hung over the water’s edge. Using his bare feet, he swept the debris into the murky water below.

The seas had been churned up by the storm, but he knew from experience they’d settle out in a day or two and be back to their usual crystal-clear, bright blue.

He spent the next few minutes checking out the rest of the guest bungalows and opening the shutters to let the rooms air out, and when he was finished, he made his way back through the garden, stopping at the clothesline to pull his now dry shorts off. He tugged them on and gathered Heather’s clothes before going back inside grande casa. He expected to find her still sleeping, but she was up and in the kitchen. With no clothes to wear, she’d tied a thin batik blanket around her body, sarong style. Her hair was piled on top of her head and she looked absolutely ravishing standing in front of the stove, a spatula in one hand and a pan in the other.

“Good morning.”

“It is now.” He knew he sounded cheesy and cliché, but didn’t care one little bit. “You look…fantastic.”

She laughed and the hand with the spatula in it went to her head, leaving a drop of batter in her hair. “I don’t know about that. I woke up and found you’d stolen my clothes. But I was starving and couldn’t wait.”

Ash held her now dry shorts and tank top out. “I’m not sure I want to give them back. I like this look on you. It’s very bohemian. And sexy as hell.”

Her smile was wicked. Ash almost ripped the thin sheet off her right then and there, and he would have, too, if whatever it was she was cooking hadn’t smelled so good. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since before leaving for Bocas Town the day before. “What’s for breakfast?”

Her smile was immediate and radiant. “I’ve been dying to get in here and make something. But I’m starting slow. Banana pancakes.”

“That sounds delicious.” He crossed the room and kissed her. “Almost as delicious as you.” It was cheesy but it made her blush, and that’s all he was trying to achieve. He traced a finger down her neck and over the curve of her naked shoulder, smiling when she shivered in response. He kissed the sensitive spot on the nape of her neck before he retreated to let her continue cooking. He would absolutely love to have her for breakfast, but he wasn’t so sure that it would do much to quench either of his appetites.

Ash gave himself distance by hopping up on the far counter to watch Heather work.

“Where did you run off to this morning?”

“You looked so peaceful, I thought I’d let you sleep and see if there was any damage from the storm. Besides, I don’t sleep much.”

She shot him a curious look over her shoulder. “And was there? Any damage, I mean?”

“Only superficial from what I could tell.” He filled her in on what he’d seen outside and how he’d opened up all the guest bungalows except for hers. “After we eat, I can go with you to see if your place sustained any damage,” he added. “But I don’t think it did.”

Heather flipped a pancake from the pan and poured more batter in. “Do you want the first taste? Or can you wait?”

Ash’s stomach growled in response. “I’d rather eat with you.”

She winked at him and turned back to the stove. “Why can’t you sleep?”

The question took him off guard. “What do you mean?”

“You said you don’t sleep much. Why not?”

“The heat.” The lie immediately felt sour on his tongue and he shook his head. “No, that’s not true.”

Heather tilted her head and waited.

Ash hesitated in telling her the truth, but for the life of him, he couldn’t come up with a good reason why he wouldn’t just tell her. “I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in years.” He glanced out the window and watched a parrot in the trees for a moment. “Memories become dreams when you sleep and sometimes those dreams become nightmares. I like to wake up.” It was the most he’d said about his story since he’d told Heather the little bit about Carlie a few days ago. But maybe it was time for the full truth.

“Not all dreams have to be nightmares.”

“Mine are.” He didn’t mean to sound as sad as he did, but there was nothing happy about his truth. “You can’t rewrite your memories, Heather. They just are.”

She turned away from the stove, her face lined with worry. “But why? I mean, why do you have such unhappy memories?” She crossed the kitchen and put her hands on his bare knees. Something about her touch encouraged him to talk.

“Once upon a time, I lived a very different life,” he said simply. “And I lost it. Those are the memories I can’t forget. Don’t you have memories you’d rather forget?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

His lip crooked up in a wry smile. She had him there. “Touché. But we will. One day.” He took a deep breath. He liked Heather; it wasn’t fair that he continue doing whatever it was they were doing without the truth. He might as well get it over with. He took a breath. “Remember when I told you I was married?”

She tried to hide it, but Ash saw her cringe a little, before she nodded. “I remember. Is there more to it?”

This was always the part he struggled with. Over the years, it had gotten easier to think about Carlie. Heck, he could even talk about Carlie sometimes. But he couldn’t talk about what happened with them. He still could barely bring himself to think about it.

It was a time he wasn’t proud of. Although it should have been. No, it could have been. If he hadn’t have screwed everything up. Things had been going so well before—

“Ash?”

He focused on the woman in front of him.

“Talk to me.”

* * *

He didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he stepped closer, bridging the gap between them, and took a strand of her hair between his fingers. “This is crazy.”

“My hair?” She laughed, but it was controlled. Something was certainly going on with him, and she wasn’t sure she was going to like it. “What’s crazy about that?”

“No.” He dropped a kiss on her nose. “This. You. Me.”

She stilled in his arms. What was he talking about? And what did it have to do with his dreams that were more like nightmares?

Finally, she spoke up. “What’s so crazy about this? You were talking about your marriage.”

“Was I?”

“You know you were.” She wasn’t going to let him out of it so easy. Clearly he had something to tell her. “Talk to me, Ash.”

Ash shook his head. “I don’t do this.”

“Do…”

“This.”

Heather pulled away, putting a little distance between them. “Looks to me like you’re doing it.” She struggled to keep her voice even, at the same time hating herself for letting him affect her so much. It wasn’t supposed to be serious. She shouldn’t care what he had to tell her, or why he was being so strange while he was doing it.

“I really enjoy spending time with you.”

She looked at him warily. “As do I.”

“But I need you to know that it can never be more than that. Us spending time together.”

“What do you mean?”

Ash took a deep breath. “I think there’s something I should tell you.”

She sighed, the last of the easiness between them slipping away completely. “Right, about your ex?”

“My wife,” he corrected her. “I vowed to never put myself in that position again,” he said simply, as if it explained everything.

“What position is that?” She tried to keep her tone light. “Marriage? No one mentioned anything about that.” She giggled a little, but it fell flat.

“No—love. I vowed never to love again. And I’m not saying that…” He held up his hand and shook his head, clearly backing himself into a tight spot.

She didn’t know what to say about the L word; instead, Heather ignored it and tried to refocus him. “What? She screwed you up so badly that you think you can never feel something again, so you vowed to never again let yourself get hurt? That’s a pretty common story, Ash. Hell, I could say the same thing. Don’t worry about it.”

He took a breath. “That’s the thing. We didn’t get divorced. She died.”

The words fell on the air, landing heavy between them.

Died?

“Ash, I’m sorry.” She put her hand on his, needing to connect with him, but he shook off her touch.

“Don’t be. It was my fault. Remember when I told you I worked all the time? That I missed holidays? Parties? Anniversaries?” She did. “Carlie was always so understanding about my need to build the business and work hard. She never complained. Not like you’d expect. But there was one time when she asked me to please not cancel our date.” He closed his eyes. “I left too early that morning for her to ask me, so she texted me. It was our third wedding anniversary and we had dinner reservations at her favorite restaurant. She told me she had something special to talk to me about and to please not cancel.”

“You didn’t.”

He nodded sadly. “I didn’t mean to. I had no intentions of canceling, but at the last minute, an important investor came into town and…it doesn’t matter. I let her down. Badly.”

“What happened?”

* * *

This was the part that was so hard. The part he’d replayed in his mind repeatedly for months. He swallowed hard. “When I didn’t show up, she was upset. Like, really upset.” Heather nodded. “She called me. From the car.”

Heather shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”

He nodded when she finally looked at him again.

“She was crying. Yelling. Calling me names. She’d never done that before and I tried to calm her down. I tried to tell her to pull over and call me back when she wasn’t driving.”

Heather put a hand to her mouth but didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. She must know what was coming next.

“I heard the squeal of the tires, the scream and the crunch of the metal. Then nothing. I didn’t even know where she was to go to her. I didn’t know where to send help. I just screamed her name over and over again.”

“Oh, Ash. I can’t even imagine how terrible that would have been for you.”

He shook off her touch again. He refused to let her feel sorry for him. No one should ever feel badly for him. It was his fault. It was all his fault.

“The man in the other car died on scene.” He couldn’t even look at her as he spoke; he knew what he’d see in her face. “They airlifted Carlie to the hospital but the internal damage was too much. By the time I got there, she was gone.” He heard Heather gasp, but still didn’t look because he wasn’t done. “At the hospital, they gave me this plastic bag with all her things in it. There was her purse and her cell phone, of course. But there was something else. The reason she was so adamant that I didn’t cancel on our date. The special thing she wanted to talk to me about.” He didn’t even have to close his eyes to relive the moment. It would be forever burned in his mind. “The sonogram picture of our baby. She was four months along. She’d written Happy Anniversary on the top. It was her gift to me, to tell me I was going to be a dad. And I destroyed it all. I destroyed my family. And all because I was too stupid to know what my priorities were.”

“It’s not your fault, Ash.”

“But it is.”

“No.” She put her hands on his face and forced him to look at her. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

He shook his head. She wasn’t the first person who’d tried to tell him that. Not by a long shot. “I didn’t tell you this so you’d feel sorry for me.” He reached up and took her hands in his.

“Then why did you tell me?”

The look on her face told him that she already knew what he was going to say.

“Because you need to understand that I really enjoy spending time with you, Heather.” She nodded. “But I vowed a long time ago that I’d never do that again.”

“Do what? Love? That’s ridiculous, Ash. It wasn’t your fault. What happened with your wife was a tragic accident. That’s all. You think that by keeping your heart closed off, you’ll never have to hurt again? That’s bullshit.”

“No.” He shook his head. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all. “It’s not about me, Heather. Carlie died because of me. Because she loved me. I won’t let that happen again.”

“You won’t let someone love you again?” Heather chuckled, but she wasn’t smiling. She stood, taking the blanket with her. “You might sit there and think you’re protecting someone else by closing your heart to love. In fact, it’s possible that you’ve told yourself that story so many times that you even believe it now. But it’s bullshit, Ash. And this is why.”

He reached for his shorts and tugged them on before sitting again. Heather clearly had something she needed to say and he had a feeling that he wasn’t going anywhere until she got it all out.

“Are you so self-centered that you think you get to decide who gets close to you?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you really think that just because you’ve decided not to love again, that no one will fall in love with you?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s exactly what you’re saying. And I have news for you.” She crossed the floor and stood in front of him. “What happened to your wife was tragic. It was terrible and devastating, but it was not your fault. Sure, you might have been a different guy back then with a fucked-up set of priorities. But that didn’t make the accident your fault. It made you an asshole.”

He grinned at her boldness. And because she was right.

“She didn’t die because she loved you.” Her voice was softer. Ash stood so he was directly in front of her. “You can’t stop people from falling in love with you. And if you try, you’re only hurting yourself because no matter what terribleness life has thrown at you, no matter what type of heartbreak you’ve been through in the past, there will always be the potential for love. The real tragedy is allowing yourself to believe otherwise.”

There was so much passion in her words, her voice, her body. Ash reached out and cupped her face with his hand. “What are you saying, Heather?”

“Exactly what I just said. The potential for love always exists. I believe that.”

They stared at each other for a moment, neither of them speaking. He couldn’t help but think she might be right. Not that he loved her, necessarily. After all, it was too soon for that even if he was open to it, which he’d just finished explaining to her could never happen. But maybe… He shook his head and pulled away before he could allow himself to finish the thought.

“Okay, so now you know where I’m coming from.” He heard her sigh, felt the puff of air on his face.

“I do,” she said slowly. “Thank you for sharing that story with me. It couldn’t have been easy.”

He shook his head.

“And I get it.”

“You do?”

He expected a number of reactions from her, but that wasn’t one of them. “I don’t expect anything from you, Ash. But thank you for telling me the truth. Trust is so important, no matter what the relationship is. Or what’s going on between two people.”

It might have been the choice of her words, or the truth of the situation—which was that she shouldn’t trust him at all—but a tight knot formed in his gut. When she kissed him again, her lips were soft and sweet. It pulled even tighter because he knew that despite the fun they were having, no matter what she said, he couldn’t be the man she thought he was. The man she needed him to be.

* * *

She needed to know more, a lot more. His confession had just given her more questions than answers. Including some big ones: Why would he choose that moment to tell her the truth about his wife? Why would he stand there and confess that he’d vowed never to love again?

Did he think she was falling in love with him? He had mentioned the L word.

Did he think she was getting too close?

Before she could ask any of the questions on the tip of her tongue, they both caught the scent of burning pancakes at the same time. Heather whipped around to see smoke coming up from the pan that she’d stupidly left on the burner. “Oh, shit.” In two steps, she was across the room but she couldn’t find a potholder to grab the pan with. Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes and she was about to reach out with her bare hands when Ash reached around her, a towel in his hands, and grabbed the pan.

“Watch out.” He deftly moved around her and dumped the whole smoking mess into the sink before he turned on the faucet. “Got it. It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” The pesky tears were still threatening to spill. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from happening.

“Hey.” Ash stood in front of her. So close she could feel his heat. Or maybe it was the heat from the burnt pancakes. How could she have forgotten about the pancakes? She could have burned the whole place down.

She didn’t stand a chance at keeping her tears at bay. Everything was just too much. She just wanted to do something right. It was bad enough getting stranded on the dock like an idiot. But now she couldn’t even manage to cook breakfast. What kind of bed-and-breakfast manager was she anyway? The tears slipped from her eyes and she didn’t even bother trying to stop them.

“It’s okay.” Ash pulled her into his arms, but she wasn’t ready to be hugged and she pushed away. “It’s okay, Heather.”

“It’s not.” She snorted loudly. “I just want to be able to do something right. I can’t believe I’m messing this up so bad.”

Ash froze and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not talking about you.” She threw a nearby towel at him. “God. You really are a self-centered bastard.”

The minute the words came out of her mouth, she felt bad. He’d just told her a tragic story about his past. She had no right calling him names. If he was offended, he certainly didn’t show it. Instead, Ash did the exact opposite of what she expected. He laughed.

He bent over, his body racked with the laughter. When he finally looked up at her, Heather couldn’t help but join in. “You’re crazy.”

The laughter stopped, and Ash looked at her with false seriousness. “Remember what happened when I called you crazy?”

She certainly did. It had ended up with her chasing him around the room until she caught him and straddled him on the floor, followed by… “Oh.”

“Oh yes.”

It didn’t take her long to get what he was saying. A moment later, she took off running, but he was too quick. Ash caught the edge of her sarong and with one firm tug, it fell to the floor.

“That’s more like it.”

She let him pull her close and kiss her hard. When his hands slipped down her bare skin, she groaned with the need he brought out in her so easily. And when he reached down between them to unfasten the button on his shorts, she pushed his hands aside and did it for him. Because whatever it was that they were doing together—whether or not either of them wanted a relationship, or believed in happy endings, or love, or getting too emotionally invested—the one thing they had in common was their intense desire for each other. And for the moment, that would have to be enough.