Can't Help Falling in Love

“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.