Never Too Hot

There was no going back now. Time to lay it all out on the line.

“If it's not too late, if you think you can ever forgive me for being a complete ass**le, I don't want to lose you.”

She stared at him. Every other time he'd been able to read what she was feeling on her face. Not this time.

“For how long?”

He shook his head, didn't get her question, especially after his difficult confession.

“How long?”

“How long do you want to keep me?”

Oh shit. This time he got it, but that didn't mean he had an answer for her. “This is more than just a summer fling. You know that.”

“Okay then, throw fall in too. Then what?”

Ginger was well aware of the fact that he didn't exactly have the future mapped out right now, that he was moving day to day without any sort of plan.

“I don't know.”

She turned and left the bathroom. He wanted to pull her back into him, rewind five minutes, start this conversation over. Better yet, forget the conversation altogether and just lose himself in her again.

“When we started this,” she said when they were both out in the living room, “I thought I could do it. That a summer fling could work for me, that if I was really lucky it might bleed into fall. Winter even. I know we had an agreement. I'm the one who told you not to be such a hero. I'm the one who practically begged you to make love to me. I realize I'm suddenly changing all the rules. But I can't keep going on like this. I can't pretend that two or three seasons are good enough.”

Not reaching for her as she spoke was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.

“I want it all. Passion. Devotion. Kids. Love.” Her gaze didn't waver. “I want a husband and a partner. I want a man who wants to figure out our plans and future together.” She pulled the towel tighter around herself. “I want to be with a man who loves me as much as I love him.”

Connor would have given anything to make the words come. To be able to tell her everything she needed to hear.

Because she was right, she deserved all of those things and more. Isabel's words rang in his ears: “Ginger is awonderful person, Connor. She deserves so much more than she asks for.”

Damn it, he didn't want to think of her in some other man's arms, looking back on her summer with him with a distant smile of remembrance.

It should be so easy. Three little words. That was all he needed to say and she'd be his.

But he couldn't get them out.

Fuck. What was wrong with him? An incredible woman was giving him the chance to be with her, to spend the next seventy years loving and being loved by her.

He looked at her then, her curls damp and dripping on her bare shoulders, her skin rosy from the heat of the shower and their lovemaking, and even though her green eyes were glassy with unshed tears, the determination to hold out for the kind of love she deserved shined through.

Suddenly, he realized the truth. He'd been in love with Ginger from their first kiss, from the first night at Poplar Cove when she'd held his hand after his nightmare and refused to let go.

Everything he'd been trying to hide from slammed like a fist into his gut, took the air out of his lungs with it. Because now that he knew he loved her, it was impossible to deny the rest of it.

He loved her too much to pretend there wasn't a better man out there for her.

She needed to be with a man who already had the future figured out. She deserved a man who wasn't working like hell just to make it from one minute to the next. She belonged with a man who wouldn't keep taking and taking from her until she ran out of anything to give.

“You're right,” he forced himself to say, his throat as raw and inflamed as if he'd swallowed fire. “You deserve all those things, Ginger. And I need to step aside so you can get them.”

She flinched as if his words had been a physical blow. He'd never felt worse, never felt so low. Especially after the way she'd risked her life to save him.

“You're an incredible woman, Ginger. I've never met anyone as strong as you. As beautiful.”

The selfish part of him fought like hell to get him to say how much he loved her. To beg her to keep giving herself to him, even if he didn't have a damn thing to give her back.

“If I could love anyone,” he finally let himself say, “it would be you.”

She sucked in a shaky breath. “If I could stop loving anyone,” she said softly, “it would be you.”

Chapter Twenty-two

THE TENSION — the misery — that pervaded every inch of Poplar Cove was so heavy Andrew was almost choking on it.

It didn't take a genius to see that things between Connor and Ginger had gone from bad to worse. No more accidental brushes against each other. No more knowing glances. No more kisses good-bye.

Four days turned into five as they each worked in their corners. Connor cutting out the old rotted logs from the wall, Andrew sanding down the new logs, Ginger painting fast and furious.

Connor barely said two words. Ginger brought out sandwiches, but didn't join them as they ate. Andrew wished like hell he could wave a magic wand and get these kids back where it was so obvious that they needed to be, but he knew it wasn't that easy. He kept hoping they'd work it out, that the next morning he'd return and everything would be fine.

Just when he didn't think he could take it anymore, was actually considering locking them into the coat closet together and not letting them out until they'd worked it out, they both left the cabin, each going in opposite directions on the beach. It was such a relief to have the place to himself, he almost felt guilty. But as much as Andrew cared about his son, Connor wasn't the only one with problems.

Here he was, finally near Isabel again, and he couldn't think of a single plausible reason to go see her. Not when she'd made it perfectly clear that he needed to stay the hell away. He felt the clock ticking down, and even though a handful of days added to thirty years shouldn't matter, they did.

Seeing her again, holding her in his arms, had brought him right back around to the nineteen-year-old boy who had been so in love with her.

He was rechinking a couple of fresh logs when the phone rang in the kitchen and without thinking anything of it

— it had been his house once, after all — he answered it.

“Josh never showed.”

It was Isabel and she sounded harried. Irritated. Panicked. He recognized the name Josh immediately.