Never Too Hot

Yes, she understood his growing pains, remembered only too well how hard it was to be fifteen and feel like your whole world was turning inside out. But even though she knew she needed to pull back a bit to let him find his way, that didn't mean she couldn't be there for him if he fell along the way.

Which he would. Because they all did.

Every single one of them.

Chapter Twenty-three

DURING EXTREME wildfires, Connor sometimes went up to seventy-two hours with little to no sleep. He'd keep running on nothing more than adrenaline and fistfuls of high-calorie food, with the knowledge that when it was all over he could crash, satisfied over a job well done.

This past week he'd had just as little sleep, but there was no satisfaction coming on the back end.

All day, every day, as he worked on refinishing the logs, Ginger wasn't just a room away, she was there in his head with him every second, her words “I want a husband and a partner. I want a man… who loves me as much as I lovehim,” on constant repeat.

He never thought he'd be so glad to have his father around. The days were easier, with Andrew a silent buffer between them. But after his father left, as soon as the sun gave way to darkness, Connor's resolve would slip into dangerous territory.

He hadn't even tried to sleep in the cabin. Not when all it would take was one weak moment and he'd be upstairs, kicking open Ginger's door to steal another few minutes with her, doing anything he could to convince her to be with him one more time, and then one more after that.

Each night he'd gone out to the workshop as soon as the sun had set. That first night he'd done push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups until he was dripping sweat all over the cold concrete floor. But it hadn't done a damn thing to clear his head. So he'd gone for a run. The first mile, his body felt sluggish. Heavy. As if he'd tied lead weights onto his limbs. Which only made him more determined to push through the pain, to run faster. Mile after mile passed as he ran away from Poplar Cove, his pace picking up with each new stretch of ground that he covered.

But Ginger stayed with him every step of the way.

Her beautiful face. The way she looked in the morning, her curls fanned out on the cover around her, her mouth soft and lush and so kissable. The way she'd looked when she'd told him she loved him on the porch, the truth in her eyes telling him they weren't just words said in the heat of passion.

He'd turned back around to the workshop, none of his usual tricks worth a damn. And that was when he'd found himself standing in front of his father's sailboat. It was a beautiful piece of work, even unfinished.

The storm he'd gone out in had wrecked his grandparents' old sailboat. The morning after Ginger had asked for everything he couldn't give her, he'd taken the speedboat out to retrieve the small craft. It was lying limp against the far shore, nearly smashed in two from slamming again and again into the rocks.

He couldn't put his grandparents' boat back together, but he could finish building this one. After a thorough search, he found the plans for the boat, neatly folded up in the bottom of a drawer.

It became his goal, his focus during the difficult days in the cabin with Ginger. Working on the sailboat didn't drive Ginger from his mind, but at least it was a way to pass the hours until the sun came up again and he could secretly watch her paint out on the porch, breathe her in as she walked by.

Every day, the agitation he'd carried around since his accident in Desolation — only when he was with Ginger had it eased — was multiplying exponentially. The couple of hours he slept on some thick canvas in the workshop were plagued with nightmares. His hands went from oversensitive to numb more and more and he had to be constantly on guard against dropping his hammer and caulk gun and sander.

He was bent down over the sailboat, putting in the finishing touches. The sun was almost rising and he was planning to drag it out on the water. He almost prayed for another storm, for the universe to force him and Ginger together again.

But since he knew that wouldn't happen, he was tempted to take a hammer to it instead and start over. Because when he was done with the boat, what the hell was he going to have to focus on to keep himself away from her?

The day before, a neighbor down the lake who also had an old log cabin had been sent by a couple of guys at the hardware store to see Connor's work. Clearly impressed, the man had mentioned that it was pretty much impossible to find anyone to work on a place like this, that modern day contractors all just wanted to tear the cabins down and start over with a Lincoln Log kit. He asked what Connor's plans were going forward, if he might consider helping out some of the other log cabin owners on the lake with their homes.

Although Connor enjoyed the work, even though there was something immensely satisfying about running a paintbrush over a log in smooth strokes, coating it with a fine layer of varnish to both protect the log and bring out its natural golden sheen, despite the fact that seeing his great-grandparents' cabin come back to life was a rush, he couldn't stay here and work on fixing up old cabins full-time. Not because he didn't like the thought of becoming a carpenter, not even because he didn't think his hands could take the work, but because he couldn't stay at Blue Mountain Lake if Ginger was here too.

Watching her marry another man, have his children, would be hell on earth.

He'd rather jump into a pit of flames than stick around to watch that.

* * *

Andrew lay on the bed in his room at the Inn for hours, staring up at the ceiling, Isabel there with him in his head, his body the entire time. He remembered her softness pressing into him, the salty-sweet taste of her tongue sliding against his, the way she'd pulled him down onto her, pulling him closer.

Come five a.m., his eyes having been open straight through, he hoped like hell a jump in the lake would snap him out of it. But although the water was cold, and he was physically tired, his insides still buzzed and snapped as if it had been thirty seconds since he saw Isabel instead of hours.

The sun was just starting to rise when he got back into his car and headed toward Poplar Cove. But when he pulled up to the cabin, he realized it was way too early to bother either Ginger or Connor. He couldn't just sit out here in his car, so he got out and started walking the path he knew by heart to the one place he'd managed to avoid since coming back to Blue Mountain Lake.

His grandfather's sanctuary, his most prized place in all of Poplar Cove: the workshop.