Never Too Hot (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #3)(35)
Author: Bella Andre

Isabel came around the counter, sat down next to Ginger. “You’re in deep already, aren’t you?”

There was no point in lying to herself about it. “Yes. And I don’t know how to stop it.”

“That only matters if you want to stop it.”

“It’s just a summer fling.” It was all they’d agreed on.

“No reason summer can’t turn to fall,” Isabel suggested.

Suddenly, Ginger realized they’d made that agreement when they thought he was going to be heading back to work for the Forest Service in California. But now that everything had changed for him, she realized that every day she spent with Connor was going to start and end with her hoping for one more day. For more of him.

Even after he’d told her flat-out that he had nothing to give.

“You’re scared, aren’t you?”

Ginger looked at her friend, saw love and concern in her eyes, and knew she could confess, “More scared than I’ve ever been. And at the same time, I’m so incredibly happy. Almost as if I could burst from it.”

Isabel leaned her head on Ginger’s shoulder, two friends sitting in an empty diner, sharing confidences. “I wish I knew the right thing to say to you. The perfect advice to give to make it less confusing. But I’m afraid you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know the first thing about making relationships work.”

Damn it, Ginger thought. She’d forgotten about the letters again.

“Actually, I came here to give you something.” Ginger reached into her purse and pulled them out. “I found these stuck behind one of my dresser drawers.”

Isabel’s face went white with shock. “My letters to Andrew.” She rubbed her fingers over the papers. “He kept them.”

“Isabel, I’m sorry,” Ginger blurted, “but one fell open and then once I started reading, I couldn’t help myself.”

But Isabel didn’t seem to hear her. “I was so young,” she said so quietly it was almost a whisper. “Sitting here, just like you are now. So in love with him that I could hardly see straight.”

Isabel’s words nearly knocked Ginger off of her stool. She didn’t think Isabel had even heard what she’d just said, she was so wrapped up in poring through the letters. But now that it was there — love, oh God, could that be what this pull was? — Ginger couldn’t look away from it.

“I can’t believe I wrote these things,” Isabel was saying. “I had the future all planned out.” She pressed her lips together. Sighed. “Stupid girl.”

“I still don’t get it,” Ginger said, working like crazy to focus on what her friend was saying, rather than the swirling mass of emotions pushing around inside her. “How could all of that,” she gestured to the letters, “have become ten terrible words?”

Isabel shrugged. “Who the hell knows. Andrew and I were just kids who didn’t know any better, I guess.”

“Is it going to be weird to see him when he comes out for Sam’s wedding?”

“Very,” Isabel admitted. “But at least I have a few weeks to prepare myself for it, right? Not,” she said with a rueful grin, “that I should be wasting too much time on that.” Pushing off the stool, she said, “I know you have a lot of painting to get done. Thanks for bringing these to me.”

Understanding that her friend wanted to be alone with the letters, and glad to have some time on her own to think, Ginger headed out.

Was it possible for her to have fallen in love with Connor already? During her short drive home, her brain insisted on playing out a montage of images.

Protecting her from the falling branch, his heart beating wildly against her back, even harder than hers because he’d been so afraid of something happening to her.

Connor’s anguish the night in his bedroom when his fingers had gone numb as he stroked her. Holding his hand but feeling she was really holding his heart.

The way he’d looked at her paintings and seen straightaway what she was trying to get down on the canvas, understanding her in a way few people ever had.

And, of course, all those precious, sweet hours in his arms.

A sharp sense of relief shot through her when she came home and saw that the red truck was gone. She couldn’t face him yet. Not when the possibility of being in love was still so new to her, when she felt as if she were strapped into a runaway train that she couldn’t even remember getting on.

Walking over to stand in front of her canvas, she stared at the painting she’d been working on.

“Before Love” was how it seemed now. How, she wondered, was she seeing things so differently after such a short time with Connor? After only one incredible night in his arms?

And yet, there was no denying that even the colors in her palette were richer now. Deeper.

A voice in her head told her she should be looking at falling in love with Connor as a disaster, the biggest one of her life. But that scared voice sounded so much like the one that had told her for so many years that she didn’t know how to paint, that she couldn’t possibly follow her own heart and create something beautiful.

She picked up her brush and then, before she could possibly get ready for it, all hell was breaking loose, her fingers and hands and arms all pushing her to paint as fast as she could.

The images came to her as quickly as she could put them onto the canvases, one after the other. And while there was similar motion and color and energy to the paintings she’d made since coming to Poplar Cove eight months ago, there was something more to these paintings.

More emotion.

More tenderness.

When she finally stepped back to catch her breath, she realized what she was doing. She was painting Connor in all the ways she saw him. Swimming across the lake, doing sit-ups on the beach, but also naked and levered above her in bed, his eyes full of desire as he told her she was beautiful. She was painting him as a hero, saving the world single-handedly. And then, standing in the middle of flames, melting down inside, but doing everything he could to hide it.

She jumped as a sharp sound knocked her out of the zone. Realizing it was the phone, she dropped her brush and ran to get it.

After this morning, the phone felt like the bearer of bad news. What news could be coming now? She prayed it wasn’t anything that would hurt Connor more.

“Ginger, darling, it’s me.”

Ah, her mother. She plopped down on one of the nearby kitchen chairs. Alexandra liked to tell her all the gossip. And even though Ginger wasn’t at all interested in the comings and goings of a bunch of her mother’s friends, she was glad for the growing connection with her mother. Amazingly, in the eight months since she’d left the city, they’d spoken more on the phone than they had in person during her whole marriage when they lived just down the street.