Never Too Hot (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #3)(41)
Author: Bella Andre

“That’s great. Ginger seems like a beautiful girl.”

Shit, another hard stare from his son. He was a lawyer, he should know how to lead a conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

“Have you run into any of your old friends?”

“Let’s cut the bull. Why are you here?”

Andrew bristled at his son’s tone, forgot his intention to be the nice guy. “Poplar Cove isn’t yours, it’s your grandparents’. Which makes it mine too. I have every right to be here.”

“Wrong.” Connor stood, looked down on him. “This is Ginger’s house now. You’re only here because she let you in.

And that’s just because she doesn’t know a damn thing about you.”

Andrew stood up too, faced off with his son. He wasn’t as broad from years of grueling physicality, but they had the same basic build. Apart from the twenty years between them, they were fairly evenly matched.

“How about we cut right to it, then?”

Andrew had thought he needed to tread gently. Fuck that. If Connor was going to come at him full speed ahead, he was going to see that his old man was tough enough to block him.

“Your brother called me. He told me what happened. That the Forest Service had turned down your final appeal.

That’s why I’m here. To take care of my own.”

“I’m fine.”

For the first time in a very long time, Andrew saw himself in his rugged son. He’d done that same thing once, worked like hell to convince everyone — but mostly himself — that the abrupt shift his life had taken was what he’d wanted.

“All my life I’ve worked on facts and facts alone,” he told his son. “Here are the facts. You have always wanted to be a firefighter and nothing else. And now your future has been f**ked over by a bunch of suits.”

From a legal perspective, Andrew understood why the Forest Service couldn’t risk having an injured man in the field who might freeze in a crucial moment.

“That’s a brutal blow, Connor. One you’re going to have to deal with sooner or later.”

“I told you. I’m fine.”

“I didn’t just fly here on a godforsaken red-eye to hear you spout that denial crap.”

Connor’s mouth twisted up on one side. “Now that’s real suffering. A red-eye flight.”

A sound of frustration rippled out from Andrew’s throat, two years of rejected invitations to connect with his son all coming at him at once.

“Your IQ tests were off the charts. You could have been anything you wanted to. You’re only thirty. It’s not too late to go back to school, to become a doctor or professor. Heck, I’ve heard you’ve been a hell of a teacher to the rookie hotshots these past couple of years.”

“Think how much easier it would have been to tell me that over the phone instead of coming all this way.”

“Damn it, Connor, I’m your father. I put aside everything else in my life to come here. To help you.”

“Bullshit. You never wanted me and Sam to be firefighters, never got tired of saying it was a dead-end job. Must feel damn good to finally be right.”

Andrew needed to call a break, reassess, approach Connor from a different angle, but before he could do any of that, Connor was saying, “Did you cheat on Mom?”

What the hell?

“Cheat on your mom? What are you talking about? I might have done a lot of things, but I never did that.”

“I already know about Isabel.”

Andrew opened his mouth, closed it hard enough that his teeth clacked together. Now it made sense why Connor had been so pissed off from the moment he’d set foot on the porch.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “I knew Isabel before-”

It was all so intertwined. Andrew was tempted to lie, but something told him that would only come back to bite him in the ass harder.

“We dated before your mom.” And he’d desperately wanted Isabel back after. Even though it had been impossible.

“Was Isabel the reason you couldn’t make your marriage work?”

“Yes.” He shook his head. “No. It was all so long ago. We tried, Connor. I swear it. Your mother and I tried to make it work.”

“She tried.” Connor stood up. “You didn’t.”

Contrition slammed into Andrew as his son moved away, the rewind button in his head taking him through the last several minutes, highlighting every way he’d played it wrong.

Something told him that if he let his son go now, they’d be done. Completely. Which meant he’d have to play his final card. Connor’s love for his brother.

“Please, Connor,” he said, reaching out to grip his son’s scarred arm. “I get that I’m not your favorite person in the world, that you’d love to shove me onto the next plane back to San Francisco. But Sam and Dianna asked if I’d walk her down the aisle and I want to be part of Sam’s wedding, do whatever I can to help them get ready for it.”

He swallowed everything else. I want to be a part of your life. Get to finally know the man you’ve become. Maybestand up for you one day at your wedding. Connor didn’t want to hear any of that.

The silence dragged on long enough for Andrew to feel rivulets of sweat begin to run down his chest. And then, finally, Connor shrugged.

“Do whatever floats your boat. Doesn’t make any difference to me.” Connor grabbed his running shoes from the porch. “I’m going to head out for a run.”

Andrew stood alone on the cabin’s porch, watching his son sprint across the sand, desperate to get away from him.

Chapter Fifteen

THE SKY was brilliant blue, the lake like glass as Josh untied his mom’s speedboat from the dock in front of their house. Five friends — including Hannah Smiley — were already on board, popping soda cans open and talking about the huge flames at last night’s bonfire. He’d known all of them, except Hannah, since he was five. Some of them were full-timers like him, others only came during the summer.

Getting behind the wheel, he ignored the five-mile-per-hour courtesy speed in the bay and shot away from the dock, his huge wake quickly washing up on the shore and knocking his neighbor’s boats into their docks.

Hannah was the only reason this past week hadn’t completely blown. Were it not for her, he would have much rather been back in his father’s loft in the city, going to loud, busy restaurants, playing the latest video games on his father’s sick gaming system, drinking beer with his father’s friends on poker night while betting — and losing — real money on his shitty hands.

Returning to Blue Mountain Lake was like stepping into quicksand. Small. Boring. Could his mother’s diner be any more different from his father’s buzzing architecture design office downtown? Red and white fifties decor versus glass and steel.