Never Too Hot (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #3)(58)
Author: Bella Andre

“It wasn’t romantic. It was disgusting.”

Hannah stopped walking. “Why?”

Something was in her voice, a warning to watch how he answered her question, but he was too pissed off to care.

“She’s my mom. She shouldn’t need to do… that.”

“But you told me your dad dates all the time.”

“It’s okay for him.”

“How? Because he’s a guy? Whereas she’s just supposed to be happy and fulfilled being your mother for the rest of your life? You’re the one who keeps saying how you wish she’d get a life and leave you alone. And then when she does you act like a complete jerk.”

She turned and started walking away.

“Hannah, why are you mad at me?”

She barely stopped, only turned her face halfway to say, “Because you just treated your mom like garbage. And I don’t want to be with a spoiled brat.”

Isabel was waiting up for Josh when he got home.

“What you saw tonight. It’s not what you think.”

“Of course it is.” He scowled. “You were practically doing it on a car with some random guy.”

Bile rose in her throat at what her son had seen. At the same time, it didn’t feel right to apologize to him for being a normal human being with normal sexual needs.

Still, she wanted him to know she hadn’t picked some random guy to go to town with.

“I knew him. A long time ago. Andrew grew up next door. At Poplar Cove. We dated.” The words, “I was your age and I loved him,” fell out of her mouth before she could think better of who she was saying them to.

She watched in horror as Josh’s expression changed from angry and disgusted to just plain crushed.

“Dad was the only guy you’ve ever loved.”

Oh no. She hadn’t thought of how hard it would be for him to hear that she’d had a life before him, before his father.

“I did love your father. And even though we’re not together anymore I’ll always love him for giving me you.”

But Josh wasn’t listening. “I saw you tonight. I saw what you were letting that guy do to you. The only person you should be in love with is my dad, not some ass**le who used to live next door. And now Hannah hates me because of you.”

She reeled from what her son had said, that she wouldn’t have been doing those things with Andrew if she didn’t still love him.

“I don’t love him,” she said almost to herself, even as the last part of his sentence finally registered.

“Hannah? Your girlfriend, you mean? How come she hates you?”

But he was done with her. “Why don’t you just go back to lover boy and forget all about me. Since it’s obvious that he’s the only one you really give a shit about.”

The last thing she heard was his bedroom door slamming and the music kicking in.

It occurred to her, then, that everything she’d said to Andrew about Connor pushing him away right when he needed his father most was also true for her and Josh. The more he pulled away, the more he told her he hated her, the more he needed her to be there for him.

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.