If only he could have stuck to his original plan of staying as far away from her as possible. But she’d been to his mother’s house. She’d met his family. She was friends with his sister, the same sister who clearly had designs on getting them together.
As if she needed something to do with her hands, too, Megan picked up the bag he’d dropped on the counter and poured beans into the coffee maker.
“Sophie’s your friend and we’re bound to see each other again—”
“—so we’ll just agree to be friends,” Megan said, finishing his sentence. “No big deal.” She gave him another one of those not-quite-there smiles as she pressed the button on the grinder. When the beans were ready for the coffee maker, she scooped them in and said, “I mean, now that we both know exactly where the other person stands, right?”
Still wanting her more than he’d ever wanted another woman, Gabe nodded.
“Right.”
She was a blur of activity, clearing off a stack of Frosty the Snowman drawings she and Summer must have been working on, pulling out a pretty plate and arranging some white-frosted snowflake cookies on it.
He’d never dated anyone with kids. Not, he reminded himself, that he and Megan were dating. But it was the first time he’d seen anyone apart from his mother juggle more than just her own life.
She handed him the cup of coffee. “Why don’t we go sit down?”
He followed her over to the small living room on the other side of the open kitchen, noting that she wisely chose to sit on the small, velvet-covered chair rather than joining him on the couch.
She slid her heels off and tucked her bare feet up under her, rubbing them with her free hand. “My feet were killing me in those heels.”
Gabe wouldn’t ever have called himself a foot man. Feet were just feet. But Megan’s pink painted toes were incredibly sexy. He wanted to push her hand away and replace it with his. He already knew how sweet her mouth was, how soft her hair was. What would her skin feel like beneath his hands?
He was blowing the “just friends” thing already. What made it worse was that not only was he just as opposed to falling for Megan as she was for him, but he also understood her reasons for not wanting to be with him. She had every right to want to be with a man who wouldn’t die unexpectedly on her this time around.
There was no question whatsoever that he didn’t fit that bill. At all.
There was a desk in the corner of the living room, along with a couple of large filing cabinets and a bookshelf that looked like it held reference manuals rather than novels.
Following his gaze, she offered, “I work from home. I’m a CPA.”
Before tonight, Gabe might have assumed that all accountants were dry, passionless geeks glued to their calculators and spreadsheets.
Megan definitely wasn’t passionless.
“Do you like being an accountant?”
“I do.” She took a sip of coffee. “I like how numbers add up. I like the rhyme and reason. How they always make sense, and if there’s a discrepancy, I know that as long as I look hard enough, I’ll figure out what the problem is. And solve it.” She blinked at him with those beautiful green eyes. “I take it you love being a firefighter?”
“I was never able to sit still when I was a kid. And I used to like playing with matches a little too much. Fire always fascinated me.”
“Your mother must have loved that,” she said in a tone that indicated just the opposite.
He acknowledged, “Not so much.”
“I guess the fascination with fire makes sense,” she said slowly, as if considering it for the first time. “Otherwise you might not be so willing to run straight into one rather than away from it like the rest of us.”
Did she know that he was fascinated with her, too? That even when he knew he should be turning away from her, he wanted to move closer?
“You have a great family, but I have to say, some of you must have been a handful. My hat’s off to your mother. And,” she said with a slight question to her words, “your father?”
“He passed away when I was five. She raised us alone.”
His father’s death was another reason he’d chosen his career. Also trained as a paramedic, many of the calls he went on were medical. He couldn’t save everyone’s father or mother or child, but he wanted to know, at least, that he’d done everything he could.
Megan’s eyes grew big. “Eight children alone?” She put a hand over her heart in a clear gesture of sympathy for his mother. “Half the time Summer feels like too much for me to deal with by myself.”
“You’re a great mother.”
She smiled at that. “Thank you. Although I’m not sure you’d say the same thing if you could see me yelling at her about homework or clothes on the floor or spending too much time on the phone with her friends.”
He shouldn’t want to see those things, shouldn’t want to get any closer to Megan or her daughter. But the longer he sat with her, talking about family, the more that wanting grew.
Quickly downing the rest of his coffee, he got up and put his empty cup on the coffee table. He noticed the window off the kitchen was open a crack and a cold breeze was coming in.
“Do you want this open?”
“No, it’s jammed,” she replied, coming back into the kitchen with her own still half-full cup of coffee. “The landlord said he’d try to stop by this week to see if he can fix it.”
Not wanting her to have to deal with being cold and paying for heat that just seeped outside, Gabe put his hand on it and pushed. Nothing happened. “Do you have a small screwdriver?”
She pulled one out of a well-organized drawer. “Here.”
It didn’t take him long to fix the problem. “A little glue or paint was stuck in under the metal.” As he handed her back the screwdriver, he said, “Your old place must have had a great view.”
“That’s why I bought that apartment. I knew it was an old building, but I figured the view was worth it.” Her green eyes shadowed. “I never thought about how safe it would or wouldn’t be in a fire, though.”
“Isn’t having a view still at the top of the want list for your new place? Along with a backyard for a fire pit?”
“Views aren’t worth quite as much as I thought they were,” she replied in a soft voice. “And I’m not sure that a fire pit is such a great idea, either.”