She was breathing just as hard, and he wasn’t surprised, given that their lovemaking had been at least as physical as anything he’d done even as a firefighter.
Gabe thrived on putting out fires. His job was his calling and every day he went to work, he went with a deep level of satisfaction over the life he’d chosen. But no triumph over fire had ever left him feeling this elated.
Which was why, no matter how many times he’d tried to hold onto the idea of one night—and only one night—with Megan, his brain hadn’t been able to pull it off.
He hadn’t forgotten what they’d agreed on in her apartment, but that didn’t mean he could discount what had just happened here between them, either.
Slowly lifting himself up off her sweet, soft curves, he looked down into her eyes, still fuzzy from the aftereffects of her climax. He smiled at her, the beautiful woman he couldn’t get enough of, and said, “Good morning.”
Two short words were all the time it took for Megan to go from pliable and loose and warm to rigid and tense and cold.
The caveman inside of him wanted to keep her pinned there beneath him on the bed. Instead, he forced himself to let her scoot away from him.
She reached for the first piece of clothing she could find. He wasn’t sure she realized that she’d grabbed his shirt, that she was wrapping herself up in him. The only thing he was sure of was the fact that Megan was desperate to get away from him.
In the decade that Gabe had been taking women to bed, they had only ever tried to get closer to him. They’d tried to find ways to spend more time with him. They’d worked to seduce him. A couple had even hoped for a ring.
But none had ever tried to get away from him.
Until now.
When Megan had made it to the far corner of the room, her back up against the wall, clutching his shirt tightly closed around her, she finally stopped and stared at him with big, alarmed eyes.
“That can never happen again.” She shook her head, that hair he’d had his fingers buried in just seconds ago falling over her shoulders like crumpled silk. “Never.”
Gabe got off the bed and pulled on his boxers to give himself time to think before replying. Back in her apartment their discussion about staying away from each other made sense. Perfect sense.
But now...well, there sure as hell wasn’t anything perfect about keeping their distance.
After his jeans were back on, he turned to the beautiful woman watching him so warily and said, “Never’s an awfully long time. Especially after—” He gestured to the bed. “Seems to me instead of saying never we should be discussing things.”
The shock on her face was better than that wary fear. “What’s there to discuss?”
He wasn’t at all pleased to note that his name on her lips was no longer the almost-prayer it had been when she was coming beneath him. “Seems like there’s plenty, Megan.”
She all but flinched at the way he said her name, still a caress, as if they were still in bed together, rather than standing at opposite ends of the room throwing the word never around.
“No,” she said, her hands clutching even tighter at his shirt, “just because we—” This time she was the one looking at the bed. “Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.” He didn’t want to have to push her like this, but he sure as hell didn’t like the way she was pushing him.
“Yes. Okay. Fine.” Each of the words was clipped as they fell from her kiss-swollen lips. “We had sex. And it was great, but—”
“More than great.”
“You win,” she replied in a hard voice, as if they were on opposite sides of a war, rather than in this together trying to figure out where to go from here. “It was more than great, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re still you and I’m still me. Which means that it can never, ever happen again.”
All she wanted was for him to agree. He could see that. And he’d promised her anything, just minutes ago when they were making love.
But how the hell could he agree to never?
“Tell me about her,” she suddenly asked. “About the victim you saved. The one you dated that it didn’t work out with. What was her name? What did she do for a living? What color was her hair?”
His surprise at her questions was tempered by the fact that he knew what she was doing: She was forcibly trying to remind him of his reasons to walk away from her. Probably before she reminded him of hers—of the husband who’d died in his dangerous job and left her and her daughter all alone.
“Kate. Teacher. Dark.”
Gabe watched her carefully as he answered her questions. For all that she was saying she wanted him out of her life, there was no doubt in his mind that she hated putting together a mental picture of his ex. Just as much as he hated to think of her in Summer’s father’s arms, more stupidly jealous of a dead man than ever now that he knew just how much warmth, how much passion, how much sweetness Megan had to give.
“What happened? How did you save her?”
“It was an apartment fire.”
“Like mine?”
He shook his head. “No. Not nearly as bad as yours.” But Kate had been crying, shaking, so scared that he’d pulled her into his arms and hadn’t let go of her until the ambulance arrived.
“How did you start dating?”
He didn’t want to tell her the truth. But his mother hadn’t raised him to be a liar. “She came by the station. To thank me.”
Megan flushed. “Of course she did. I should have guessed.”
“She was nothing like you.”
“Right,” she said in that same clipped voice, so at odds with its husky warmth when she was pleading with him to make love to her. “Strange how similar it all seems, though.” Her eyes were overly bright as she looked back at him. “Did she have a child, too?”
“No. She was young. Only twenty. Still in college.”
“Was she pretty?” She held up her hand. “No. Don’t answer that. Of course she was pretty.” She took a deep breath. “So, what happened?”
“We broke up.”
Just like that, the strong woman moved back to the forefront. “You told me, and I quote, ‘It never works out.’ Why not?”
“She was young. We both were.”
“Sure,” she said, “I believe that. But I’m pretty sure this whole firefighter–victim thing is bigger than just you and Kate and how young you were.” She looked like she’d tasted something rotten as she said his ex’s name. “Tell me exactly why being with a fire victim you’ve saved is such a bad situation. I want to hear why it never works out.”