But for all the times he'd been called a hero, right now he was just a man.

And if he was being kicked out of her life, if never was all that he had to look forward to, he wanted one last look at her. One final chance to imprint the most beautiful woman he'd ever known into his memory.

"Yes, if I'm leaving, I guess I do."

She blinked at him, a doe caught in the headlights. "I didn't realize I'd grabbed it." She was biting her lip and flushing at the thought of being naked in front of him again. As if she didn't want him to think she'd purposely put on his shirt because she wanted a part of him around her, she added, "It was the closest thing to the bed."

A half-dozen thoughts shot through his brain at once.

He wanted to pull her into him, take her back to bed, and remind her how good they were together.

He wanted to tell her he didn't have any of this figured out, either, that it didn't make any more sense to him than it made to her, but he didn't care.

He wanted to bring her dead husband back, wanted to erase the ghost from her life so that he could at least be on a level playing field with the man.

He wished he could become someone who liked suits and cubicles and computers.

But, as Megan started to come toward him, he couldn't do any of those things. All he could do was watch her, drink her in, memorize every line and contour on her beautiful face. Her eyes were too bright, but her shoulders were back and her chin was still up as she moved out of the corner.

From the first moment he'd seen her, he'd known how brave she was. Nothing had changed between then and now, nothing but the knowledge of how soft, how giving, how sweet she was, in addition to all that bravery. All that strength.

She opened the shirt and let it fall from her shoulders. Her mouth was open slightly, her eyes big, her skin flushed.

Sparks jumped between them and he knew all the nevers in the world couldn't make their perfect chemistry any less.

Completely naked again, she gathered up his shirt in one hand and held it out to him. "Here."

He took the shirt from her, their fingertips touching as they made the transfer. He waited for her to turn, to gather up her clothes from the floor, to cover herself with something, anything.

Instead, she stood there naked before him.

"Never," he said softly, needing to reclaim that word and turn it around. "I've never seen anyone as beautiful as you."

She put both of her hands over her heart as if she were trying to hold it inside. "Please."

One word had never held so many potential meanings, but Gabe knew the room was in danger of backdraft if he stayed to try to figure out which please this was-the one that was begging him to stay...or begging him to go.

He'd learned early on in his firefighting career when to go deeper into the flames...and when to retreat to rea.s.sess.

Gabe forced himself to put his shirt on, walk to the door, open it, and leave the room.

But he refused to say goodbye.

She had done the right thing.

The smart thing.

The only thing she could do in good conscience as the mother of a little girl who had already lost one man who was important to her.

But none of those truths made watching Gabe leave hurt any less.

Especially since she also knew she'd done the stupidest possible thing by sleeping with him in the first place...by becoming just like all those other firehouse girls who lived just for the chance to share a bed with a firefighter.

Megan didn't know how long she stood in the middle of her hotel room, naked, lost.

Empty.

The sound of a shower going on in the room upstairs jarred her back to life.

Her fantasy night was over. Fantasies, she told herself, were like dessert. Delicious, but you couldn't eat chocolate and whipped cream for every single meal without getting really sick.

Finally, Megan lifted her hands from her chest and ran them through her hair. It was time to get back to her real life, a life she loved, with a seven-year-old who kept her on her toes. As she stepped into the shower, Megan told herself that everything would go back to normal now and she'd be fine.

More importantly, now that she'd made the very difficult decision to stay away from Gabe, her heart-and Summer's, too-would remain safe from harm.

An hour later she was standing at Julie's cabin, ringing the doorbell, shivering in the cold.

"Megan, good morning! Perfect timing. Come on in and have breakfast with us."

She pasted a smile on her lips. "Thank you." She wouldn't be able to eat a single bite, she already knew that. She stepped inside the warm cabin, but even though she was no longer standing in the snow, she still felt ice cold.

It wasn't until she found Summer hanging from the ladder that went up to the loft like a little monkey-"Hey Mommy! I had the best time ever last night!"-that Megan's heart finally expanded back to the right size.

This time it was a little easier to tell herself that she'd done the right thing...and that the two of them were going to be just fine.

Without Gabe Sullivan in their lives.

Chapter Fifteen.

Gabe's days pa.s.sed one after the other in a snowy blur as he drove his body to the limits of its endurance. Even the mini-blizzard that had everyone tucked warm and dry into the lodge at the base of the mountain hadn't stopped him from going out. But no matter how hard he pushed himself, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about how unwavering Megan had been about the two of them not seeing each other again.

The women he slept with always wanted to talk about things, always wanted to try and prolong their relationship.

Not Megan.

Sure, at first he'd been committed to steering clear of her. Yes, he'd thought dating her was the path to the dark side. But that was before he got to know her, before he realized she was nothing like Kate...and before he tasted Megan's sweet lips as their bodies came together in a long, sweet burst of the purest pleasure he'd ever known.

Only, somehow, in the morning he'd been the only one rethinking their "agreement."

All Megan could say was never and no.

Gabe had rarely heard the word no in his life. Especially not from women.

Didn't she realize what throwing down a gauntlet like that did to a guy like him? That she might as well have issued him a direct challenge?

"How's the powder been?"

For the first time in two days, the sky was clear blue and the sun was shining. Zach had decided to come up to his ski condo and the two of them had agreed on some ice fishing for the afternoon.

"Good."

They didn't say anything more during the short drive to the iced-over pond. Each grabbing a folding chair, pole, and tackle box out of the truck bed, they headed out onto the ice. They cut open two holes in the ice and sat down in front of them, their lines hanging in the freezing water.

For the first time in days, Gabe stopped to appreciate the silence. He'd always liked the mountains during winter, even navigating the sometimes rough conditions. Although, he couldn't stop himself from thinking, he'd much rather be here with a seven-year-old who couldn't stop talking...and her gorgeous mommy.

"How is she?"

When had self-obsessed Zach turned into a mind reader?

Gabe hadn't forgotten the way Zach had flirted with Megan at the holiday party or that he'd gone over to her house to change her tire.

"None of your G.o.dd.a.m.ned business."

Zach looked amused as he sat back deeper in his cloth chair. "You don't know, do you?" Shaking his head, his brother said, "Never even got in her pants, did you, before she kicked you to the curb?"

Gabe sprang from his seat so fast, he had surprise in his corner as he knocked Zach off his chair and onto the ice. The sound of his brother's skull hitting the ice was the best thing he'd experienced in days.

"I'm going to tear you apart, a.s.shole," he promised in a menacing voice.

Zach was in great shape, but Gabe's career meant he had twenty pounds of muscle on him.

"Uncle."

But Gabe still owed his brother for the flirting and the tire, so even though he made it seem like he was getting off Zach, he made sure to get in one more head-slam, along with a knee to the kidney.

"You're all losing your minds." His brother groaned as he lay there on the ice even though Gabe was back in his chair. "Chase. Marcus. Should have figured you'd be next."

"Stay away from her," Gabe warned. "Megan is off limits."

Zach slowly sat up and rubbed his head with both hands, then grinned despite the pain he was clearly in. "Maybe," he conceded, "but you've got to admit she has a really fine a.s.s."

Gabe knew his brother had started with one broken-down old car and turned Sullivan Autos into a megabucks business, but right now he was the dumbest person on the planet.

"I warned you." Gabe cracked his knuckles and prepared to mess up Zach's face.

His brother held up his hands again. "A joke! It was a joke. Swear to G.o.d, I didn't think you'd go here again. Not after what happened with what's-her-name."

Here he'd thought Megan's dead husband was the only ghost between them. Now, suddenly, he realized Kate's was too, just as much.

"When Marcus was going through all that bulls.h.i.t with Nicola, I thought the rest of us agreed on the score. That it's better to keep things easy. Casual. Fun. Especially you. After what happened that time with that girl who tried to kill herself in your house."

Zach looked as earnest as he got and Gabe knew he believed the bulls.h.i.t he was spouting wholeheartedly. A week ago, Gabe would have been right there with him.

"Megan's different."

"Another one bites the dust." Looking disgusted, his brother made the sound of a plane falling from the sky and crashing hard.

Gabe stared at his brother, but he didn't see him.

Was that how Megan's husband had died? Who had told her? When? How?

And how had she told Summer?

d.a.m.n it, Megan had kicked him out of her life before they could talk.

Gabe wanted to know more about her. Not just about her husband's death, but what she ate for breakfast. Did she like to hike or was she more of a biker? Did she have any siblings? Where did her parents live, and did she have a good relationship with them?

Yes, Megan had kicked him out of her room that morning, but he was equally to blame for their breakdown of communication. Because just as he'd barely been able to see her through the haze of thick smoke when he'd found her in her apartment two months ago, even though he'd seen her several times since, he hadn't wanted to let himself see her for who she really was. Instead, he'd told himself it was smarter to force himself to look at her through the thick haze of the smoke created by his ex's crazy behavior.

He hadn't been able to forget what she'd said when they'd been making love in her hotel bed. Please love me. Were they simply heat-of-the-moment words...or something more?

Strong enough words, from a deep enough place, to finally start cutting through the dark, heavy smoke that lingered from his past.

And hers, too.

Gabe closed up his chair, grabbed his pole and tackle box, and headed back to his truck.

"Where the h.e.l.l are you going?"

Gabe revved the engine and Zach had to scramble after him to throw himself and his fishing gear into the truck before it skidded out across the snowy terrain.

Ignoring his brother, Gabe went through what he knew so far. Megan had drawn her line in the ice and she didn't plan on budging. And he'd understood where she was coming from-had been right there with her, in fact.

But that was when Gabe hadn't planned on skating over his line, either.

Not until he'd just realized-with some help from his a.s.shat of a brother-that the ice was always shifting.

No one had ever told him just to go away like she had. And, sure, his pride was involved. So yes, he couldn't deny that getting Megan to come around was a challenge. But just as he wouldn't deny that he thrived on challenges, that facing down untenable situations that other people would go out of their way to avoid was precisely what he lived for, Megan was far more than a challenge.

She was a flesh-and-blood woman that he not only desired, but that he admired...and liked a great deal.

More than he'd ever liked anyone before.

Liked her so much, in fact, that Zach was probably right on the money and like might already be starting to head toward something a whole lot bigger than that. They skidded around an icy corner so fast his brother cursed loudly as he grabbed onto the door to keep from slamming his thick head into the windshield.

Feeling alive again for the first time since he'd walked out of Megan's hotel room four days ago, Gabe just grinned.