by Bella Andre
"Like what?" she pressed.
Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone?
"Alive," he ground out. "They look alive."
Her eyes went wide as she moved one hand over her heart. "You can see it? What I'm painting?"
"I told you. I don't know what I'm talking about."
His breath caught in his throat as she smiled back at him; her cheeks were a rosy pink, her hair piled on her head exposing her long, slender neck.
"No. I mean, yes, you do. You're right. I'm painting the lake. The energy that's within it and around it every single day. And no one has ever really seen--" She shook her head. "With abstract art, most people think it's just a bunch of random colors."
Oh shit. This conversation, these smiles, were the opposite of what he should be doing. "I'll clean up my tools and get out of your hair for a while."
She blinked at the abrupt switch, before saying, "Don't go." Looking flustered, she added, "I'm going to make some ground-turkey tacos. Are you hungry?"
"Starved," he admitted, "but I can grab something in town."
She was already moving past him into the kitchen, pulling out peppers and salsa and black olives. "It's not a problem. I'd end up with leftovers anyway."
Thinking of how Tim had said Kelsey would be insulted if he didn't eat the breakfast she'd made, Connor told himself he didn't have any choice but to accept.
He banged his knuckles against the stove. "You probably need this, right?"
"A stove would certainly be handy."
Sweet Lord, the kitchen was so small that they were practically right on top of each other. Clamping his fingers around the edge of the stove hard enough to turn his knuckles white, he shoved the stove back into place against the wall.
"I'll go clean up and come back down to help."
Turning the water on, he stepped into the ice-cold spray before the old pipes had a chance to heat up and decided to leave it cold. This dinner was going to be a lesson in self-control. Or purgatory.
The green farmhouse dining table on the porch was set and full of food by the time he made it back downstairs, a beer in front of each plate. Sitting down on opposite sides of the narrow table, neither of them spoke as they concentrated on assembling their tacos.
After taking a bite, Connor had to tell her, "This is great, Ginger."
Waving away his praise she said, "It's nothing. Just tacos."
He finished the first taco, started another. "You should be in the kitchen, not waiting tables."
"Waiting tables is just for money. I'd rather paint."
Watching as she sucked her lower lip beneath her upper teeth made not only Connor's groin react, but also something in his chest. And even though he'd told himself over and over to keep his distance, he found that he wanted to know more about her, wanted to try to solve the mystery of her.
Maybe then she'd stop being so damn intriguing.
"Why are you here?"
She blinked, clearly thrown off by his abrupt question. "Most people have never heard of Blue Mountain Lake."
She put down her half-eaten taco. "I got a divorce. And just to be clear, I'm the one who wanted out. But once it was all done I knew I couldn't stay there anymore."
"Where's there?"
"New York City."
The picture was growing clearer. "You didn't wait tables in the city, did you?"
"No. I did a lot of fund-raising." She raised her eyebrows. "More than you'd think was humanly possible, actually."
Another puzzle piece slid into place. She didn't dress like a rich girl, but there was a sophistication in the way she moved.
"Most people don't walk away from money."
She took a long drink from her bottle of beer, then said, "I know this is going to sound like I'm a poor little rich girl, but I love how different Blue Mountain Lake is from my previous life. My parents think I'm crazy to want to be out here, can't believe I'm waiting tables for nothing, but it's my decision. I waited thirty-three years for this, for something all my own, to use my own hands and brain rather than have everything handed to me on a silver platter." She paused, looked him straight in the eye. "I came here to finally get it right."
Any other time, any other person, he would have let it be. But the way Ginger had pushed him to talk last night about the fire, about his hands, still grated. He'd call it retribution, and work like hell to believe that's all it was.
Rather than out-and-out fascination.
"Why'd your marriage fall apart?"
Instead of flinching at his pointed question, she came right back at him. "What is this, twenty questions?"
"Last night you got to ask the questions. Now it's my turn."
She seemed to consider it before nodding once in agreement. "Fine. But I'm not going to spare you the gory details."
Jesus, he'd already felt that she'd understood him last night, but now it seemed that she'd almost been in his head too.
"I'd get them out of you anyway."
Loaded tension swung back around to heat, back to the sensual chemistry they couldn't push down.
"It was lust at first sight. Jeremy and I met at a dinner party given by a family friend. We left early to have sex at his frat house."
Lust? Jealous sparks shot through him.
Looked like she was right. He didn't want the gory details after all.
"I was twenty-two. A virgin in her senior year of college, the good girl who'd been saving herself for Mr. Perfect. So naive you wouldn't believe it. Within weeks his ring was on my finger. My parents fought it, told me to slow down, but I just thought they were being their usual rich, cautious selves, that they were snobs because he didn't have a huge bank account. So I ripped up the prenup they wanted him to sign and when he wanted money to start a company I gave it to him without doing any due diligence. I was so blindly, stupidly in love." Her mouth twisted. "And then one day I realized it hadn't been love at all. Just pretty good sex that left as quickly as it had come."
Pretty good grated, but not as much as great or fantastic would have. Connor did the math.
"You must have been with him ten years."
"Don't remind me. What a waste. Ten years I spent trying to pretend everything was fine, trying to convince myself that I hadn't made the wrong choice, that I hadn't failed."
"Why did you finally leave?"
Her eyes closed tight. "I'd rather not talk about it."
A nice guy would have dropped it. But he'd lost that guy in the fire. "I talked last night. Fair is fair."
Without opening her eyes, she said, "We were at one of the auctions I'd organized. Jeremy liked to be the auctioneer, was pretty good at it actually. Except that night, he'd been drinking. And when he drank he got sort of ... mean."
Connor's fists clenched. "Did he hurt you?"
Her eyes flew open. "No." She shook her head. "Yes. It was one of those 'buy a date' auctions and I was one of the last women to be auctioned off. He made a joke."
"A joke."
"About a cow." Two bright spots of color spread across her cheeks. "About how if we lived in India I would be the prize for the night. That there must be some guy out there who liked," she lifted her hands to make quote marks around the words, "big girls like me. And then he grimaced to show just how disgusting he thought I was."
Connor had never met the guy, but he wanted to rip him apart with his bare hands.
"My father yanked him off the stage. I don't remember exactly how I got to him through all the tables and chairs." She smiled then, a bitter twist of her lips. "But I'll never forget how good it felt to slap him. The sound it made when my palm hit his jaw. And then he swung at me with both fists, would have hit me if one of my father's friends hadn't pulled me out of the way in time."
She took a breath, seemed to come back to the porch, the dining table. "It was the final straw. What was the point of pretending anymore? Everyone could already see what a mess my marriage was
. So I filed. And got the hell out of there."
"Your husband was an asshole."
She smiled, almost seeming surprised by it. "You're right. He was. Is."
"And he was wrong. About you, about how you look."
"Connor, you don't have to. It's taken me a long time, but I'm finally starting to come to terms with my body. With my shape." Another smile, this time more sad than happy. "I spent a lot of summers at fat camp."
"Whoa. You're joking, right?"
"Every summer I got to hang out with fifty of my best overweight friends. I could quote the calorie handbook to you verbatim."
He hated everything about the idea of fat camp. Especially when there was nothing wrong with Ginger. Nothing at all.
"I still don't get it. Why would they have sent you to--"
No, he wasn't going to say the words. Not when they didn't fit her.
On the surface Ginger seemed so strong. She hadn't taken any of his bull, had come right back at him every time. But now, for the first time, he saw a hint of the fragility she'd been hiding.
"I guess my parents thought life would be easier for me if I were prettier, if I could wear the same things everyone else did. But like I said, I'm over it." She held out her arms. "After my divorce, I figured it was time for a new approach. To say this is me. Take it or leave it."
Jesus, she didn't get it, how badly he wanted to take it. Take her. Rage rushed through him at what that prick of an ex-husband had said to her, at the way her parents had belittled her beauty; he forgot his vow to stay in neutral territory.
"The first moment I saw you standing on the porch in your cutoff shorts and tight little shirt, I wanted you."
Ginger pushed her chair back so fast the loud scrape of the chair echoed all through the porch. She grabbed their plates.
"I'll clear this up."
But the kitchen wasn't far enough away, didn't give her the space she needed to pull herself back together.
She'd been about to throw herself at him, about to beg him to make love to her, to shove the plates and food off the dining table and pull him down over her as a thank-you not just for saying something so incredibly sweet, but for getting her art in a way few other people ever had.
Only, she'd just told him her whole sob story. If anything had happened just then she would feel like it was out of pity.
He walked into the kitchen holding the rest of the dishes, his large presence seeming to suck up all the air in the room.
"I was out of line. Right now and last night."
Knowing they were both trying to stay above the waterline tonight, she simply said, "Don't worry about it, Connor. Not any of it."
Pulling from a past that involved plenty of small talk, she purposefully shifted to a more innocuous subject. "I'd love to know what the lake was like when you were a kid. I always dreamed of coming to a place like this."
He moved over to the sink, turned it on to wash the dishes by hand. "I learned to swim when I was three and my brother shoved me off the end of the dock." At her gasp, he said, "Don't worry. He wouldn't have let me drown. That's what he says, anyway. The rest of the summer I barely came out of the lake at all, except to crew with my grandfather in his Sun Fish."
"What about when you were a teenager, was it still as much fun?"
"Sure," he said, his voice more easy than she'd yet to hear. "Sam and I spent one summer rebuilding a busted-up party boat from scratch with some buddies. Did donuts in the middle of the lake until the ranger came out to give us a ticket for reckless driving."
"How could you stay away for so long?" she asked "You obviously love it here."
His hands stilled in the soapy water. "I already told you. I had a job to do."
"Of course firefighting is important," she agreed, "but what about the rest of your life? You can't be a superhero twenty-four-seven. Surely the Forest Service doesn't expect you to give up everything for the job."
"No one forced me to keep going out there." He was defensive now, the sponge scraping at the already clean plate. "It was my choice. I've never wanted another life. Never wanted anything else."
"Seriously? There's nothing else you want? Nothing?"
After last night, she'd told herself she wasn't going to push him so hard again, but she couldn't help it. Not when she couldn't fully grasp what he was saying.
"You don't want a family? Kids? Something beyond your job?"
"After the fire I saw how fast it could all go up in smoke. How damn easy it would be for me to walk out the door one morning and not come back. I would never want to leave a family behind. And I can't live without fire. So, yeah, I've made my choice."
Now it was her turn to apologize. "It's very commendable. Choosing firefighting over everything else. I didn't mean to make it sound like your choice is wrong. I'm just not sure I could make the same one."
He slammed a plate into the drying rack. "Don't you think I've gone over this a hundred times? That maybe if I'd taken some time off, gotten more sleep, spent some time with someone who wasn't also living and breathing fire, that I could have outrun the flames?"
"What happened in Lake Tahoe wasn't your fault, Connor."
"One of our guys died in that fire. Jamie. He was just a kid. A rookie thrilled to be working his first couple of fires for the summer."
She wanted to put her arms around him, but after last night touching him seemed like the worst possible option. Not unless she wanted to end up in his arms again.
Which she did.
She gripped the dish towel tightly. "I'm sure you and your crew did everything you could to save him."
"They were down one man. Me. I should have been out there with Jamie when the bomb went off. Maybe I could have seen that something wasn't right and got him out in time. Instead he was out there all alone, without a chance in hell. I should be grateful to be able to stand here and wash the dishes. I can run and swim, get back out in the woods whenever I want to. But all I can do is complain about my hands, about not being allowed to do my job."
He left the room and she wanted to go after him, to force him to see that he was doing the best he could, better than most, and that he needed to stop beating up on himself for being human.
But something told her he wouldn't hear her. Not tonight.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
She wasn't surprised when she heard him start up his truck and drive away.
The phone rang and she'd been so deep in her thoughts she nearly dropped the plate she'd been holding. "I'm sorry to disturb you tonight," a man said, "but I was wondering if my son was there by any chance?"
Isabel's story instantly came back to her along with the unhappy ending, He cheated on me. She got pregnant. He married her.
"You must be Andrew."
"Yes. I didn't realize my parents were renting out the cabin. How have you enjoyed being there?"
Strange how different this conversation with Connor's father was from any she'd had with his son. Connor didn't waste words, whereas his father struck her as extremely smooth. And yet, neither of them knew Helen and George had decided to rent out the log cabin. Not the closest family in the world.
"Poplar Cove is wonderful, thank you. And, yes Connor's staying here, but he just went out."
Somewhere, anywhere to get away from her. Because everything she'd said reminded him of his own pain.
"Could you tell Connor I called? That I'd very much like to speak with him?"
She wondered if she were hearing things that weren't there, the hint of desperation in Andrew's voice. "Of course. I'll tell him."
After hanging up, she pulled a sticky note off the fridge and wrote, "Your father called," on it. Quickly deciding he might not find it on the fridge, she headed upstairs with the note and down the hall to his bedroom.
She paused at the threshold, thinking of what had happened in the room not twenty-four hours ago, her body responding with a flood of desire. Of longing.
He was a hero and yet he couldn't forgive himself for not being the man he once was. Everything in her ached to heal his pain. His regret. To pull him into her arms and hold on tight until he could finally let it all go.
As she put the note on his pillow, even as she tried, one more time, to remind herself that she hadn't come to the lake to get involved with an off-limits man, she felt as if she were watching a crash about to happen in her rearview mirror. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Because she wasn't sure she wanted to.
CHAPTER NINE
GINGER RAN all the next day from back-to-back shifts at the diner, to a private art lesson at the home of one of her favorite students, and finally to the Thursday Night knitting group at Lake Yarns on Main.
Her friends were there already. Rebecca and Sue from the Inn. Kelsey taking a few hours away from her little girl. A couple of mothers she was on the school art board with, one of whom was complaining about being pregnant for the fourth time.
"I actually cried when I found out," the woman confessed. "Here I thought I was out of diapers, that they were all going to be in school during the day, and bam! Those dreams all went up in smoke."
Ginger was glad everyone else was talking at once, alternately consoling and congratulating the woman, because she simply couldn't speak around the bitter lump in her throat.
God, it shouldn't sting so much to watch someone else get everything she wanted. Not just one child, but four.
But any way she tried to reframe it, it still stung like crazy.
Once the wine had been poured, the brownies passed around, and they'd all finally pulled out their various works in progress, Rebecca turned to her on the small couch the two of them were sharing with Kelsey.
"Did you do something with your hair, Ginger? You look different."
It was funny, when she'd looked in the mirror that morning, she'd done a double take herself. She fumbled her needles, one of them clacking to the floor.