“I made you come. I put my hands on you and controlled you.”

She grabbed his hands, stuck one hard to her br**sts, shoved the other between her legs.

“You think you can make me come just by putting your hands on me? Just by rubbing yourself against me? Am I coming now? No!”

She shoved his hands off, whirled away, her skin flushed with anger.

“If you'd been hurting me, if you had really been trying to control me, I wouldn't have come apart like that.

I'm in love with you, Connor, but that doesn't mean I'm some puppet you're holding the strings to.”

“Your wrists. I did that to your wrists.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at her arms. “I've always bruised easily,” she said dismissively, before glaring back at him. “Are you hearing a word of what I'm saying? I love you. Just the way you are. All I want is for you to talk to me. To let me in.”

He was trying to take her words in, was trying to process the force of her emotion, everything she was offering him, but as soon as he'd heard the word love again, it hit him, a sucker punch in the center of his gut: there was only one thing worse than losing the use of his hands, only one thing worse than losing his entire identity as a firefighter.

Letting himself love Ginger… and losing her too.

Because now that everything he'd been absolutely sure of for thirty years had gone up in smoke, all he knew for certain was that everything good eventually slipped from his hands.

It was the only truth he knew. The only thing he could be certain of anymore.

Her frustration echoed out from the porch, out to the beach, the water lapping at the shore.

“I've never thought you were a coward, Connor. Never. But if you leave tonight, I'll know that you are. You might have proved yourself to be a hero a hundred times in a wildfire. Well, this is your chance to prove it to me.”

Chapter Eighteen

IT WAS a rough night.

Andrew had never needed much sleep — as a litigator, he was often up late into the night poring over briefs, only to wake at dawn to defend his client — but he'd woken up disoriented and confused in the Inn's small cottage bedroom. Making a cup of coffee in the automatic coffee-maker on the kitchen counter, he stood by the window and stared out at the water.

The night before he'd spent hours sitting in the dark on the porch of his cottage on the shores of Blue Mountain Lake. After running his credit card and handing him a large, old-fashioned key, Rebecca, the pretty innkeeper, had said, “I'm afraid our restaurant here is booked up for the night already, but if you're hungry, I can highly recommend the Blue Mountain Diner. Isabel does a fantastic job with the food there.”

Although he was starved, he didn't think Isabel would appreciate seeing him show up at her restaurant tonight.

Or any other night.

Noting the fruit and cookies on the sideboard in the sitting room, he said, “Thanks, but I'll make do just fine with this spread.”

Looking unconvinced, she'd said, “You know what, how about I pop my head into the kitchen and see if the cook can whip up something simple for you and send it down to the cottage in about an hour?”

It was the nicest anyone had been to Andrew all day, apart from Ginger. But he wasn't under any misapprehensions as to why she was being so wonderful. It wasn't because he was a great guy. It wasn't because he deserved her kindness.

Rebecca simply didn't know him.

And being nice was her job.

He'd sat in an Adirondack chair, staring out at the lake, watching the sailboats and speedboats and kayaks go by, but not really seeing any of them.

All night long, the only thing he could see was the hatred on his son's face, on Isabel's face as each of them listed off all the ways he'd hurt them, all the ways he'd failed.

But he couldn't hide out in the cottage forever. And strangely, for all the discord of the previous day, for the first time in years, he felt like he was home.

Thirty years he'd gone without seeing this place. Thirty years he'd stayed away from his mistakes. Or thought he had, anyway. But Blue Mountain Lake was a part of his soul that couldn't simply be thrown away or forgotten.

He'd been a summer baby, born at the small hospital forty-five minutes away. He wondered if his old crib was still in the Poplar Cove attic, or if his parents had gotten rid of it as soon as Connor had outgrown it? Every summer as a kid they'd come to the lake, an extended family that included his grandparents as well. He'd grown up playing on the beach, swimming in the sometimes chilly waters, sailing on whitecaps, roasting marshmallows on sticks. He'd been so certain about the way his life would unfold.

He'd planned to build boats. Handmade sailboats. To sail around the world with a beautiful woman at his side.

He moved away from the cottage window, pouring himself a cup of coffee. It was too late. He'd wasted too much goddamned time being a martyr, spent the best years of his life trying to impress the wrong people.

But even as he thought it, he hoped to hell he was wrong. Otherwise there was no point in sticking around, no point in trying to grow a pair of balls and try again with his son.

But first, he would start his day at Blue Mountain Lake the way he always had as a kid. With a dip in the lake.

Quickly putting on his bathing suit, he jogged to the empty beach, down the Inn's dock, and splashed into the water. He was grateful for the rush of adrenaline that shot through him when he submerged beneath the cool waters.

Making his way out of the water, he looked up and saw Rebecca standing on the Inn's porch watching him. Clearly embarrassed to have been caught, she smiled and waved, then disappeared back inside the building.

The funny thing about discontent, Andrew had discovered over the years, was that he tended to notice it in other people, particularly people who were trying to hide it. Something in the innkeeper's eyes, the set of her mouth, told him that she wasn't happy. Not, of course, that it was any of his business. Still, he knew what it was to search for happiness and come up empty.

After a quick shower and shave, he got dressed and headed into town on foot. The Inn was at the end of Main Street. Isabel's diner was on the opposite end of the two-block center of town. He'd promised he wouldn't bother her, but that didn't mean he couldn't stand across the street, see what she'd done to the place.

His heart was pounding and his palms were sweating as he passed the small tourist shops, the ice-cream store window, the cafй/bookstore, the knitting shop, the public dock that ran the historic boat tours of the lake, and a handful of business offices.