Playing with Fire (Hometown Heat 3)

Things have already irrevocably changed.

The knowledge makes my palms sweat as Maddie turns to me, the setting sun catching the caramel streaks in her hair, making her even prettier.

“So?” I ask after an uncomfortable moment of silence. “What’s the verdict?”

“What’s your end game?” she asks, answering my question with a question.

I blink. “Um, nothing. No end game. I just want to spend time with you.”

She shakes her head, the skin between her eyebrows wrinkling. “No, I mean, with dating. Why do you date? Not just me, anyone. What’s your end game? Do you even have one?”

I resist the urge to pull her into my arms and kiss the tension from her lips. It’s a decent question, and one that deserves an honest answer. “I don’t know. I mean, someday I’d like to find someone, get married, I guess. I don’t want to play the field forever.”

“But you’re already thirty-one. Around here, by your age, most men who are looking for Ms. Right have either found her, or found her and divorced her,” she says, clearly not willing to let me off easy.

But then she never does.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve always respected her, even when we were kids.

I nod. “You’re right. And I’ll be the first to admit that in the past, I wasn’t really looking for Ms. Right. I was more concerned with Ms. Right Now. But then I moved to Atlanta and I was so busy with work I didn’t have much time to date.” I hesitate, wanting Maddie to know at least part of the truth. The part I’m ready to share, anyway. “There was a woman last year who I thought might be…special. We cared a lot about each other, and I was hoping we’d have a future together. But it didn’t work out.”

“Why?” she asks, pinning me with her unflinching gaze.

I shrug uncomfortably. “A lot of reasons, the main one being that moving forward with me would have meant a big life change for her, and she wasn’t ready for that. In the end, she decided she’d rather stay in a familiar, less-than-perfect situation than try for something more.”

Maddie presses her lips together, taking a moment to digest that before she speaks again. “I can understand that. I think that’s why Serge stayed with me for so many years, even after he knew that he didn’t love me like a husband should love a wife. Our marriage was familiar, and good in a lot of ways.”

I nod, wishing she hadn’t gone through all that with her ex. She seems to be at peace with it, but I know it was painful for her, and I don’t like thinking about Maddie hurting.

“But I don’t want good anymore,” she continues, a vulnerable look in her eyes that makes it harder to resist the urge to pull her close. “I want passion and fun and friendship and someone who’s open to dating becoming something more. I came to this retreat promising myself this would be the beginning of a new me, that I would learn to let my hair down and have a little fun while I was waiting to find the right guy. But I’ve been thinking all day…”

She sighs and her gaze shifts to the water, where the waves are crashing into the shore with bursts of foam. “That’s not me,” she says, almost too softly for me to hear. “I’m not a casual kind of person, and I don’t want to date someone who’s only after a good time. Even if that good time is very, very good.”

“Hey…” I rest a hand at the small of her back and wait until she lifts her gaze to mine. “Who said I was only after a good time?”

Her shoulders bob up and down and she nibbles at her lip for a moment. “From what I’ve seen, your relationships don’t seem to last too long.”

“No, but that’s not always my choice, you know,” I say. “There are a lot of women out there who aren’t looking for anything long-term, either. Especially with a guy they think is a dumb, firefighter meat head.”

She smiles. “You’re a lot of things, but a dumb meat head isn’t one of them. Firefighter, yes. Meat head, no.”

“And you’re not some random woman.” My fingers smooth up her back, under her hair, to curl around the back of her neck. “You’re Maddie. I know the type of person you are. If I wasn’t on board for something more than casual, I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t have asked to date you. And when I say ‘date,’ I mean exclusively, by the way. I mean you and me giving this a shot to see if we work as more than friends.”

Her brow furrows again. “Really?”

“Really,” I say with a huff of laughter. “Why is that so hard to believe?”