Heating up the Holidays

A village near Mombasa, Kenya

THE FIRE glowed brightly in the darkness, crackling and filling the air with the scent of burning wood. Lorelei could have become mesmerized by it so easily, the same way she might have been entranced by a television screen back in the U.S. at night after a long day of work.

But tonight, it only warmed her. The storytellers had long since finished spinning their tales, the drummers had retired to their cots and the last vestiges of the evening’s gathering had trickled away.

Next to her, a gnarled old man who had most unexpectedly become one of her closest friends in the past few years was looking at her as if he could see her soul. She squirmed uncomfortably, because, she feared, he really could.

“You must go home now,” Kinsei said in his heavily accented English.

They had been trading her English language instruction for his knowledge of herbal medicine ever since Lorelei had first come to Kenya. It had started as her way of smoothing out the relationship between her, the local Peace Corps doctor, and him, the local medicine man.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to the U.S.”

“Not America. I mean, you must go to your home. Where your family is. The place of your coming into this world.”

A wave of nausea nearly overcame Lorelei, not just at the thought of going back to her hometown, but because Kinsei was eerily, against all her scientific logic, always right. The few times she’d dared to contradict his advice, disaster had struck.

“You have been feeling restless, have you not?”

She nodded slowly.

“And you have unsettled business in the place where you became a woman.”

Oh, dear. Her mouth went dry. She looked at the fire, and then quickly back at Kinsei again, because he knew that when she couldn’t look at him, he’d struck the most tender of nerves.

“The place has made you so unhappy in the past, that you go all the way to the other side of Mother Earth to escape it, but you cannot escape what dwells in your heart.”

“Is this your way of getting rid of the annoying white doctor?”

Kinsei laughed hard. He always said there was no other way to laugh.

“No, no, my dear. You are ready to go. This is why I say so.”

“I’m afraid.”

“You have so much pain in your heart, you need to conquer it.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Think of someone who hurt you the most. Who is it?”

Without thinking, Lorelei blurted the name Ryan Quinn. God, she didn’t even think of him very often anymore, but when she did, she still felt as if she wanted to vomit. All her teenage angst, summed up in one name…

Her first love, her first lover, her first heartbreak.

“You must go back to him and find a way to have power over your pain.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If he killed your family’s goat, then you take the goat of his family. You see? It is the way to achieve balance, and happiness comes after balance.”

“So if he broke my heart, I have to break his?”

“I never thought you such a violent woman.”

Lorelei laughed now, realizing how her meaning had gotten lost in translation. “No, in English, to break someone’s heart means to hurt the person you love very badly.”

“Ah, I see. You must not be vengeful. But this man who set fire to your heart, you must take back from him the power he took from you. He took your virginity, you take it back.”

She had stopped wondering how he knew details of her life that she hadn’t told anyone. He just did.

“How, exactly, might I do that?”

“You must have sexual passion with him, and then walk away. In this act, you will be taking back your sexual power.”

Lorelei’s insides rebelled at the idea.

“And don’t let your silly Western ideas get in the way of this wisdom. It is the correct thing to do.”

There wasn’t a relationship therapist on earth who would have agreed with Kinsei, but he had never steered Lorelei wrong. She bit her lip and let the fire mesmerize her now.

Take back her sexual power? Go home again? Leave this place she’d come to love?

She’d have to sleep on it.

1

Ocean Harbor Beach, California

Six months later…

DR. LORELEI GIBSON didn’t recognize the hot guy sitting on her examining table at first. She was preoccupied and exhausted. The pace of the Ocean Harbor Beach Hospital E.R. was still a drastic change from her last job, and she’d already been on her shift for eleven hours when she walked into room 8 and looked at the clipboard.

“Hello, Mr…Quincy. Let’s see what’s going on here.”

“It’s Quinn, not Quincy, and I just got hit in the head by some falling floorboards-that’s all,” he said in the usual manner of manly men who didn’t like to admit they were hurt.

Quinn, not Quincy, she noted on the chart, scratching out the mistake someone in admitting had made. Quinn-not-Quincy wore a pair of firefighter’s pants and boots and a white T-shirt. When her gaze lingered for a few moments on his face though, she choked back a little gasp of surprise.

Ryan Quinn.

She thought of Kenya, and Kinsei and his advice to her before she’d left Africa. She’d tried to dismiss his words, but she couldn’t. Not completely. He was part of the reason she was here in Ocean Harbor Beach, trying to make peace with her past.

And now here he was, this piece of her past, sitting on her examining table, as if Kinsei himself had delivered him up for her.

He looked a little different than he had fifteen years ago, when they’d been in high school together-older, more mature, more weathered by life, but still gorgeous, even more so than in his younger years.

This was the problem with coming back to her hometown after so many years away-it was like walking through a graveyard, with ghosts hopping up to scare her at every turn. Although they were ghosts she’d come to face, their appearance didn’t scare her any less.

She didn’t have many-any?-pleasant memories from her adolescent years. She’d been an awkward, nerdy, socially inept, chronically weird kid, too brainy for her own good and too young, from having been moved ahead two grades, to grasp the intricacies of adolescent social life.

And she’d had a raging, painful, endless crush on Ryan Quinn.

In spite of the significant role he played in her memories, she knew it was entirely possible he wouldn’t remember her at all. They’d slept together exactly once and while for her it had been a momentous event-her first time-for him, it had just been a meaningless teenage conquest, probably one among many.

She swallowed the bile rising up in her throat and forced herself to focus on the present.

“Looks like your CT scan came out with no abnormalities,” she said as she finished reading over his chart.

Lorelei approached him, set aside the clipboard, and took out her light. She shone it in his eyes and watched his pupils contract normally, then instructed him to follow the light with his gaze as she moved it left, right, up and down.

“Have you felt dizzy at all? Nauseous?”

“Nope. I blacked out right after getting hit in the head, but only for a few minutes.”

She noted her observations on the chart.

“You look familiar,” he said, frowning at her name tag, and her throat constricted. “Lorelei Gibson…Did we go to school together maybe?”

She was sixteen again for a moment, wondering why the love of her young life was pretending she didn’t exist the day after they’d made love. But she pushed aside the feelings of angst and inadequacy and reminded herself that she was now a grown woman who’d traveled around the world, served in the Peace Corps and finished medical school at the top of her class. Those old rules about who was cool and who wasn’t didn’t apply anymore, and those old rejections should not matter at all.

“Perhaps,” she said, sounding more casual than she felt. “I did grow up here, but I left after high school.”

Recognition dawned on his face, and she felt herself shrinking inwardly. “Rat Girl!”

Lorelei winced at the cruel nickname she’d been branded with in freshman year after volunteering to loan her two pet rats to their biology class to act as class pets for the year. Her intelligence, and her uncool interest in all things creepy and crawly, had made her stand out from her peers right away, and they’d awarded her a lovely moniker to match her pets.

When he caught her expression, he realized his mistake. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. You must have hated being called that…Lorelei. We were lab partners one year, right?”

If she hadn’t been blushing before, she definitely was now. Because soon, he was going to remember the disastrous end of their senior-year lab partnership.

When she’d mistaken his kindness for attraction, she’d finally worked up the courage to blatantly flirt with him. And one day while they’d been gathering sulfur water at the local hot springs for their project, she’d kissed him right on the mouth in the middle of a discussion about the effects of sulfur on invertebrates.

And then, right there in the hot springs, the kiss had turned into an embrace, which had turned into heavy groping, which had turned into them taking off their clothes for a dip in the springs, which had turned into them making love in the pool of steaming water.

To Lorelei, that one evening had been complete bliss. And the next day at school-utter hell. He’d never looked at her, never talked to her, never offered any further help on their lab project. He’d simply pretended she didn’t exist for the rest of their senior year.

Lorelei had been heartbroken.

She pushed away the horrible memories and tried to move on. They weren’t here for a high-school reunion. “So,” she said, pretending she’d been reading important things on his chart. “You blacked out after getting hit on the head?”

He nodded, but he was still looking at her as though he was trying to remember something. “That’s what I just said.”

“For a couple of minutes?”

But she could tell by his expression now that he was remembering the hot springs. “You and I, senior year, we…”

Oh, God.

But why was she so scared? She wasn’t that inexperienced girl anymore.

“We what?” she said flatly.

“We, um, did that sulfur project together, didn’t we?” he said, obviously uncomfortable with her intense stare.

She frowned as if she was having trouble recalling. “Did we? Wow, you’ve got a better memory than I do,” she lied.

He looked at her a little oddly. “Yeah, we did.”

“I’m sorry to hurry this along, but we’re pretty backed up today. Do you happen to know exactly how long you were blacked out?”

“Oh, right, sorry. Maybe a couple of minutes?”

“Okay, good. It looks like you’re fine. If you start feeling dizzy, nauseous, have any trouble with your vision, or generally just feel like something isn’t quite right, please come back in right away.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Take it easy for a day-no running marathons for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Am I cleared to go back to work?”

“Yes, so long as you’re not doing any heavy lifting for a day. You can take over-the-counter pain medication if you’re feeling any discomfort from the bump on your head.”

She edged toward the door.

“Okay, thanks. Hey, it was good to see you again. Welcome back to Ocean Harbor Beach.”

Lorelei smiled as best she could. “It’s good to be back,” she said as she hurried out the door, feeling as if she were fleeing the scene of a crime.

In the hallway, Maria Valdez, one of the day-shift nurses, was passing by. She stopped in her tracks. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Lorelei blinked dumbly at the question, not sure how to answer. “Not really,” she said. “I’ll be in the break room for a few minutes.”

She headed down the hallway, her heart thudding wildly in her chest, feeling for all the world as though she was in high school again.

2

“REMEMBER that girl Lorelei Gibson from high school?”

Ryan’s coworker, Kyle Witcomb, who’d been sitting in the E.R. waiting for him, blinked uncomprehending. “Um, no. Are you going to live, or what?”

“Sure, just got a bump on the head is all. I told you guys I didn’t need to come to the E.R.”

“Yeah, well, you were slurring your words and talking nonsense at the time.”

“And, now I’m fine, so let’s get out of here,” Ryan said, then headed toward the E.R. entrance.

No matter how long he’d worked as a firefighter, he never got comfortable with the sight of people sick or in pain. It always made him feel that he should be doing something to help, and if he couldn’t, it drove him crazy.

Once they were outside in the cool, sunny December day, free of the sights and smells of tragedy, he let out a sigh of relief. His thoughts went immediately back to Lorelei.

“That girl from school I mentioned-I know you’ll remember her. She was in our biology class, and she had those pet rats-”

“Rat Girl?” Kyle said, frowning. “That weird science-geek chick who always wore hats to school?”

Ryan winced at the nickname. He still felt like a jerk for blurting it out to her in the examining room. But he had much bigger things to be ashamed of. After they’d had sex, he’d spent the rest of the year pretending she didn’t exist, unwilling as he’d been to admit he was attracted to her.

“Yes,” he said, his tone a little testy. “That’s her. She was my doctor today.”

“No kidding? I’ve never seen her around here.”

“She said she just moved back into town. I gotta tell you, she doesn’t look so weird anymore. She was pretty damn hot.”

“No way. I remember one time, she came to school smelling horrible, like she hadn’t bathed in weeks, with blood all over her clothes. When our homeroom teacher demanded to know what had happened, she said she’d found a dead dog on the side of the road and carried it around looking for its owners.”

Ryan said nothing. His thoughts went back to adolescence, when he hadn’t had the balls to publicly lust after a girl like Lorelei. All the kids in school had known she was brilliant, but that had only made her stand out even more as an oddball. It hadn’t helped that she’d been so much younger than the other kids in their graduating class.

He hated that he’d been one of the jerks who’d made her feel like an outcast. Sure, he’d been thrilled when they were assigned as lab partners senior year, but only because he knew it guaranteed him an A. The fact that she’d apparently developed a crush on him and thought he’d be interested in being more than lab partners had been lost on his eighteen-year-old self-that is, until she’d thrown herself at him the last night they’d worked together and he’d callously accepted her offer of sex without considering at all what it might mean to her.

He’d only let himself consider later that her complete awkwardness as they’d fumbled with each other’s bodies, and the pain he’d caused when he entered her, might have meant that she’d been a virgin. Which had only made him retreat even more from facing her, because it meant he was an even bigger jerk than he’d wanted to admit.

He’d been immature back then, and only officially interested in girls with shiny hair and hot bodies. He’d never even told any of his friends that he’d slept with Lorelei.

Ryan wished he could make it up to her for the following days and weeks after they’d had sex, when he wouldn’t talk to her or even look her in the eye.

She must have absolutely hated him.

She had every right to.

“What’s the matter with you?” Kyle said.

“Oh, nothing,” Ryan lied. “I was just thinking about how being a doctor’s a lot like being a firefighter-saving lives, working under pressure, making a difference for people-”

“Dude, you and your bleeding heart might want to go on home now and take a rest. Maybe curl up with your favorite teddy bear and watch a chick flick.”

Ryan gave Kyle a friendly shove. “Screw you.”

“The chief said you should go home for the day. I’ll drive you back to your place if you want.”

“I should go get my car from the station.”

“You sure you’re clear to drive?”

“She didn’t say I couldn’t.”

They both climbed into Kyle’s truck and started off toward the fire station.

“You going anywhere for the holidays?” Kyle asked.

“Nope. I’ll be working. My parents are at my aunt’s in Arizona, so there won’t be a family get-together.”

“Hey, I’d have you join me, but I’ve got vacation time and I’m heading south to visit family.”

“That’s all right,” Ryan mumbled, distracted as he stared out the window.

His head still ached from getting bonked, and Christmas was the last thing on his mind right now. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lorelei. Did it make him a shallow jerk that now that she was hot, he felt bad for having been an ass to her?

Yeah, it pretty much did. He cringed at himself. Except, well, she’d probably always been this hot. It had just taken him growing up and seeing her through mature eyes to understand it.

It wasn’t just that she was pretty in a more conventional way now. He hadn’t really thought much about her in all these years, but what he did remember about her was all good. She’d been so smart and quirky back then, he hadn’t had the good taste to recognize what a cool person she was. But now he knew better…

And yeah, okay, she was hot.

That didn’t hurt.

He had to do something to say he was sorry for his asshole behavior all those years ago. He owed her big-time. Maybe take her to lunch, or bring her some flowers or…

Or what? He didn’t even know if she was married, or had a boyfriend or if she still even liked guys.

Well, hmm, he was almost positive he hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. He had a second-nature habit of scanning women for one. But maybe what he owed her most was to leave her alone.

Still…

At the very least, he needed to apologize to her. But would that just remind her of something she’d rather not think about? Would she even remember now what a jerk he’d been? Was he just crediting himself with too much significance in her life?

No, he needed to just leave her alone. If their paths ever crossed again, he’d take that as a sign and find a proper way to apologize, but until then, there wasn’t really anything to be done.

The moment he thought it though, he found himself wishing “until then” would happen right away. Like today, or tomorrow, or…no later than the day after that.

3

LORELEI could feel the heat from the fire, but she didn’t smell smoke. The foot of her bed was on fire, flames licking the air and singeing the heirloom quilt her grandmother had made. She tried to pull the quilt away from the fire, but it was too late. Ruined.

Only when she saw that she couldn’t save the quilt did she think of saving herself. Terror seized her as she scrambled off the side of the bed. The flames were spreading across the floor now, engulfing the entire bed and half the room-blocking her way to the door.

She tried to cry out, but no sound came from her throat. And then, as if she’d been heard anyway, someone burst in the door.

Across the flames, she saw Ryan Quinn. He aimed his hose at the bed and fired a blast of water that instantly put out all the flames.

With the fire extinguished, she could see that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, only his fireman’s pants and boots, and a red hat that looked oddly like the flimsy plastic kind she saw kids wearing when they played fireman. His chest was all sculpted muscle and smooth tanned skin. God, he was gorgeous.

Was that just a costume he was wearing?

“You got here fast,” she said.

He tossed aside the fire hose and crossed the room, then took her into his arms Rhett Butler-style.

“I thought you’d never call,” he said in a breathless voice.

Then they were both on the bed, naked, kissing and caressing in such a frenzy that Lorelei couldn’t tell where she stopped and Ryan began. She was sixteen again, acting out her wildest adolescent fantasies. In fact, when she looked down at herself, she saw that she wasn’t entirely naked. She was wearing nothing but a pair of pink striped knee socks she hadn’t worn since high school.

Weird.

But then, the sensation of Ryan’s mouth on her neck erased all thoughts, and she could feel a relentless need building within her, a sweet, delicious ache that demanded he be inside her.

She grasped his hips and pulled him hard against her, spreading her legs wide and as he found her wet, hot center with his erection. She moaned, arched her back, and begged him, “Please, I need you now.”

And then he was there, right where she needed him. Inside her, filling her up, creating an even more delicious ache that was building fast, fast, so fast.

He moved inside her, and then her inner muscles were contracting around him, and she was gasping, crying out, as her body was overcome by climax.

But then he started moving inside her so fast and hard, it was making the house shake. The headboard banged against the wall so loudly, she was sure the neighbors a house away could hear.

Or maybe it was a hammer. Or a car driving into the side of the house…

Lorelei’s eyes shot open. She stared into the darkness of her bedroom, her brain catching up with reality.

Her body was tingling, as if she’d just had an orgasm. Her heart was pounding.

She had just had an orgasm.

But…

She was here alone. She’d been dreaming. There’d been no fire. There’d been no Ryan Quinn bursting into her room with his fire hose to rescue her.

His fire hose?

Could her brain’s pathetic symbolism get any more obvious?

She groaned and sat up in bed, bewildered by the banging sound on the roof that had invaded her dream. Her highly erotic dream…that had just given her an orgasm.

Jeez. She needed to get laid.

This wasn’t the first time she’d woken up with the certainty that she’d just come in her sleep-it had happened a few times before, always after a long stretch during which she was getting zero action in bed.

She sighed and squinted at the ceiling, her brain trying to process what the noise was.

She wasn’t in Kenya anymore. She was in her old family home, in bed, in Ocean Harbor Beach, California, and…

The roof of the house was about to fly off. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. Then she remembered that the weather forecast had called for rain with wind gusts of up to seventy-five miles per hour tonight, and, judging by the noise outside, the weatherman had been pretty accurate. Lorelei had a feeling she wasn’t going to get much more sleep unless she did something about the loud banging sound coming from the roof.

After a twelve-hour shift at the hospital that had turned into a fourteen-hour one, she really, really could have used a good night’s rest. But the noise was only getting louder. She flung her covers off and got up, grabbed her robe and went to check the fire in the wood-burning stove.

Her family beach cottage had seen better days. Her grandmother had passed it on to her mother, but now that her mom was living in a condo in a seniors’ community, she had no interest in the upkeep that went into taking care of the cottage.

And her lack of interest showed in a big way. After sitting empty for the past three years, being battered by the constant wind from the Pacific and occasional arctic storms that blew in off the ocean, the cottage was in terrible disrepair. Lorelei had been thrilled when her mother offered to let her have the place-it had seemed like serendipity, after she’d made the decision to come home-but she’d had no idea how far in over her head she was getting.

With the house-and the emotions involved in coming back to Ocean Harbor Beach. She didn’t have many friends here to come back to. Those few she’d kept from high school had scattered to other parts of the world thanks to careers and marriages. And those who remained-like Ryan Quinn-were ghosts she wasn’t sure she wanted to confront.

Except, Kinsei insisted she had to.

Kinsei was a crazy old man who had three wives, a terrible pipe-smoking habit and wore a loincloth. Why, exactly, did she feel the need to take relationship advice from him?

Because she knew she really did want to move on from the pain of her past. She wanted to let go of her childhood angst and make a life for herself here in her hometown. She didn’t want to run away from her dreams anymore. So here she was, attempting to live out the dream she’d always held dearest, of working happily as a doctor in her hometown, and she was having to confront her dreaded past in order to do it.

And what she needed to confront right now was that her house was falling down.

Now that the first big winter storm of the season was closing in on the coast, Lorelei had a feeling she was going to see just how bad the cottage’s condition truly was.

She kept telling herself that after two years in the Peace Corps, she could accomplish anything, but so far, she’d proven to be pretty inept at home improvement. She’d thought that the resourcefulness she’d learned in Kenya would serve her well in tackling the renovation project, but, it turned out, she was better at adapting to life as a doctor in a third-world culture than she was at stripping floors or repairing leaky roofs.

And speaking of leaky roofs…

That banging sound coming from the ceiling in the living room was situated over a spot where she could see water dripping onto the floor. She walked across the room and peered up at the leak.

“Dammit,” she muttered, her mind producing images of costly structural damage done by long-term exposure to rain.

She needed to do something. She’d hoped the storm would hold off until morning when she’d have more energy to get on the roof and nail down a protective tarp, but she’d been kidding herself. The rain was probably only going to get worse as the night wore on.

She found a bucket under the kitchen sink and placed it where the water was dripping. Then she slipped her feet into a pair of gardening clogs and went outside to look at the roof. Fat raindrops pelted her skin, and an icy wind penetrated her robe and chilled her to the bone instantly. She tugged the fabric tighter around herself and walked to the side of the house.

There she found the source of the noise. As she’d suspected an area of the roof had taken the brunt of the coastal winds for years, so that now some of the shingles were missing, while a piece of the roof itself flapped in the wind like a bad toupee, lifting up and slamming back down with each wind gust.

She had to do something about it. If she waited all night, that whole section of the roof might be gone in the morning.

Flush with a sense of self-reliance, she ran to the gardening shed in the backyard and tugged out the ladder, then dragged it across the yard and laid it on the ground next to the house. After that, she went back inside, took off the housecoat and found a hooded sweatshirt that would serve her better for climbing onto the roof. After two years in Africa, she no longer owned any rain gear, and she made a mental note to buy an all-weather kind of coat soon.

She tugged the sweatshirt on over her pj’s-a pink flannel top and pants covered in big red polka dots-then put on her running shoes, which would be better than the clogs for climbing.

She had a large blue tarp next to the door, the very same one she’d been telling herself for the past week that she needed to nail over the problem spot in the roof until serious repairs could be done, and next to it, a nail gun she was a little bit afraid of but that had so far proven less injurious to her than the old hammer-and-nails method.

Okay, what else would she need up there?

A loud crashing sound came from the roof again, and she winced.

Her cell phone…in case she needed to call anyone for help.

Not that she’d need help. But there was a storm outside, and, well, she’d never been up on the roof of a house before. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It was going to be a piece of cake, she told herself. No problem at all. She’d just get up there, nail down the tarp and get back down. It would take ten minutes max.

She could do it.

Yep, no problem at all.

She grabbed her cell phone off the table by the door and put it inside the pocket in the front of her sweatshirt, wrapped the nail gun up in the tarp, then tucked the bundle under one arm. Finally, she marched outside into the rain, feeling as resourceful and self-reliant as a pioneer woman.

Once she had fought the wind to get the ladder balanced against the side of the house, she was feeling slightly less confident, but when her weight was on the ladder, there’d be no problem at all…she hoped.

For once in her life she found herself wishing she had a nice strong man in her life to hold the ladder-or maybe even go up on the roof while she held the ladder-but she banished that thought before it could take root.

Men, even the biggest, strongest ones, were intimidated by her. They usually didn’t want their women to be smarter and more successful than them. And those who weren’t intimidated usually just couldn’t understand her at all. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, and while as a kid that had been the source of most of her misery, as an adult, it gave her joy to be herself. Unlike in her adolescent years, now she didn’t give a damn if men were turned off by her funky fashion sense, her outspokenness or her sometimes-odd interests.

Except, well…maybe she should give a damn, considering how hard up she was, to be having orgasm-inducing dreams all by herself in bed.

Not wanting to dwell on thoughts of the man who’d inspired the dreams, Lorelei stared up at the top of the ladder, rain pelting her face, and tested its footing by placing her weight on the first rung. She shivered at the icy wind that penetrated her pj bottoms. The bundled tarp tucked under one arm, she quickly climbed the ladder before she could lose her nerve.

At the top, she carefully placed the tarp on the roof, then eased herself up beside it.

Okay, now what? She’d never been on a rooftop before, let alone in a storm. By now she was half soaked by the driving rain, and the wind felt strong up here. She carefully started unrolling the tarp as best she could over the problem spot.

As soon as she had one corner of it free, she took out the nail gun and drove several nails into the corner. Then she rolled the tarp out farther, using her knees to keep it down in the wind, and crawled across it to nail the next corner down. This one needed to hang over the edge of the roof, and getting so close to the edge made her a little queasy. But she managed it.

Feeling more confident, she made quick work of the third corner, then crawled across toward the fourth corner. A wind gust blew the tarp up into her face before she made it there, a gust so hard she had to duck down and press herself to the roof to keep her balance. She muttered a string of curses and edged herself toward the corner of the tarp again, quickly nailing it down with three nails as she used her knees to hold the corner in place.

Finished, thank God. But when she tried to crawl back toward the ladder she couldn’t move. Her leg was stuck. She looked down at the spot her leg refused to move from and saw that she’d managed to nail one leg of her pj bottoms to the roof along with the tarp.

Of all the stupid things she’d ever done…

She muttered a string of curses.

Think. What to do? She tugged at her pant leg again, figuring if nothing else she could rip them off, but the roof was slanted, and if she tugged hard she was likely to fall right off.

Okay, so, she’d just have to slip the pj bottoms off and leave them up here. The world wouldn’t end if she crawled back down the ladder in her underwear. Shivering and soaked, and trapped in a kneeling position by her inept nail-gun work, she dropped the gun, untied her shoes and kicked them off, then shimmied out of the pj bottoms.

There, that wasn’t so hard. In the morning her pj’s would be stuck up here for all to see like a surrender flag made by Victoria’s Secret, but that was better than her being stuck up here with them.

When she was done, she hurriedly put her shoes back on and crawled to the edge of the roof where the ladder was…No, make that, where the ladder had been. The same wind gust that had nearly blown her off the roof, had apparently blown the ladder over, and it now lay in the grass, utterly useless to her.

Another string of curses escaped her lips.

Now what?

She didn’t know anyone well enough in town anymore to call them after midnight to come help her out of this ridiculous bind. Growing colder and wetter by the second, she began to see what she was going to have to do.

Call 9-1-1.

As soon as she thought it, she also realized that would mean the fire department would probably come. And, that meant there was a small but real chance it would be Ryan Quinn who’d have to come up here and rescue her in her underwear.

4

RYAN STEPPED off the truck and braced himself against the driving rain and wind that lashed him. As he strode across the lawn lit by the engine’s flashing red lights, he turned on the flashlight in his hand and shone it ahead so that he could see where he stepped. Behind him, the removable ladder was being brought down from the truck by his buddy Kyle.

It had been a week since Ryan had seen Lorelei in the E.R., but he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. She popped into his thoughts at odd times of day and night, like right now, as he strode across the yard of a house where it had been reported a woman was stuck on the roof.

Stuck on the roof? This stormy night, of all nights? Well, it wouldn’t be the oddest thing he’d ever seen on duty.

This place, he recalled, was where Lorelei had lived when they were teenagers. He’d come here a handful of times to work on their science project, but he wondered who owned the place now. He didn’t come to this neighborhood often. His own house was little more than a surf shack, a place down the coast he’d been renting for a few years near the best surf break in the area.

Whoever lived here hadn’t taken very good care of it. Last time he’d seen a place in such bad shape, he’d found a meth lab inside. He braced himself for having to deal with some meth head on a rampage, stuck on the roof after trying to fix the TV antenna or something equally dumb.

On the other side of the house, he found a ladder lying across the grass, which probably explained the person trapped on the roof.

Kyle positioned the ladder for Ryan and braced it, then Ryan began to climb up. A minute later, he was peering over the edge of the slanted roof.

The first thing he saw was a pair of bare legs, bent in a squatting position. His gaze followed the legs upward to the rest of the woman, whose face was familiar to him.

Lorelei.

Sweet heaven.

Lorelei, looking wet and cold, but not hurt. He tried not to grin. She had an expression on her face somewhere between anger and self-deprecation, as if she knew how ridiculous she looked but couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh about it.

“Lorelei,” he said. “Hi. Are you hurt at all?”

“No, just wet.”

“Let’s get you down from here. Just take my hand,” he said, reaching out.

She looked at his outstretched hand, then back up at him. “I don’t have any pants,” she said, her teeth chattering between the words.

“Dare I ask why?”

“I…nailed them to the roof by accident.” She tried to say it with a straight face, but laughter bubbled up from her throat, and Ryan couldn’t help laughing, too.

“That must be the polka-dot surrender flag over there flapping in the wind,” he said, nodding to the bit of pink fabric ten feet away.

“Yeah.”

“Take my raincoat,” he said, unbuttoning it as he spoke. Before she could protest, he shrugged it off and handed it to her.

She put it on, and sure enough, it was long enough to cover her to midthigh. “Thanks,” she said, still shivering as she eased herself across the roof and turned so that she could go down the ladder.

He placed a steadying hand on her back, but his gaze was fixed on her bare legs, thin and shapely. He got a flash of heat in his groin as he imagined her thighs spreading for him, imagined those legs wrapped around his hips…

Whoa, there. Time to remember his purpose, which was to help her off the roof, and then maybe, if he dared, apologize to her for his asshole behavior in high school.

They made quick work of the ladder, and at the bottom, Ryan picked up a blanket that someone had brought and left on the ground, and wrapped it around Lorelei.

“All’s well,” he said to Kyle. “I’ll help her back to the house while you get the ladder.”

“Sure thing, man.”

Ryan followed Lorelei around the side of the house to the back door. Once she was inside, she turned to face him, took off the blanket, and unceremoniously removed her jacket. He took them when she held the stuff out, and then his mouth went dry as he took in the sight of her stripping off her sweatshirt and grabbing a towel to dry off.

He watched as she toweled off, transfixed at the way her panties pressed against the flesh at the apex of her thighs and her nipples showed through the thin fabric of her wet pajama top. And before he lost all good sense, he shrugged on his raincoat again in the hope of hiding his growing erection.

She had a woman’s body now, with heavy breasts and a narrow waist, smooth skin and a shapely ass. She looked glorious there in her tiny white panties and pajama top, wet hair clinging to her cheeks and shoulders-not like any teenage fantasy he’d ever had, but like a totally grown-up one.

He would have loved to reach out and touch any part of her-hell, every part of her-to confirm that she was not a figment of his imagination. Then he’d pull her close and warm her against his naked body-

“Thanks,” she said. “You can go now.”

Right. Of course he could.

“I hope you’ll, um, wait until after the storm to do any further nailing of clothing to your roof.”

She grinned sheepishly. “I’ve got a leak. I was trying to cover it with a tarp.”

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full with this place, huh?”

“My mom let it fall into disrepair. She hasn’t lived here for years. I thought I could move in and renovate it, but, yeah, it’s turning into quite an ordeal.”

“I used to work construction-maybe I could help,” Ryan blurted before he could stop himself. What the hell was he thinking?

He wasn’t thinking, at least not with the head he should have been using. His brain was too clouded by erect nipples and wet panties to think clearly now.

“Oh. Wow, um, thanks, but I couldn’t ask that of you. I mean, maybe if you know any good contractors or carpenters or roofers, you could recommend someone?”

“Absolutely. But seriously, one of my hobbies is carpentry. It would be my pleasure to help-anytime.”

It occurred to him then that maybe while she was standing there in her wet panties wasn’t the best time to be having this conversation. There-a sensible thought.

She gave him an odd look.

Ryan felt his cheeks burning. God, all he was supposed to do was apologize, not try to insert himself into her life. Why was he being such an ass?

Because she was a beautiful, nearly naked woman, and he was a guy. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. Besides, she looked even hotter soaked with rain than she did dry.

He forced his mind off the wet-naked-Lorelei fantasy that was threatening to overcome him and back to reality.

“Listen, I know it’s late, and you’re cold, and I have to get back to work. Maybe we could talk about this later. I’d be happy to give you some names of people to call, if nothing else.”

“Sure, thanks. That would be great.”

“How about tomorrow? Will you be around for me to stop by?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Great, I’ll see you then,” he said, then turned and walked away before he said anything else stupid in the face of her panties.

He needed to get a grip. But dammit, he wanted her. His whole body was so pent-up with frustrated desire, his dick pressing against the front of his pants, his mouth parched…it was a minor miracle he hadn’t grabbed her and made love to her right then and there.

No, he wasn’t going to behave like a Neanderthal. Not again. Not when he had a chance to make things right. He’d help her with her house, if she’d let him, and when the time was right, he’d tell her how sorry he was for his behavior in high school. His self-respect depended on it-he couldn’t walk around in the world knowing he’d been a jerk without making amends for his actions.

That was it. He’d apologize, and all would be right in the world again.

He absolutely wasn’t going to sleep with her again. Well…not unless she really wanted to.

5

AS SHE WAITED for someone at Monroe Brothers Roofing to pick up the phone, Lorelei stared up at the growing water stain on the ceiling and muttered a curse. Living in a house should not be so hard. She was beginning to think the hut she’d lived in in Kenya had not been such a bad idea. At least when a thatched roof leaked, no one was surprised.

Finally the phone was picked up, but it was only a recorded voice explaining, “Monroe Brothers Roofing is currently unable to take on new roofing jobs for the immediate future, due to high demand for roof work. Please call us back in February if you need an estimate for new work. If you are a current customer-”

Lorelei hung up the phone and muttered a curse at the phone book. The other two roofing companies she’d already tried were not working during the winter months. She was beginning to feel as if she were starring in a bad movie version of her own life, in which the hapless, overeducated doctor meets her match in a house determined to fall down rather than be renovated.

Her brooding was interrupted by a knock at the door. As she went to answer it, she did a quick check in the mirror and saw that she hadn’t yet brushed her hair, and her face, untouched by makeup, bore the puffy, dark-circled evidence that she hadn’t slept much the night before.

Whatever. Anyone who dared to knock on her door at nine in the morning after an epic thunderstorm would get the frightful sight they deserved. It was probably a neighbor knocking to ask if she had electricity-the answer was no, she didn’t-or to tell her that some of her belongings/tree branches/whatever had blown into their yard and needed to be removed.

But the moment she jerked the door open, she regretted having answered it at all. Ryan Quinn stood on her doorstep, still wearing his uniform.

Him again. Was fate trying to beat her over the head with him or what? She said a silent Fine, you win to Kinsei and gave in to the truth of the matter. He was right. She was going to have to sleep with Ryan to get rid of him from her life for good.

“Hi,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry to bother you so early-”

“I’ve been up for a while,” she said, cutting him off. She didn’t want to stand here engaging in niceties right now, not when she looked like this.

How was she supposed to conquer the ghosts of her past with bad hair and raccoon eyes?

Her gaze dropped to his hand, and the bouquet of red and yellow daisies he held. He presented them to her.

“These are for you,” he said.

“Oh,” she said dumbly, taking the bouquet. “What for?”

“Can I come in for just a minute?”

“I’m…kind of busy right now,” she said, torn between not wanting to be rude to her future conquest and not wanting him to get any more of a look at her poorly groomed self.

“Sorry, I just need a minute to talk to you. Please?”

He might have been the source of her worst teenage angst, but that was then, and right now, he looked so earnest, she couldn’t manage to feel the least bit cold and hostile.

He flashed a weak grin, and she looked down at the flowers in her hands. Flowers? Really?

Curiosity nearly overcame her desire to send him away.

How could she refuse? Kinsei would probably curse her if she did. But the old man didn’t understand a girl’s need to prepare herself for seduction.

“Um, sure, I guess.” She stepped aside and opened the door wider for him to enter. Upon doing so, she got a view of all the leaves, tree branches and debris from the storm that would now need to be cleaned up, adding to her ever-growing list of household tasks.

But the problem vanished from her head almost immediately, because when she turned to face Ryan again, she was struck by just how damn attractive he really was. Still. After all these years.

He filled up the space in her entryway, and the flowers-what was with the flowers? She smelled them. They were a lovely contrast to the dreary morning sky outside.

His expression turned to a mixture of serious and sheepish. “I wanted to check on you, first, and make sure you’re okay after your ordeal last night. And bring you those references you asked about.”

Lorelei blinked. This concern was in sharp contrast to her long-held belief that he was an insensitive jerk. “Other than being a wee bit sleep-deprived, I’m fine.”

“Good.” He handed her a list of names and numbers. “These are my recommendations of people to contact for work on the house.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said, and took the paper. She looked at it, and the roofers were ones she’d already tried. Her heart sank.

“What’s wrong?”

“Any chance you know of a roofer who isn’t booked solid with work right now?”

“Oh, you’ve already tried them, huh?”

Lorelei nodded.

“Well, that’s perfect. So you don’t have any choice but to let me help you repair the roof-and remove your pajama bottoms from their rooftop imprisonment.”

“No, really, I can’t ask you such a big favor. We don’t even know each other.”

“I’d really like to help. I feel like I owe you,” he said, his gaze steady on her as if he was hoping she’d understand another level of his meaning.

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said too quickly. Was he thinking of what had happened in high school? Did he remember?

The flowers, the offer of help, the early arrival on her doorstep…it was all adding up to…what? Was she really going to get laid that easily?

Following Kinsei’s advice usually involved much work and sacrifice. Success didn’t crawl into her lap like a lovesick puppy.

“The other reason I’m here is a bit more awkward. I…” He hesitated. “I owe you an apology for what happened when we were teenagers.”

Lorelei blinked again, her brain refusing to catch up to his words. “What?”

“I behaved like a total jerk when we were in high school together. I know that now, and I’m very sorry. I wish I could go back and change my actions, but I can’t, so the best I can do is offer amends now. I was hoping you’d let me make it up to you by helping you with the house repairs.”

An unexpected surge of anger rose up in her, and she blurted, “So it’s like a trade? You take my virginity and fifteen years later you fix my house as repayment?”

He went pale, and she could tell by his pained expression that she’d hit him where it hurt.

Good.

She wasn’t finished.

Screw Kinsei’s advice. She was pretty sure telling Ryan Quinn to go to hell was exactly what her soul needed to heal from the past.

“That’s right, asshole! I was a virgin. Did you even know that? Would you even have cared? I gave you my virginity, and you repaid me by treating me like I didn’t exist for the rest of the school year.”

“Lorelei, I’m really, really sorry. I deserve whatever you’d like to say to me.”

She knew she was supposed to be gracious in the face of his heartfelt apology, but did he really think he could show up here fifteen years later with a sad little bouquet of flowers and a chagrined look and make all her pain go away?

She’d never felt so angry in her life. It was as if all her teenage angst was welling up again, only this time, she was strong enough to do something about it.

She thought of Kinsei again. He’d never steered her wrong. She was suddenly sure of what she wanted to do. She’d let him make amends, if that’s what he wanted to call it-he could amend his way right into her bed and relieve all the sexual tension that had been building up in the months since she’d last gotten laid, and then she’d drop him like a hot potato, and this time let him sit around wondering what the hell had gone wrong.

Some little adolescent voice that dwelled deep in her heart let out a victorious battle cry at that thought.

“Wow,” she said. “This is certainly an unexpected turn of events. I never thought getting stuck on the roof would lead to this…”

“I know an apology and a bouquet of daisies can’t begin to make up for what I did to you, but-”

“I appreciate the gesture,” she forced herself to say without sarcasm. “And…what the hell. I’d be happy for you to help me with the house repairs, if it would make you feel like we’re, um, even.”

“Thank you,” he said, nodding solemnly. “I’d love to help.”

“Why don’t you stay and have some coffee with me, tell me what you’ve been up to all these years, and I can tell you what needs to be done to the house.”

He smiled. “I’d like that a lot.”

Lorelei led him into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee had just finished brewing. At least the gas stove was still working, even if the electricity wasn’t. With its own fireplace that she’d gotten going as soon as she’d woken up, the kitchen was the warmest room in the house.

On the far side of the room, her pet rabbits, Thor and Lucia, were huddled together, taking in the warmth of the stove from a safe distance. They had free rein of the house, since they were litter-box trained, but they tended to like staying in the kitchen near their food.

“Have a seat,” she said, nodding to the table. “Have you had any breakfast yet?”

“Actually, no. I came straight from the end of my night shift, to the flower shop, to here. I wasn’t planning to, but…” He paused awkwardly, as if he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. “But I really don’t want to trouble you.”

Lorelei ignored him as she put the daisies in water then started pulling out ingredients to make a breakfast frittata with mushrooms, peppers and cheese. She’d never been good at this small-talk stuff. She much preferred getting to the heart of matters. It made her bedside manner alternately loved and hated, depending on the patient.

“Hey, you have rabbits.”

“Meet the new king and queen of the household. Thor is the brown one with the ever-disdainful expression, and Lucia is the white one.”

“You just got them after you moved in?”

“Yep, from the local bunny rescue place.”

He crossed the room, knelt down and attempted to pet the rabbits, who studiously ignored him until he came too close, and then they fled into the imaginary safety of their litter box.

“They don’t like strangers. Ignore them and they’ll come check you out in their own sweet time.”

He smiled and sat down at the table again. “I always thought you’d become a veterinarian.”

“I thought about it, but for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a doctor. I still love animals as much as I did as a kid, though.”

“I always liked that about you. Didn’t you have a python or something in high school?”

“Yep, and a couple of lizards, and the rats, of course, and a scorpion and…”

“You must have driven your parents crazy.”

“They made me find new homes for most of the animals when I left for college. It was devastating.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel. I had a dog until last year when she died of old age. It’s like losing your best friend.”

Lorelei went silent as she found all the ingredients she needed, thinking of the animals she still missed. The rabbits were a good fresh start though. She loved their bratty little personalities, and they kept her company in this drafty old house, their presence a constant fuzzy reminder to be Zen about all things.

“Want to hear something totally crazy?” Ryan said as she began shredding parmesan cheese with a grater.

“How could I not?”

“When I picked up those flowers for you at the flower shop in Santa Rey? There was this Christmas tree with little cards all over it, and a sign that said if you buy a card, the proceeds would go to charity.”

“Oh, yeah, I think I heard about that on the radio the other day.”

“So I bought one of the cards, and…this is going to sound really weird, but…I think you’ll understand why I felt like I had to come here right now and apologize when you hear this. And I swear, I didn’t know what was on the card before I bought it.”

“What was it?”

“It’s a gift certificate to Linden Rock Hot Springs.”

Kinsei’s face appeared in her mind. That sneaky little man…She might be a doctor with a scientifically trained mind, but the medicine man had taught her to believe in the inexplicable.

In a soap opera, this would be the part where Lorelei would halt the cheese grating and turn slowly to stare at Ryan. A weighty, emotional moment would pass between them as they contemplated the significance of his words, of the way fate-and one wily old Kenyan medicine man-had twisted and turned to make their lives intertwine again.

Linden Rock Hot Springs was where they’d had sex all those years ago. Back then, it hadn’t been the luxury spa and retreat it was now. It had just been the hot springs located on undeveloped private property where teenagers and hippies loved to hang out naked. But its location overlooking the Pacific, among sheer cliffs down to the ocean and majestic cypress trees, had guaranteed that sooner or later it would be commercially developed.

But of all the cards for Ryan to have picked…Yeah, she could see why he’d come straight here, looking all earnest and sorry.

She felt the cheese grater slip from her hands as she looked back at him.

“Wow, weird coincidence, huh?” she said casually, as if she didn’t already know it was the hand of fate telling her to get laid and overcome her past.

“Totally weird. I have to admit, it kind of freaked me out.”

Lorelei turned her attention back to the cheese. She scooped the shreds up in her hands and dumped them into a bowl. Then she began washing and chopping vegetables.

“I guess, being a doctor, you probably don’t believe in anything mystical,” Ryan said to her back.

She shrugged, thinking again of Kinsei. “Back in medical school, I would have said no, but being a doctor, I’ve seen all kinds of things I can’t explain. The only thing experience teaches me is that there’s a lot I don’t understand.”

She mixed eggs with the frittata ingredients, then greased a pie pan, poured everything in, and put the dish in the oven to bake. It was her lazy-cook’s method for making a frittata, since it didn’t require her to stand over the stove and watch anything.

Once she’d poured them each a cup of coffee, she set the table with sugar and cream, then pulled up a chair across from Ryan.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you believe in fate or ghosts or UFOs or anything?”

“I’m probably in the same camp as you. Experience has taught me to be open-minded.”

“So,” she finally dared to ask, seeing now how easy her resolution with the past might be. “Do you think fate is telling us we need to go back to the hot springs?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding a little odd. “I feel silly saying it, but I do.”

6

RYAN COULD hardly believe his luck. He’d never expected his apology to Lorelei to go so smoothly, and better yet, to end with her asking him to the hot springs. It would be the perfect way to make up for the past. He’d show her-and himself-that he wasn’t the jerk kid he used to be.

As he sipped his coffee, he relaxed. With the heat from the kitchen stove and the morning light pouring in through the big picture window, the room felt cozy and intimate. If he closed his eyes, he’d have felt like he was home.

But with Lorelei sitting across from him, the last thing he wanted to do was close his eyes. He could hardly stop staring at her. She held such familiarity, this nearly forgotten piece of his past, like an old beloved toy that had slipped from his memory until he’d stumbled upon it by accident. Except, of course, she hadn’t been sitting around in an attic waiting to be rediscovered. She’d been wandering the world, having what had no doubt been an interesting life, and he wanted to know what had filled the space between then and now.

Not that she owed him any such information. They’d had sex exactly once-he’d even been her first lover, which kind of blew his mind now that he’d had the fact confirmed-but everything he knew about her was based on his very limited perspective of who she had been fifteen years ago.

He wanted to know more, but she spoke up first.

“It must have been a busy night for you guys last night, with the storm and all.”

“It was the most calls in one night that we’ve had all year. And that’s saying something considering the fire season we had this year.”

“Wow. I hope no one was hurt.”

“Luckily, you were the most endangered soul I encountered,” he said with a grin. “There was an oak tree branch that caved in a roof over on El Segundo Avenue, but no one was in the part of the house that was affected.”

She smiled into her coffee. “I was horrified when you showed up to get me off the roof.”

“I don’t blame you. That was a pretty spectacular screwup, with the pj bottoms and all.”

“I’m not as handy as I think I am sometimes.”

“So you just moved in here a few weeks ago, huh?”

“Yes. For the past two years I was serving in the Peace Corps, in Kenya, and when my tour ended, I felt…drawn back home, I guess.”

“That must have been an incredible experience.”

“It was life-changing. I thought for a while that I’d never leave Africa. I had this dream of joining Doctors without Borders, but lots of different things…signs…whatever…just kept telling me I needed to come back here to Ocean Harbor Beach.”

“I’m glad you did. It’s great to see you again. I’m not really in touch with many people from high school anymore, but I always wondered what happened to you.”

Which was true. He might have been a shallow, self-centered shithead as a teen, but Lorelei was unique enough that she had come to mind now and again, and he couldn’t help wondering what had become of his most brilliant classmate.

“What have you been up to since high school?” she asked.

“Oh, the usual. Going to college, surfing, backpacking around Europe, getting married, getting divorced-perhaps not exactly in that order, but you get the idea.”

“You’ve been married?”

“To a girl I met in college. Bad idea. It lasted two years, and then we realized we hated each other. Or, at least, I realized it when she told me she thought she was in love with my best friend.”

“Ouch. I’m sorry,” she said, wincing.

“It’s okay. We already knew the marriage wasn’t working when it happened. But it still hurt like hell. Definitely humbled me, made me realize I’m not God’s gift to women or anything.”

He grinned ruefully, and she smiled back.

“That’s always a healthy realization. How long since you got divorced?”

“Five years.”

“Dating anyone?” she asked, and if he had been his younger, cockier self, he’d have said her tone was kind of…provocative.

Could it be that after how horribly he’d behaved, she might still be attracted to him?

No, he was imagining things.

“Nope, how about you?”

“I’m afraid I’ve become one of those career-obsessed drones who has no social life,” she joked. “Definitely not dating right now.”

“I’ll bet you left behind at least a few Peace Corps volunteers who were devastated to see you go.”

She smiled ironically. “Perhaps, if only because I’m a hard worker and it meant they’d have to pick up the slack in my absence.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but she ignored him and went to the stove to check on breakfast, which was smelling pretty damn delicious right now.

She pulled the lightly browned egg dish from the oven, and Ryan’s stomach growled. He’d been too busy to eat last night, except for a sandwich he’d grabbed around five in the morning on the way to a call.

A minute later she was getting toast out of the toaster. After preparing two plates, she placed one in front of him, along with utensils and a napkin. “It’s a frittata,” she said. “Would you like jam for your toast?”

“No thanks. This looks delicious.”

“So.” She took her place at the table again. “What do you do with yourself when you’re not fighting fires?”

Ryan felt relieved that she really did seem to be genuinely interested in him as a person, because he was finding himself even more interested in her than he’d thought he’d be. Not only did she look dynamite in a tank top and panties, but she had an interesting career and past that he wanted to know more about. On top of the fact that she was brilliant, and, he thought, after taking his first bite of frittata-a great cook, too.

He found himself wanting to impress her. “I play the guitar, write songs, play in a funky little blues band sometimes…”

“Really? Is there anywhere I can see you play soon?”

“Hmm…Maybe.”

He was struck with an idea. Maybe a brilliant idea. He’d write a song. For her. And play it at the hot springs, to say he was sorry.

It could be corny, or it could be the smartest thing he’d ever done to win a girl’s heart.

Win a girl’s heart? Was that what he really wanted to do?

Okay, so he didn’t know Lorelei all that well yet, but he had a gut feeling about her that he couldn’t shake. It had been settling in ever since he’d opened the gift certificate for the Linden Rock Hot Springs at the flower shop.

No, actually, ever since he’d seen her there in the clinic. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. She was everything he wanted in a woman. Ever since his divorce, he’d made note of what he truly loved in the women he dated, versus the things he thought he’d loved but ultimately realized were just the things society told him he was supposed to want.

He didn’t want to make the same mistakes he’d made in marrying Heather. He wanted to find his real, true dream girl next time around. Someone smart and quirky and original and beautiful in the not-so-obvious ways-well, and okay, the obvious ways didn’t hurt, either. Someone like Lorelei.

He wanted to prove to her that he liked her for who she was, and that he would never, ever take advantage of her again. If they were ever lovers a second time, he’d make sure she knew it meant something to him.

“You’re looking awfully deep in thought. It’s okay if you don’t want me to see you play. But I do like blues guitar, if that makes a difference.”

Perfect. Then she was going to get her own private show.

“It does,” he said, smiling. “I’ll let you know the next time I’m playing.”

7

LORELEI checked herself out in the full-length mirror and was happy enough with what she saw. Her jeans were the rare, much-sought-after, perfect cut-the one pair she’d ever owned that made her ass look as if it belonged in a jeans ad. And her stretchy long-sleeved black T-shirt hugged her curves in all the right places. Her hair was sleek, and hung around her face in a stark contrast to how she usually wore it for work, pulled back in a haphazard bun.

She’d made plans with Ryan to take an evening soak in the hot springs first, then have dinner at the spa restaurant. She didn’t suppose they were technically allowed to have sex right there in the springs anymore, not now that it was an official spa, but she’d been sure to wear her best bra and panties beneath her clothes, just in case the opportunity arose-and she had every intention of making sure it arose.

If nothing else, she’d be naked with him in the hot springs, and if that didn’t put ideas in his head, she wasn’t sure what would. Linden Rock was still, thank goodness, notoriously clothing-optional, and she planned to use that fact to her advantage. In spite of her discomfort with being found pants-less on the roof, Lorelei had always loved being naked in the great outdoors. It was one of the best feelings she knew.

Beside her, Thor the rabbit god stared at her rather disapprovingly.

“What? You think I’m being a slut? Well, if you weren’t neutered, you’d be humping everything you could get your paws on, so I don’t want to hear it.”

Okay, so she talked to the rabbits. It was therapeutic for them, and for her.

A glance at the clock-thank God, the power was back on as of today-told her Ryan would be here at any moment to pick her up, so she slipped on a pair of boots, shrugged on a warm coat and headed to the living room. She caught sight of his headlights in the front window, flipped off the lights in her house, grabbed her purse, and headed out the door, feeling as if she was about to conquer the world.

Or at least the ghosts of her past.

She had never blatantly, intentionally seduced anyone before. She was a little surprised she even knew how. Not that she was the same awkward dork sexually that she’d been in high school. No, she’d never gotten any bad reviews on her skills as a lover, but she didn’t believe in using her feminine wiles for nefarious purposes, either.

Flirting with Ryan the way she had over breakfast the day before-it was amazing how easy it had been. It felt natural, even. Probably because she really did want to sleep with him. He was as gorgeous as ever, and he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He was a real man now. He had to be more emotionally mature than he was back then.

Even in high school, he’d had a sensitive air about him. He hadn’t jockeyed for attention and status, but had moved with the self-assuredness that showed he knew he didn’t need to. And he’d stood apart a bit from the crowd, always watchful, always noticing things. Well, noticing everything except Lorelei, apparently.

But now, he’d finally admitted what a jerk he’d been and apologized. Perhaps that should have been enough for her.

Yet she’d been so miserable during her high-school years, and Ryan had represented the culmination of her misery. After graduation, she’d fled Ocean Harbor Beach as fast as she could and never looked back. She’d gone so far as to attend a summer program at college just to get away as soon as she could.

Moving here was the most time she’d spent back home since high school, and she still wasn’t quite used to it.

Outside, Ryan was getting out of his pickup truck, a dilapidated old thing he probably owned solely to haul his surfboard around. When he saw her, he smiled and said hi.

“Looks like we’ll have clear weather, at least,” Lorelei said, looking up at the star-studded night sky.

She’d had the day off, and she’d spent it cleaning up after the powerful storm. Now her yard looked normal again-well, normal for a long-neglected rat’s haven of a front yard.

The forecast was calling for clear weather through Christmas. Not that it mattered. She’d be spending the holiday alone, far as she could tell. Her mother had already planned a seniors’ cruise to Hawaii before she’d known Lorelei would be home for the holidays.

Well, at least she might give herself a little pre-Christmas revenge sex tonight. That would help make up for work being her only other thing to look forward to.

Ryan opened the passenger door, smiling down at Lorelei in a way that made her toes feel all tingly. “You look beautiful, as always.”

“Thanks,” she said as she slid into his truck, kicking aside a can of surf wax in the process.

The truck bore a bobbly dancing Hawaiian girl on the dash, and cracked vinyl seats that had seen better days. It felt familiar to her somehow.

When Ryan got in and started pulling out of the driveway, she asked, “Is this the same truck you drove in high school?”

“One and the same.” He grinned proudly and gave the dashboard an affectionate pat.

“Wow, I can’t believe it still runs.”

“Neither can I. I’ve made a hobby out of fixing the old girl-it’s become a labor of love.”

So this was the same truck Lorelei had ridden in to the hot springs with Ryan all those years ago…Weird. And oddly appropriate, too, she supposed.

“Most people would, you know, just buy a new car.”

“Believe me, I’ve been tempted, especially when I find myself broken down on the side of the road. But I like the things in my life to have some character, some history-you know?”

“Yeah. I guess it’s the same reason I’m fixing up my broken-down family house rather than living somewhere else. Well, that, and I can’t afford a mortgage anywhere in Ocean Harbor Beach.”

She liked that he still had his same old truck after all these years. It suggested things about his character that were all good. Except, of course, genuinely liking him would make the whole revenge thing a bit more difficult.

Lorelei bit her lip and pushed that thought out of her head as they turned off of her street and drove along the coast, with the ocean outside her window.

They traveled along the coastal road toward the hot springs, chatting about mutual acquaintances and who had done what or gone where or married whom since high school. Ryan, having stayed here in town, knew a lot more about such matters than Lorelei did.

When they reached the Linden Rock resort, he parked and turned to her. “I hope you don’t mind taking a little detour before we go for a soak.”

“Sure, what’s the detour?”

“It’s a secret.”

Lorelei was intrigued. And when she saw him get out of the truck, reach into the rear and pull out a guitar case, she was even more intrigued.

“There’s a little spot down this path I was hoping we could check out,” he said, nodding in the direction of the gardens.

Lorelei followed him, and a moment later, they were standing in a gazebo draped with bougainvillea.

“Have a seat,” Ryan said, as he removed the guitar from its case.

Her throat went dry. He wasn’t really going to play music, was he? Right here? Right now? The thought made her nauseous, because it was just too romantic to be real. Where was the callous jerk she’d known fifteen years ago?

He began strumming a slow, bluesy tune on the guitar, as Lorelei settled on the bench seat across from him and watched. She’d never had a guy play music for her personally before. Then he began humming along with the tune, his voice deliciously sexy and low, and the breath whooshed out of her lungs. By the time he was singing the first bar of the song, Lorelei could feel sweat trickling down her chest between her breasts in spite of the cold, damp night air.

She watched, mesmerized as he sang about lost chances and lonely nights, about broken hearts and longing for redemption. It took her well over a minute to realize what he was singing about and she could hardly believe her ears.

She strained to hear every word and make sense of it. Maybe she was mistaken. No way could he have composed this beautiful, soulful, melody in only one day.

But when he reached the lines about her virgin skin in hot water, heat rising around them, and being sorry for the silence, she knew.

This song…he had written it.

For her.

8

RYAN HELD the guitar until the final sound vibration had settled in it, and there was silence. Then he placed the instrument back in its case and looked up to see Lorelei staring at him, dumbstruck.

She tried to compose herself, perhaps arrange her features to suggest she wasn’t moved by the song, but he knew that look. She’d felt what he’d intended her to feel.

And he could not help being satisfied knowing it.

“Wow,” she said quietly. “You wrote that.”

“It’s a work in progress. That was my first time playing it through without any major screwups.”

“You wrote that,” she repeated, as if awestruck.

“Yesterday after I left your place.”

“I’m…stunned. And flattered. Thank you.”

He closed the distance between them and took her hand, pulling her up to a standing position in front of him. When he could see clearly into her eyes, he said, “I wanted you to understand how truly sorry I am for what happened the last time we were here together.”

She nodded, averting her gaze for a moment, then looking back at him with an expression that seemed like determination.

“I accept,” she said. “Now how about we go for a dip?”

“You don’t have to twist my arm.”

After he’d put the guitar back in its case and taken it to the truck, they went to the spa registration desk and checked in. They were given a map of the grounds and facilities, and they followed a path outside toward the ocean, to the hot springs, which were now dimly lit for the evening and equipped with chairs and meditation platforms nearby.

The place was, miraculously, deserted. Ryan said a silent thank-you to the universe. He had no preconceived notions of how he wanted the night to go-okay, maybe he had a few, and he’d reserved a room at the spa hotel just in case-but he did at least want them to be alone the way they had been fifteen years ago. It wouldn’t have been the same with other people there to spoil the mood.

“Looks like we have the springs all to ourselves,” Lorelei said, echoing his thoughts. “Nice, huh?”

“I don’t suppose a cold Wednesday night five days before Christmas is all that popular a time to go spa-hopping.”

“Have you been here…since, um…?”

“No,” Ryan said quickly, which was true. “I think I’d lose some of my cred as a firefighter if I was caught contemplating my navel at a place as frou-frou as this.”

She laughed. “I forgot you have to consider such things.”

Ryan tried not to stare as she casually began taking off her clothes without even turning away. This he remembered from their first time here together, as well. He’d been awestruck by her lack of inhibition, especially when his experience with teenage girls had been dominated by awkwardness and self-conciousness.

Her ability to strip naked without a care in the world, both then and now, gave her an air of raw sexuality that was incredibly arousing to him. It was all he could do not to walk right over to her and take her in his arms.

And it presented him with another problem. He had a raging erection that was going to announce what he wanted to do whether he spoke a word or not, so as he undressed himself, he turned his back to Lorelei, then had to chuckle at himself over the ridiculousness of the situation.

Where was his lack of inhibition? What was wrong with her knowing that she turned him on? Wasn’t that what he wanted anyway?

With a deep breath, he tossed his pants aside and turned to get in the water, consequences be damned. Lorelei’s gaze landed immediately on his stiff cock, but instead of looking away, she simply stared up at him, her eyes half-lidded, as if in a sexy challenge.

Damn, she was bold.

And he loved it. He’d never met a woman so at ease with herself as Lorelei was.

He lowered himself into the water and sighed at its heat, a heavenly contrast to the cold air around them. They could hear waves crashing against the beach down below.

“Here we are,” he said dumbly. “Can you believe it?”

She eased herself into the water one leg at a time, and his gaze took her in, relishing the sight of her bare skin, the curly dark hair that covered her sex and the dark, erect nipples he so badly wanted in his mouth.

“Barely,” she said. “Mmmmm, this feels amazing.”

He tried to think what else to say, but at the sound of her little moan of pleasure, his mind went blank.

He could only sit there, dumbstruck, wanting so desperately to have her that he couldn’t imagine not reaching for her right then and there.

“What is it?” she asked when she caught the odd expression on his face.

“I…this…um…”

What? What could he say? He’d lost all his words.

She eased herself across the rocks, coming closer to him. Closer, closer, closer still…

Then she was next to him, and before he could say a word…she unexpectedly straddled his lap.

His cock, so suddenly pressed against her, ached like crazy to thrust inside. He could hardly believe his luck.

“I have a condom,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

She. Had. A. Condom.

Hallelujah.

She leaned in and kissed him then, a long, slow, deep kiss that stated her intentions as clearly as any words could have. Ryan’s toes curled into the sediment at the bottom of the spring, and he grasped her hips, rocking against her and savoring the feel of her soft, delicious ass in his palms.

“We should get a room,” he murmured when she broke the kiss.

“No,” she said. “I want you right here, like before.”

Yes, this was exactly like before. Her on his lap, straddling him, kissing him into stunned submission.

She’d been awkward then, unlike now, but clearly into him. And he’d been carried away in the passion of the moment, unsure, in his lame adolescent mind, why he was so turned on by his nerdy, odd lab partner, but unable to stop the forward momentum of passion unhindered by thought.

Now though…Now, he knew why he wanted her, and he knew he’d be lucky to have her. And there wouldn’t be any stopping them this time, either.

When her hand slipped down his chest, between their bodies, and grasped his cock, he let out a ragged moan of pleasure. She began stroking him slowly, her lips slightly parted as she watched his reaction.

“Dammit, woman,” he said. “You sure know how to make a guy feel good.”

She kissed him again, and he shut up. But if she kept stroking him like she was, this was going to be over before it had gotten started, so he reached for her and pulled her hard against him, lifting her as he did so to bring her gorgeous tits to his mouth.

He sucked each one in turn, teasing a nipple with one hand as his mouth took care of the other. Then he slid his free hand down, between her legs, right across her clit, to gently stroke her opening. She was already slippery, ready for him to enter, and he groaned at the feel of her there.

Damn, but he wanted her badly.

Right here in the open, where anyone could see. He didn’t care now. And apparently, neither did she, which made it all the more exciting.

Was this how he intended to show his contrition for past bad behavior? By repeating the same act? No, this time, he’d be the best damn lover she’d ever had, and he wouldn’t ignore her the next day, or the next week-or ever. He’d give her the attention and appreciation and respect she deserved, because the feel of her body against him was all the convincing he needed that she was just as perfect for him as he’d suspected.

And this time, he intended to be remembered, at the very least, as a good lover.

Grasping her hips and lifting her slightly, he held his breath and plunged under the water, sliding down, and down still, until his face was between her legs. He found her sex with his mouth, flicked his tongue gently against her, held tightly to her hips as she writhed against his coaxing tongue. Then he plunged his tongue inside her and tasted her delicious, musky flavor, lingering there pleasuring her until his lungs could stand it no more and he had to come up for air.

When he’d broken the surface, his body between her legs again, he took a deep breath and gazed up at her surprised but aroused expression.

“Where’s that condom?” he said in a ragged voice, and she held out her hand, revealing it on her palm where it must have been since she’d disrobed. So she’d come here knowing they’d get it on. One more thing he found to like about her style.

He took the packet from her and opened it with his teeth, then slid the rubber on and grasped her hips again. He couldn’t wait anymore. He needed to be inside her before he went insane.

Looking into her dark brown eyes, he positioned his cock against her and held her hips tightly and thrust gently, back and forth, back and forth, not quite entering her. The satiny texture of her pussy drove him wild with aching, and he wanted to be in her more than anything he could ever remember, but he also wanted to know she ached for him just as badly.

Her back arched, she grasped his shoulders tightly and shifted her hips so that he could tease her no more, nearly forcing him inside her. The naked arousal in her gaze, in her half-parted lips as her breath quickened, told him what he needed to know, and he slid inside her in one smooth thrust. At the sensation of it, he expelled a ragged gasp of pleasure, and she sighed, letting her eyes fall shut.

Ryan felt himself melting into her as he thrust his hips, again and again, the water buoying them, making their movements effortless. To shield her from the cold air, where her body wasn’t in the water, he wrapped his arms around her and held her chest against him, his short deep thrusts reaching as far into her as he could go. Each movement reverberated through his body like a little earthquake.

He could not remember the last time he’d felt so good, so right, and as his body coiled tighter and tighter, straining for release, he wished this night would never end.

9

IT WAS just like the first time, and it wasn’t anything like it. The place was the same, and the people and the act, but the feelings and sensations were brand-new. Lorelei was not an awkward, love-struck teenager giving up her virginity to someone who didn’t deserve it. She was a sexually confident woman who was well aware of what this act did and didn’t mean, and she was taking back the power she’d lost all those years ago.

And, damn, it felt good.

She grasped Ryan’s shoulders tightly as he lifted her and carried her to the middle of the spring, where they could both be immersed in the water and out of the cold night air. Her legs wrapped around his hips, he continued moving inside her in a standing position, and she could feel herself rushing quickly toward climax, just like in her dream, except not.

She closed her eyes to focus on the sensation of him moving inside her, stretching her and touching the most sensitive spots in her body, and she felt herself being transported back in time. The years vanished, and she was the same girl who’d been so hopelessly in love with Ryan, the same girl who’d offered her body to him in the hope of getting love back.

Here they were, joined together again, and finally it felt exactly as she’d once hoped it would. If she just kept her eyes closed, she could forget reality.

He was kissing her as if he wanted to devour her, making love to her as if somewhere inside of her was what he needed to survive. Lorelei held on to him, heard herself whimpering at the pleasure that threatened to overcome her…

When he stopped kissing her, his gaze locked on her and he stared into her eyes. He saw her, or maybe he saw through her, and she could not remember how they’d ever been at odds, or separate or even two different people with their own bodies and desires.

She had never had such uninhibited, animal sex right out in the open before, and she didn’t want it to end. She savored each moment as if it might be the last…felt herself building toward something…her body tensing further and further still…Then her inner muscles began to quake, and she was surprised by the intense orgasm that overtook her suddenly.

Not caring who might hear, she cried out, gasping with the intense pleasure coursing through her. And a moment later, she could hear Ryan doing the same. He muffled his release by kissing her again, his tongue coaxing her to feel the moans that escaped his throat and entered her mouth.

When he’d finished spilling into her, he hugged her tightly and sighed raggedly. Then he eased out of her and set her down on her feet in front of him.

He held her against him as he caught his breath, and Lorelei became aware again that they were separate. Their bodies were two, not one. The deep hunger that had filled her had now been replaced by a delicious hum…and yet still, deep within, an ache remained, as if their one act of lovemaking had not begun to satisfy the desire that had burned within her for so many years.

“That was…incredible,” he whispered into her ear. “I forgot how amazing you feel.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ve both improved a bit over the years,” she said, smiling, but the mention of their first time together caused something inside her to harden.

She recalled why she was really here, to do as Kinsei had said and conquer this painful ghost of her past. She couldn’t get swept away in feelings that would only defeat her purpose.

“Come over here and sit,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her back to the rocks where they could sit and still be chest-deep in the hot water.

They sat half facing each other, her legs draped over his, and stared up at the sky.

“You wanted that to happen, didn’t you?” Ryan asked.

Lorelei found herself caught off guard by his frankness. “Of course I did,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

He chuckled. “Sure, but I didn’t want to presume…”

“Why else would we come here?”

“To enjoy a soak?” he offered.

“Don’t act coy.”

“I don’t mean to. I was just curious.”

Lorelei found herself wanting to tell him here and now, why they’d just done what they’d done. It felt like the right time. And so she did.

“I needed to do this,” she said. “To make peace with the past.”

He gave her a curious look. “How so?”

She slid her legs out of his lap and sat up straight, not caring that her breasts were now exposed to the cold night air and all the world, too.

“I really appreciated your apology, but I felt like I needed more than that. I needed to reverse the wrong that was done here before. I’ve spent fifteen years hating what you did to me.”

She stood up and started to climb out of the hot spring, but he grasped her wrist to keep her from going.

“Don’t leave,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

“I have to leave. It’s the only way I can feel any resolution.”

He let go of her, and she climbed out, grabbed her clothes and started getting dressed, still wet.

“So this meant nothing to you then?” he said. “You were just here for…closure?”

He spoke the last word as if it were something vile.

And maybe it was in this context, but she wasn’t going to feel guilty.

“That’s right,” she said, then swallowed hard. “It means nothing.”

WHY, LORELEI wondered for the next three days, did closure feel so damned awful? Wasn’t having sex with Ryan again supposed to bring her balance and a sense of peace with her past and all that?

It hadn’t given her anything but a sense of emptiness as she lay in bed alone every night. She buried herself in her work, but it didn’t help.

Ryan had tried to call her a couple of times, but she’d screened her calls and hadn’t answered, and he’d given up.

And then she’d felt bereft of him all over again.

She was sitting in the hospital cafeteria alone when her friend and colleague Maria Valdez sat down next to her, bearing a tray with two chocolate brownies on it.

“You look like you need one of these,” she said, offering one to Lorelei.

“Thanks.” Lorelei took it and broke off one corner, then put it in her mouth and chewed slowly. She could barely taste it.

“What’s going on with you? You’ve been moping around here like your dog died.”

She glanced over at Maria, at her warm brown eyes and half smile, and she shrugged.

“Hmm. Man trouble, huh?”

“Yep.”

“It’s the holidays. Seems to either make or break relationships.”

“I didn’t really even have a relationship. Just a…”

“A booty call?”

“No.” Lorelei laughed in spite of herself.

“Whoever it is, you’re sure looking like you want a relationship. Did he cheat on you? Lie to you? Steal your checkbook?”

“No, no and no,” Lorelei said. “He’s a good guy, I think. But I’ve been holding a grudge against him for something he did a long time ago, and I thought I’d finally evened the playing field-I thought I’d feel all empowered and victorious-but it just made me feel like shit instead.”

“Of course it did. You’re a woman. We can’t do anything blatantly mean without feeling bad about it.”

“I guess.”

“Men get revenge-women just get hurt.”

Lorelei swallowed another piece of brownie. She wasn’t sure she bought Maria’s sweeping generalization, but she thought of Kinsei. He was a man. He was the one who’d told her she’d feel better once she’d taken back her power from Ryan.

He’d never steered her wrong before, so what was going on now? Was it just that he’d given her advice meant for a man? She didn’t think so. Maybe she just needed to stop taking other people’s advice and make her own decisions.

“So now you’re all alone for the holidays?” Maria said. “You’re welcome to come join my family for Christmas Eve tomorrow. There’s a ton of us-it’ll be easy to get lost in the crowd.”

“I’m scheduled to work, but thank you anyway.”

“Whatever he did wrong, he’s not worth feeling bad about, you know?”

Lorelei took another bite of her brownie as her gaze landed on the necklace Maria wore, a thin gold chain with a silver and gold angel charm dangling from it.

The angel’s face, small as it was, managed to look so peaceful, so free of petty emotions.

“Maybe you should just forgive him,” Maria said. “You know, the spirit of the season and all…”

Right. Forgiveness. Harmony. Wasn’t that what Christmas was all about?

Lorelei frowned at the mist of fog outside the window, rolling in from the ocean. Did she have enough forgiveness in her heart?

Did Ryan, now, after what she’d done?

She knew she couldn’t sit here forever wondering. She had to go find out.

10

RYAN LAY on the couch in the darkened room across from the crackling fire, watching the colored Christmas lights on his ficus tree twinkle. The string of bulbs was his one nod to holiday cheer. But at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, he was feeling a lot more wistful than cheerful. He’d turned down the various offers he’d received from friends to join them for holiday festivities, because after work today, he’d just felt like being alone.

Lorelei was still on his mind. But he understood she didn’t care to hear from him, and he supposed he understood why. Not everyone could forgive. And maybe he didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

But he wasn’t all that thrilled with the way she’d treated him, either. He’d allowed her into his heart…the same way she’d allowed him into hers when they were teenagers.

So, yeah, okay, perhaps she was right, he deserved to be alone and miserable tonight. But he couldn’t stop thinking of the way it had felt to be with Lorelei again, and the memories, so fresh in his mind, haunted him day and night.

Maybe he was just meant to be alone. He’d failed ever to find a woman who felt like his soul mate, and now, when he finally had found someone who seemed to fit his wildest fantasies, she hated him for the ass he used to be.

Such was life, he supposed.

His gaze landed on his guitar, and he sat up and grabbed it from the foot of the sofa. If nothing else, he could pour his wistful feelings into a new song. That was how he usually dealt with heartbreak, anyway.

He started a slow strumming, closed his eyes and let the words come to him.

He sang about sorry being such a sorry word, and forgiveness being so hard to reach, and…he just about made himself sick with how bad the impromptu song was, but he kept going, making up words as he went along, stopping, starting again, trying out the lines one way, and then another.

He was just about to give up his brooding musical efforts and go to bed, when he heard a knock at the door.

Ryan set aside the guitar and prepared to tell the neighbors that he was sorry the walls of his house were so thin, but when he opened the door, he found Lorelei, still wearing her hospital scrubs.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hi.” His heart swelled in his chest, as if it was straining to get closer to her.

“I…I just wanted to stop by and say I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“No, it’s okay. No more apologies.”

“I heard your song.”

“Oh. Well, then I do have to apologize for how bad it was.”

“You wrote that?”

“Just now. I mean, no, I didn’t really write it, I was just making it up as I went along.”

“What was it about?”

“You.”

She blinked, and he could see tears form in her eyes. One spilled out onto her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb.

“Want to hear a live performance?”

“Um…I just did. I heard everything. Sorry. I was eavesdropping, I guess.”

“It’s okay. All stuff I’d say aloud to you, if you’d listen.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I don’t?”

“It’s Christmas Eve. Aren’t we supposed to forgive on this of all holidays?”

Ryan tried not to feel too hopeful, but he failed. “I suppose so. Please come inside.”

She stepped into the living room, with its unintentionally shabby chic decor, surfboards hanging from the ceiling, fireplace glowing brightly, and the pathetic little tree with one sad string of lights.

“Welcome to my humble shack,” he said. “Can I get you something hot to drink?”

“Let’s skip the pleasantries, okay?” she said, staring at him in that intent, hyperintelligent way she had.

She looked tired, as if she’d been working a long shift, but she was still beautiful. Her hair was pulled back, and her face was free of makeup, making her look younger than she was.

Ryan got a lump in his throat, seeing her standing right there in his living room, that had only moments ago felt so cold and empty.

“I shouldn’t have done what I did,” she said, “and if you have time, I’ll explain why I did it. It has to do with an African medicine man, and fate, and teenage angst, and first love and other things I don’t quite understand.”

“I’ve got all night.”

She smiled then, and all the tension vanished. She was, at once, the beautiful, odd girl he’d always known. The one he wanted to know inside and out. The one he was pretty damn sure he was falling in love with.

“So do I,” she said, smiling still. “And I’ve got tomorrow, too, if you’re free.”

“I am,” he said, then he bent to kiss her softly on the lips.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she said against his mouth a moment later.

“Yes.”

“You were the first guy I ever loved.”

“I was?”

“Yep.”

“Wow…I’m honored.”

“Do you know what they say about first loves?”

“I’ve heard different stories,” Ryan said, slipping his arm around her and pulling her against him.

She felt warm and perfect.

“The only one I know to be true is that first love never really dies.”

He let her words sink in, and he smiled. He glanced up at the clock. It was 12:01 a.m. now. Christmas day.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, then kissed her again, holding her tightly, as he promised himself that this time, they’d get it right.