Her eyes lit up. “That hat. I loved that hat. I haven’t seen you wear it since that night.”
If he’d known she’d be looking for it, he would have done something about it. “I lost it at the Moose Is Loose. They’re hanging onto it for me, but I haven’t been up there since that night. Didn’t know it meant anything to you. I’ve had it since I was a teenager riding herd.”
“I guess I’ll just have to use my imagination,” she murmured wickedly.
“I’ve been using mine overtime, so join the club.”
The tip of her tongue slid between her lips. She’d put something in her hair to make it look wild and tousled, and it didn’t take much imagination to picture it spread across his pillow.
“I’m trying to ask you serious questions and you keep distracting me.” With a stern frown, she tapped on the table between them. “When did you switch from cowboy to fireman?”
“Halfway through college. I was a biology major. Thought I might go on to med school but decided to change to fire sciences. I couldn’t stomach any more school. Turns out a good half of our calls are medical anyway. So I get to use those muscles too.”
Under her curious gaze, he found himself wanting to keep talking, which was unusual for him.
“When did you become a fire chief?”
“When I moved to Lost Harbor. That’s generally how it happens, you have to switch locations to get promoted. I’ve had a lot of experience with volunteer fire departments because that’s how I started, as a volunteer for the county where our ranch was located in Texas.”
“Texas to Alaska. That’s a long way.”
“Yeah.” He saw no need to elaborate on that, but she kept waiting so he felt rude not answering. “I had reasons for wanting a change of scene.”
“Like what?”
Oh lordy, she really did want to get into it. “Divorce,” he said simply.
Her expression shifted from interested to cautious. Not that he could blame her.
“I needed a new start, and it wasn’t ever going to happen within a hundred miles of my ex.”
“Lost Harbor is a lot more than a hundred miles away from Texas.”
“And about six state lines away. Part of its charm.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Listen. I don’t bad-mouth my ex. Either of them. Those relationships were what they were, and I learned my lessons.”
“Which were?”
“Why make things complicated when you can just fuck and have fun?” He said it lightly, but he heard the hollowness of his own words. It had taken a lot of hurt for him to get to the point where he believed that.
He still wasn’t completely sure that he did.
“Sounds like you had a rough time.” Her sympathetic gaze drew more confessions from him.
He shrugged. “I’m not complaining. I married the first girl I really loved. Gillian. We got married at the end of high school. Then I got busy with college and she got bored. Met someone else and took off. I didn’t blame her, but it was a kick in the guts. I was still a naive kid, basically. It blew me away that she could even think about another man. I was so in love, or at least I thought I was.”
He could hear the hurt seeping into his voice, and cleared his throat. “Like I said, it was a good lesson.”
She touched his hand, making him realize he’d been clenching it. “I’m sorry. That must have been a real heartbreak.”
“Oh, yeah. I thought we’d cracked the whole love-and-marriage thing. I was going to get my degree, become a doctor, start a family. Turns out we never made it past my freshman year. Poor dumb kid.” He shook his head at his own past self. “I proposed to her on horseback during a roundup. Man, when I look back, I can’t believe what a dolt I was.”
A funny smile flitted across her lips. “It’s very sweet, honestly. From the outside, I never would have pegged you as a sap.”
“And you’d be right about that. My sappy days are dead and gone. After Gillian left, my brothers kept telling me to ‘buck up, be a man.’ I shut the fuck up after that. Got into firefighting and moved on.”
What he left unsaid was that if his marriage to Gillian hadn’t killed off his romantic side, his nightmare with Amelie would have done it.
“Here’s the thing. I was a naive, clueless, horny kid.