Can't Help Falling In Love (The Sullivans #3)(28)

They clinked their glasses together, still laughing as they both drank. The alcohol hit Megan’s bloodstream and sent warmth moving all through her limbs. Her skin felt extra sensitive as she shifted in her seat and the wool of her dress moved over her skin.

Gabe’s eyes on her only added to the heat. It had been a very long time since she hadn’t felt like a mother or a CPA.

Beneath his hungry blue eyes, with another couple of sips of her incredibly strong drink in her, she couldn’t help but feel like a woman. It didn’t help that she remembered only too clearly the feel of his strong arms around her, the press of his lips when his mouth came down over hers and he claimed the kisses she was desperate to give to him.

And yet, before she knew it, they were eating and laughing as he ended up telling her some of those stories about growing up as one of six brothers who acted first and thought last. Maybe she should have pretended she was okay with things, but she’d never been good at pretending. Had never understood the hows or whys of being someone she wasn’t.

“I shouldn’t be having this good a time with you.”

“I’ve heard I’m irresistible,” he teased.

Damn him for the way he always made her smile. Of course, if smiles had been all there was between them, everything would have been perfectly fine.

Knowing there was no point in arguing with his too-true statement, she said instead, “That must be why you don’t have a girlfriend or wife, right? So many women, so little time.”

She expected him to laugh at that, but instead his expression tightened down. “I’m no saint, Megan, but I’m not the devil, either.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she quickly backtracked, “just that I can see why a guy like you would have fun playing the field.”

“A guy like me?” His eyebrows were raised in question and he’d put down his silverware to sit back in his seat and watch her as he waited for her to explain.

She tried to keep her voice light as she said, “Like you said, there’s a certain irresistibility about you and—”

“But you’re bound and determined to resist me, aren’t you?”

His statement stopped her in her tracks. “You’re bound and determined to resist me, too,” she reminded him. “And I certainly can’t remember anyone ever telling me I’m irresistible, so we both know who has the short end of the stick here.” She pointed her index finger at her chest. “Me.”

She was so caught up in her speech that it took a few seconds for her to realize she’d just made a complete idiot of herself. Thankfully, just then the alarm on her phone went off.

She shoved her chair back. “I’ve got to go get Summer.”

Gabe stood, too, and grabbed her hand before she could run away through the restaurant and catch her breath.

As he pulled her into him, she could almost taste his mouth, knew she was going to give in to his kiss. But when they were only a breath apart, instead of taking her mouth with his, he simply said, “I’m the one who’s trying like hell to resist you, Megan.”

Just another half an inch and he could be hers. She could blame the alcohol, could claim that it had all been out of her control. But just as she was teetering on the edge of letting her walls come down to take what she so desperately wanted, she heard Summer call out.

“Mommy! Gabe!”

She stepped away from Gabe so quickly, she bumped into another table.

“Sorry!” she said to the couple without even looking at them and then she was turning to Summer. “Hey, honey, how was the sleigh ride?”

“Awesome! Did you guys have dessert already? I’m starved.”

After thirty mind-blowingly awkward minutes where both of them let Summer chatter about the kids she’d met on the sleigh ride, a couple of whom were from her soccer team, and all the fun things they’d done during the past two hours, they all finally left the restaurant. Megan felt like a wet dishrag that had just been wrung out. Hard.

They were almost away from the biggest—and most dangerous—temptation she’d ever faced in her life when Summer said, “What time should we meet you tomorrow morning for snowboarding?”

“How about ten a.m.?”

“Awesome!”

As Summer went running off to look for their room number and the elevator door closed on Gabe’s gorgeous face, a half-dozen words on the opposite spectrum from awesome were running on repeat through Megan’s mind.

If dinner with Gabe had nearly done her in, how was she going to make it through a whole day with him, in beautiful Lake Tahoe, in one piece?

* * *

By the next afternoon, when Megan had fallen over for the hundredth time, she lay in the snow laughing at herself. “If I had a white flag, I’d raise it right now.”

Gabe had dropped to his knees to help her up and as he lifted his goggles, she found herself looking into his smiling eyes.

“You’ve almost got it.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” She was too exhausted and surely bruised all over to do more than nod in the general direction of Summer, who was working on tricks at the far end of a ramp the ski resort had set up for snowboarders to play around on. “I’m afraid Summer is going to be the only snowboarder in our family.” She shot a nasty look at the board attached to the big boots she’d rented for the day. “I hope my skis will forgive me for cheating on them.”