Never Too Hot Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ever again.”
    Stu’s fiancée lowered her voice, grinning as he walked away. “At least I now know exactly the kind of bride I don’t want to be.” She cocked her head to the side. “Were you just coming by to see Stu, or did you need something else?”
    “I need a room. Just for tonight.”
    Her face fell. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Connor. I wish we had one, but this wedding has simply taken over. Every single room. Even the ones that we don’t usually rent out. These people have practically moved into the supply closets. And all the local B&Bs are booked too for the next few days. But I can make a few calls to some of the nearby towns if you have a few minutes.”
    It didn’t take long for her to confirm that the nearest opening was an hour away at a motel on Piseco Lake at the southern tip of the Adirondacks.
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.”
    Damn it, he should be sleeping at Poplar Cove. He could just imagine Ginger’s face if she found him kicking his feet up with a beer on her porch when she got off work, how her eyes would get big, the way her cheeks would flush with outrage.
    What was he thinking? He’d just met her. He didn’t know her at all. And beyond getting her to agree to let him work on the cabin, he didn’t plan to. She was just some random woman who happened to be living in his family’s lake house.
    The fact that there was something intriguing about her—he hadn’t expected a woman as soft and artsy-looking as her to have such backbone—was irrelevant.
    But Stu’s fiancée clearly couldn’t stand to think of him being homeless for the night. “I’m sure Stu wouldn’t want you going all the way to Piseco. If you wouldn’t mind sleeping on his couch, you could stay with him until a room opens up when this wedding is finally over.”
    He knew a good offer when he heard one and after she brought him upstairs and showed him into Stu’s suite of rooms and his couch for the night, he quickly changed into his running gear. Five minutes later he was sprinting away from Main Street.
    He should have known this trip would turn into a total clusterfuck. For twenty-eight years, everything he’d wanted had come right to him. The perfect job. Gorgeous women. Life had been easy. Fun. Exhilarating.
    Two years after his accident everything should be back on track. Not unraveling more every day. So many times in Lake Tahoe he’d wanted to get in his car and just drive. Anywhere. Just to get away. To get out of his head. To leave what had happened on the mountain behind. Especially on those nights when sleep didn’t come, when all he could do was replay those sixty seconds in Desolation Wilderness when everything had changed.
    But that was the wimp’s way out. So he’d held tight. Waited for the Forest Service to get it right and put him back with his crew. Waited until this morning, when he’d gotten on the plane to New York.
    Was it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet? For some space to get his shit together and push his body until it finally gave up the fight and did what he goddamned wanted it to do? Was it too much to want to help his brother with his wedding and bring his great-grandparents’ cabin back to its former glory?
    His lungs were burning, but it was the good kind of burn, the kind of pain that reminded him how lucky he was to be alive. Sprinting like this was what had gotten him off that trail in Lake Tahoe with nothing more than a couple of fucked-up hands and arms, some nasty scars on his shoulders and neck.
    And that was why he was going to run past the pain, run until he was too exhausted to notice it anymore.
    Two hours later, he limped upstairs in the near state of exhaustion he’d been shooting for and found a message on Stu’s fridge telling him to grab whatever he wanted. He downed one beer before his shower and was already halfway through the second as he made his way out to the end of the Inn’s long dock. Searching for