Page 61 of 15 Summers Later

Why had he kissed her? More to the point, why had she responded as if this was the first kiss she’d ever had that actuallymeantsomething?

“I don’t know what just happened.” Luke raked a hand through his hair. “You kissed my cheek and...you always smell so good and I couldn’t resist.”

She stared at him, feeling as if every single rational thought had completely flown out of her head.

“I... What?”

He grimaced. “I know. It was completely inappropriate. I’m your employer. I should never have taken advantage of you like that.”

He was concerned about kissing her because sheworkedfor him? That thought had never even crossed her mind. Their relationship was so multilayered, the fact that she was a vet tech in his office seemed a minimal issue.

“Technically I work for you, I guess. But only for another few weeks.”

He did not look happy about the reminder. “Still. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was a gross abuse of power.”

“You currently pay my salary but it’s not as if you hold my entire professional future in your hands. And I’m sorry you find my kisses gross,” she muttered.

He gave her an exasperated look. “You know that’s not what I meant. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve always been very careful not to...to let myself think about you that way.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that admission. “What way? Like a woman?”

“Like a woman at all available for the kind of relationship where we could kiss and...other things. You’ve always been like a sister to me.”

“I’m not your sister.”

He gave her a wry, tight smile. “Yes. I’m fully aware. But our lives are deeply intertwined. We work together, both at the clinic and here at the rescue. You’re best friends and roommates with my sister. You come to my mother’s house for dinner every month. For all intents and purposes, you’re part of the family.”

She couldn’t argue with him. They should never have kissed. Everything he said paralleled what she herself had been thinking.

He gripped her hand in his, his feature set. “You’re important to me, Mad. I care about you. My daughter cares about you. My mom would adopt you if she could. I don’t want to do anything to screw that up for everyone.”

Had one kiss made things irrevocably awkward between them? She couldn’t bear thinking that.

Luke was exactly right. Since the day he and his family had rescued her and Ava, Madi had always been careful to lock away any romantic feelings for him. But how could she help but fall a little in love with a man who had pulled her out of the line of fire and covered her body with his?

He probably didn’t think she remembered. They hadn’t spoken of those moments and he likely believed the gunshot wound she had sustained had given her short-term memory loss or something.

She remembered everything, though. The smell of gunpowder, the baying of the dogs, the frantic shouts and searing pain as she had been shot.

Luke had been solid and strong, even though scared himself, she knew. He had shoved Ava and Nicki behind a rock, yelled for his brother to take cover and had picked up the family’s rifle before covering Madi, who was bleeding copiously from the bullet that had struck her temple and lodged under her skull.

We’re going to get you out of this. I promise. Just hang on, kid, he had whispered to her as he fired the rifle in the direction the shots were firing.

She remembered the cries and shouts as his shots and his father’s managed to keep their pursuers at bay.

She also knew he had risked his life for her, as his father had. Luke had no way of knowing a helicopter full of federal agents from multiple agencies had been deployed to rescue her and her sister as soon as Dan Gentry had made that first satellite call a half hour earlier, after they stumbled onto their camp.

He had continued protecting them all with single-minded focus.

She drew in a shaky breath. “Okay. Here’s what we have to do. We both need to forget the last fifteen minutes ever happened.”

He made a rough sound of disbelief, low in his throat. “How do you propose we do that?”

“Easy. We just focus on all the reasons why that kiss should not have happened. You’re right. The various strands of our lives are interwoven. You are too important to me. I don’t want to lose that. Ican’tlose that.”

Something flickered in his gaze, something hot, surprising. She did her best to ignore it.

“We simply have to rewind back to when I unlocked the door. You helped me inside, we put the dogs out, then you went on your merry way for the night. That’s how I will choose to remember this evening and I...I suggest you do the same. It’s the only way we can go back to...to our regular life. To the way things were.”

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