After all she’d seen overseas, all the people she’d lost, opening her heart and letting someone in wasn’t an option. It would take away the small shred of security she relied on to get herself from day to day without falling apart. Right now, she could trust in herself. She was strong. She could get herself through today and the day after that. She didn’t need to rely on anyone else.

Looking away, she pushed herself off the bed.

“You go ahead.” She tried to keep her tone light, as if what they’d shared hadn’t shaken her to her core. “If you keep him in the kitchen, I’ll meet you there after a quick detour to my room.”

Eric nodded and headed for the door.

“And Eric?”

He looked back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Please don’t tell Liam.”

From across the room, she felt his body tense. It wasn’t that she feared her brother knowing she’d fooled around with Eric. She might be scared of her feelings, but she could hold her ground when it came to Liam. But she worried it would hurt Eric. She’d seen the regret in his eyes. He always, always did the right thing—until tonight. Until her.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he said.

The door closed behind him. Georgia picked up her towel and made a dash for the stairs leading to her second-floor bedroom. When she got there, she scrambled to find underwear, shorts, and a T-shirt. Dressed, she reached for the knob and paused.

Eric’s voice drifted up. She had to go down there. Liam would be concerned if she didn’t, and the last thing she needed was her brother asking questions. But facing Eric? How could she look at him and not picture the raw desire she’d witnessed in his eyes? It was a heady, powerful thing knowing she could bring him to his knees without laying a hand on him. If she’d ever doubted he wanted her the same way she wanted him, she didn’t now.

But she couldn’t risk a repeat performance. This wasn’t like jumping out of an airplane. This wasn’t an adrenaline rush she could walk away from unscathed. After she came, she’d wished she could curl up in his arms and let him hold her. Wanting that simple comfort left her flat-out vulnerable.

She refused to be weak. She hadn’t come home alive and whole only to crumble. No, she had to find her way through these overwhelming emotions before she could open up to someone else, even a man who’d been her friend for years—and just revealed he could be so much more.

“Where’s Georgia?” Liam’s voice carried through the house’s open spaces.

She quickly made her way down the curved front stairs, past the sprawling open living area to the kitchen. Liam stood by the granite counter, his hands shoved into the pockets of his work jeans. The two men looked like night and day with Eric in his dress shirt and suit pants, and Liam in his ripped gray T-shirt and dirt-covered work boots, though physically they were roughly the same size, both large and imposing.

“I’m right here,” she said. “What are you doing here, big brother? Checking up on me?”

She saw the grim expression on her brother’s face, and a small tremor ran through her. Not fear, just awareness. Liam always greeted her with a smile. Always. Tonight, something was wrong.

“Nah, I came to see your boss.” Liam studied her for a minute as if he could tell if she’d done something wild just by looking at her. Then her brother turned his attention back to Eric. “We have a problem.”

Georgia stole a glance at Eric. He looked nothing like a man who had experienced an orgasm worthy of the Richter scale. There was no way her brother could guess they’d been naked together on Eric’s bed when he arrived, not from the severe expression on Eric’s face.

“A problem?” Eric crossed his arms in front of his chest with his feet firmly planted a hips’ distance apart. This man could take on anything.

“Forest fire.”

Georgia had grown up in timber country. Forest fires were serious business. Hearing those words, she could practically smell the smoke the memory was so strong. When she was six, her family had been forced to evacuate, leaving their home and all their worldly possessions in the fire’s path. In the end, the firefighters and loggers had held the flames back before the fire reached their home. Others hadn’t been so lucky. She looked to Liam, knowing he remembered too.

“Where?” Eric demanded.

“The hundred acres in White Rock.”

She watched as Eric went pale. That was the piece of land he’d inherited from his father. Those trees had been growing for seventy years, maybe more. Georgia knew he’d finally decided to harvest them not because he needed the money but because it was the best time for the trees. And he also wanted to set the money aside for Nate. Eric had told her that he planned to place the profits in his nephew’s trust fund.

“What happened?” Eric asked.

“Best I can figure, the lightning that passed through the area last night struck a tree,” Liam said.

“It didn’t rain on your side of the hill, did it?”

Liam shook his head.

“So the fire is on the other side of the property from where you were working?”

“It’s everywhere now. The wind has blown it around.”

“No way to know right now,” Eric said. “If it wasn’t started by a lightning strike, then a chainsaw must have let off a spark. You didn’t see anything?”

“No. But we were moving quickly. I had a feeling the fire threat would be raised in the next day or two and we’d be left loading trucks or sitting on our hands, unable to harvest. I was pushing the crew, and somehow we missed the smoldering. It’s my fault.”

Georgia wrapped her arms tightly around her torso to keep herself from rushing over to her brother and hugging him tight. Liam hid it well, but inside she knew this was tearing him apart. To be responsible for a fire, a force of nature that could claim lives and ruin homes—no one deserved to shoulder that alone.

“My land, my crew, my responsibility,” Eric said. “I should have been out there with you. How bad is it?”

“We’re going to need to put in a fire line,” Liam said. “I called the fire department and the department of forestry on my way here. They’re going to come at it from one side, and I told the chief I’d talk to you about cutting the line on the other.”

Georgia bit her lip. Cutting a fire line meant felling trees to stop the flames from jumping, and digging a trench. It would take all night, probably well into tomorrow. She knew the men would work fast to keep the fire from spreading. She prayed it would be enough to keep the neighboring communities safe.

But either way it would be a while before Eric came home again, longer before they had a chance to talk about what had happened earlier.

Eric headed for the hall. “I need to change into work clothes. Wait here and then we’ll go.”

Liam turned to her, his brown eyes filled with concern. “You sure you’re OK? You don’t look like yourself.”

No, she wasn’t OK. Not even close. “Just thinking about all those people who might be forced to leave their homes.”

Liam’s mouth formed a grim line. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep them safe.”

“I know you will,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure there isn’t something else bothering you?”

There was. The emotional fallout from one mind-blowing orgasm. But she wasn’t about to share that fact with her brother. And compared with a forest fire, her problems seemed small and irrelevant.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Have you been sleeping?” Liam asked. “Are you having nightmares again?”

“I’m sleeping,” she said. Sometimes.

Not much scared her now. Not jumping out of planes or driving too fast. But sleep? The nightmares were so vivid, so terrifying, she often woke barely able to breathe. And those were the good nights.

When she’d been living with Liam, there had been times when she hadn’t woken up fast enough. The nightmares had held tight to her, and she’d screamed her heart out. He’d ripped her away from the dreams, begging her to wake up. If her screams terrified a grown man like Liam, what would a small boy like Nate do if he heard them?

Georgia didn’t want to find out. Since she’d moved in with Eric, she’d done her best to sleep only when thoroughly exhausted and then only for a few hours at a time. So far, it had worked. To be safe, she’d also asked for a room on the other side of the house from Nate. In Eric’s sprawling timber-frame home, it was a simple request to accommodate.

“I’m fine, Liam,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. You have a fire to deal with. Focus on staying safe.”

“Always,” Liam said.

Eric strode into the room. He’d traded his tailored office clothes for a pair of faded jeans and plaid flannel, sleeves rolled up to reveal the strong muscles of his forearms.

“I’ll ride with you,” he said to Liam. “While you drive, I’ll call and have the chopper ready. A flyover will give us a better idea where to put the line and set up the base camp. And I’ll call the crews. We’ll take shifts.” Then Eric turned to her. “You’ll have to get Nate up, fed, and ready for school.”

Georgia nodded. She could do all of those things. She didn’t want him worrying about Nate while out cutting trees in the middle of the night with a forest fire bearing down on him and his men.

“But I’ll be back to take him to school,” Eric said.

“I can do it.”

Eric shook his head. “I’ll be here.”

The men headed for the front door and Georgia followed. Eric paused, waiting for her brother to step out into the night, before turning back to her.

“Georgia,” he said softly, “when I get back, we need to talk.”

She waited until he disappeared into the darkness before shaking her head. Talking was the last thing she wanted to do. She needed things to go back to the way they were before she’d walked into his room and dropped her towel—before an emotional tidal wave had threatened the walls she’d constructed around her feelings, destroying the sense of security that kept her going from one day to the next. And she had to keeping going. She’d lived. She owed it to those who didn’t make it to find her way forward, not fall apart.

BY SEVEN ON Tuesday morning, Eric was running on fumes. He’d worked through the night, felling trees alongside his crew. If they held off the fire, he’d come back and salvage the downed trunks for timber. It wasn’t ideal. Nothing about a raging forest fire was.

He walked through the base camp and nodded hello to the men, who raised their hands in greeting, but he didn’t stop to talk. Smoke hung heavy in the air, and there was no mistaking the smell of burning fir trees. The mood at the camp was solemn, and no one expected chitchat. In the distance, he could see the fire jumping from the crown of one tree to the next.

It was heartbreaking to watch. His grandfather had bought this land, and Eric had grown up caring for those trees. He’d worked alongside his father, limbing them to prevent something like this from happening. One damn spark and it all went up in flames.

Eric looked away, scanning the camp. Volunteers had set up a table with to-go boxes of coffee, bottled water, and food. He headed over. If he was going to take Nate to school, he needed caffeine.

“Hey, man, you headed out?” Liam asked.

He must be more exhausted than he thought. He hadn’t noticed his friend’s approach. Eric nodded, filling a paper cup with lukewarm coffee.

“You might want to come straight back. The wind is changing directions,” Liam said. “The fire chief is talking about evacuating homes to the east.”

“I heard. Talked to him an hour ago. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He had to get Nate settled first.

Liam nodded. “If you have a chance, check in with Georgia. She seemed off last night. I’m afraid she is going to do something stupid.”

Too late for that. She’d found her latest rush. Him. Part of him was glad Georgia had come to him. It was physically safer than jumping out of planes, and the thought of her hitting on some random guy . . . damn, that felt like a punch to the gut. But hell, for all he knew, she’d been seeing half the men in the valley since she’d been home.

“I’ll check on her,” Eric said, stirring his coffee. He felt like a teenager, but he had to ask. “Do you know if she is seeing someone?”

The muscles in Liam’s jaw jumped. “She better not be. She’s not ready for that. If you hear different, tell me.”

Eric looked off into the distance where the orange flames danced on the tops of the trees: a physical reminder of how one mistake could destroy something that had taken decades to grow, like a friendship.