Oliver Stoll’s life has gone up in smoke. Literally. Escaping an apartment fire, he’s made it out with little more than the clothes on his back and his best friend and downstairs neighbor, Mia. With few other options, he agrees to stay with David Elliston, Mia’s older brother. David was Oliver’s first crush, first kiss, first everything. That is, until the day they broke up five years before. It hadn’t been pretty.<br><br>David Elliston is back in town. Offered the chance to oversee the Kellmen Group’s newest magazine acquisition, he isn’t going to let a years old heartbreak stop him. But being thrown together with Oliver is harder than expected. And the flicker of hope he’s long tried to bury becomes even more difficult to contain.<br><br>Ex-lovers, best friends, and angry parents don’t make the best backdrop for rekindling a romance. But it’s the lies from the past that might just extinguish any chance they have of starting over.

Big Flames and Small

Oliver was still Mia’s best friend after all these years, and that wasn’t likely to change. So, David needed to mend fences. He knew as well as anyone, how easy it would be to ruin everything. One poorly chosen word and he might not be allowed in the same room as the man, never mind salvage anything resembling friendship. He needed his every move to be perfect.


And yes, that may have sounded calculated. That’s because it was. David had learned a lot in Atlanta. The most important lesson being you didn’t leave your happiness up to luck, or to chance. And you didn’t leave it up to someone who hated you. Especially if they might have had every right to do so.


He just needed to say the right things, and survive the next half an hour. And not let himself get sucked into Oliver’s orbit.


It was something he’d never been very good at.


Mia took her time browsing the aisles of the 7-Eleven, but eventually Oliver gave up, grabbed a fountain drink, and escaped.


Chapter 4