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

It was a weekend hotspot, and Oliver had ducked inside to escape a sudden downpour on his walk home from work one evening, when he’d run into Scott for the first time.


He’d been there with some others from the firehouse, and had asked to buy Oliver a drink, despite it being obvious that Oliver was only waiting out the rain.


Scott was tall and good-looking and the confident type Oliver had never been himself but had always found appealing. And Oliver had fallen for him instantly.


They’d jumped into bed that same night and it had been burn-down-the-house incredible.


But it had only taken a few months to realize it hadn’t been enough to build a relationship on.


Oliver gave his name to the host and, at her suggestion, grabbed the only empty stool at the bar.


Chapter 19