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

David stopped pouring. He’d never seen Oliver so dressed up.


“You look nice.” He looked hot. Like a student-teacher that all the high school girls and gay boys would make eyes at.


“Really?” Oliver spun around, twisting as if he was trying to see his ass. David could have told him his ass looked good too. “You think? It’s Ryan’s jacket.”


“Absolutely.” When Oliver didn’t volunteer his morning’s plans, David broke down and asked. “Where’re you going?”


“With Mia.” David could tell he was looking forward to whatever it was. “She’s dragging me to look at wedding halls.”


“Yeah, she was on the phone all afternoon making appointments. But I think it’s really more an excuse to show people that ring. And for me to buy her lunch.”


“Buying lunch is a brideman’s job.” Mia walked in the room, up earlier than David had seen her in all his adult life.


Her hair was pinned up, and she wore a short gray dress, with pink poke-a-dots, and matching pink wedge heels.


Chapter 25