“I care for you differently,” he said, narrowing his eyes, wanting to force her to believe this. “With a fire call, I don’t get a terrifying fear gripping me like I do whenever I hear that you’re on the trail heading up to Dead Man’s Cliff, or that you’ve fallen down a flight of stairs. You’re not a job to me, Lily. Not even close. You’re more. And I think I’m more to you too. You want to know what I think?”

“I’d say no, but I’m getting that it wouldn’t stop you from telling me anyway.”

He smiled grimly. “I think it’s not that you don’t feel anything, it’s that you feel too much. I scare you.”

“Your life scares me,” she said, and seemed shocked that she’d admitted such a thing.

His heart squeezed, hard. He’d never really given any thought at all to what the people who cared about him went through while he was working. The anxiety and worry. And for someone like Lily, who’d lost her sister so tragically, it would be worse, so much worse. “I get that,” he said quietly. “I do. And I can’t promise I’ll rein it in—it’s my job. But I can promise you that safety is of the upmost importance to me and everyone working with me. Always. But I don’t think that’s what this is. I think the real issue is that you’re afraid of loving someone and letting them love you.”

The look on her face said he’d hit bingo. But he could also tell that she wasn’t ready to go there, wasn’t ready to admit her feelings yet at all.

But at least he could show her his. Especially since he was more of a show-don’t-tell kind of guy anyway. “Come here,” he said.

“I’m right here.”

“Closer.”

She walked into his arms. He pulled her in and kissed her. He kissed her until he knew he’d taken it as far as he could without tearing off that pretty sundress right then and there, and only then did he lift his head.

“Oh,” she breathed, staggering back a step, clearly trying to play it cool—which might have worked if her eyes weren’t dilated and the pulse at the base of her throat wasn’t going apeshit crazy.

He gave a slow smile and pulled her back in, not hard for him to do, since she already had a grip on his shirt like he was her lifeline and she was going down for the count.

She cleared her throat. “So you showed up all Captain America to save the day, and now what? I jump into bed with you? Was that your plan?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but in my version we didn’t talk this much.”

“A full-service rescue then,” she said evenly.