She shook her head. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not ideal, but I’m only living there temporarily. I’ll find a better place once I save up. How did you find your house? It’s perfectly located. You’re away from the bustle, but still close to everything, and you have lake views.”
“It was my job to know these mountains.”
She turned off the faucet, and a sad look crossed her face. “Do you miss being a firefighter?”
He pointed at a towel attached to the upper cabinet. “I used to.”
She dried her hands on the towel. “But not anymore?”
Levi rubbed Grace behind the ear, considering. “Good question. If you’d asked me one or two months ago, I would have said yes without hesitation. Now…I don’t know. It’s not something I’ll ever be able to do again.”
Emily faced him, leaning against the sink. “Your father said there was an accident, but he never mentioned what happened.”
Levi traced the bright red scar above his eye. Small for something that caused so much damage. “Cement block to the head.” He smirked. “I must have a hard head, because it should have killed me.”
Emily’s chest rose and fell heavily. “That’s horrible.”
He shrugged. “I lived, and the boy who’d started the fire in the abandoned building survived too, so it all worked out. Could have been a lot worse. Someone could have died or I could have lost more than partial vision.”
Levi’s worst nightmare was to lose someone he loved. Being able to save people had been his main reason for becoming a firefighter. Without his job in the fire department, he’d felt adrift. But he could protect the people he cared about while he ran Club Tahoe. Just in a cleaner setting.
“So you lost some vision?”
“Not enough to matter—except as a firefighter. Even a small loss of peripheral vision was enough to stick me at a desk.” He frowned at the kitchen table Jaeg had made. It was one of his favorite pieces in the house, but right now he stared through it. He might have accepted that his dream career was over, but that didn’t make it easy to swallow.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.
He looked up. “Excuse me?”
“Not the vision loss, but that your father put you in charge of Club Tahoe. If you had remained with the fire department, watching your friends go out while you had to stay back, it would have been a constant reminder of what you’d lost. This way, you get to wear fancy suits, which I know youlove.”
He smiled. He hated the monkey suits, and tugged at his collar enough at work that she must have noticed.
“And,”she said, “you get to boss around us minions.”
He rubbed his jaw again, grinning. “I do enjoy that part.”
“Right? Who doesn’t want to spend time with a brainy girl who obsesses over the fine details you hate?”
“Yet another perk.” This time he sent her a full smile. Emily really had made his life easier. No—not easier, because being around her and not touching her wasn’t easy. She made his lifebetter. With the help she offered, no doubt, but also her presence made every moment lighter and more enjoyable.
She grinned shyly, then looked around. “What should I do while you’re gone? Besides lots of dog rubbing. Feed her? Give her a bath?”
“I already fed her, but a walk or two wouldn’t hurt. You don’t need to give her a bath. I wouldn’t subject you to that. You’d come away with one as well, except instead of being cleaner, you’d be dirtier.”
“Got it. No bath.” She looked past him. “How far up does this road go?”
He walked across the living room to the window overlooking the other end of his property, and Emily followed. “About a half-mile.” He gestured to the north. “It isn’t paved, but it’s well worn and Grace knows the way. You won’t need a leash; she doesn’t like to be away from her people.”
Emily beamed, and Levi’s heart lurched to the side. “Am I one of her people?”
He cleared his throat. “She made you her pillow the other day. I’d say so.”
She glanced at Grace—his elderly, tongue-bathing, rescued pet. “I like the sound of that. I wouldn’t want to be a doormat, but being a pillow? Now that’s something to aspire to.”
His heart pounded heavily as he took in her position at his side. She was adorable, and she was chiseling his cement-hardened heart with that velvet hammer of hers.
Emily must have noticed how close they stood. She might have even sensed the heat his body was generating in her presence. She took a step back. “Don’t let me keep you. Grace and I will be fine.”
