“For you. When you spend a ton of time trying to grow something from a seed and it dies, it’s a bummer.”
He nodded. “I get that.”
“So what do you do when you’re not firefighting or driving around broken women?”
“Broken. Ha. Right. Then who whooped me at Parcheesi?”
“Well, I might be broken, but I’m not a loser.” She winked. “Tough to keep up, eh, old man?”
“Please. I’m only thirty-three.”
“Yep, a good four years older than me.” She sounded proud of that fact. “So, what do you do for fun?”
“Well, it’s obvious I like gardening. I also work out.” He flexed.
She swallowed. “I can tell.”
“I wish I could say I do a lot more than that. I don’t. Hence me being boring and playing games to inject fun into my life.” He ate his sandwich then turned the tables. “What about you?”
“Wait. You forgot about the blind dates. You do that.”
“Forfun,you said.”
She grinned. “You look like you ate a lemon.”
“Ha ha.” He felt so comfortable with her here. “What about you? Besides keeping the bloodshed to a minimum with your evil minion at home, what do you do for fun?”
“Not much.” She sighed. “I was planning on some rock climbing with Emily this month. Benny knows a guy who owns a rock-climbing gym. It would have been a blast. We might still do ceramics though. I like art.” She faced him, her expression animated. “I was hoping to do some painting, believe it or not. I want to try watercolors, and I thought Emily and I could go take a day trip to Mt. Rainier, and I’d paint the mountain or something.” She blushed. “Sounds silly, but the plan was to do it and come home with a masterpiece.”
“I think it sounds fun.”
“You like to camp?”
“I did as a kid. It was okay. But I’m more a bed guy than a ground-with-ants-and-bugs-walking-over-you guy.”
“I get that.” She shivered. “Truly. I like sleeping above the ground, not on the ground.”
“Did you camp when you were a kid?”
She frowned. “No. I grew up in the boring suburbs out east. Dad was a teacher, mom a homemaker. We had a nice life, but it wasn’t exciting.”
“Do you get to see them often?” Reggie wondered. She hadn’t mentioned her parents much, just her friends helping her.
“They died right after I graduated high school. It was rough. I loved them a lot, and I had no other family, well, none I’m close to.”
“Ouch. That’s hard.”
“It was. But I got through college, married Stephen, moved out here, had Emily, divorced Stephen, and now have nothing better to do than harass the poor guy who saved me.” She sighed. “Should I apologize now or later for how badly I’m going to continue to beat you at our next round of board games? Or should I just let you win because you did, technically, save my life?”
“That’s true. I did save your life.” Not at all. “Several times, in fact.”
She was trying not to laugh. “Oh?”
“First, I saved you from your head exploding in the ambulance, you know, when Emily was screaming your name. Then, I saved you in the hospital from dying from embarrassment. I was nice, even when confronted with your hair that stood by itself. And you told me all about your unshaved legs.”
Her cheeks were totally pink, but she laughed.
“And then last night, I saved you from burning up in the oven when you would have killed yourself pulling that pan from the flames.”
