“Nice. You’ve got this.”
She bit her bottom lip between her teeth. “That was the easiest question. Give me some more.”
He goosed her around her waist, peals of laughter from Mabel causing Chief to raise his head and stare.
Competitive Mabel, huh? That was interesting. She was a nice person. It wasn’t her set point to get all in a huff if someone were beating her in a game. She didn’t much care if others shined brighter than her in some aspects, although Zane’s chest bumped up in a snort because, technically, that was impossible in his eyes.
Nevertheless, she had a high standard for herself. Driven with a side of kindness. Which was why he didn’t need to prod her into working hard for the next couple of hours, until it was far too late to be able to have rational thoughts about such things as propriety anymore.
He felt forlorn at the end of the evening as he walked her out to her car. He’d just had the highest of highs. He and Mabel. Together.Something good was definitely happening, and he didn’t want to watch her drive away and wonder how she’d be the next day. And the day after that. Their history had been so up and down, frankly more down than up the last couple of years, that this sense of foreboding was like sticking a fork in a popover fresh from the oven.
There was nothing to tell him where they stood. They’d crossed a threshold, one they’d been standing and waiting on, tapping their watches in nervous anticipation for so long. But did that mean things couldn’t slide right back to where they were?
No. Things with Mabel were still tenuous. It was like a mama bird on the edge of her nest, watching her babies with their craning necks and delicate skin.
He opened her car door, and she slid in, drawing in her shapely legs after her. Her eyes still flirted just a touch. “See you tomorrow?”
Now that right there, that smile with the happy dimple pop, was worth the little sleep he’d get tonight. The 4:15 a.m. alarm to get to the firehouse by five was going to hurt a little. But it wouldn’t feel like a chore because every moment spent with Mabel was worth it.
“You like her, huh?” he asked Chief as he took the steps up the porch of his house, patting his head.
Me too, boy. Me too.
Chapter 16
One of the things about being in a…whatever this was…with Zane was that the man had the ability to infiltrate Mabel’s dreams after a night of solid kissing.
And by solid, I mean insanely good.
Mabel had dreamt, literally and figuratively, of a redo of their first kiss for so long that it had started to feel like it would never happen. The desire for it had become one with her being.
Now, they’d ended their years-long moratorium on kissing.
Which meant dreams of him and his kissing had been a part of her for so long that now that it had happened, it was exciting and comfortable, all at once.
That accounted for her gauzy-mindedness in the backroom of the Clucky Spud with her KNO friends, a few notable exceptions aside. Okay, only one exception that really mattered to Mabel at the moment: Zane was on call for his paramedic job. And she felt his absence like a punch to the gut.
“You guys think we could stick to the task at hand?” Weston’s forehead crinkled.
Weston hadn’t been part of the group for long. He was the most recent inductee, and that, with his sometimes aloof manner, usuallyrelegated him to “I’m a go pick up the wings and fries for ya’ll” status. Hey, he had to earn his keep, even though Mabel was pretty sure he’d already earned it within that first night of meeting him when it was clear he was a decent guy who had a thing for Ruby.
Still, with personalities in the room the likes of Tory, Liam, and Mack, it was hard for some of the newbs to get a word in edgewise sometimes. Okay, Mabel admitted that she could be intense with everyone sometimes too. Not in an in-your-face way. It was more of a “Let’s do this now and as perfectly as we can” way.
But now? Weston was a man on a mission. It felt like a let’s-roll type of deal. He’d gathered them together in this top-secret meeting because he was about to ask his very important women a very important question and had wisely brought in the talents and visions of all of KNO for help.
“Okay, okay, he’s right, guys.” Cady rocked Henry back and forth, who’d fallen asleep on her shoulder during the last half-hour of everyone hashing it all out. “Let’s get this planned and done with.”
Yeah, sleeping baby on her shoulder? She probably did want to be able to get him home.
Weston pinned everyone in the group with a look. “To reiterate: if anyone says anything about these plans to Ruby, I will have your heads.”
The group groaned, and Anjali raised her hand. “Do Delloyd and Dellynn know about this? Should we be a little quieter?”
The owners and operators of the Clucky Spud were married, adorably in love, and at the center of all things Silver Plum.
“I didn’t tell them what this was. Not in so many words. But when I asked them if we could hold an important meeting back here in their office and not to mention anything about it to Ruby, Dellynn smiled so big I was worried her face might get stuck like that. Thefirst thing Delloyd said was, ‘If you all come after the lunch rush and before the dinner rush.’ The next thing he said was, ‘Atta boy!’” Weston’s face went a little red. “So, I think it’s pretty obvious to them.”
Weston cleared his throat and began again. “Any more questions for me before we run down the schedule again?”
