“You’re not going anywhere.You’ve got time.”
He looked at their joined hands.His was filthy.Hers wasn’t much better.“You’re right,” he said quietly.“I’m not going anywhere, and I do have time.”
Noah appeared at their elbows, notebook in hand.“I wrote about the fire.Seven pages.Front and back.I drew pictures, too.”
“Good job,” Bonnie said sincerely.
“The fire triangle really works, Mom.They took away the fuel and the fire stopped.Tucker let me listen to his stethoscope, and Walter’s lungs sound like a cat purring.”
Bonnie frowned.“Walter’s lungs shouldn’t sound like that.”
“Tucker said the same thing.He used words I’m not allowed to say, though.”
Gray looked down at the boy—soot-smudged, granola-crumbed, vibrating with the excitement.He put his hand on Noah’s shoulder.
“Can I read your documentation later, Noah?”
“I’ll make you a copy.”
“That would be awesome.I’ll want to include it in my final report.”
Her son beamed.
Gray watched Noah walk back toward the ambulance, writing as he went, and she watched Gray watch him go.The expression on Gray’s face was tender, knowing, as if he understood exactly what it meant to a child to be taken seriously by an adult.As if he’d once been a child nobody took seriously enough to stay for.
He was staying here.For good.With her.
She’d known it before today.She’d known it since the parking lot, since the tailgate, since the star chart and the mud and the three thermoses.But watching him stand on this burned hillside holding her hand, covered in soot and smiling at her son’s retreating form, she didn’t just know it.She felt it deep down in the place where fear had lived inside her for four years and was, slowly but surely, being replaced by something better.
The WoWS had fought a fire today.The widows of the men who’d died in a burning barn had organized the town to stop another fire from taking anything else precious from any of them.She didn’t know about the rest of the women but today had been cathartic for her.When faced with another fire, she pitched in to help fight it in every way she knew how to, and the fire hadn’t won this time.It hadn’t taken away anything or anyone precious to her.
The pinochle group was already retelling it.By tomorrow, Ruth would be spreading a version of events in which Gray had fought the fire single-handedly with a garden hose while simultaneously delivering a calf and proposing marriage.
The real story was better.The real story was a whole town that showed up.
And at the center of it, covered in soot and ash and the quiet, bone-deep satisfaction of a man who had finally found the place where his competence and his heart pointed in the same direction, stood Grayson Lawton, holding her hand.The man who didn’t leave.The man who stayed.
Want to find spend just a little more time with Gray, Bonnie, and the kids?Access an exclusive bonus scene featuring them in my letter to you at the end of this chapter.
…and now for a sneak peek at the next yummy hero in the Cobbler Cove series in
A FAMILY FOR DILLON…
Dillon Steele had a long list of ranch visits to make and a parvo case he was monitoring at the clinic, but instead, he was driving to a Golden Retriever breeder’s kennel because Grayson Lawton had asked him to.He considered briefly that he was more inclined to answer favors than phone calls.Which wasn’t a virtue, exactly, but it was what it was.
He met Gray on the rodeo circuit.Smart guy, a little awkward, a lot kind.They’d worked the calving disaster at the Foster Ranch together and Gray talked him into sticking around Cobbler Cove permanently.
Which was why he’d just bought a decrepit ranch house outside town.The realtor called it “distressed.”Dillon called it something to occupy his lonely evenings.He’d also leased a small clinic in town where folks could bring their pets.Told himself it was a six-month experiment.
The breeder’s kennel smelled like cedar shavings and warm milk.Nine Golden Retriever puppies tumbled around in a fenced pen like a slow-motion explosion of butter.
Gray was crouched beside the pen, grinning.Beside him stood a slim blonde with hazel eyes that went soft when she glanced at Gray.Bonnie Watson.Last week, he’d watched her run a town council meeting with twenty-six agenda items and never once consult a piece of paper.
Her kids were here, too.Cassidy was nine and had a small spiral notebook in her back pocket.She studied him the way a police officer studied a suspect, measuring but withholding judgment.The boy, Noah, was seven and vibrating like a tuning fork.He started shooting questions at Dillon before he’d cleared the door.
“Are you the vet?Have you ever been bit by a horse?Have you ever amputated a leg?What’s the biggest animal you ever delivered?”
Dillon set his bag down.“Yes.Once.Several times.And a three-hundred-pound Charolais calf, which I’d rather not relive.”
