Gray gave her space, not crowding her.Somewhere in her bout of grief, he’d leaned one shoulder against the doorframe leading to the engine bay and seemed prepared to wait there all day for her.Which was immensely kind of him.And perceptive to realize it might be emotional for her to be back here.
She was exceptionally grateful that he didn’t try to hug her.Shehatedbeing hugged when she was fighting off grief.
If it had been the simple straightforward grief of loving a man, losing him tragically and suddenly, and spending years missing him and dealing with his loss, maybe she would have been able to accept comfort from others.But as it was, her grief was embroiled in a complicated stew of other emotions and memories, some of which were so bitter they made the entire stew of feelings entirely unpalatable and impossible to digest.
She also appreciated that Gray didn't speak.The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her feelings.And certainly not here.Not in this place that had been Brent’s home as much as their house had been, the men here his family as much as she and the kids had been.
Grayson just stood there, quietly present.
More feelings battered at her in waves, but not at the even intervals of a tide and not at the extreme highs and lows of a tsunami anymore.Thankfully, her seawall was back in place after that appalling emotional break just now.
Grayson was clearly going to let her lead any conversation that happened next.
She should say something.Find an innocuous topic.Something safe.
She cleared her throat.Said lamely, “Brent was the assistant captain of the department.He loved this place.”
“Tell me about him?”
It was the gentlest ambush she'd ever walked into.Four words.Asked easily, without any real demand for an answer.She never talked about Brent, but suddenly words were pouring out of her, a cascade of memories tumbling into her brain and out her mouth before she could stop them.
She told how Brent had joined the department as soon as they moved to Cobbler Cove.How he kept his firefighting gear shined up like new and the guys teased him for waxing his rubber boots so they'd be shiny, too.
She described how he told her stories about his callouts, small-town emergencies that made them both laugh.A cow on the highway, a cat in a chimney, old Mrs.Farber calling 911 because her smoke detector was chirping and she thought a bird was trapped in her walls.
She felt a smile on her face, and it surprised her.
The last time she'd been in this building, she'd been screaming while the sky glowed orange outside the window and the Shoemacher fire raged on.The captain of the Apple Pie Creek Fire Department had come here to tell the assembled wives none of their husbands had made it out of the Shoemacher barn alive.
Even as her memory of that moment surfaced, her brain shut it down, cramming it back into its mental drawer, and slamming the drawer shut so fast she barely registered it consciously.
She didn't tell Grayson any of the bad stuff.She kept it light, kept it safe, kept the ugly drawers with big hairy monsters hiding in them tightly shut.
But standing in this dead firehouse and speaking her dead husband's name to a man who listened the way Gray listened—without interrupting, without offering comfort she hadn't asked for, with that steady, compassionate gaze—cracked something in her composure that she hadn't known was loose.
She stopped talking as abruptly as she'd started.“I should go pick up the kids.”
“Of course.”
“I'll let you know when I can get over to the storage unit for the blueprints.”
“Any time, day or night.I’ll be there.”He flashed her a smile, a little bit wry, a little bit shy, and a great deal attractive.
That man's smile was a lethal weapon.
And on that note, the widow with two kids needed to stop ogling the hot future firefighter and get out of here.
She hurried out into the cold afternoon.She didn't look back at the duty roster.She didn't look at the bunk room stairs leading to where her husband slept his last night on earth because she told him not to come home.
She got in her car and sat for a minute, gripping the steering wheel until her hands ached.
Belatedly, it dawned on her that Gray would know she was sitting in her car like this and hadn't driven away.Embarrassed, she hastily started the engine, pulled out of the fire station, and went to pick up her children.
3
The problem with solving a small town's agricultural mystery, Gray discovered, was that word traveled at the speed of Ruth Sanger.And that woman's mouth was supersonic.
He'd barely settled into his usual booth at the diner when Ruth materialized at his elbow with the inexorable momentum of a weather front.
