Gray blinked.
She counted in her head.One potato.Two potato.
Comprehension dawned in his eyes.“Pretty boring, actually.Municipal regulations make for dry reading.It helped me to see some real permits and what the regulations look like in practice.”
“When you ace your class, you owe me a cup of coffee,” she replied.
“If I ace that class, I'll even throw in a stale donut for you.”
“Hey now!”Rose called out from behind the counter.“We don't serve stale donuts in this establishment.”
Bonnie laughed.“That's because your customers gobble them up so fast, they don't have time to get stale.”
So.Grayson wanted the Shoemacher barn blueprints, did he?Given that he was Cooper Lawton's brother, and Cooper, an attorney, had been quietly investigating the Shoemacher fire for Sheriff Wheeler, she knew one thing.Whatever Grayson was looking for in those blueprints, it wasn't just casual curiosity.
She didn't want to think about what he might be looking for.
The bus pulled up just then, derailing her speculation.The diner’s door banged open and her two kids tumbled in, shedding backpacks and coats and noise as they entered.
“Mom!”Noah raced across the diner, a seven-year-old with his mother's blond hair and boundless energy that suggested he was powered by a small nuclear reactor.He skidded to a stop at the booth and his eyes went wide.“Are those books aboutfire?”
“Noah—” Bonnie started.
But her irrepressible child had already picked up the nearest textbook and was staring at the cover, which had a dramatic photograph of a firefighter silhouetted against a wall of flame.
“This isso cool.”He looked up at Gray with unfiltered directness.“Are you a firefighter?”
“Not yet,” Gray said.“I'm studying to be one.”
Bonnie started.He wanted to be a firefighter?Whatever for?Doing that got good peoplekilled.
Noah demanded, “Can fires burn underwater?What's the hottest fire in the world?Is lava a fire?”
Gray leaned forward with the unconscious eagerness of a person about to share something they genuinely loved.His mouth opened, but then he caught himself.Glanced at Bonnie questioningly.
She gave him a small nod ofgo ahead, he'll love it, and Gray turned back to Noah.
“Lava isn't technically fire,” he said.“Fire requires three things: fuel, oxygen, and heat.Lava is just very hot rock that gives off a lot of heat.It’s not a fuel source.But it's about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than most structural fires.”
“Whoa.”Noah slid into the booth beside Gray, uninvited, as if he'd been sitting next to this stranger his whole life.“What's the hottest fire there is?”
“The sun is the hottest thing in our solar system.But if we're talking about fires on Earth, that would be burning dicyanoacetylene in ozone.Burns around six thousand degrees, which is pretty close to the temperature of the sun's surface and hot enough to cut through steel like butter.”
Cassidy appeared beside Bonnie, dropped her backpack on the floor with a thud, and looked at the textbook Noah had commandeered.She was nine years old with light brown hair, her mother's hazel eyes, and the confident bearing of a kid who knew how to take charge of everyone and everything around her.
Her gaze moved from the textbooks to the man, and Bonnie could practically see her daughter filing information on him.Then Cassidy slid into the booth next to her mother.
“I'm Cassidy,” she said.“I’m sorry Noah barged in on your reading.He has no manners.”
“I havegreatmanners,” Noah declared indignantly.
“You sat down next to a stranger without asking.”
“He never said it wasn’t okay.That counts.”
Cassidy rolled her eyes at her brother and opened her mouth with the clear intent to order her brother out of Gray’s booth.
Grayson cut in, “Hi, Cassidy.I'm Grayson.Pleased to meet you.And it’s fine if Noah sits here and looks at my books.”
