The Firefighter's Family Secret. Shirley Jump
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“Still testing us out, huh?” She grinned. “Well, I can tell you this much about Stone Gap. It defines small town. If you sneeze over your Wheaties at breakfast, half the town is lined up for a flu shot by lunchtime. Most everyone here grew up in each other’s pockets, as my dad likes to say. Which means everyone knows pretty much everything about everyone else.”
“Sounds...suffocating.”
“It can be.” She shrugged. “But in a small town, someone’s always there if you need help. If you’re down, there’s a neighbor or a friend to pull you back up. Stone Gap has its faults, like any place, but at its core, it’s a great town to live in. And you can’t beat the weather or the fact that we’re right on the water.”
He chuckled. “Are you with the welcoming committee?”
She blushed, a soft pink that stole across her cheeks. “No, I just...finally learned to appreciate this place.”
“I’ve never lived in a place that I loved like that. Atlanta’s fine, but it’s a big city. You can get...lost there pretty easily.” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head.
“Lost in more ways than one?” she said softly.
Colton cleared his throat. He wasn’t about to unload his life history in a hardware store with a woman he barely knew. Even if every time she smiled, she made him want to linger for hours on end. “Well, thanks for the tips about Stone Gap. I’ll keep them in mind.”
“Sure. Anytime. And if you want the twenty-five-cent tour, you know where I am.”
“Twenty-five cents? That’s it?”
She blushed again. “It’s a small town.”
That made him laugh. “Harry already told me where the best apple pie is.”
“Then you’re down to the twenty-cent tour. Unless you have already discovered the best place for making out.” The blush intensified. “I meant, for the teenagers.”
“Of course.” Making out? That made him think about climbing in the backseat of his car with Rachel and seeing where it might lead. Not a good train of thought to follow, but that didn’t stop him from a quick mental image. “Us old people are too mature for that.”
“Definitely.”
Yet everything in the undercurrent of their conversation said differently. He might be out of practice in the dating arena, but he sensed some definite attraction in the air. He had the strangest urge to lean across the counter and kiss her right now.
“Uh, I should sign this.” He bent his head and scrawled his name across the receipt then handed it back to her.
“Thanks,” she said. She lifted the fishing pole and gave it to him. “Need anything else?”
Your phone number, his brain whispered. Because he definitely wanted to get to know Rachel Morris, fisherwoman and shortstop, much better. But he was leaving in a few days, so asking her out wouldn’t make any sense.
But as he headed out of the store, Colton had to wonder if maybe forgoing her number was the thing that didn’t make any sense, because she lingered in his mind long after he cast the first line into the water.
Rachel dusted shelves that didn’t need dusting and tidied displays that were already tidy. It was a Tuesday, one of the least busy days in her dad’s shop. Her only customer had been the tall, good-looking firefighter in a faded blue T-shirt and stonewashed jeans that hugged his legs and told her Colton Barlow was a man who worked out. A lot. Good Lord, his biceps alone were enough to make her mind start fantasizing. Hot and yummy, and a definite change from the older, potbellied retirees who usually came into the store.
Men who looked like Colton Barlow, and had a killer smile like his, didn’t come to Stone Gap very often. He’d stayed long enough that she almost thought he was going to ask her out. But in the end, he just paid for his purchase and headed out the door. Clearly, she’d read him wrong. Of course, she hadn’t helped things by being such a dork and blushing every five seconds, or making that stupid comment about the best place to make out. It was as if she was back in high school again and crushing on the cute boy in English class.
She shouldn’t have been disappointed—after all, she was the one who had sworn off men until she had more than five minutes of free time a day—but she was. It would have been nice, really nice, if he’d noticed more than just the type of rod and reel she was selling him.
At six she locked up, got in her car and drove across town to the three-bedroom bungalow where she’d grown up. The flower beds were overrun with weeds, the trees in desperate need of trimming and the white picket fence out front had faded to a dingy gray. It was as if time had stopped in that house, and now everything else was slowly giving up the fight.
Rachel sighed, parked her car in the drive then headed inside. Just like the outside, the interior of the house was dark and dingy, coated with a fine layer of dust and despair.
Before her mother’s death, her father had been at his store day in and day out, clocking in when the shop first opened and staying as long as anyone needed to buy something from him. Her mother had manned the ship at the house, keeping up with the plants and dishes and creating a home with everything she did.
But then cirrhosis had taken Rachel’s mother last year, leaving all of them with a hole too wide to fill. It had hit Ernie especially hard. He’d made himself a hermit in the house, losing interest in the store, in fishing, in his life. For that entire year, Rachel had run the shop single-handedly, putting her own life on hold, leaving her father to grieve while she ordered supplies and paid bills and swept the floors.
For ten months he hadn’t asked her a single question about how the store was doing. But she’d come by every day nonetheless and given him a recap. Then one day he’d called her in the middle of the day, asked her how it was going. It wasn’t much, but her father’s spark of interest had given Rachel hope that maybe, just maybe, she could get back to her own venture someday soon. Assuming she still had one, given the dent one year of not working had made in her bridal business. Just when Happily Ever After Weddings was getting off the ground, Rachel had to put it all to the side. She’d lost several bookings, and had probably given up all the ground she had worked so hard to gain the year before. But her father had needed her, and that was all that mattered.
Someday he’d be back in charge, and she’d go back to her life. Someday.
She found her father sitting at the kitchen table, a crossword puzzle in front of him. He had filled in only a handful of clues since she’d left him this morning in the same place, with the same folded section of newspaper in his hands. The breakfast dishes still sat in the sink, and there was nothing in the stove for dinner. Rachel worried that if she ever stopped coming by, her father would stop eating altogether. It was as if losing his wife had made him lose his motivation to move forward. Move anywhere, period.
“Good evening, Dad.” She pressed a kiss to his unshaven cheek. She missed the scent of his cologne, the smoothness of his skin after he shaved. “What’s for dinner?”
“I...uh...haven’t thought about it.” He blinked, his eyes bleary and red, probably from getting a few fitful hours of sleep in the recliner in front of the TV. His white hair stuck up on his head, and his T-shirt looked as though it hadn’t been washed in a month. “The day goes by so fast sometimes. I didn’t even realize it was that time already.”
“Why don’t I just throw some chicken on the grill?” Rachel pulled open the fridge and pulled out a package of meat, acting like everything was okay. That it didn’t make her heart hurt to see her once robust and busy father sitting here like a lump of clay. “You still have those potatoes?”
“Potatoes?”
“I bought them at the store yesterday. Remember?”
“Oh,