Page 10 of An Adventure For Aster

“Gotta go,” he said. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

“You too,” she said and moved her kids into the long line to follow the rest into the building.

“What was that all about?” Carter asked when he climbed in the truck. Carter was driving.

“One of the kids from a few weeks ago said hi. He wants to be a fireman. Asked his teacher if they could do a fire truck project.”

Carter laughed. “With the cute teacher, I see.”

“I doubt the kid was thinking along those lines,” he said.

“You’d be crazy if you weren’t,” Carter said. “Unless you’re taken.”

Aster didn’t talk much about his personal life. He didn’t think Carter even knew what he did now. When he’d first started to volunteer he only gave his background that Carter would have seen showing he’d been trained in the service. He’d said he was working construction, which was the truth when he first moved to the area.

It still was the truth with him working on the expansion building, but half the time he was in the plant dealing with things there too.

“No,” he said.

“That was your opportunity to ask her out,” Carter said.

He squinted one eye at Carter in the truck. “We were there on a fire call and you think I’m going to ask someone out? How long has it been since you’ve had to ask someone for a date?”

“Too long,” Carter said. “I’ve been with my wife since college. I probably have lost touch with reality.”

“Just a little,” he said, holding up two fingers.

“It’s a small community,” Carter said. “Maybe you’ll run into her again. She’s from the area.”

“You know her?” he asked. He wasn’t sure why that surprised him. Maybe because he was from a town that had over a hundred thousand people, while Stonington, where he volunteered and where this school was, had maybe twenty thousand people, if that. Mystic barely five thousand.

He lived and worked in Stonington. Blossoms was split between the plant and the storefront on the main street in Mystic. Zane was only a few minutes away on the large property that belonged to Lily and held all the greenhouses.

The whole area was small and it seemed everyone knew everyone else’s business half the time.

“Sure,” Carter said. “Well, not personally. Her brother is a doctor and another brother a state trooper. I was a year ahead of River in school. I’m not sure how old Raine is. She wasn’t in high school when I was there, I don’t believe.”

He didn’t know which one was River, the doctor or the trooper, but found it funny that they both had water names.

“She looks young to me.”

“I bet she’s thirty,” Carter said. “Or thereabouts. I’m thirty-six.”

Which was two years older than him. He’d thought Carter was older than that. Guess maybe he lost touch with things too.

“Still doesn’t mean she’s single or that I’m going to ask someone out while I’m on the job.”

“As I said,” Carter said, “you’ll probably run into her again.”

When they got back to the firehouse, he changed out of his gear and went back to work.

“Everything okay?” Ivy Greene asked him. “I heard it was the school.”

Ivy worked as an assistant to the three owners of Blossoms and was out at the plant a lot.

He found her upbeat and pleasant. Maybe a little annoying with it, but she was harmless in his eyes. He had dark things in his life so being around someone cheerful wasn’t a hardship.

“Yes,” he said. “Someone smoking and afraid to get caught had their cigarette catch papers on fire in the garbage.”

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