Page 72 of The Spark Between Us

She stopped moving around the room and looked at me. Then she walked over to where I stood, wrapped her arms around me, and laid her head on my chest. She didn’t tell me about Earl or explain that the sixty-year-old physicist wasn’t any kind of threat. She didn’t need to.

I stroked her hair, and inhaled a calming breath. To hell with Earl. I had everything I needed.

Lifting her face from my chest, I brushed a gentle kiss against her lips and reached for her hand. I opened the fridge to check the inventory of leftovers and catalog whether we had any decent ingredients. “How about a grilled cheese?”

Sarah licked her lips. “Perfect.”

A few minutes later, I’d hustled up two sandwiches and a couple cans of sweetened iced tea, and we continued our tour of the place.

“Where is everyone?” Sarah looked around the bay, craning her neck to check the corners where she must have thought the guys were hiding.

“Out on a call. Downed power pole, so they need to be onsite in case the wires spark up during removal. They were heading out when I left to get you.” I hesitated, knowing she got nervous at the thought of me being in danger, but I had to tell her. There was a good chance that tonight’s shit would get real.

She studied me. “What aren’t you telling me?” I recalled asking her the same thing when we were at the bike shop, and I saw the depths of concern in her eyes about losing her license. Apparently, she’d learned to read me too. I liked it. A lot.

“There’s a decent chance we’ll get called out tonight on something bigger. Grisley Fire. It’s burning out in Mount Diablo.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, yeah. I heard about that. Is it bad?”

I wanted to lie and allay her fears, but the fire was zero percent contained, and we were heading into a potentially rough night. “It’s not great. Already burned over ten thousand acres. So far, we haven’t been called for backup, but we’re standing by. The real danger is tonight if the wind doesn’t do what we’re expecting.”

“What are you expecting?” She took a step closer to me, protectively. I wasn’t too worried about the fire, but I loved knowing she cared.

“Well, the weather report shows easterly wind in the evening, which would be great because it would force the fire back over the area that’s already burned. So that’ll give us time to regroup and get a handle on it.”

Sarah exhaled a breath she’d been holding, and her shoulders dropped. She blinked up at me and nodded. “Oh. Okay, well, that sounds good. I feel better knowing that.”

I knew she was nervous, but I didn’t want to sugarcoat things so much that it was as good as a lie.

“Yeah, it’s just...fires are weird because fires create their own wind, so even when we think we know what the weather is going to do, the fire can do something else. That’s when things happen, like when the whole town of Paradise burned to the ground. It happened too fast for anyone to predict it. The fire burned four football fields worth of brush a second.”

“Jesus.” She was silent after that, and I knew her mind was racing with the implications. And I knew the question that would be on her mind next. “You think you’ll get called tonight?”

I nodded. I couldn’t lie to her. Didn’t want to. “It’s likely.”

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders like she was getting ready for battle. “Okay then, let’s tour this place and hope for easterly winds.”

* * *

Everyone hastheir favorite part of the station, and I was no different. I leaned into the history.

Knowing Sarah, there was a decent chance she’d done her research and already knew about the odd artifact I wanted to show her, but I held out hope it might still surprise her.

We walked into the front gallery, where I guided her to what looked pretty much like an ordinary lightbulb. Encased in a wooden display box, it burned dimly. “It’s called the Millennium Light. And it holds a world record.” I pointed at the barely shining bulb, which glowed like the dying light of a ten-year-old flashlight. The thing wouldn’t impress a soul without a history lesson.

“Really? For what? I feel like I should have heard of this.”

“Nah, not unless you live around here. You can see it’s not super bright, just four watts, but this thing has been burning for over one hundred and ten years.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yup. It’s in the Guinness Book.”

Dude, you’re showing her a geriatric lightbulb.

Did she even care? What was I doing?

Her bright eyes told me she did. “Well, that’s something to crow about. Go, little light bulb.” She smiled, but when her eyes drifted over my face without looking me in the eye, I knew her mind was churning.

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