Page 5 of Deck the Fire Halls

Shit. He thought I was gonna jump him.

I stepped inside and smiled at him with my hands up, wanting him to see I was no threat, and a little disappointed he didn’t recognize me. “My name’s Soren,” I said. “Your next-door neighbor at home and here, it seems.” I gestured to the fire hall across the street. “Just over there. I saw you pull in. I recognized your car. You just moved here, right?”

He blinked and he flustered a little. “Right, yes. Ugh. I’m so sorry about yesterday. I don’t even know what I was thinking.”

“That those flamingo pajamas are a bold statement?” I was aiming for funny...

His whole face scrunched up in the cutest way before he buried it in his hands. “Oh my god, I’m so horrified.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. I liked them.”

One cautious eye appeared from behind his fingers.

“I’m serious,” I added, as nonchalantly as I could. “Anyway, I recognized your car and saw you come in and just wanted to say hi and welcome you to town. I didn’t want you to think we got off on the wrong foot or anything.” I took a step toward him and held my hand out. “Soren De Silva.”

He stared at my hand, and for a long moment, I thought he wasn’t going to take it. He seemed to shake off his embarrassment and took my hand. “Rob O’Reilly. Doctor.”

It made me smile.

He was kinda cute, in a professional, clean-cut way. Not usually my type but there really was somethingabout him that struck me. He was... god, there was something about him.

He was older than me by a few years, at a guess. He was pale, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years. And he had dark, tired circles under his eyes.

But under that . . .

His blue eyes hid a story I wanted to hear. His lips looked as if he worried them with his teeth too much.

Realizing I’d been staring a beat too long, I nodded to the box he’d carried in. “First day?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said. He slid his messenger bag onto the counter and opened the archive box, revealing some stationary, a small medical skeleton thing, and a certificate frame. “Need to get acquainted, I guess.”

Yeah, there was definitely a story in those eyes.

He carried the box into the second office, and given he hadn’t told menotto follow, I assumed I was supposed to. He paused a moment to look around, then slid the box onto the desk and took the frame out first. He looked around at the walls. “Hm. I’ll need a hook. I should have thought about that.”

“I can put a hook up for you,” I offered.

He looked over at me and blinked as if surprised to see me. “Oh. No, it’s fine. I can... get one of those stick-on hooks or something.”

I pointed my thumb to the door. “We have all kinds of stuff at the fire hall, it’s no problem.”

He hesitated so I took it as a green light.

“I’ll be back in a minute and get it fixed up. You open at nine?”

He nodded.

I grinned at him. “Plenty of time.”

I jogged back across the road, unable to stop smiling.

“Oh shit,” Chuck said when he saw me. “Boss, he’s got that look.”

Doug came around from the side of the truck and looked me up and down. “Longest two minutes I ever saw.”

I grinned at him as I opened the drawer, took out a one-inch nail, and lifted the hammer from the hook on the wall. “Gonna be another two.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Doug asked.

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