Page 59 of Single Mom for the Firemen

I bust out laughing, raising my eyebrows at him. “Yeah, convincing job making it sound like you’re not desperate to read the first draft,” I tease him.

He shrugs. “Hey, if I’m going to be put to paper, I at least deserve to know what’s being said about me, don’t I?”

“It’s very positive. Very flattering. You have my word on that.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing you would say if you were trying to hide what’s really going on in those pages,” he shoots back.

I plant my hands on my hips and come to a halt as I turn to him outside the store. “Well, I guess you’re going to have to find some way to bribe me to make sure that I show you in a good light in the book.”

“Hmm, bribery, huh?” he murmurs as he moves in close to me, looping his arms around my waist and pulling me into him. I giggle, planting my hands against his chest. I can already feel a few strange looks from the people around us, probably wondering why we’re getting frisky in the parking lot of this no-name grocery store on the edge of town, but I don’t care. Not when he feels this good, this close to me. “I’m sure I can come up with a few ideas…”

As he speaks, his sinks his mouth slowly into mine, and a rush of hungry want pulses through me. I know I shouldn’t be letting it get the better of me in a place like this, but damn, if there isn’t something near-painfully hot about imagining all the ways he could go about bribing me if he got it into his head that he wanted to.

And when he pulls back, my head is still spinning slightly, but I manage to arrange my features in such a way that they won’t totally make clear just how much I enjoyed this.

“That’s a start,” I tell him as I pull away. “And if you carry the groceries back to the car, that’s going to go a long way toward making this right…”

He laughs as he catches up with me. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“That’s what good journalists do,” I fire back as I grab a basket. And as we pull out the list and set about figuring out exactly where the beer is hiding in a store like this, I can’t help but smile. It might seem totally average and totally unremarkable toanyone passing by, but to me, this kind of intimacy is something that I have lacked for so long in my life.

And now that I’ve found it, I know I will never let it slip through my fingers again.

30

VANESSA

As I wrapmy hand around my coffee cup, letting the warm rays of the early-September sunshine warm my face through the living room window, I feel a smile curl up my lips.

This time last year, I was in an office, probably panicking about turning in the cartel article for the first round of edits—wondering if I’d done enough, second-guessing how hard I had worked and how much I’d put into that story, wondering if it was going to be enough, if it could ever be enough.

Of course, if I had known where it was going to lead me, after everything that happened, I probably would have left it on the shelf. The thought of my daughter getting kidnapped would have been too much for me to contend with, even if I knew it would help bring the cartel down in the long run.

But if I could have skipped forward a little and shown myself where I was going to end up? Yeah, there might have been a part of me that wanted to keep pushing forward, no matter how crazy it might seem. Because the day that I have laid out ahead of me right now feels downright perfect—and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of it.

I hear voices upstairs, and glance toward the stairs to see Killian and Mason emerging from their bedrooms.

“You think that’s going to be enough water?” Mason asks, frowning as he looks at the pack on Killian’s back. Killian rolls his eyes skyward at what is clearly not the first of his brother’s questions he’s had to deflect this morning so far.

“We’re going for a hike, not trying to start a new civilization,” he points out. “It’s plenty. You got the food…?”

“I have it,” Jake cuts in, as he emerges with a large backpack and sets it down on the counter.

My eyes widen. “Hey, how much do you have in there?” I protest. “It looks like you’ve packed the whole damn store…”

“There’s four of us,” he reminds me. “And by the time we’ve done this hike, you’ll be hungry, trust me.”

“Or maybe we’ll find some other way to work up an appetite,” Killian murmurs to me, briefly resting his hand on my waist as he brushes by.

I grin as I take another sip of my coffee. To be honest, I kind of like the idea of going out there and getting up to something a little dangerous—I know it’s not their MO, causing trouble in the woods, but now that the end of summer has finally come around, don’t they deserve a chance to blow off some steam?

Mason has been planning this hike all week. It’s one he does at the end of every summer, he told me, to plant a rock on top of the small tower that he created near the peak of one of the hills that looks down over the forest. A way to commemorate the hard work they put in, and the fact that the forest is still standing at all, after everything it’s been through.

And I have seen so much more out here than I ever would have imagined. Not just what’s happened to Callie and me, but the level of work the guys put in to keep this place safe. Getting up early every morning to patrol for fires that were left undoused the night before, and might have spread to the surrounding trees. Heading out in the middle of the night to offer aid to a hiker who got lost and ended up banging on their door in search of help. I had no idea how much went into keeping this place safe—both for people and from people—and their quiet sense of duty has been incredible to witness in the months since I arrived here.

And of course, it has formed the basis for an amazing story for my book. It’s really starting to take shape now—I spend enough time working on it these days that I’m always getting hassled by one or the other of them to read it, but I don’t want them to look at it until it’s done. No, when the time is right, I’ll give them the completed manuscript and let them see the story in its full glory, but until then they’re not getting anywhere near my words. They’re under lock and key until I can do them justice, however long it takes.

But today, I’m taking a day away from work. Callie is at school—where she is thriving—and I’m heading out into the woods. Once we have everything gathered, I slip on my shoes and pull on a light jacket, grabbing a pack and hooking it over my shoulders.

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