Page 63 of Single Mom for the Firemen

That’s it. Done. Finally.

I lean back from the computer and close my eyes, rubbing my hands over my face as the enormity of it really sinks in—it’s finished. Complete. Over. Well, the first draft, at least. I’m sure there’s a whole lot more I have to do before it’s ready for publication, but after the better part of a year’s work, I have finally completed my book on the guys, and I couldn’t be happier.

Of course, I have to send it off to Lara, and I know she’s probably going to have a million more questions about everything that I’ve put in there. I have tried to talk to her about it as little as possible, in the hopes that it will give her a really authentic reaction to it as a first-time reader and not as my best friend. Though, of course, there are still a few bits of gossip about my new-fangled relationship that have been too juicy to hide from her…

Speaking of. I hear footsteps coming up the stairs, toward the makeshift office that I set up for myself in the bedroom—glancing around, I see Mason standing in the doorway with a coffee, and he makes his way over to the desk to plant it down next to me.

“Thought you could use a little boost.”

“Always,” I reply, reaching for the cup. “But you’re actually a little late. I just finished it.”

“Hell, yeah!” he exclaims, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “So does that mean we’ll finally be able to read it…?”

“Soon,” I laugh. “I want to run it by Lara first. Besides, I’m sure the three of you won’t find it very interesting. It’s just about everything we’ve already talked about in interviews for the book…”

“Are you kidding?” he protests. “I can’t wait. I can’t believe you’ve been making us wait so long when this is all about us, anyway…”

I take another sip of my coffee and rise to my feet, slipping a hand into his.

“Well, you’ll just have to exercise your patience a little longer,” I tease him. “Think you can manage that…?”

“If you can give me plenty of distractions, I could give it a try,” he replies as he goes to kiss me—but before he can, there’s an explosion of noise and energy downstairs, and we pull apart.

“Guess that means Callie’s done for the summer,” I remark, laughing, as I head for the stairs to go greet my daughter.

It’s hard to believe that her first year of school has come and gone so quickly—it feels like just yesterday I was helping her get ready for her very first day, but now she’s ready to start her very first summer vacation. And of course, she’s going to be spending it the same way she has spent the whole rest of this year so far, when she hasn’t been at school—in the cabin, with me and the guys, or exploring the forest as the longer nights draw in.

“Hey!” Killian calls from downstairs. He’s the one who picked up Callie from her last half-day at school, insisting that I needed time to work on my book without distractions. I think he’s as keen to read it as Jake is, though he’s been playing it cool, making as though he doesn’t even really care what I have to say about him in there.

“Hey,” I reply as I arrive at the bottom of the stairs—just in time for Callie to wrap me in a massive hug that nearly knocks me off my feet. I laugh as I catch her, stumbling back into the staircase slightly and kissing the top of her head.

“Hey, you need to be a little more careful with your mom!” I protest, though I know it’s going to fall on deaf ears. “I’m delicate…”

“Not that delicate,” Jake jokes as he steps out of the kitchen. I fire a look over my shoulder at him, but I can hardly find it in me to get mad as he stoops down to greet Callie.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs to her, and she practically springs away from me to give him a hug. She squeezes him tight, and I pause for a moment, just taking in the sight of the two of them together.

In the last year, Callie has grown close with all the guys. She and Mason have taken adventures out into the woods, where she hashelped him with his note-taking on the flora and fauna of the forest. Killian has even shown her how their walkie-talkies work, taking them apart and putting them back together so she knows she’ll always be able to reach them. On some of those nights when they were out dealing with calls, she was up late, clearly worried sick. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that they’re such a new addition to her life, but it bothered Killian enough that he went out of his way to assure her they would always come home.

And the relationship she has developed with Jake is the sweetest of all. Though she knows nothing about what Jake has been through, it’s almost as though there’s some part of her that can tell he needs a little extra love when it comes to family. The closeness they share, it means a lot to both of them—I don’t think Callie realized until the guys were a part of her life just how much she was missing a father figure, but having three of them, she’s spoiled for choice.

“So, a whole summer up here with us, huh?” Killian jokes to her as he straightens up. “How are you going to put up with us?”

“If you figured it out,” Mason adds as he comes down the stairs, “then share it with me. I still can’t figure out how I’m meant to handle these guys…”

Jake muttersassholeunder his breath, quietly enough that Callie doesn’t hear it, but he’s grinning. He’s relaxed a lot over the course of the last year—he doesn’t seem as on edge at every little thing, the way he was when we first met. Or maybe I just got a skewed view of him because I first met them when I was in the middle of burning a pie. I’m not sure. Either way, this version of him—I like it a whole hell of a lot.

“How was your last day at school?” I ask Callie as she heads through to the kitchen to get something to eat—I swear she’s shot up over the last few months, and she’s eating me out of house and home. Thank God for the salary Lara still has me on, or I would have nothing left to survive on myself.

“Great!” she replies, through a mouthful of cookies she grabbed from the tin. “We watched a movie and we played games, and…”

As we all follow her to the kitchen, she fills us in on everything she got up to, and I perch at the breakfast bar and listen with a smile. I wasn’t sure how she was going to get on at school, given how crazy things were in the few months leading up to her first day—but, if what her therapist has told me is anything to go by, she’s a resilient little thing, and starting school when she did was the perfect distraction from the memories of the kidnapping that sometimes kept her up at night.

A cold shiver runs down my spine at the memory. Even though it was barely over a year ago, it feels like another lifetime when all of that went down. Back then, I had no idea how the guys really felt about me. They might have already known they cared, but as far as I was concerned, this was just a fling that would last the length of the summer. It wasn’t until they came to us then, so fearlessly, and rescued us in the face of the cartel trying to steal us away, that it really clicked for me just how much they meant it when they said they cared.

And just how much I need them in my life too. It’s not just Callie and me against the world anymore—looking back, I can hardly believe I survived so long like that. I might have made it through, but I was on full-steam-ahead mode for years, never taking a second of time to process everything, never really considering where all of this left me.

But now I can breathe. I’m not the only one taking care of Callie anymore; we all step up and do our part—not just in raising her, but in making the world a better place for her.

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