Page 90 of My Grumpy Fire Chief Next Door
The silence stretches like a noose. I lower the phone and just… stare. Because I know. He heard it from him. And now, everything might be ruined.
Chapter twenty-four
Noah
The station's been empty for hours, but I'm still here, surrounded by silence and questions I can't answer. I can’t believe I’m doing this, probing into her life without permission, but I need to know the truth.
The Sinclair Financial logo glares back at me, all sharp edges and pretentious gold lettering. Just like the business card sitting on the desk beside me, thick cardstock, embossed.Richard Sinclair, President.
I typeKatherine Sinclairinto the search bar again, like maybe this time the results will be different.
They’re not.
There she is on the screen.
It’sher,but nother. At least, the woman staring back at me isn’t the woman I thought I knew.
The woman in these photos is polished. Perfect. Honey-blonde hair swept into some intricate updo, draped in a dress that probably costs more than my truck. Smiling that empty,practiced smile rich people learn in the cradle. At some charity gala. At a fucking yacht party.
The worst part is the fact that some of the pictures are recent, like two to three years ago, and it makes my throat tighten.
I zoom in on one photo, she’s laughing, champagne flute dangling from manicured fingers. That’s the part that guts me. She looks comfortable; like she belongs.
I can’t reconcile it with the woman who showed up to T-ball practice with her five-year-old, the woman who lights up when I gift her a chunky bracelet, the woman whose leg I get tangled with under the sheet.
The woman who drinks tea from a chipped Star Wars mug in my kitchen and paints sunflowers on the backs of old receipts.
The real question is, how much of everything that we shared was real? What was her story? What else is she hiding? Why did she have to hide? Would she have ever come clean if her father hadn’t come down to town?
I don’t even know who she is anymore—and I’m still in love with her. God help me, I’ve already fallen.
Blaze whines at my feet, pressing his cold nose into my knee, but I hardly react. His tail thumps once, hesitant. He knows how I feel. Always does.
I scrub a hand over my face. My stubble rasps against my palm, and I watch as my phone lights up again on the desk.Kate. Sixth time tonight, and still I let it ring.
Because now, little things slot into place.
The way she flinched when Tara attacked her and claimed she had something to hide. How she never talked about her family. That one time she absentmindedly corrected my wine pronunciation…It’scabernet sauvignon, not cab-er-net and then looked like she’d been slapped.
Fucking Christ.
I push back from the desk hard enough to make the wheels screech, and just then, I hear the station door creaking open and Blaze’s ears perk up.
I don’t need to check the cameras. I already know. Because I figured she’d come. Of course, she wouldn’t let me ignore this.
I step into the bay just as Kate walks in, holding a basket probably filled with food. Her hair’s coming loose from its ponytail, and there’s a smudge of paint under her nails. She looks nothing like the woman in those photos.
And everything like the woman I thought I knew.
“You weren’t picking up,” she says. Her voice is too light.
She can pretend that everything is normal, but I can’t. I can’t even get a word to pass through my tight throat, so the silence stretches between us.
Her smile falters. She shifts the basket to her other hand. “I brought dinner. Thought maybe you….”
“Why?” The single word comes out rougher than I meant it to.
She blinks. “Because you weren’t picking up and you skipped our dinner together.”
