by Score, Lucy
“Well, I didn’t know pinkeye could spread that quickly,” she joked.
“Dreamy, get you a drink?” Linc called from the cooler.
She gave him a thumbs-up, and he handed one of the kids a beer and directed her toward Mack.
“Dreamy, hmm?” Gloria said. “I heard our handsome fire chief sent you flowers this week.”
“He was being funny,” Mack insisted.
“Nothing says hilarious like a bouquet of wildflowers.”
It clicked then. Gloria managed the floral shop in town. “And you made the arrangement.”
Her smile was quick. “Guilty as charged. Linc swung by to personally sign the card, you know.”
Both women skimmed their gazes over the man who was grazing at the food table and keeping up an animated discussion with Sadie.
It didn’t mean anything. They were flirting. Flirts flirted.
“Well, thank you both for making me feel so welcome,” Mack said lamely. God, her small talk was rusty.
“We’ll have you feeling smothered in no time,” Aldo predicted.
“How’s the firm doing?” she asked him.
“Good. Swamped. We’re bringing on another engineer. This bridge project turned out to be a massive undertaking.” As he talked, he draped his arm around Gloria’s slim shoulders. It was a casual gesture, one Mack wasn’t sure if he was conscious of. His wife curled into him as if she had always belonged in his arms.
It was…sweet. Romantic. Beautiful to see a man who’d sacrificed so much finally be rewarded. And what the hell was in this beer? A love potion?
“Daddy!” The tiniest Vietnamese toddler raced over to Aldo, heedless of the giant smoking grill behind him. She threw herself at the man with the confidence of a little girl who knew that her dad would always catch her.
“There’s my girl,” Aldo said, swinging her up on his hip and giving her a noisy kiss between her lopsided, black pigtails. “Lucia, say hello to Dr. Mack.”
“Hi! Do you like dinosaurs or ponies better?” Lucia demanded.
“Hi. Um. Dinosaurs?” Mack answered.
Lucia gave an approving nod. “Good. Me, too. Daddy, can I have a snack?”
“Listen here, snack weasel,” Gloria said, tickling her daughter under the arms and then transferring her to her own hip. “Dinner is in fifteen minutes. You may not have a snack, but you will eat every bite of your delicious dinner, and you’ll say thank you to everyone who made the food.”
Lucia’s brow furrowed. “Okay. Then I can have a snack?”
Mack smothered a laugh.
Aldo watched his wife and daughter wander off, still arguing. “Ain’t life something?”
“This side of five years, and I was hauling your ass across the desert in a helicopter,” Mack mused. “And now here you are.”
“And now here we are,” he said. “Come meet the newest member of the family.”
She followed him across the yard to where the stocky woman was bellowing sweet sentiments into a wide-eyed baby’s face.
“You are just the cutest little baby in the whole wide world,” Mrs. Moretta shouted.
“Ma! Avery’s not deaf. You’re piercing her eardrums,” Aldo said, sweeping the baby out of his mother’s grip.
“I’m not piercing her eardrums! She loves when I talk to her!”
“Ma, this is Mackenzie O’Neil. I believe you screamed at her on the phone once.”
Mrs. Moretta gave Mack a formidable stare. “You the one who saved this dumbass’s life?”
“Uh. One of them,” Mack said.
The woman wrapped her in what apparently was the Moretta family back-breaking hug. “You’re okay by me, doc.”
“Ma, please stop strangling her,” Aldo said, trying to wedge his way between them.
Reluctantly, Mrs. Moretta released Mack from her death grip. “You’re a good girl, honey,” the woman said at an almost conversational level.
“Now that you can breathe, this is our daughter Avery,” Aldo said, holding up the round-cheeked baby. She had Aldo’s complexion, Gloria’s eyes, and, so far, she hadn’t demonstrated Mrs. Moretta’s vocal cords. But Mack wasn’t ruling out the possibility.
The baby gave her a toothless, drooly grin, and Mack felt a funny, mushy sensation in her chest.
“Want to hold her?” Aldo offered.
Mack’s hands rose at the same time she shook her head. “Oh, no. That’s okay. I don’t really know how—”
“Let a pro show you,” Linc said, muscling his way into the conversation. “Hey, pretty girl!”
The baby’s eyes widened, and after a moment of contemplation, she giggled and held out her chubby arms to him.
Aldo expertly transferred Avery into Linc’s arms. The baby looked up at him in awe. She reached up to touch his jaw with a drool-covered fist. Linc pretended to eat her hand, and Mack felt lightheaded.
It was as if she’d hit the very last snooze on her biological clock. But she wasn’t a husband and babies type of woman. She wasn’t sure exactly what type of woman she was, but it was a thousand percent not a mommy.
She took a long pull on her beer.
Harper danced into their circle and gave Avery a smooch on her round cheek. “I’m so glad you all could come over tonight. We’ve been so busy with back to school that I almost forgot what socializing was like.”
“Well, you’ll get to socialize with someone very special,” Mrs. Moretta shouted mysteriously.
Harper’s face lit up. “Tell me everything, Mrs. Moretta.”
“Well, his name is Ricky, and we met on an app. He’s fifty-four, and his profile says he’s an entrepreneur.”
“That’s code for unemployed, Ma. And you can’t just invite a boyfriend no one’s met to a family get-together,” Aldo complained.
“Why the hell not? James did!” Mrs. Moretta pointed accusingly in the direction of the man walking through the gate in the fence.
He looked like Luke, and the way Sophie hug-tackled him told Mack he was definitely family.
Behind him, another man stood tentatively in the open gate, holding a covered dish.
“They came!” Harper clasped her hands together. “I’m so excited!”
“I’m gonna get a closer look.” Mrs. Moretta barreled across the yard with Harper on her heels.
Claire and Charlie rose from their pile of grandkids and started toward the newcomers, too.
“Small town gossip update. That’s James, Luke and Sophie’s brother. After years of serially dating women, he realized he was very, very gay,” Aldo said.
Linc pointed the baby in the direction of the couple. “Do you see that nice, handsome guy with Uncle James, Aves? That’s Manny, and it’s the first time Uncle James has brought a boy home to meet the family, so be nice and try not to barf on him.”
Mack watched as Harper gave James and then Manny welcoming hugs. Claire and Sophie each took one of Manny’s arms and led him in the direction of the beer cooler while James and his dad, Charlie, hugged it out.
“Moretta, dogs are done,” Luke called from the grill.
“Duty calls.”
“He forgot his baby,” Mack said.
“Time for your crash course in baby holding,” Linc announced. “Now, Avery here is three months old. So she prefers to be up so she can see what’s going on,” he said, demonstrating.
“It’s fine. Really. I don’t need to hold her.”
But he was depositing the wiggly bundle in her arms, and she was holding on tight.
“If I drop her, I’m blaming you,” she hissed.
Avery apparently thought that was hilarious. Her giggle was belly deep and ridiculously charming.
“Oh, you’re very cute,” Mack told her. Avery beamed up at her and made a humming noise.
“See? You’re a natural,” Linc said, leaning in to make faces over Mack’s shoulder.
She could smell his shower gel, his deodorant. She could feel the heat that pumped off his body. It felt…close. Intimate. An
d entirely inappropriate for all her new goals.
She turned and took a step back to put a little distance between them. “How’s the shoulder?” she asked abruptly.
He circled his arm slowly. “Still a little tender. How are you at massage?” he asked wolfishly.
“About as good as I am at holding babies.”
“That good, huh? Maybe you can sneak over the fence sometime and—”
Mack whirled around. “Not in front of the baby!”
14
It was a study in normal. Parents, couples, families. All enjoying a Friday night with the people they loved the most. Mack felt an odd, decades-old ache at the unfamiliarity of it all.
“What do you think? Wanna give it a go?” Once again, Linc appeared at her side. It kept happening, one of them drawn into the other’s orbit in this backyard.
“Give what a go?”
“Marriage. Kids. Backyard BBQs on a Friday night with half the town in attendance. I’ve got the day off Wednesday. We could swing by the justice of the peace.”
She knew he was flirting. But there was something intoxicating about him being so close, so focused on her.
“Yeah, I don’t think I have those genes,” she sighed. “I can barely recognize healthy family dynamics, let alone live them.”
“You’d figure it out,” he said with confidence. “I’d help.”
“I appreciate your faith in me. But this is like a foreign language to me.” She lifted her beer. “They make it look easy.”
“That’s because you’re seeing the end result of years of blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Aldo definitely deserves a happily ever after,” she said, remembering in a flash his ashen face, covered in dirt and blood. The way he clung to the hand of her other patient, cracking jokes, while she grimly kept him from bleeding out.
“They all do, Dreamy. Just like you.”
“I’ve got too many skeletons,” she said lightly. There were too many dents and dings between childhood and here. Reminders that there were no guarantees.
“Did you know that Gloria was in an abusive relationship that almost got her killed?” He said it calmly as if he were discussing the weather. “Or that Harper lost her parents and grew up in foster care. She put a foster parent in prison for abuse when she was twelve. Got a broken arm and ribs for putting herself between a monster and another kid. And then there’s Garrison.”
“No love lost between you two,” she observed.
Linc grinned. “He always thinks I’m trying to steal his women.”
“He’s got good taste.” She watched Harper ruffle her oldest’s hair while she perched on Luke’s knee and said something that made her father-in-law laugh. Harper was happy. Down deep, in-the-bone happy.
“Always has. He was married before. High school sweetheart. Lost her in a car accident the day he came home from deployment. She was on her way to pick him up.” There was a tone present in Linc’s voice that she couldn’t quite identify.
“Jesus.” She took a long pull on her beer.
“They make it look easy. But it sure as hell isn’t. It’s work. Hard work. But you’re not afraid of a little manual labor, Dreamy. You’ll do fine.”
She cleared her throat, surprised at the emotion she found there. “Your approach is all wrong, Hotshot,” she complained, trying to lighten the mood.
“Educate me.”
“You can’t come at me all flirty about weddings and babies. I’m a short-term, no-strings kind of woman. No messy endings that no one saw coming. No long-term commitments. No fuss. That—” She pointed at the campfire where couples canoodled and kids begged to roast the bag of marshmallows they found. “—is not for me. Now, if you wanted to make real progress with me, you’d promise me no-holds-barred, stringless sex and a drama-free parting when one or both of us is ready to move on.”
She returned his grin. Like recognizing like.
Linc held up his hands. “I’m just laying it out there for you, Dreamy. We’re two of a kind. Peas in a pod. We can practically read each other’s minds. Why wouldn’t we want to settle down and show the rest of this town what happily ever after looks like?”
The fire chief was an expert level flirt.
Mack sighed theatrically. “I guess I’m going to need a new pair of shoes.”
“Okaaaay. Maybe I’m not reading your mind all the time yet.”
She stepped in a little closer, testing the proximity.
“I just keep trampling hearts and getting heart juice all over my shoes. Looks like you’re lining yourself up to be my next victim.”
Linc’s laugh was a loud, appreciative rumble.
“What are you two talking about over there?” Claire wondered.
“Pizza,” they said together.
“Peas in a pod, Dreamy,” Linc said under his breath. “Peas in a pod.”
* * *
The kids were fed and then sent off to a corner of the yard with a blow-up projector screen and a movie, leaving the adults to eat and chat. Meals were plated, drinks poured, seats taken.
In what Mack thought of as an interesting twist of fate, a latecomer arrived: Joni, Luke’s first wife’s mother. And with her, her long-time boyfriend Frank, a grizzled foreman with Luke’s construction company.
Linc was one of the first to greet Joni, and Mack was surprised by the tight hug they’d exchanged. They had no link that she could identify. In fact, the woman had no real link to the family either. Her daughter, Karen, had died years ago. Yet here she was, chit-chatting with Ina Moretta and Claire while the kids called her Aunt Joni.
The only negative undercurrent Mack could pick up on was Luke’s dislike of Linc. And even that felt more like habit.
“What’s with the salad fest, Garrison?” Linc asked from where he crowded Mack on her left. Broad shoulders, beefy thighs.
The host was staring morosely at his plate of vegetables. “Lost a bet,” he groused.
“Five years ago,” Harper interjected at his side. “He’s been putting off the consequences until this week. But he officially used up his last free pass, and now he must pay.” A dimple winked to life in her cheek.
“I’m wasting away, Harp,” Luke complained, but his hand was gentle as it threaded through his wife’s hair.
“You’re probably dropping your cholesterol by twenty points,” she teased, cuddling into his side.
“I can’t believe you’re making me do the whole week,” he said, staring longingly at the chicken on his mother’s plate.
Claire made a show of savoring her forkful. “Aldo, this chicken is fabulous,” she said with a wicked smile. “I’ve never tasted anything so delicious.”
“Mean, Mom. Mean,” Luke complained.
“Mom! Dad called Gram mean,” Robbie, the oldest, teased as he strolled by to refill his plate. He was sixteen, and the adults had been razzing him about a girlfriend and his learner’s permit.
“I heard,” Harper said, reaching a hand out for her son.
“He’s so grounded,” Henry piped up, trailing his big brother to the food.
“Are the kids behaving?” Harper whispered to Robbie.
“Yeah, they’re fine. But Lucia bribed Henry to bring her another brownie.”
“Make it a very small one, please.” Gloria sighed and rolled her eyes.
“You know, if you weren’t such an amazing baker, Lu and I wouldn’t be sugar monsters,” Aldo added.
“I didn’t make the brownies,” Gloria pointed out with a laugh. “Our daughter did.”
“She learned it from watching you,” Aldo insisted, pressing a kiss to the top of Gloria’s head.
“I’m sure Avery will take after you in overhead squats,” she teased, bouncing said daughter on her lap.
“At least I can still eat dessert,” Luke sighed dramatically from the head of the table.
“Well, we could always go double or nothing,” Harper mused.
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Now what?”
Ha
rper shot a pointed look at Mack and then Linc. “What do you think, Luke? Care to bet against me again?”
He followed her gaze, then winced. “You’re wrong. She’s too smart for him.”
“Care to wager?” Harper said, cocky now.
Luke gave Mack another look and then narrowed his eyes at Linc.
“No.”
“Good, smart man,” she said, patting him on the thigh. “Now eat your veggies.”
He went back to his sad salad.
“Do I want to know what that was about?” Mack asked Gloria.
She grinned. “Luke told Harper she was full of crap when she said Aldo had a crush on me. He said if Aldo and I ever got together he’d go vegetarian.”
“Never doubt your wife’s genius and your best friend’s heart,” Aldo said, holding his plate of chicken under Luke’s nose.
“Luke is lucky I’m the benevolent goddess I am and only sentenced him to a week,” Harper said airily.
“Change of subject! So how’s work going in small-town America, Mack?” Luke asked.
“Quieter than I’m used to,” she said.
“It’s got to be a heck of a change of pace for you,” Joni ventured.
“It is.” Mack nodded. “But I think it’s going to be good for me. I’m still flying shifts with the hospital’s air med team on my days off.”
“Still, it’s a tough transition,” Aldo said.
He and Luke would know.
Both men had made the transition from active combat to quiet home life multiple times. To go from life and death to running errands in the span of a few days was dizzying. It was why Mack was happy to keep the air shifts. One foot in and one foot out.
“The thin blue line,” Linc said.
The adults all nodded, and Mack realized they were all profoundly aware of what first responders and members of the military did to protect their normal, everyday lives. Right now, they were a cop, a fire chief, and three members of the military surrounded by people who loved them. The people whose lives had been forever changed by those career choices, those callings.
They understood, accepted, and appreciated the sacrifices. And for the first time, Mack wondered if there was hope for her after all. If there was a possibility that a Friday night BBQ with friends and family could be in her future.