by Score, Lucy
Brandon had recently slept at a friend’s house who wasn’t as well supervised as Brandon was used to. They’d watched a horror movie about kids whose parents abandoned them after selling them to a traveling circus. He’d been sleeping on the floor outside his parents’ bedroom for the past week.
The dog would help, Linc predicted.
“I don’t think so,” he said, ruffling his nephew’s thick, dark hair. “I think she’s just running an errand.”
“If she does abandon us, will you come live with us and Dad?” Brandon asked earnestly.
“Absolutely,” Linc promised. “Five bachelor guys in a house living it up?”
“Is bachelor when all the ladies show up to live with you and you have to pick the prettiest one or the one that yells and cries all the time?” Mikey wanted to know.
Another unsupervised victim of television. He couldn’t wait to tell Jillian.
“That’s a different kind,” Linc assured him.
His nephews lined up in front of him and waited expectantly. “So?” Brandon asked.
“So, what?”
“Are you going to feed us or something?”
“Better. I’m putting you to work first. You have to earn those grilled cheeses.” He pointed out the open bay door where the ladder truck sat outside on the asphalt.
“What kind of work?” Mikey asked suspiciously.
Linc picked up the buckets and sponges he’d stashed on a workbench. “You’re washing my ladder truck.”
Someday, Linc thought as he watched the boys battle over the hand line, his nephews wouldn’t be ecstatic about washing the bottom two feet of the fire department’s apparatus. Someday, they wouldn’t be excited about visiting him. They’d be too busy with school and sports and girls—or boys. So he’d hang on to these moments now while he had them before they were gone.
He’d hang on, and he’d wish, he’d hope, that Mackenzie O’Neil would take a chance on him and give them both a shot at this.
38
She’d gone and done it now. She’d officially lost her damn mind, Mack decided, as she hauled the final load from the grocery store into the kitchen. There were bags everywhere. Food everywhere. And because the food couldn’t be served out of shopping totes or store packaging, she’d had to buy serving dishes, bowls, paper plates, utensils.
Then there’d been the issue of where to sit. She couldn’t very well have a dozen people over and cram them around her four-person dining room table. Though really, who could have known they’d all say yes on such short notice?
So she’d bought a picnic table and a couple of folding lawn chairs from Bob’s Fine Furnishings. The table was due for delivery in ten minutes.
“What if they all have to go to the bathroom at the same time?” Mack groaned to herself as she unloaded ten tons of produce for the fruit and vegetable trays she thought would be nice to snack on.
She froze. What if no one shows up?
Leaving everything where it was—would the kids even like those little cups of ice cream anyway?—she hurried out the back door and across the yard to the gate.
She knocked on Linc’s back door.
It was open. He never locked it, and sometimes she let herself in. But in her self-induced panic, she was rooted to the spot. She stopped knocking when Sunshine bounded up to the glass, followed quickly by a bewildered-looking Linc.
He opened the door with a grin.
“I made a terrible mistake. I had a good day. The weather was nice. Then some evil force took over my body and started inviting people over for a cookout. Tonight. At my place. You’re invited, of course. I should have led with that. Anyway, I don’t know what to do. I have a kitchen full of food, and what if no one shows up or they all have to go to the bathroom at the same time and there’s a line? Do I have enough beer? What about wine? Do kids like ice cream cups?”
He stopped her by gripping her shoulders and laying a hard kiss on her mouth.
When he pulled back, Mack’s brain was quiet again.
“Dreamy?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you need?”
“Help?”
* * *
He was a natural. Within five minutes, he’d unpacked all of the groceries and triaged them into prep order. While she oversaw the table delivery, Linc appeared with a large plastic tote marked “PAR-TAY” and began unloading supplies.
She sliced fruit and vegetables, and he threw chicken breasts into bags of marinade.
“We’ll keep the food inside, that way everyone can sit on the deck or at the picnic table since it’s a nice night,” he told her as he manhandled two large coolers onto her deck. “Beer in this one. Water and soda and kids’ drinks in this one.”
“I don’t have any kids’ drinks,” she groaned.
“Dreamy, I’ve got 37,000 nieces and nephews. I’ve got kids’ drinks,” he promised.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said.
He climbed the steps and put his hands on her hips. “You’re breathtaking when you’re Dr. O’Neil on the scene. You’re beautiful when you’re trying to line dance. But this frazzled, wide-eyed woman who just wants her friends to have a good time is downright adorable.”
“Shut up.” She let out a long breath and gave in, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her face into his chest for just a minute. He was so steady. So good.
Sunshine trotted inside with a face full of dirt and what looked like the better portion of a tree stump in her mouth.
“Shit,” Linc said, releasing Mack.
The dog dropped the muddy chunk of wood on the floor and wagged her tail expectantly. She was covered in dirt and mud from nose to tail.
Pawprints and smears covered the black and white checkered tile.
“I’ll clean it up,” he promised, looking at his watch. “I swear.”
Mack started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Sunshine took the humor as a compliment and jumped up on Mack, placing two perfect muddy pawprints on her breasts.
“Sunshine!” Linc grabbed the dog by the collar. “It’s not a party if a dog doesn’t need a bath during it,” he promised Mack as he hauled the mud monster out the back door.
“Then this is going to be a hell of a party,” she predicted, surveying the disastrous kitchen.
While she scrubbed the floor, he made a run for the ice she’d forgotten and came back with ingredients for some secret recipe dip and more flowers. Grocery store flowers.
“Figured you were due for some new ones,” he said, shoving the bouquet of yellow and orange and red blooms in a vase. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll fire up the grill and get the drinks on ice. Then I’ll show you my secret buffalo chicken dip recipe.”
She stopped in the middle of scrubbing and stared up at the flowers.
Sunshine mournfully pressed her still-muddy nose against the sliding glass door, tail wagging hopefully. Mack smelled hot grill and heard the music that Linc was playing through a wireless speaker. She wouldn’t have thought of music. She hadn’t known how much she enjoyed fresh flowers. She’d had no clue how much she’d love a—mostly—good dog. And she hadn’t been prepared for a hotshot neighbor with tattoos and a charming grin.
Her heart did an odd roll.
“Oh, boy,” she whispered, slapping a hand to her chest.
So this was what it was like. There was no point fighting it.
She’d gone and fallen in love with Lincoln Reed.
* * *
Mack was still reeling an hour and a half later when her backyard was full of people. Music, a mix of pop and country, poured from the speaker. The smell of grilled meat and citronella candles wafted on the evening breeze. Someone somewhere was burning leaves.
Ellen showed up with a large Caesar salad and a six-pack of skinny spiked seltzers. Aldo and Gloria brought the girls and two pecan pies. Luke and Harper were sans kids thanks to Luke’s brother James and his boyfriend offering up a sleepover. They showed up with hot dog and
hamburger buns and their dogs who romped with Sunshine and made beggy eyes at anyone manning the grill. Harper was sporting a fresh hickey peeking out from the neck of her sweater, and Luke had a self-satisfied grin permanently affixed to his face.
Freida and her husband brought potato salad and shrimp and arrived mid-argument about whether a time-share in Cabo was a good move. Russell and Denise appeared with two bottles of very nice wine and truffle mac and cheese and weighed in on the time-share debate. Tuesday would have come, but she and her boyfriend were in Pennsylvania for the weekend for a ten-mile mud run.
Everyone loaded up plates and carried on conversations. Work. Food. Kids. Football. Medicine.
It was exactly what she’d envisioned, and she couldn’t quite believe that it was happening in her own backyard. She’d gone overboard. Mack could see that now while she enjoyed a quiet glass of wine on the deck steps. There was way too much food. The picnic table, while a nice addition to the backyard, hadn’t been as urgent as she thought as her guests had shown up with their own chairs. She’d be eating fresh fruits and veggies for at least the next five days. And there was no way one three-year-old was going to eat two dozen ice cream cups. But it was still perfect.
She was watching what had turned out to be quite the successful party when Aldo’s three-year-old, Lucia, skipped over to her. Her sweet, round cheeks bore the evidence of the ice cream Mack had second-guessed, and her lips were stained red from Linc’s juice boxes.
“Hi!” Lucia said.
“Hi.”
“I fell down and hit my face running when I wasn’t ’sposta,” the little girl said, pointing to a scrape on her jaw.
“Ouch,” Mack said.
“How did you get your boo-boo?” Lucia asked, poking the scar under Mack’s eye.
Mack moved back an inch or two so as not to lose the eye. “Oh, that happened a long time ago.”
“Was it on accident or purpose?” Lucia asked. “Mama says sometimes when people get hurt it’s not on accident. But that they can still be okay.”
Mack was losing control of the conversation. “Uh, I guess it was on purpose.”
Lucia put her chubby little fists on her hips. “It’s not okay for people to hurt other people,” she lectured.
“No, it’s not,” Mack agreed. “But I’m okay now.”
“My mama’s okay now, too,” she said with an emphatic nod. “Sometimes I kiss her old boo-boos to make sure they still don’t hurt.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Mack told her, feeling her throat tighten painfully.
Lucia leaned in and pressed a sloppy kiss to Mack’s eye. “’Dere. Now yours won’t hurt anymore either.”
Bewildered, Mack watched the little girl skip off until the image blurred behind hot tears she blinked away.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and jolted.
Linc sat next to her, and bath-fresh Sunshine burrowed under Mack’s arm on the other side. He didn’t say anything.
“Just got something in my eye,” she fibbed.
He stroked a hand down her back, and she wanted to tell him. To blurt out the words that bubbled up and demanded to be set free. She had feelings. So many of them now that she didn’t know what to do with them all.
Instead, she leaned her head on Linc’s shoulder and decided to just feel it all for a while before making any rash decisions.
39
Linc argued baseball with Luke and kept an eye on Mack as she joined in the conversation with Denise and Freida across the yard.
He felt a tug on the hem of his sweatshirt. “Chief Wink! Can I draw you a picture?” Lucia asked, peering up at him with those big, beautiful Vietnamese eyes.
“I’d love a picture,” he told her.
“’Den I need some paper,” she informed him.
“I brought crayons and four coloring books,” Gloria said, appearing behind her daughter. “But she’s insisting on paper.”
“Lemme ask Dreamy,” Linc said, pretending not to see the look Gloria and Luke exchanged. If everyone was surprised by his relationship with Mackenzie, they might as well hurry up and get over it.
He inserted himself into the girl talk as they debated whether or not Harper should run for Benevolence mayor the following year.
“Do you have some paper a three-year-old could commandeer?” he asked.
Mack smiled up at him in a new, soft, dreamy kind of way that made him want to kick everyone out and kiss her for the rest of the night.
“Sure,” she said. “There’s a notebook in the living room on the shelf by the fireplace.”
“Thanks.” He did kiss her then. He couldn’t help himself. He left her with Freida and Denise’s chorus of “oooh” and headed into the house, all three dogs on his heels. “Behave yourselves,” he warned them.
He found the notebook, a sketchpad actually, on top of a stack of medical journals and flipped it open. The charcoal portrait surprised and intrigued him. It was a young woman with laughing eyes and thick, black hair that kinked and curled in a celebratory riot around her face. He turned the page and found another portrait, a man with a buzzcut and lines around his eyes and the mouth that was pressed in a firm, flat line. He wore a uniform decorated with a load of military experience.
“Not that one,” Mack said, breathlessly hurrying into the room. “I forgot. The notebook’s on the end table.”
“Mackenzie, these are amazing.”
She looked like she was about to be sick.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” he asked, closing the sketchbook.
She bit her lip and picked up a spiral-bound notebook next to the couch. “They’re my dead,” she said finally.
“Patients you’ve lost,” he clarified, with the hope that the woman he was head over heels for wasn’t confessing to being a serial killer.
She nodded.
Linc was relieved. “They’re really good.”
Her shrug was jerky. “Thanks. I picked it up after First Responder Day. I used to sketch when I was a teenager. I thought maybe if I got them down on paper that maybe I wouldn’t have to carry them all around with me anymore.”
He got it. He carried his own shadows with him. All first responders did, and sometimes the load got too heavy.
“Who was she?” he asked, opening to the first sketch again.
“I don’t really know much about most of them,” she said, staring down at the woman on the page. “She was the last one I lost in Afghanistan. She was a medic and a translator and got caught in some crossfire. I knew she wasn’t going to make it back to the base. But instead of sitting there and holding her hand, I gave her plasma and worked on her injuries. I knew she wasn’t going to survive. Her heart stopped five minutes out and never restarted. And I didn’t know her name or who she was thinking about when she slipped away. I just knew that her blood pressure was too low and her heart had stopped.”
“That’s what you’re trained to do,” he reminded her.
“But it wasn’t what she needed. My medic on that flight, he leaned down and whispered in her ear the whole time. I thought I was annoyed that he wasn’t getting me what I needed fast enough because he was too busy trying to make this connection to this person who wasn’t going to make it. And that sounds horrible,” she confessed. “But I was mad at myself for not being able to offer that kind of comfort. I could fill her up with pain meds. But he was the reason she died with this little smile on her lips. He promised her he’d tell her mom that she was the best mom in the world. And I only did what I was trained to do.”
“Did he tell her?” Linc asked.
“Probably. I don’t know. After that flight, I decided it was time to be done. To do something else. My deployment was up. And I decided I wasn’t going back.”
His doctor always seemed to be moving forward, never looking back.
“And here you are,” he said. He wanted to flip through the pages and study the faces she’d drawn.
“With a backyard full of people and a house
full of dogs,” Mack said, cracking a hint of a smile as Lola flopped on her back on the couch, legs in the air.
Sunshine was busy chewing on a squeak toy shaped like a taco that Mack bought for her. Max was biting Sunshine’s fluffy tail.
She was a miracle, he decided. A walking, talking, scarred, beautiful miracle, and he was only just beginning to scratch the surface.
“I feel like the more I get to know you, the more I want you around, Mackenzie.” It wasn’t exactly a confession of love or a demand for forever. But it was something.
She let out a steadying breath. “I maybe don’t hate the idea of sticking around,” she said.
They were standing with the coffee table between them and a whole lifetime of unspoken words. But for now it was enough.
The back door slid open. “Mack, where’s your diaper changing station, and do you have any tarps and biohazard suits?” Aldo asked, holding Avery at arm’s length. The baby smelled like sewage and was belly-laughing.
40
On a chilly Sunday just before Halloween, Sunshine’s presence was requested at Jillian’s so she could teach their dog how to stop eating throw pillows, socks, and loaves of bread he counter-surfed for. Linc invited Mack along for the ride.
They watched together from the truck as Sunshine plowed full steam ahead through the open front door, and Jillian gave them a harried wave.
“Don’t corrupt our girl,” Linc called out the window of his truck.
“Oh, shit,” Mack snickered. They watched through the big front window as Sunshine, followed by the new dog, Beefcake, hurled themselves onto the back of the sofa. They could hear the crash as the curtains and curtain rod fell to the floor.
“Yep. Teaching Beefcake everything she knows,” Linc said, throwing the truck in reverse and peeling out of the driveway.
“Shouldn’t we go back and help?” Mack asked, still laughing.
“Hell no. Up for a little detour?” he asked, taking her hand.