“Oh, it’s beautiful! So peaceful!”
“You won’t say that after you’ve been swatting mosquitos for a while—come to think of it, you’d better spray yourself with this.” He tossed her a can of insect repellent. “And by all means, don’t play in the Spanish moss or you’ll take home a nice crop of chiggers.”
“I don’t believe I know what a chigger looks like.” Kimberly didn’t argue but liberally sprayed the repellent over herself.
“It’s not what they look like, it’s how bad they itch. Yow.”
He hefted the picnic basket out of the back of the vehicle and grabbed up a big plastic carton. “Bait,” he said slyly. “You’re not afraid of worms, by chance, are you?”
“Spiders, yes. Worms? Nah. I dissected my share of them in college.”
“Good to know I won’t have to bait your hook, ma’am.” He tipped his head toward her and started for the mill house.
“Wait!” Kimberly called. “Where are the poles?”
He motioned at the mill house, still walking backward toward it. “We keep some spinners locked up in here so we don’t have to fool with bringing them every time.”
The basket stowed in the shadiest, coolest part of the mill house, Daniel gave her a quick tour, showing her the massive millstone that had ground wheat and rye and corn in decades past.
“I’m surprised you let Taylor come down here,” she commented, “since she’s allergic to corn.”
“Ah...but she couldn’t come here, not before Rob and Andrew and I scrubbed that millstone and every speck of every surface in this place with a bleach-and-water mix,” Daniel said. “I rigged up a siphon hose for water from the millpond, and we used that. Had the place spic and span in no time.”
Her surprise must have revealed itself. “Hey,” he protested. “When I know what has to be done, I do it. But I admit...about that tree house, well, I had a failure of the imagination. I am sorry, Kimberly.”
Impulsively she blurted out, “Let’s not talk about that, or Marissa’s birth mom or...or anything serious today. Right now, I want to play hooky and pretend the real world won’t jump on me with all four claws extended when we turn your neighbor’s cart around and head back to Ma’s.”
He took her hands in his. “Ah, Kimberly.” His voice grew husky. “You need a day to play hooky, that’s for sure. But don’t make any promises you can’t keep. I know how hard they are, how much they tie a person down.”
He was talking about his promise to Marissa’s birth mom, of course. This trip had been perfect so far—well, except for Marissa. Kimberly didn’t want to cast a pall over it.
So she told him, “Teach me to fish, Daniel.”
And he did. He set her up at one of the wide, deep windows overlooking the millpond, with its lush oak canopy, and tried to show her how to cast the spinner’s line between the big trees standing on hulking roots in the water.
Kimberly didn’t prove to be a natural at casting. Maybe it was because of Daniel’s nearness more than in spite of him.
It was incredibly difficult for her to concentrate on the proper casting technique when she felt his strong, warm body against her, his arms around her, attempting to guide her hands. As if that wasn’t enough to completely distract her, the barest hint of stubble grazed her cheek, and the scent of him—clean soap, nothing fancy—finished the job.
“Whoa!” he hollered as she cast yet another line into the trees. “That one is a goner, too.” He pulled out his pocketknife and clipped the line.
Kimberly watched his nimble fingers restring the rod for a third time. “Let’s face it. I’m hopeless at this.”
“Nah.” He deftly tied the finishing knot and stood her rod up against the rough-sawn timber wall of the mill house. “It’ll take you a while, but you’ll get the hang of it. Shoot, my dad didn’t give up on me, and I sank the hook straight into his backside. That was after I’d cast into about four trees and tangled our lines twice.”
“You miss him, don’t you?” she asked.
Daniel didn’t say anything in the time it took him to carefully stow his spool of line back into his tackle box, then still more slowly bait Kimberly’s hook and cast it out into the water. He propped the pole in a notch carved into the wide window ledge. “Yeah,” he said finally. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish he were here.”
“I wonder what it feels like to be Marissa,” Kimberly mused. “I mean, I know what it’s like to not have a dad, but I at least knew who my dad was. She never had a dad at all. Not until... Daniel, I—I want to say how much I’ve really loved watching you with Marissa these past few weeks. You’re so patient with her, so good with her. I think you’ve really filled a void in her life, a void that I didn’t fully realize was so big. Thank you. I mean that.”
He fixed his gaze out on the calm sun-dappled waters of the pond, where a pair of dragonflies were chasing each other in slow lazy circles. “You don’t know how much that means to me to hear you say that. I’ve screwed up so much—no, I know that, Kimberly.” He forestalled her protest even before she could form the words. “First not being as honest as I could be about that bracelet and then about the tree house. You talk about being hopeless at casting... I was beginning to feel hopeless about this father-figure business.”
She let her fingers slide along his tanned forearm, relishing the feel of taut muscles, solidity, all the things that made him so rocklike and reliable. “You are far from hopeless. You’re too good, in fact. Marissa’s going to miss you when we leave.”
He captured her hand in his and pressed her palm to his lips, then folded her fingers in an intimate clasp. “What about you, Kimberly? Will you miss me?”
Without thinking, she leaned up and pressed her lips to his. It was supposed to be the briefest of kisses, but he caught her up in his arms and didn’t let her go. The kiss continued, sweet and beguiling. It was Daniel who finally broke their embrace. “Man, oh, man, Kimberly Singleton. You really know how to take a guy fishing.”
She blushed. “Maybe we should try some of Ma’s lunch if we have such strong appetites, huh?”
He exhaled. “I think that’s a very wise idea—but then, Marissa told me you were really smart.”
The mention of her daughter’s name helped ground Kimberly in the here and now, not the fuzzy, romantic land of maybe or if only.
“Ha,” she replied shakily, smoothing her hair and hoping Daniel didn’t see her fingers tremble. “Marissa’s sure got you fooled. She was angling for something. Usually I’m one of the most ignorant creatures on the planet, didn’t you know that?”
He turned to her, his eyes dark with an emotion she couldn’t quite read—pain, maybe?
“I don’t believe that at all. Not to me. I wish—I wish things could be different, Kimberly.” His voice was harsh with emotion.
Daniel didn’t elaborate on what those things would be, didn’t wait for her to ask. He walked out into the brilliant sunshine and tossed rocks hard and far into the millpond.
The ripples went wide, spreading quickly from a small concentric ring where each stone sank to ever-larger rings that crossed into the ripples from previous rocks. Kimberly couldn’t help noticing how they crashed into one another, getting in the way of each other, canceling out the energy each had been imbued with.
Hesitantly, she walked out to join him. “Daniel...”
He threw another half-dozen rocks before he acknowledged her presence. Dusting off his hand, he met her eyes. “Can we not talk about this? I just—I just can’t. When I’m with you, I want to tell you...everything. Every last detail. Especially after...well, after...” Setting his jaw, he started back toward the mill house, determination in every line and crease of his face. “I promised. And I intend to keep that promise, at least until I’m released from it. And nothing—not even the sweetest kisses in the world—is going to change that fact. You have no idea how much I wish it could.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DANIEL FOUND
HIMSELF perversely glad that he’d planned to work at the station on Sunday morning. It gave him an excuse not to see Kimberly.
His crew, however, was not as pleased to have him there.
“Whoa, Chief, wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” one firefighter asked after Daniel snapped at him.
Another made the mistake of asking if the county had approved the training fire. “Is the county office open today?” Daniel growled. “No? I didn’t think so. When I know, you’ll know.”
Even Daniel cringed at the rough tone he’d used. Before he could apologize, the firefighter had raised both hands and backed away.
It wasn’t the crew’s fault. They were restless. Too many calls that could be handled by a couple of them with one hand tied behind their backs. Too many days of stepping on toes, bumping into each other during the long shifts with nothing much to do except mindless cleaning and straightening and prepping. Too much proximity.
Proximity. The feel of Kimberly in his arms rushed back to him, making every nerve ending tingle. He’d had way too much proximity with Kimberly the day before, and that was his problem—not the guys, not being fire chief.
He squared his shoulders and renewed his determination to be more like his dad. His father had hardly ever carried work home—at least not that he let slip to Daniel and the rest of the kids when they were young—or taken problems from home to work. Keep it separate—do your job at the station and then do your duty at home. That had been his philosophy.
Daniel hoped that one day it would come to him as naturally as it had to his dad.
He walked into the day room, ready to burn off some of his own bottled-up energy. What he needed to do was stop mooning over Kimberly. He needed to challenge a few of the guys to cut out the video games and instead try to beat him at push-ups.
They never could—for some reason, Daniel had always found it amazingly easy to rip out a long string of uninterrupted push-ups. It didn’t mean he could bench-press more than some of his guys, but it was a sure way to bait them away from their current couch-potato status.
But before he could crank out even ten pushups, the buzzer reverberated through the building. Daniel froze, barely suspended above the ground, the concrete floor biting into his knuckles.
Structure fire. A big, fast one from the sound of it. A restaurant on the south side of town. Possible electrical fire. Wires down, power still on.
Daniel remembered the place: it prided itself on churning out authentic Southern fried chicken deep-fried in 100 percent pure lard, and who cared about your arteries when you tasted their chicken?
A hand reached down to yank him up. It was the crewmember who had backed away from him earlier when Daniel had practically bitten his head off.
“Guess we won’t be needing that training fire after all, huh, Chief,” the man said, his eyes somber. “I don’t like the sound of this one.”
As Daniel hustled for his turnout gear and watched his captain supervise the organized chaos of both engines gearing up and heading out, a lump formed in his throat.
Pride. These men and women knew what they were doing—and they didn’t have to turn to him for direction. His department, after months of struggle, looked a lot like his dad’s well-oiled machine so many years ago.
He hauled himself into the cab of his captain’s truck, slamming the door as Hank peeled out behind the second engine.
His captain didn’t take his eyes off the road as he asked, “Chief, you think they’re a little trigger-happy on this one? You think it’s as big as they say?”
“Hmm.” Daniel looked toward the south side, saw a huge billowing cloud of black smoke suddenly belch up from behind the steeple of the First Christian Church.
That restaurant was cheek-to-jowl with four churches, one of which had been standing in that spot for nearly a hundred years. On a Sunday morning, every one of those churches would be filled with a congregation.
A shiver ran down his spine. For the first time in a long time, pure, cold fear pooled in his gut at the prospect of a fire. Suddenly he craved one more shot at a morning with Kimberly and Marissa. A slice of toast and Marissa’s fresh-out-of-bed grouchiness. Kimberly’s breathless laugh during awkward moments when she wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
Had his dad thought something similar riding to that warehouse fire? He tried hard to push the superstitious idea from his head.
“Nope,” he said in a grim voice. “We’re probably going to wish they had it wrong, but I think they called it right, Hank. I think this one will be an all-hands-on-deck deal. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a killer.”
* * *
KIMBERLY AND MA were in the kitchen, elbow-deep in putting up a bumper picking of Ma’s tomatoes, when the call came in. Ma had asked Marissa to grab the phone for her.
“What?” Marissa’s strangled cry instantly got Kimberly’s attention. Her daughter was gripping the phone, her face a pasty gray-white, her eyes wide.
She stuck the phone out toward Ma. “Y-you’d better take this,” she said, her breath coming in short gasps. “This lady says it’s a fire. A big fire.”
Ma’s paring knife clattered to the floor. For once, she didn’t automatically bend down to pick up what she’d dropped. She stepped over it and extended a trembling hand for the cordless.
“There’s been a fire?” she asked into the handset, collapsing into one of the kitchen table’s ladder-back chairs.
Kimberly abandoned the tomatoes, wiped her hands on a towel and crossed to her daughter. She wrapped her arms around Marissa, who laid her head against Kimberly’s chest. “Marissa? Honey? What did they say?”
“Oh, Mom! It’s a big one—every engine. Bobbi told me once they never call out every engine unless it’s a killer fire. A-and Daniel—Daniel’s hurt.”
Kimberly’s breath caught in her chest. Breathe, she ordered herself. You can’t think if you don’t breathe. Her lungs obeyed, dragging in a choking inhalation. She licked her suddenly parched lips and swallowed. Staring past Marissa, she scrutinized Ma for any clue as to Daniel’s condition.
And I waited for him to leave this morning before I came into the kitchen. The thought tore through her like the ripping action of a serrated knife. Oh, please...don’t let the last time I see him be his back through my bedroom window.
Ma was nodding, her hand to her mouth, her own breath coming in quick little pants. “I understand. And Rob? And Andrew? They’re okay?”
She wobbled to a standing position, pushing the chair back with a nails-on-chalkboard screech. “Yes, yes, I have someone to drive me.” She looked at Kimberly, a desperate appeal in her eyes. When Kimberly nodded, Ma spoke hurriedly into the phone. “We’ll be at the hospital quick as we can.”
* * *
SOMEONE HAD MOVED the hospital five miles farther down the road and placed every slowpoke car in front of her to boot, Kimberly was certain. How else could a ten-minute trip seem to last an eternity?
In the backseat, Marissa was trying—and failing—to hold back choking sobs. “Go faster, Mom!” she pleaded.
Kimberly darted a peek to check on her, tried to telegraph some calm and peace. “We’ll get there, Marissa.”
With one hand, Kimberly gripped the wheel, but with the other, she held Ma’s hand, their fingers intertwined. Ma’s short nails dug into Kimberly’s palm, but she didn’t care. She knew what it was like to fear for your child—if it had been Marissa, she would have been all to pieces.
She was barely holding it together as it was.
Glancing down, she saw that she’d left the house in such a hurry she hadn’t even taken off her tomato-speckled apron. Ma, too, still wore hers. “Marissa,” she began, more in an attempt to distract her daughter than concern about how they looked, “can you untie Ma’s apron at the neck?”
“Land sakes,” Ma exclaimed, a hand to the flowered apron. “Why, I just left everything, didn’t I? Oh, my! Did I turn the stove off? Daniel will be the laughingstock of t
he department if the house burns down because I forgot the stove.”
“I did, Ma.” Marissa was calmer now, her fingers busy untying the bow at Ma’s nape. “While you and Mom went for your purses. And I picked up the knife, too. I didn’t know what exactly to do with the tomatoes, though.”
A jolt of pleased surprise ran through Kimberly. She wouldn’t have guessed that Marissa would have had the foresight and maturity to act calm in a crisis. She’d put Kimberly to shame.
“Thank you,” Kimberly told Marissa as she felt fingers on her own neck and the apron strings fall away. “I really appreciate you remembering, and I know Ma does, too.”
“Those tomatoes will be fine just like they are, or we’ll throw the whole mess out if they sour,” Ma stated in an uncharacteristic departure from her careful, frugal ways. Now she moved around in the seat, untying the back apron string as well and balling up the cloth. “And, Kimberly, I guess I forgot—you don’t know the ropes of being in a firefighter’s family. That was Louise Dubberly on the phone—Hank Dubberly’s wife. Hank’s a captain at the station. If it had been...” Ma trailed off, but picked right back up again, injecting a determinedly positive note in her voice. “If it had been real bad, they would have come to the house and got us. They always do. Now, that’s not to say he’s not hurt, but...it’s probably not real bad.”
Kimberly braked behind a slow-moving pickup and used the chance to study Ma for signs and clues, as much as she had earlier. Daniel’s mother had clasped her hands together until the knuckles were taut and white, and she’d focused unmoving eyes on the road ahead of her. She didn’t look as though she really believed her own words.
“What could she tell you?” Kimberly willed the pickup to move faster. “Louise Dubberly, I mean?”
“It was that fried-chicken place off Grady Street—no, I forget, you probably don’t know it. Anyway, it caught fire, and what with all that grease...” She drew in a deep, noisy breath.
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