by Zoe York
Kerry nodded, but she turned back to Bailey. “What do you want to do?”
“I just want to go home.”
“How about we go back to your place, but we can call the hospital, too? Maybe they aren’t busy.”
The conversation went back and forth a bit, and by the time they were done, Bailey was in Kerry’s car, and they were going to swing past the hospital on the way to Bailey’s house.
Which meant Owen had to watch Kerry drive off—without a backwards glance at him—and the apology still sat unsaid and heavy in this throat.
He followed Dani and Matt back to their ambulance so he could add a line to their report.
“That was slick,” Dani said to him as he scrawled his signature. “How she convinced Bailey to go the hospital even though she was reluctant.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t she Becca’s midwife, too?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s good.”
She was very good. And entirely professional, even when he was a jackass. He nodded. “All right, see you back at the station.”
The next time Kerry saw Owen, he was in the army uniform Bailey had talked about. On her way home from a hospital delivery, she stopped to grab a coffee from the Tim Horton’s in Wiarton, and he was at the head of the line.
Once again, she recognized him from the shape of his body, and heat raced through her. He made her feel voyeuristic and dirty in the strangest of places. The grocery store. The coffee shop. This crush could easily get out of hand.
Luckily, he was happy to douse it with cold water just by turning around once he had his coffee in hand. She was six people back, and his gaze—sharp, focused, critical—found her immediately.
It didn’t surprise her at all when he stopped in front of her and gave his usual greeting—just her name, as curtly as possible. “Kerry.”
“Hey,” she said with a polite smile. I like you just fine. Then why didn’t it feel like he did?
His jaw flexed, and silence stretched between them. Another rousing conversation, she thought to herself. But then he surprised her by stringing four words together. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Why?”
Then he rocked back on his heels, his eyes flashing dark. “The interagency working group.”
Oh. That. “Right.”
Another heavy silence followed that, as he stood there looking like he was made of granite, and she wondered if this was how it would be tomorrow, and why had she insisted on being a part of this committee?
“I need to apologize,” he said, his voice strained.
“Not if it pains you,” she snapped back.
His eyes went wide. Really wide, and his mouth followed, stretching into an unexpected smile. “Not at all,” he said softly. His gaze settled on her face, and that felt soft, too. “Not painful in the least, Kerry. I want to apologize. This isn’t exactly the time or place, probably, but I should have said this weeks ago. I was out of line.”
Her mouth flapped open, then snapped shut. Oh.
And then, because of course this was how her life would go, her pager went off. Owen glanced down to where she wore it on her hip, then back to her face.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he repeated, and she nodded dumbly.
From the counter, the coffee shop worker called for the next customer, and the line shuffled forward.
Kerry had to check her pager, and get a coffee, and move on with her day. But her feet didn’t want to move. They wanted to stay right where they were, pointing at Owen Kincaid and his wide, soft smile.
Behind her, someone coughed.
What she wanted didn’t matter when she was holding up the line. “See you tomorrow,” she said quickly, then moved ahead.
Glancing back over her shoulder, she watched as he headed out the door, coffee in hand. He used his shoulder, keeping his body sideways so he was looking at her until he was all the way out of the coffee shop.
“Sorry for holding up the line,” she whispered to the older lady standing behind her.
That woman shook her head, a grin on her face. “Don’t apologize to me, I think I enjoyed that as much as the two of you did. He’s quite the looker. Almost like one of those movie stars.”
A Canadian Hemsworth indeed. Kerry let out a shaky breath. Well, if the other woman liked what she’d seen, she must have missed the start of the conversation where it had been awkward as fork, but she wasn’t wrong about the rest. Kerry had enjoyed the apology. And the smile.
If Owen smiled like that more often, though, things might get complicated.
Chapter Ten
Owen had the shortest transit time to the interagency working group, because it was meeting in the new Pine Harbour library space upstairs from his office. The third floor of the Emergency Services building had been “under-utilized”, and when the library was threatened with closure due to high operating costs in its former location on Main Street, the community rallied together. Owen organized the volunteer fire brigade to help move all the books to the new space.
But he hadn’t actually been upstairs since it opened, so he headed up there with lots of time before the meeting so he could have a look around—and he had another reason, too.
Behind the desk was a very pregnant Chloe Dawson. She was typing on the computer, but looked up as soon as Owen approached.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
She shook her head. “I was just compiling a list of book recommendations for one of our patrons. What’s up?”
He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. “That’s sort of why I’m here. As a patron.”
She beamed at him. “What can I help you find?”
“It’s been a while since there’s been a baby in my house. And being the grandparent is different than being the parent, and I… I don’t know what I’m looking for, exactly. But something that might refresh what I can do to be a good family member.”
Chloe patted her belly. “I don’t even need to look those up, and it’s not from me doing my own reading. I’m in complete denial about what comes next here. But Tom has a stack of books on his bedside table, and as a librarian, I can’t help but notice which ones he picks up over and over again.” She grabbed a notepad and scribbled down three titles, then went to her computer. “We have one of them here in this branch, and the other two are able to be requested, if you’d like.”
“I’ll start with the one that’s here.” He picked up the piece of paper. “And I guess that means I’ll need a library card, too. It’s been a while since I’ve had one of those.”
“I’ll see if you’re still in our system.” She typed his name into the computer, then laughed. “The last book you took out was something called Daniel Boom, ten years ago?”
“The start of Becca’s graphic novel phase,” he said, memories washing over him. She’d been so little, but so grown-up at the same time. “Shortly after that she went to live with her mom more of the time for a year while I did a course out of town, and then she had her own library card.”
Chloe gave him a thoughtful look. “Why don’t you sign out something you might like to read or watch for yourself, as well as this book on being a good grandfather?”
Owen wouldn’t know where to start. “Yeah, maybe.”
She waved him toward the stacks. “Go find some books. I’ll get your new library card ready.”
That was how he found Kerry, nose-deep in a book, sitting cross-legged against the window at the end of an aisle in the mystery and thrillers section. Because he wasn’t a small man and he hadn’t been trying to sneak up on her, his footsteps probably sounded like a stumbling elephant came to screeching halt in front of her.
To her credit, she didn’t look startled in the least as she stopped reading, glanced straight ahead at his boots, then slowly slid her gaze up his body until she made eye contact with him. Then she smiled. “Hello.”
It wasn’t much to go on, and there was definitely a part of him that wanted
to turn tail and run, but he’d been doing that for months and it didn’t get them anywhere. He didn’t know how to navigate this, but they were about to sit down across the table from each other and talk about serious issues in their community, so that should probably be his entire focus with her. Not how cute she looked curled up with a book, her legs bare beneath a sundress. “Hi,” he said. “I was going to grab a book to sign out before…”
“Me too.”
“Is that one good?”
She glanced at the cover. “Yeah.”
“Great.”
“This is a pretty big library, actually.” She climbed to her feet. “I’m impressed. When I first moved here, it was on Main Street.”
“I helped move the books over,” he offered. It sounded way less impressive out loud than in his head.
She nodded. “Great.”
His neck flushed. This could only get more awkward, and he was floundering, so he grabbed a book at random off the shelf and held it in the air. “Found what I was looking for. See you in there.”
Gripping the book tightly, he stalked back to the front desk and slid it across to Chloe. “I’ll sign this out, too.”
Her eyes danced as she took in the cover. The Lady Loves a Necromancer, read the title. Apparently the book he’d grabbed at random was a Gothic paranormal romance. Well, it probably wouldn’t be boring, which was more than could be said for his conversation skills.
When Owen walked through the door at Mac’s the next day at the end of the lunch rush, and he saw Kerry sitting alone in a booth, he promised himself he wouldn’t grab a seat where he could watch her like a creeper.
In fact, he’d do her one better. Even though he’d planned to take a full lunch break, there was a stack of paperwork on his desk waiting to be done.
He nodded at the waitress behind the counter. “Can I get a souvlaki plate to go, please?”
“Sure thing.”
He grabbed a newspaper someone folded up and left on the counter. He could read headlines while his food was prepped. He had no reason to turn around. No reason to look in her direction, no danger of making awkward small talk that made him look like an idiot.
So when Kerry crept up on him, and put her hand on his arm, he didn’t see it coming. So he leapt in the air, twisted around, and brought his hand crashing down onto the counter—eventually. First his hand went through a ceramic mug.
And part of the mug went through his hand.
“God damn it,” he groaned as blood spilled fast and furious over the Formica countertop.
“Don’t move,” Kerry whispered. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, just as shocked as he was, but she immediately took control, grabbing a stack of napkins and clamping them down and around his injury.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Kerry took a deep breath. “This is a bit outside my wheelhouse. But I want to look at it, okay?”
“It’s fine,” he said reflexively.
“Uh huh.”
He hoped it was fine. But the napkins were wet and red. Blood spreads like any other liquid. And yet that knowledge didn’t help him when he was the patient. He looked away from his hand, away from Kerry, and focused on a point on the wall.
The waitress was beside them now, asking what she could do to help.
“Can you get me some clean towels? Something more absorbent than these,” Kerry said. The other woman pulled a stack from somewhere behind the counter. Kerry grabbed one and wrapped it around his hand tightly. Then she waited.
Owen could feel the swelling starting already. His hand hurt like a sonofabitch, but he could feel all his fingers, he was pretty sure. In a second, he’d look for the pieces of the mug and figure out how much of it was inside his hand.
God damn it.
“The bleeding is slowing down,” she said. “Can you put pressure on this for a minute? I want to wash my hands.”
The waitress squeaked in protest, clearly not wanting to get involved in the first aid directly, and Owen shook his head. “I can hold.”
“You sure?” Kerry’s face was tight with concern.
“Yeah.” He replaced her touch, carefully avoiding the spot where he could feel a jagged piece of china stuck in his skin, and then stared at the spot on the wall again until she returned, her hands held high like a surgeon waiting to be gloved.
This was the exact opposite of a sterile operating suite, but he appreciated her efforts. She gestured for him to move his hand, and she carefully lifted the towel.
“Motherforker,” she whispered.
“Do you always do that?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Do what?” She was still examining his hand.
“Swear like a kindergarten teacher?”
She laughed. “Yeah. I guess so. Pregnant women are often in the presence of little people who will repeat any curse word that slips out.”
“And you’re a Good Place fan.”
“That too.” She bit her lower lip as she returned the towel. “I think you might need stitches. Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?”
“I don’t need stitches.”
Her eyebrow curved high. “No? You haven’t even seen it.”
He swallowed. “Show me.”
She peeled back the cotton, revealing a wedge of ceramic jammed exactly where he thought it was, in the meaty muscle at the base of his thumb. Probably just missed the ligament, and hopefully wasn’t deep enough to have hit the tendon.
Which meant it might be cosmetic damage only, but he wouldn’t know that until the shard came out—and the wound was cleaned. He repeated her curse, although he didn’t use the kindergarten version.
“Can I call 911 now?” the waitress helpfully offered.
“Nah, we’re good here,” Owen said with false bravado. He wasn’t calling for a bus when he didn’t need one.
Kerry nodded. “I’ll take him in.”
He made a face at her.
She raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to clean it up? Because we can do this here or it can be done properly at the hospital. I have a suture kit in my car, I’m just saying.”
She meant it as a threat, but he liked that plan better. “Pretty sure I’m bigger than your average patient.”
“I don’t do stitches on the babies,” she said dryly. “And your palm isn’t bigger than a perineum.”
He deserved that, although he thought his hand was pretty damn big.
“Get your bag.” His head was starting to spin. He nodded at the waitress. “Hey, can we use the back room for this?”
“Uh…”
Kerry cleared her throat. “You know what? If you want me to do this, we can take it outside. We don’t need to be spreading any more biohazard risks around the diner. Health and safety complaints would mess with my preferred lunch routine.” She gave the waitress a quick smile. “I’m going to take this guy off your hands. Can you box up my lunch and bring it out when his food is ready?”
“Sure thing, Kerry.”
He got uh…. She got Sure thing, Kerry.
His daughter’s midwife was a walking, talking advertisement for the saying, you catch more flies with honey. And yet Owen still couldn’t manage that shit when he was around her. Ironic.
She asked for a garbage bag, too, and carefully bagged up all of their biohazard waste—his blood all over napkins and tea towels he would have to replace—then got his hand wrapped up tightly again and gave him clear instructions on how to hold it, like he didn’t know.
Except he was the patient now, and his brain wasn’t working properly, so she was right to do that, and he appreciated it.
“I’m not a Neanderthal most of the time,” he said to her as they walked across the parking lot to her car. He blurted it out to distract himself, maybe, but also to get it off his chest. He knew that’s how he came off to her.
“No?”
He frowned. “No.”
“Okay.” She gave him a polite smile and unlocked her car.
“Do you think I actually am a Neanderthal?”
She shrugged. “You grunt a lot.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what to say.”
Kerry smirked at that and gestured for him to get in the back seat of her too-small car. While he squished himself into the space behind her passenger seat, she went around to the other side, where she fit just fine. Deftly, she opened her medical bag and pulled out a couple of sterile pads, which she stretched out on top of a gym bag sitting between them on the back seat. A makeshift examination table. Then she pulled a headlamp out a side pocket, turned it on, and got down to business. “All right. Let’s have a look.”
He made a face as he unfurled his fist.
She didn’t miss it. He saw the way she paused, looked at his face, and then changed the subject. “Is that what happened with the interagency working group? You didn’t know what to say?”
Distracting someone from pain and discomfort with a jarring question was a good trick when he used it on someone else, but he couldn’t say that he cared for being on the receiving end of it. He looked out the window, then back at her. Her eyes were focused down, carefully examining his wound. It was easier to look at her when she wasn’t looking back. It didn’t stop him from looking at her all the time, of course. But this was oddly nice. And for once, he wasn’t stuck on the words. “That was mostly thoughtlessness. I was being selfish.”
“Selfish how?”
“I…” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I don’t know what to do about the fact that you unsettle me.”
“I—” She jerked her head up. “I unsettle you?”
He grimaced. Classic Neanderthal move, he realized.
She sighed. “Hold tight. I want to clean this out a bit, get a better look.” She grabbed more supplies. Just like with Bailey, her movements were spare and precise. An expert just doing her thing, effortlessly. Owen knew how much practice that took.
“Becca really likes you.” And there it was again. The fact that Kerry was his daughter’s midwife, and that needed to be their entire focus. He changed the subject. “Do you think it might be okay with some steri-strips?”