by Natalie Ann
“You wanted to shed a tear, didn’t you?” she asked.
“No. I know they aren’t my kids, but it feels like it.”
“They are yours now,” she said. “Jeffrey looks at you as his father and Maddie adores you.”
“It is a nice feeling,” he said, puffing his chest out. She wasn’t sure if he was aware he’d made that move. Ryan’s wife, Shannon, was a widow with two young kids when she relocated to Colonie fifteen months ago. Whitney was pretty sure the last thing Shannon thought she’d find here was love again so soon and a second marriage.
“So the question is, when will you have your own child?” she asked.
“Probably soon,” he said. He stopped to look at her. Really stare at her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I’m not.”
She didn’t need her brother to apologize to her for finding love and a family and wanting to add to that. “Yeah, but we all thought it’d be you with the kids by now. It’s been your dream.”
“And dreams can still come true. As we know, it wasn’t meant and it’s a damn good thing nothing is tying me to Kevin.”
“Asshole,” Ryan said.
“He was that. And many more choice words. But he’s out of my life for good.”
She’d thought for sure she’d have to buy him out, but during the divorce proceedings, she got her fast divorce and they went on their separate ways. The fact their biggest asset, their home, wasn’t in either of their names worked in her favor. They had a joint savings account that she only put part of her income in, they split it and divided up some things in the house and he was gone as if she’d snapped her fingers and he went up in a puff of smoke.
“Damn straight,” Ryan said. “Now you need to get on that horse again. Don’t let him hold you back.”
“I’m not,” she said. “We’ve had this conversation several times. I don’t hate men and never did. I’ve got too many good examples of them in my life to feel that way. I’m just more selective now.”
She wouldn’t admit trust was a factor with moving on completely, but she figured many assumed it.
“If Evan can find someone, anyone can,” Ryan said of their older cousin.
“Evan isn’t nearly as bad as you used to be and Parker is perfect for him.”
“You’re obsessed with Parker because she was on Survivor.”
Whitney did a little shoulder wiggle. “She was awesome. Girl power there. Sorry, reality shows are my guilty pleasure.”
“Just don’t sign up for any of those Bachelor shows.”
“Good God no. I’ve had enough drama in my life. Anyway, one of my backup smoke alarms was beeping last night and it kept waking me up and I had a splitting headache this morning. It’s fine now.”
“Does it need a new battery? Do you want me to stop over and check them out? It was cold the last few nights, your furnace kicked on fine?”
“I don’t need my baby brother to change a battery that I did this morning. After I figured out which one it was. It’s all good. And yes, my furnace is working.”
“Okay. I know you are all independent and everything, but if you need anything you can ask any of us.”
“And I do when it’s something I can’t figure out on my own.” She appreciated the help and support she got from her father and brother. No one lived that far from the other in Paradise Place. Her whole family lived there, except Christian who was always buying and flipping homes all over the area on the side.
“If you have a minute I wanted to go over some supply orders with you,” Ryan said.
“Pull up a seat,” she said. She was a jack-of-all-trades for the business. The office was fairly big and she ran it. She oversaw the staff and the building itself. She dealt with most of the new build paperwork that went through their realtor, Ruby Turner. She handled all the customer and vendor relations. Not to mention the website for the business and marketing.
Yep, she had staff under her and they were great and she could delegate, but her job was her baby at this point in her life. She used it as a substitute for motherhood.
Was it wrong? Yes, it was. But it was what it was since it was all she had.
Before Ryan sat, he moved over to her filing cabinet, opened it up and pulled out a package of Twinkies. She kept junk food in there for her brother and cousins.
“You’re never going to grow up, are you?”
“No way,” Ryan said around a mouthful. “I eat these here so Shannon doesn’t yell at me for setting a bad dietary example in front of the kids.”
“You don’t need this junk food when Shannon is always baking for you.”
He rubbed is hand on his flat stomach. “Don’t I know it. But you keep filling the cabinet and I know you won’t eat these. Got to keep my sister happy too.”
She smiled. Not too many other than family worried about her happiness in her life.
“And you do. I am happy.”
“You are,” Ryan said. “We’ve seen it for years. That is one good thing.”
It wasn’t like a flipped switch when she kicked her lying cheating husband out of the house. There were times things got even darker and her family saw it.
She had secrets. Or Kevin did that she’d discovered. They’d hurt her. They’d burned her. They made her lose faith in men.
Until she realized that Kevin was his own brand of douche. She just wished she’d seen it before and hadn’t wasted so much of her life.
“It is.”
But she wasn’t so happy when hours later she got a call that her security system was going off at home and the fire department had been dispatched.
She pulled the cameras up fast to look around and didn’t see smoke, but couldn’t figure out what was going on as she rushed out the door without telling anyone the reason.
The office wasn’t that far from the development her grandfather had started over fifty years ago.
She pulled into her driveway at the same time the firetrucks arrived. “Whoa, where do you think you’re going?” one of the firemen asked.
“It’s my house,” she said. “There is no fire. I can see it on my cameras. There is no smoke either. I’d rather you don’t break a door down to get in.”
“Captain,” the guy yelled. “The homeowner is here. She says there is no fire inside.”
She turned her head to see the fireman in full gear coming toward her and felt her heart slam into her chest at the sight of her first love. The boy that broke her heart and pushed her into the arms of Kevin.
No, no. That was wrong. He didn’t push her toward another man. She went there on her own when the one she wanted discarded her.
“Trey,” she said, pulling her shoulders back. She wouldn’t let him know she was affected. She’d shed more than enough tears over him when she was seventeen. She wasn’t that young girl anymore.
He wasn’t that boy either that said he was going to be a fireman like his father and it scared her. No, this was a man in front of her. One she’d tried to push from her mind for years.
“Whitney,” he said. “Do you want to let us in, or just tell us to leave since there isn’t a fire?”
“Can I go in or do you have to go before me?” she asked. “I don’t see a fire on my cameras, but I’m not stupid enough to send you away without having the house looked over.”
“Let me see the camera,” Trey said. She pulled her security system up and handed her phone over. “I’d like to go in first, if you’re okay with it?”
She handed over the key. “Here you go.”
“Stay here. We’ll be right back. We won’t break anything, don’t worry.”
She cracked a grin. “I know a few men who could fix it if you did.”
He didn’t smile back. Not like the boy she used to know. Guess they’d both changed a lot.
2
Pay Attention
Trey Bridges recognized the homeowner’s name when the alarm went off. How could he not? He’d known Whitney for years i
n school, dated her seriously for one, then broke things off when he started to feel smothered.
He’d hurt her. He knew. He was hurting himself, but they were seventeen. He wasn’t thinking of marriage and kids and that was all she talked about.
Since she’d gotten married less than a year after high school, she’d had no problem moving on, and if the knife in his heart had been twisted some more by that, he had to pull it out because he’d made his bed and had to lie in the bloody mess.
Proof was this stunning home she had in the development her family owned. No shocker there.
He opened the front door and went in with two of his men. There was an alarm going off in the house and he walked around until he found the source in the basement. No smoke, but it wasn’t a smoke alarm, rather the carbon monoxide one. “Let me go grab the meter,” Trey said. “If you want to look around some more you can, but there are no signs of a fire.”
He pulled his mask off when he got outside, then grabbed the meter and walked back in without stopping to talk to Whitney. It was probably just a battery, but it was his job to check and make sure the house was safe.
He got back in the house with the meter in his hand and already could see the reading in the house was higher than normal. By the time he got to the basement and the furnace it was reading over 100.
Since he worked on furnaces on the side for his father, he shut hers off easily enough, then started to open all the windows in her finished basement. The house was huge and gorgeous like he suspected it’d be when he pulled in front of it.
“Start opening windows on the first and second floor,” he told two guys that had come back in with him. Between him and the four others, they had the house aired out fast.
“What’s going on?” Whitney asked when he got back outside.
“There is carbon monoxide in the house. That is the alarm that was going off. I shut your furnace off, but you should get someone out here to look it over. The highest concentration was coming around it, so my guess is that is the source.” If he wasn’t on the clock for the city he could look closer, but it wasn’t his job. She had people she could call to handle it.
She closed her eyes and dropped her head back. “An alarm was beeping on and off all night and I couldn’t figure out which one it was. I thought it was the backup in the kitchen and I changed the batteries and went back to bed.”
“Experience any headaches, lightheadedness, dizziness?”
“I had a raging headache when I left this morning. The furnace wasn’t on long the past few days. Just a few hours last night. It was off this morning. I only turned it up to warm the upstairs before bed and then it shut off.”
“Which was a good thing. But it must have kicked back on this morning.”
“Thanks. Can I go in the house? What do I do now? How will I know when it’s safe?”
“Getting air in the house will help. You’ll need to keep the windows and doors open all day. A furnace repairman will have a meter too to check once it’s repaired.”
“Can I buy one of them myself? I’m going to be paranoid now,” she said.
He remembered that about her. That she worried like a little mother over the smallest things. Even said she was scared he wanted to be a fireman, but he wasn’t changing his career goals because it upset her.
Not that this was small and she had a right to be paranoid. Hell, he could relate since it seemed like he turned into her now that he was a father.
“You won’t need one,” he said, cracking the barest of grins. She was being nice and friendly. There was no reason not to be back. She obviously wasn’t harboring ill feelings toward their one-year relationship fifteen years ago. He was crazy to think otherwise.
She ran her hands over her face, her dirty blonde long hair blowing around a little in the early September breeze. Her blue eyes still crystal clear and hitting him in the gut. “I’ll call our furnace guys once I get back to the office and get someone over ASAP. My brother is going to freak over this.”
He remembered Ryan back in the day. The kid was always looking out for his older sister. “Stuff like this happens,” he said. “The house looks new so chances are it could be a loose or cracked exchange. Might be an easy fix.”
“Yeah. I should have had it cleaned before I started to use it. Or at least looked at. I do every year toward the end of September, but the past few nights were colder than normal and I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s all good. That is what alarms are for in the house. That is if people pay attention to them.”
She squinted one eye at him like she used to do when he busted on her. He was being serious though. He’d stopped busting on women years ago. In the past year he didn’t even have time for a woman.
“I’m going to get an earful on that too. Thanks again, Trey.”
“Just doing my job. Let us know if you need anything else. Let’s head out, guys,” he said to the crew and got in the truck. All in all, it was an easy call. Anytime he left and came back clean and not stressed was a win for him.
Stress seemed to be his middle name more often than not.
The job he loved so much more a burden than a reward.
Today added to it putting him in front of his first love only to realize that maybe he’d acted too harshly back then breaking things off rather than working them out.
No, he reminded himself. Then he wouldn’t have Ben, and Ben was his world.
How he got him didn’t matter. But making one change would alter the course of the rest. He’d always believed that and proof was him being a single father and facing the dreams Whitney talked about that scared him shitless.
“Are you all set now?” Ryan asked her hours later.
“I am,” she said. “The furnace guys were there and checked it all over. They had to order the part so they can’t fix it until tomorrow.”
“You’re not spending the night in the house, are you?”
“No. I wanted to but Dad threw a fit. It wasn’t worth arguing and I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be there even with the furnace off.”
No use testing fate. The house had been cleared out and was reading fine on the meter by the end of the day, but she’d keep the fans blowing and the windows opened on the second floor for now.
“Make sure they fix your furnace before they go to any other site,” Ryan said.
“They will,” she said. “Now go home to your wife.”
Ryan didn’t move though. “What else is going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Whitney? I know you too well.”
“Fine. Trey was on the call.”
“Trey Bridges? The guy you dated in high school?”
“Yeah. Did you know he was a fireman?” A captain, she wanted to say but didn’t. She’d heard him being addressed by the other fireman.
“I might have heard something. I don’t keep track. You know that. But he always said he was going to be, so you shouldn’t be shocked.”
She shouldn’t have been. Trey had always been a man of his word. “Anyway, he was nice.”
“He always was. I liked him. And I didn’t like a lot of guys you dated.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What happened with you two?”
“Young love,” she said. There was no way she was telling Ryan that she’d been stupid and hovered over Trey. That she talked about her dreams and wishes and how they were perfect for each other. That she tried to talk him out of being a fireman because it scared her and she was only thinking of herself.
No seventeen-year-old boy wanted to hear his girlfriend dreaming about wedding gowns and baby names.
She’d had stars in her eyes like she always did.
She should have kept it all to herself and didn’t because she thought she could tell Trey anything.
He wasn’t just her first love, but her first lover.
The connection she felt to him had never been replicated.
“We were all stupid in high school,�
� Ryan said. “But you did let your plans slip out more than once.”
“Some more than others,” she agreed. “Anyway. Go home to your wife and those sweet kids of yours.”
“Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? You know Maddie loves her aunts.”
Whitney smiled. She did love Shannon’s four-year-old daughter, Maddie. “She has Zoe there.”
Zoe Milton was Shannon’s younger sister that lived in an apartment in the basement of Shannon and Ryan’s home and was the kids’ nanny.
“Maddie loves you too. Shannon said she hadn’t seen you lately.”
She did adore her new sister-in-law. They’d had an instant connection when Shannon started building her house via Tacoma almost two years ago. “Don’t you know not to drop guests on your wife last minute? Talk about stupid.”
“Shannon cooks enough for an army each night and you know it. But if it makes you feel better I’ll call her and ask.”
“And put her on the spot?” Whitney said. “Really, Ryan.”
Shannon worked from home for her late husband’s business that was run out of Seattle. She had a high-level finance position but pretty much set her hours. Actually, last she knew, Shannon was selling the business to Tyler’s partner, John, and now worked for him. Shannon was worth more than them all and could walk away and start a new life, but she didn’t and said she wouldn’t. She’d stay on so the kids knew their father’s legacy.
Shannon was a mother and homemaker at heart. A working mom like Whitney always thought she’d be. So yeah, they got along well, because like saw like.
Ryan pulled his phone out and she saw him typing. “You’re coming to dinner,” he said. “Shannon said she’s got a big pot of sauce and meatballs.”
“What did you ask her?” she asked.
“I said I was starving and wanted to know what was for dinner and if she needed me to get anything at the store on the way home.”
“Guess you’re smarter than I give you credit for, asking that way.”
He smirked. “I don’t want to be sleeping in the doghouse with Taffy and Oreo, thank you very much. But she said she was dying for meatballs and if I wanted to get some fresh bread, it’d be great.”