Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74730 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
I’m not ready. Eric knew it, his blue-green eyes soft and patient. “It’s okay. Truly. Go get breakfast. Bring him around to teach Wren how to flip burgers.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, clinging to the last edges of my sanity. “We’re friends. I could do that. Ask him to dinner.”
Maybe if I went public with a friendship with Denver, eased us into things, he wouldn’t balk at keeping our fling going, and I wouldn’t freak out at the thought of coming out.
“You could.” A small smile danced across Eric’s face, a ghost of the man he’d been before losing Montgomery, serious but always happy and smiling. “You could ask him to dinner even without kids involved.”
“I could. Let someone else cook for the man.” Dating. We could date, let the fling morph into something without an end point. It was a tantalizing prospect, and I nodded. Baby steps.
“You should. Now, go on with you.” He waved me toward the back door. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing that Eric had guessed. I liked having Denver as my secret, but I didn’t like lying to my oldest friend.
As I drove to the diner, my mind kept mulling over the delicate dance of keeping the fling going while also trying to nurture it into something more without spooking Denver or myself. Maxine had dragged me to the ballet in Seattle a number of times with fellow academic types. I hadn’t had a lot of patience for teasing out the nuance of the storylines, but the impossible lightness with which the dancers moved had stuck with me. I felt like that now, all my weight balanced on a few tiny joints, about to soar. Or fall.
Didn’t want to fall. Yet, when I entered the diner, and Denver looked up and smiled, wide and true, the risk of leaping didn’t seem quite so scary. I headed for the counter, already anticipating our banter and what he might surprise me with this time.
“Sean!” Talk about a surprise. Right as I was about to grab a stool at the counter, my dad’s booming voice made me stop, heels digging into the scratched linoleum floors, lungs turning icy and stiff. “My boy! Come join the new mayor and me. Didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
That makes two of us. I turned away from the counter, away from Denver, and made my way to the booth where my dad was sitting with a woman in her early fifties. Short ash-colored hair, blue glasses, pink sweater. I vaguely recognized her as someone from my parents’ church who had been big into community service, then city council, and now mayor.
“Mayor.” I gave her a nod as I slid in next to my dad.
“Oh, call me Rosalynn.” She smiled warmly. “My wife is off at a library association conference this weekend, so your father was kind enough to indulge me in an early breakfast meeting to catch me up on all the fire and rescue news.”
“That’s great.” I forced myself to smile and not glance at the counter area. “And I’m here because Eric wanted some one-on-one time with the kids.”
The partial lie tasted sour. Eric was the one doing me a favor, not the other way around. But my pulse hadn’t slowed since hearing my dad’s voice, and sitting next to him made me feel even more like a guilty teen with a secret than I had earlier.
“There’s my blue eyes.” Tammy came over with a cup of coffee and a menu for me. Her eyes were tired, but her voice was a little too friendly and familiar. I had been making a habit of coming to the diner, and she was a smart lady who probably suspected more than she let on. She gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Figured you might be in.”
My dad’s mouth pursed like he was trying to reconcile my explanation for my appearance with Tammy treating me like one of the family.
“We’ve been coming in on shift a fair bit.” I made my voice casual as if I wasn’t the one to frequently suggest Honey’s over other options.
“And off-duty too,” Tammy teased. I tried to catch her gaze for a warning look. I didn’t need my dad to be too curious about my presence here.
“Some.” I waved my hand, adding a chuckle. “I’m kind of addicted to…the coffee.” And okay, that reason was thinner than a paper filter. Honey’s coffee was pretty much standard diner fare—strong and aromatic but nothing special. “And the hash browns. The one breakfast food I haven’t mastered cooking yet.”
“Remind me to assign you to the bacon at the annual firefighter’s breakfast in May.” My dad’s voice was hearty as ever. Not suspicious. Thank God, but my back was stiffer than an axe handle.
“Are you enjoying your term as mayor?” I asked Rosalynn, hoping she’d take pity on me and make small talk to distract my dad from any questions about my life.