“Crap.” Caz gripped her hands tightly for one more second, then let go. “I guess I’m getting naked in the ambulance.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the fire service, there was driving code three—going as fast as you could possibly go—and then there was the unofficial code-three-and-a-half, which was driving just a little bit faster than that. When Lexie gave the update, saying an elderly female had been found down in her house, alone and bleeding, Bonnie stepped it up to the latter.
“It’s Ava!” she yelled over her shoulder. Behind her, Caz was sitting on the gurney and had his tux trousers off, but it looked as if he’d forgotten to take off his cowboy boots first.
“Who?” He yanked harder on the pants.
Bonnie tried desperately not to ogle his red briefs. “You know, I broke her toilet!”
“She’s never really hurt,” said Caz, tugging at his left boot. “She probably needs her coffee pot cleaned or something. You should slow down if you want me to be decent by the time we get there…” But his voice was worried, too. The call hadn’t come in from a medical alarm—according to dispatch, it had come from a neighbor.
The house, in disrepair last time, looked even worse on the inside this time. There were dishes piled in the sink that might have been there for weeks, and Ava, lying on the floor of the washroom just off the kitchen, looked so thin Bonnie’s heart hurt.
“Oh, dear,” Ava said, grasping for glasses she wasn’t wearing. “They sent me the handsome one again, didn’t they? And me without my lips on.”
Caz smiled and kneeled next to her. “You’ve got quite a bump on your noggin there, don’t you?”
Bonnie reached for the gauze and butterfly strips. They’d clean out the head wound, but she was going to need stitches at the hospital. “Do you know when you fell, Mrs. Simon?” The bleeding was barely a trickle—it had to have been hours before.
Ava Simon blinked at her. “Who’s Mrs. Simon?”
Bonnie felt even more concern. “I’m sorry, I—”
The older woman laughed. “I’m just teasing. I have all my faculties, more’s the pity, or I could have had a lot more fun hallucinating down here for hours. I fell last night, when I was getting supper ready.”
Bonnie glanced at the counter behind her and saw the can of black beans, halfway opened, the can opener next to it.
“I like beans,” said Ava with a little flip of her hand. “You’d be surprised at how little you can get by on when you’re my age. I made a single bag of walnuts last three months.”
Bonnie gasped.
Ava laughed. “Got you again!” But then she grimaced, her laugh collapsing, as Caz touched her side. “Ooof. It’s bad, huh?”
Her left hip was broken, Bonnie could tell by the way she was folded up on herself.
It was only going to get worse for Ava Simon. How many times had Bonnie seen exactly this? An elderly person in good health, taken down by a hip, and never released from the hospital again. Ava was already frail. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
Caz said to Ava, “You’re going to be fine.”
Bonnie stared at him.
Ava’s eyes brightened. “You think so?”
“I know so. You’re going to be just fine.”
Ava looked at Bonnie, searching her face. “You think I can trust this young man?”
Caz followed Ava’s gaze. Both of them waited for Bonnie’s answer.
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “I think you can.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
At the hospital, after making sure Ava Simon was tucked in and full of meds that made her flirt woozily with every orderly that wandered by, Bonnie and Caz stood in the hallway leaning on the same wall.
They were inches away from each other. Around them, nurses bustled, family members hurried, doctors ambled. But to Bonnie, there was no one else in the hall. He was so close to her she could feel the heat from his shoulder, smell the scent of wood shavings and soap.
Her pinky finger touched his, and it felt like a burn. Or a kiss.
She didn’t move her hand away.
He didn’t, either.
“Did you mean that?” Caz asked, his voice as soft as it had been when they’d been in bed together, as soft as it had been that night when he’d told her how she felt in his arms. “What you said back there about trusting me?”
Bonnie paused before answering. Her heart did that weird fluttery thing again. “If I say yes, will you tell me what you were doing in the app bay? On the stage, in your tux?”
“I was just hoping.”
Her breath hitched in her chest. “For what?”
“For you to forgive me for what I said.”
“What you said to me was crap.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
Bonnie counted the beeps of a heart monitor she could hear in the next room. When she got to thirty, she said, “But what I said about your dad… and what I couldn’t tell you…I should have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” he said, turning to face her. His crystalline-blue eyes warmed. “I was the one who made all the mistakes. I was furious with you, with what you could do to me without even trying. You made my dad feel better, and that’s like winning the lottery for him. And me. That same night, you made me feel like I could touch the sky. Then, I not only shut you out, but I kept you out, and then I told you we had nothing together.” He paused, and touched her cheek so lightly she wondered if she imagined it. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. That’s what I was doing on the stage. I was trying to change the outcome, to make it right.”
Something joyful tugged inside her. “So…”
“So. I’m asking if we can move forward.”
Yes. Bonnie’s heart said yes. Her brain stalled, though, and her mouth said, “Where?”
“Wherever you are. I don’t care where that is. That’s where I want to be.”
“Huh.” It seemed as if she’d lost all the other words she’d ever known. She wanted to—longed to—lean forward and wrap her fingers around the collar of his work shirt, but she stayed still. “Huh.”
“I know you can’t tell me how you feel.”
Bonnie opened and shut her mouth. She wanted to.
Caz reached forward and tugged on the pocket of her sweatshirt. She swayed toward him. “I can say it for both of us. I love you.”
The words he said were huge and yellow—enormous balloons of delight that soared away, taking the stopper in her throat with it. “I love you, too,” said Bonnie.
Caz looked both shocked and delighted, as if someone had just handed him the thing he wanted the most, the thing he thought he’d never find. “You what?”
Bonnie laughed. “I love you.” The words tasted of salt. Nothing about them felt normal, but they felt right. Her truth. Her whole truth. “I’m in love with you, Caswell Lloyd.”
“Holy—” He broke off and gave a ranch-hand whoop. “You’re telling me how you feel.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” she realized. “I’m telling you what I know.” That was the difference. Feelings changed, emotions swayed. That was why they couldn’t be trusted, couldn’t be believed.
Knowing was something else.
Bonnie knew her parents loved her, and she knew she loved them back. She knew Darling Bay was where she was meant to be, she knew she had the best job in the world, and she knew it just as surely as she knew how to whistle.
Most of all, though, she knew she loved the man in front of her, the one whose eyes said he knew it, too.
“One question. No, wait. Two.”
Caz grinned. “As many as you want.”
“Kiss me?”
He did, thoroughly. And she kissed him back. His lips were as hot as his fingertips were cool, and if they hadn’t been standing in the middle of the emergency room hallway, Bonnie might have gone looking for the briefs she’d seen in the rig. A nurse yelled, “Get a room!”
Bonnie pulled
back, but stayed firmly where she was, in his arms. “That wasn’t the first question. The first one is will you take me to your cabin?”
“It’s pretty empty. Only if you help me fill it with things we love.”
She lost her breath as happiness filled her like helium. She took a few seconds to find it again and then asked, “Will you carve me a bicycle someday?”
Caz laughed.
Then he pulled a tiny block of wood from his pocket and showed her the minuscule pedals.
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About Rachael Herron
Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novels The Ones Who Matter Most, Splinters of Light and Pack Up the Moon (all from Penguin), the five-book Cypress Hollow series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland. She teaches writing extension workshops at both UC Berkeley and Stanford and is a New Zealand citizen as well as an American. You can find her at RachaelHerron.com.
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KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF THE NEXT BOOK!
Don’t miss a minute in Darling Bay! One unforgettable town, three standalone series (read them in any order!). So many ways to fall in love!
THE FIREFIGHTERS OF DARLING BAY:
Playing with fire has never been this fun…
Blaze: Tox and Grace - Book 1
Burn: Coin and Lexie - Book 2
Flame: Hank and Samantha - Book 3
Heat: Caz and Bonnie - Book 4
Or get all four together on sale, HALF OFF! Save $5.97!
The Firefighters, Boxed Set
THE SONGBIRDS OF DARLING BAY:
Nashville meets the Gilmore Girls in this heartwarming new trilogy of estranged country-singing sisters seeking true love (and their way back to each other).
The Darling Songbirds, Book 1, March 2016
The Songbird’s Call, Book 2, September 2016
The Songbird’s Home, Book 3, March 2017
THE BALLARD BROTHERS OF DARLING BAY:
The Bachelor meets The Property Brothers: Love, property, and construction. What could possibly go wrong?
On the Market, Book 1, June 2016
Build it Strong, Book 2, October 2016
Rock the Boat, Book 3, January 2017
STANDALONE NOVELS:
Women and families finding their ways back to what really matters: each other:
The Ones Who Matter Most
Splinters of Light
Pack Up the Moon
CYPRESS HOLLOW ROMANCES 1-5:
Knit-lit with more heat than just wool could ever provide:
How to Knit a Love Song
How to Knit a Heart Back Home
Wishes & Stitches
Cora’s Heart
Fiona’s Flame
Eliza’s Home (Historical Novella)
MEMOIR:
Rachael’s life as seen through the sweaters she’s knitted:
A Life in Stitches
Keep reading for a Sneak Peek
of the first book in The Songbirds of Darling Bay series, a full-length, heartwarming new romance from Rachael Herron!
EXCERPT OF The Darling Songbirds:
CHAPTER ONE
The saloon had always looked old-fashioned, but now it resembled a set in a ghost town. The boards creaked under Adele Darling’s feet as if they hadn’t been stepped on since women wore hoop skirts. Cobwebs on the porch slung themselves from top beams to bottom ones, and an old wagon wheel leaned against a hitching post in front. It was as if the sidewalk had been poured right around the post, and her Toyota hybrid looked completely wrong parked next to it. It should have been a horse.
The problem was that Adele wasn’t in an old western, or a ghost town. Darling Bay was the sleepy gold-rush town her great-grandfather had given his name to.
The town she’d left for good a long time ago.
There was a hand-drawn sign that said: Hours – 11 AM–2 AM. She glanced at her cell phone. Almost noon, and the doors were locked. Awesome.
She knocked on the wood next to the iron screen door.
“That won’t do you no good.”
Adele spun. “Sorry?”
The exceedingly short woman standing on the step below her wore a long, oversized blue dress that hung on her like a sack. Somewhere in her mid-sixties, she had a well-creased face, like a crumpled envelope. A dozen or more necklaces dangled around her neck, crystals and quartz and what looked like actual feathers, on tarnished silver chains. Her short grey hair stuck up in spikes as if she’d just run her hands over it roughly, but her smile was wide. “He ain’t here yet.”
Adele wasn’t sure who he was. “Okay . . .”
“But if you reach up above the door,” the woman pointed, “yeah, right there. You’re a tall one, ain’t you? Grab that key for us, will you?”
It wasn’t that Adele was tall at five foot five. It was more like the woman was eye level to her elbow. “Got it.” Now that the key was in her hand, Adele had no idea what to do with it. It wasn’t like she would just unlock the bar’s front door. Would she?
She didn’t have to make the decision. In a move so quick it surprised her, the woman snatched the key from her palm and unlocked the iron security door, swinging it wide open and barreling through the wooden half-door as if she owned the place, which Adele knew for a fact she didn’t.
“Sometimes I gotta open up for him, you know?” The woman moved to the right and snapped on two light switches, and then headed for the bar. She was a low, fast-moving bowling ball in blue. “It’s usually harder ’cause it’s tough for me to reach that key. It’s not like I mess with the till or nothin’, I just help him out where I can.”
Adele trailed behind the woman. This wasn’t the situation she had imagined herself in when she’d awoken this morning. All she’d known four hours ago in her San Francisco hotel was that she had a long drive up the coast. When she got to Darling Bay, she figured she would plan her next move.
So she’d gotten in her rental car and headed north. Highway One wound through the redwoods, darting out to the rocky coast and back inland again. She’d stopped once to stretch her legs, and had stood cliff-side watching elephant seals slap themselves up and down the coarse sand. It took a bit more than three hours to get to Darling Bay, a long-enough drive to make her feel as far from Nashville as she’d ever felt.
She used to be used to this feeling. This used to be home.
And now she had exactly no idea what that meant.
“You want a drink, dearie?”
Adele blinked. “I’m sorry . . . Who are you?”
“Well, I suppose I could ask you the same thing.”
That was fair. “I’m Adele Darling.”
“Oh, my God. You are.”
Crap. Adele should have just said her first name. What was she thinking? Nowhere else would her last name have raised more than a vaguely puzzled eyebrow. Sounds familiar . . . can’t place it. But not here.
The woman clutched at her pile of necklaces. “They didn’t tell me that.”
“Who?” Adele was feeling more confused by the second. “I don’t think anyone knew I was coming.”
“But they usually tell me everything.” She held up a chain that had a pink piece of stone at the end and peered at it closely.
“Your necklaces tell you these things?” Ade
le kept her voice soft. Maybe it was better not to startle her.
The woman stared at Adele as if she were crazy. “Not my necklaces. My dreams.”
“Ah.”
“Of course, it’s not like they’re always right. Sometimes they tell me a storm is coming when all that’s going to happen is I forget to take the kettle off the stove. Same thing.” She waved her arms above her head. “Clouds of steam. Just in my kitchen. You see?”
Adele nodded carefully.
“Where are the other two?” The woman peered behind Adele as if she were somehow hiding her sisters.
“Not with me.” Nothing could be truer. “I didn’t get your name.” Adele held out her hand.
The woman’s shake was firm. “Norma.”
“And you’re the bartender?”
Norma laughed heartily, but she spread her palms on the top of the bar as if to negate her next statement. “Oh no, not me. You’re a funny one. I’m just a drinker, from a long line of the same. Speaking of which, what can I make you?”
Not the bartender, then, but not not the bartender. “How about a Coke?”
“With rum? And can I read your tarot cards?” Norma asked hopefully.
“I’m good on both, thanks.” It was a bit early to start pounding liquor. “So if you’re not the bartender, and the saloon was supposed to open at eleven . . .”
“Oh, he’ll be here.”
“Who will?” This was beginning to feel like a game of Who’s On First.
“Nate.”
“Nate?”
Heat (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 4) Page 14
