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“And what have we learned today?” I fixed Tim Jensen with a gimlet eye and waited.
The sixteen-year-old, who considered himself an amateur inventor, ran a hand through his singed hair. “That gunpowder measurements are important, and added shrapnel does not give a sparkly effect to a cannon blast.”
I pressed my lips together to hold in a laugh. Since the kid hadn’t actually gotten hurt with his homemade cannon experiment, the situation was kinda funny. But part of my job as a firefighter was to impress upon the teen that such experiments were not appropriate or safe. “And?”
Tim curled his shoulders forward. “And I shouldn’t be trying to get ahead on next year’s physics project about ballistics and mini explosions without adult supervision.”
He shouldn’t have been trying to make a cannon out of old pipes and a basic fuse system at all, but what teenage boy didn’t, at some point, attempt to launch small projectiles at targets? For me and my friends, it had been a potato cannon. Plenty of boom, far less likelihood of actual fire or injury.
“Remind me to introduce you to the fine art of the potato cannon.”
A car turned into the driveway, bumping far too fast along the rutted road. It had barely come to a stop beside the house before the drivers-side door opened and an older woman stumbled out, racing toward Tim. His mom, presumably.
“Oh, my God! What happened? Are you okay?”
I intercepted the panicked woman. “He’s fine. I can’t say the same for his cannon?—”
“Cannon?” the woman shrieked.
“Tim, why don’t you explain your experiment to your mom?”
The beseeching look the boy turned on me suggested that this was far worse punishment than anything else I could dish out.
Them’s the breaks, kid.
Tim reluctantly recounted the decimation of his homemade cannon, which had shot backward when fired, blowing apart and spraying wires, pulleys, and timber supports across the yard, in addition to his “ammunition.” Really, it was a miracle the kid hadn’t lost an eye, or worse. I signaled to the rest of the crew to begin packing up. The assorted small grass fires his experiment had started had been effectively doused. By the time we were ready to go, Tim was grounded for the rest of his natural life.
As we rolled away from the Jensen house, Pete Novak grinned over at me from the driver’s seat. “Bet this wasn’t the kind of call you expected to be taking when you took a job back on-island, huh, L-T?”
“Not so much, no.” After all the years coming up through the ranks in a big city fire department, I was accustomed to far more action. But I hadn’t gotten into firefighting because I was an adrenaline junkie, so the idea of risking life and limb with slightly less frequency was more than a little appealing. The change certainly made my mother happy. “Any day that doesn’t result in somebody getting hurt or losing everything is a good one in my book.”
“I’ll drink to that. Wanna hit up the Pelican to check it out after we get off shift? I’ve been hearing good things about their blackened shrimp.”
“Nah, I’ve got a standing invite to my mama’s for dinner. It’ll be over by the time we’re through with shift change, but she’ll have made me a plate. Figure I’ll go pick it up, then head home and crash. Another time.”
“Holding you to it.”
By the time we got back to the firehouse and did what needed doing, it was more than two hours past the end of my shift. Food I didn’t have to make myself was definitely high on my list. I could do exactly as I’d planned and drop by Mom and Dad’s for the inevitable leftovers. Or I could swing by the tavern for takeout and maybe get a few minutes of conversation with Caroline. I hadn’t liked leaving as we had the other day, without knowing she was okay. But we’d had places to be and, as Drew had pointed out, there was nothing more I could reasonably be expected to do.
Not that either of those things had stopped me from thinking about her ever since.
We weren’t friends. I doubt she even considered me more than a passing acquaintance in the same way ninety percent of islanders were. But I hadn’t been able to get those rich, dark eyes out of my mind. There’d been hurt and frustration mixed in with the inevitable embarrassment. But there’d been fire, too. A desire to fight, barely leashed.
I chose not to analyze why I wanted to take on those battles for her. Maybe because I remembered the younger version of her who’d tried to make herself small. I’d always wondered if that was because she wanted to be less of a target at home. The possibility had never sat well with me. The idea that people other than her father were out to make her life difficult now was even harder to swallow. I wanted her to think of me as an ally. A friend. I told myself that was why I turned my truck toward OBX Brewhouse.
But the moment I stepped into the bar and spotted her, I knew I was lying.
She moved with ease and grace, a heavy tray full of food balanced on one shoulder. Her hair was bundled in another of those messy buns, though several curling strands had fallen by now, teasing the nape of that lovely neck I wanted to touch and taste. Yeah, my motives for being here definitely weren’t purely altruistic. I was seriously attracted to this woman. Was she dating anybody? I had no idea. It wasn’t like I could ask such a question without cranking the rumor mill up to overdrive. But damn, I wanted to know if she was available, and if she was even interested.
If she was…
One thing at a time, McNamara.
At this hour, the kitchen wasn’t too far from closing. As no one occupied the hostess station, I wove my way through tables and took a seat at the bar. No one else was behind it, and I didn’t see any other servers. Was she here on her own? Only a handful of the tables were filled, and a quick scan of the room told me that most of the patrons were tourists, but still.
“You’re too pretty to be working in a place like this, Caroline.” The slightly slurred voice had my head whipping up from the menu.
Across the room, I spotted her straightening from refilling the man’s water glass. I didn’t have a clear view of him, but Caroline’s body was ramrod straight, one hand curled around the edge of her tray so tightly I could see her white knuckles from where I sat.
