Page 66 of Falling for a Grumpy Hero

Momma Winslow: So proud of you, baby! Those sketches are amazing. Your client is going to love them.

I replied with a heart emoji, briefly contemplating telling her that I was seeing someone, but eventually, I decided to keep it to myself for a while. Ford and I had a lot of stuff to figure out and knowing my parents, as soon as I told them how I really felt, they’d be on the first flight here to welcome him to the family.

With the block party happening tomorrow, I wanted to be fresh in the morning, so I changed into my pajamas and said good night to my parents, then I signed off for the night. Tomorrow was going to be a big day and I was looking forward to seeing Ford interact with his neighbors and hopefully, having a good time with his community.

The next morning, I dressed extra cute in a pair of denim shorts and an off-the-shoulder top and cycled over to his place. By the time I got there, preparations for the party were in full swing. It looked like the whole block was out there helping, music already playing from someone’s porch and several of his neighbors decorating the cul-de-sac.

The atmosphere was so festive already that I smiled, waving at the neighbors I’d met so far as I headed the last hundred yards or so to his house. Once it came into view, my mouth dried up and my heart started fluttering at the sight that awaited me.

Like so many others, Ford was already outside and busy with the final preparations for the day. In his case, it was mowing his lawn—and he was doing it shirtless. Glistening in the morning sunshine, he moved from one side of the lawn to the other, and the ideas that flickered through my mind as I watched were nothing short of pornographic.

Gosh, he looks good. How on earth am I supposed to keep my mouth shut about falling for him when he’s looking like that?

It didn’t feel even remotely possible, but I managed to keep myself in check. Mostly because as I slowed in front of his house, I also noticed the slight limp in his gait. He was pushing himself mighty hard for someone with the kind of injury he had. I just really hoped he would take a break if he needed one. I could take care of him, but I desperately needed him to start taking care of himself as well.

34

FORD

Sun blazed down on me from above, the sky blue and clear. Not a breath of wind moved through the air and old-school rock music played from speakers we’d carried onto my next-door neighbor’s porch. The party was well underway and so far, everyone seemed to be having a blast.

Laughter echoed all around me, my neighbors standing in little groups scattered around the cul-de-sac. Kids raced around with water pistols and some zoomed past me on their bicycles, shrieks of joy or protest over having been hit with a jet of water piercing the street every so often.

Mostly organized chaos was the closest I could get to describing it, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it might be. In all the years I’d been living here, I’d heard the music, the laughter, and the shrieks, smelled the scent of barbecue on the air, and I’d kept my curtains shut tight.

The party had always annoyed me to the extent that the last few years, I’d deliberately left for work before they’d started and I’d locked myself into the office until long after the festivities had been over. All to avoid exactly where I was now.

Somehow, I’d even ended up manning the grill. A high honor, I supposed, to be trusted with their hamburgers on a day like today.

As I flipped the burgers, I lifted my gaze and immediately sought out Lila again. She was mingling and smiling, her red hair like a strawberry halo around her head in the sunshine. I’d been stealing glances at her all day, wondering not only how the hell she’d managed to convince me to come to this thing, but also why it didn’t feel like the world was ending now that I was here with her.

“Hey,” a guy said as he walked up to our group around the grill. I’d been chatting with some of my neighbors, mostly older men, but the dude joining us now hadn’t been one of them. “You’re Callahan, right?”

I glanced at him, a little frustrated that he’d grabbed my attention from Lila just as she’d dropped her head back to laugh, but I gave him a curt nod. “Yeah. That’s right. You are?”

“Barry Moore.” He grinned and extended a hand toward me, using the other to point at a house down the block. “I moved in there a few years ago. Never got a chance to meet you before, though.”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy.” I shook with him, expecting him to fall into the conversation he’d interrupted with the others about swimming pool maintenance, but he sidled up to me instead. I frowned, flipping the burgers at the other end of the grill and hoping he’d leave me alone.

I was out here. I’d come to the party and I’d been talking. I didn’t need him right next to me. Especially not since I could feel him staring at the side of my face like he was trying to figure out if he recognized me.

“You served, right?” he asked a moment later. “I think I heard from someone that you were in Afghanistan?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I was there.” I slid the spatula underneath a burger that one of the little boys had come to carefully select for himself earlier. “Any reason why you’re asking?”

“Oh, sure. Yeah, I was there too. Just over a decade ago now.”

The guy was friendly enough, just making conversation from the sounds of things, but my blood started cooling when he mentioned the time period. “We were there around the same time, then.”

My gaze cut to the side and as soon as I looked at his face again, I knew that he knew. There was something about the way his jaw tightened as our eyes met that told me he’d been somewhere around there when it’d happened.

Somehow, half a world away, someone who had been there had ended up living on my block a decade later. Fucking fantastic.

“You were in that heli that crashed,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “The lone survivor, if memory serves. We heard about it. I thought I recognized your name the first time I heard it, but I wasn’t sure until just now.”

As he was speaking, I felt the darkness creeping up on me like thunderclouds gathering in the distance of my mind. The storm was rolling in and there was suddenly not a damn thing I could do to stop it.

I swiped the boy’s hamburger from the grill, wanting to keep the promise I’d made about saving it for him. Memories started flicking at the edges of my brain, the acrid scent that had pervaded my nostrils as soon as we’d gotten hit mingling with the smoke drifting off the barbecue.