Page 21 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

James Parker is on his knees in my lane. Trowel in one hand. A flat of seedlings in the dirt beside him. His glasses have slid all the way down his nose, and there's a smear of soil on his cheek where he's pushed them up wrong at least four times.

He hears my footsteps and freezes like a deer. Like a lawyer, a councilman, and an ordained minister caught red-handed at seven in the morning.

"Rue." He says my name the way other men say your honor.

"James."

"I can explain."

"I surely hope so." I'm smiling already. Can't help it. "Because from here it looks like you're gardening my secret path."

His ears go pink. Thirty-six years old, three respectable jobs, and his ears go pink.

I go back for a second mug and bring it out to him, and we end up where I always end up, sitting in the grass under the big live oak with our backs against the bark. His hands are filthy. He holds the coffee anyway, careful, like it's evidence.

"How long?" I ask.

He looks at the seedlings. At the ribbon of blue running down the lane.

"Rue." He clears his throat. "It was never wild."

I hold real still.

"The path. I planted it. I plant it. Every year I add to it so it reaches wherever you walk." He pushes his glasses up and leaves another smudge. "And before you found this lane, there was another one. On the Hall property. The very first spring you were home."

The trail of asters. My first spring home. A line of blue leading off across Gran's land with a note that said find me where the wild asters grow brightest, back when I was too raw and too proud to follow anything, and I never walked it to the end.

"That was you." My voice comes out smaller than I planned.

"That was me." He turns the mug in his dirty hands. "You never followed it. So, I figured the trail could come to you instead. I moved it, year over year. Extended it out here so it would be waiting whether you ever came or not."

I look at the asters. Spring after spring of them. A man on his knees in the dirt before I ever said yes to a first date.

"Why asters," I say. I already know. I want to hear it.

"They were your gran's. Her favorite. She told me so about forty times, usually while I was holding something heavy. She'd had me hauling and fetching since the week I came to town to help her put her affairs in order." A small smile. "I thought, Rue's going to grieve whether anybody helps her or not. And grief needs somewhere to walk. I figured yours ought to be someplace Eleanor would've liked."

I have interviewed a thousand people about love. I have a system, a method, a perfect record. And this man planted my grief a road, and never once took credit, and would have gone to his grave quiet about it if I hadn't caught him with a trowel.

"Tell me something about her," I say, when I can talk. "Something I don't know. Something that's only yours."

James laughs before he even starts. That's how I know it's a good one.

"Did you ever wonder where the yarn came from? For the scarf she was working on?"

"The periwinkle one." It's in my cedar chest. Unfinished, needles still in it. I've kept it all this time and never could say why, except that her hands touched it last.

"She came to my office at seven in the morning on a Saturday," he says. "Didn't ask. Appeared. Thermos in one hand, directions to Houston written on the back of an envelope in the other. Said no yarn within a hundred miles of this town was the right color and I was driving."

"Houston."

"Five stores, Rue. Five." He's grinning now, all the way. "She held skeins up to the window light in every one and said 'close' like the yarn had disappointed her personally. Made me hold colors against my forearm because, and I'm quoting, 'your skin's nearer to hers than mine is now.'"

My coffee's gone cold. I'm holding the mug with both hands.

"Fifth store, she goes quiet. Picks up one skein of periwinkle blue. Holds it to the light. And she says, 'There she is.'"

"There she is," I repeat.