Page 21 of Love Bomb

“That’s okay.” He was so eager to please. It was lovely. “The office is mainly for planning and meeting clients. We do all the practical work out at our work yard.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Oh, really,” Rona said as casually as she was able. “Where’s that?”

“Out by the old mine,” Conall said.

“And that’s where Kade does his woodwork and Bain, er, blows things up?”

He laughed. “Bain doesn’t just blow things up. He’s one of our main builders.”

Bully for him. Rona only cared about the blowing things up part.

“Ah, but he must still tinker with explosives.” She forced a casual chuckle.

“I wouldn’t call it tinkering,” Conall said. “He does a fair amount of specialist jobs for big companies and the government. Not as many as he used to do, but enough for him to travel a couple of times a year.”

Good, so he still used a lot of explosives. Which meant he had to store them somewhere.

“Remember the garden shed at your parents’ house?” she said. “He was always in there, coming up with new ways to blow things up.”

“He got into so much trouble back then. The guy was a genius at science in school, aced physics and chemistry without even trying, but all he cared about was making concoctions that went boom.”

She laughed politely. “Does he still make his own concoctions?”

“He dabbles a bit. Although, he mainly uses a supply of industrial grade materials for his jobs—detonators, explosive primers, chemicals and the like.”

At last, they were getting somewhere.

“That sounds impressive,” she said.

Conall’s shoulders straightened with pride. “He’s extensively licensed and well-respected in his field. He’s even done some teaching and consulting work for the government.”

“Wow.” Rona was genuinely impressed, but not surprised. Bain had always been exceptionally smart. “It’s great to hear he’s still inventing his own explosive formulas,” she said.

“I don’t think we could stop him.”

“He must have a lab where he does his thing,” she prompted as gently as she could.

“Would you believe he’s still working out of a shed?” Conall grinned. “It’s a wee bit bigger and better than our Da’s old garden shed, but it’s still basically a shed. Bain says he feels at home in there and it helps him think straight.”

“And that shed is up at your work yard too?”

Conall nodded. “Gotta keep the explosive stuff far away from everything else.”

At last! Bain kept his explosives in his work shed.

Rona almost rubbed her hands together and cackled with glee.

But she didn’t. She wasn’t stupid.

“I’ll bet. Tell me,” she chuckled as though she was being silly, “do explosive experts still use dynamite or is that just in the movies?”

She crossed her fingers and hoped it was still a thing, because a couple of sticks of dynamite would do the job nicely.

“Oh, it’s still used,” Conall said. “But there are better options. Mainly it’s used for stuff where the explosive can get wet, like flooded caves or digging trenches. You see,” he leaned in, enthusiastic about the topic, “it’s heavy and sinks when it’s wet, so that makes it handy for stuff like that.” He blushed. “Bain told me that when I was a kid and asked him about it.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “Cartoon research?”

Conall smiled widely. “Yep. I wanted to know why the coyote kept getting blown up but never died.”