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Three jars of baby food lay smashed on the floor. Bryce put the clues together and realized she and her nieces had likely caused this upset.
“Um, I think we’re good now,” she said to the Viking-strong man crouching over them. “It was just baby food. We must’ve thrown those jars off-balance while we were rescuing Cecily.”
Mr. Ryker looked over his shoulder, confirming her words. Then he stood. His ears flushed bright red, and before she could say anything, he’d unlatched his baby and scooped her out of the cart. Cradling her head with his free palm, he rounded the endcap, his long legs eating up massive chunks of aisle as he fast-walked through an empty checkout lane and through the exit as if escaping a flaming building.
“Wow. He was like a superhero,” Cecily said after he’d disappeared through the swooshing automatic doors, her eyes as big as pearl onions. “A genuine supermarket superhero.”
“No. He’s a pirate, and he’s tired. He tol’ me so.” Addison fixed her bent fairy wings. Then her eyes alighted on the mess in the middle of the aisle. “Are we gonna get yelled at, Aunt Beamer?”
Suddenly, a public announcement came over the grocery store’s speakers.
“Cleanup on aisle five, please. Cleanup on aisle five.”
“Nope. But we’re going to check out.” Bryce snatched the baby shampoo and canned soup from the man’s cart, then rushed the girls out of the aisle and toward the cashiers. “I think we’ve worn out our welcome here.”
Chapter 2
Ryker bolted from the store, leaving everything but Elise behind in his rush to outrace his humiliation. But as good as his prosthetic was, he couldn’t outrun his PTSD or his embarrassment. Every day since returning from deployment to Afghanistan seven years ago, he’d fought the feeling that he didn’t fit in the real world. Some days, months even, it would lessen. He’d hang out with guys from his old high school football team or his Marine brothers, and things would run smoother, like his life had gotten a much-needed oil change. But then, inevitably, the gears would gum up. Life would feel…heavier. Some days when he appeared in public, that sense of not belonging—of being out of sync with the rest of the civilians—became so painfully intense it was all he could do to clench his jaw and gut through the sensation.
On those days, it was just easier to skip the VA therapy appointments, rationalizing that it wasn’t worth time away from the shop. It was easier not to leave the garage at all; the grocery delivery app was the best thing created, in his opinion. He’d planned to just stay home with the baby…until she’d shit herself all the way up to her hair. Twice.
Ryker wondered if somehow Dr. Kirkland had arranged the entire fiasco, just to prove his point. Ryker could hear the doc’s calm, unruffled voice in his head.
“You know PTSD comes in waves, and avoidance is not a therapy. PE and CPT are,” the calm, patient tones of Dr. Kirkland explained for the thousandth time the benefits of prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy for both veterans and anyone who’d experienced trauma. “Just like Notre Dame had a binder full of plays to get into the end zone, I’ve got a binder full of ways we can tackle PTSD. All you need to do is participate with me. Suit up. Be in the game.”
In every telehealth session, Dr. Kirkland always managed to slide in a reference to his four glorious years of collegiate football. At first Ryker had been suitably impressed—even sharing with doc his days as the Wellsville Lions Varsity quarterback—up until Doc admitted he was the team’s kicker. And the backup kicker, at that.
“I just want to be on the sidelines. Or the bench. The bench would be good,” Ryker muttered to himself, then, as his niece grabbed onto his left ear, he forcibly pushed those thoughts from his head. He unhooked her chubby hand and lifted her in the air to blow a raspberry on her little belly until she drew her legs up, screeching in her throaty baby voice. “First things first: get you back to the garage, little Lisi.”
He unlocked the door to his truck and carefully slid baby Elise inside her car seat.
“Frigging thing,” he said under his breath, wishing the makers of this moronic ninety-point baby harness were here so he could strangle them. He’d finally clicked it all together when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ryker?”
Whipping around, he let his muscles relax. It was the friendly woman from the grocery store with the loosely braided hair and white chef’s coat. The one the kids had called Aunt Beamer. The one he’d “saved” from jars of baby food. His muscles tensed again as his neck burned with embarrassment.
He stood at stiff attention, throat working to find something to say, until he finally blurted out the first words that popped into his head.
“Just Ryker. No mister. I mean, Iama mister, but…” He stopped his babbling with effort. What in the hell was wrong with him anymore that he couldn’t even handle an introduction? He took in a lungful of air, finishing the dangling sentence. “Ryker’s my first name.”
“Oh.” She smiled and nodded, seemingly unbothered by his verbal foaming at the mouth. “Well, Ryker, I just wanted to say thanks again for getting Cecily unstuck and all. I’m Bryce, by the way. Bryce Weatherford.” She stuck out her hand and he shook it, appreciating how strong her grip was at the same time he muscled past his embarrassment to meet her eyes. Momentarily, he was distracted by her frank, blue-gray gaze, looking away only when she dangled a plastic bag from her other hand. “Thought you might need these.”
Elise yammered “dadadada” in her seat as he took the bag. Inside was the baby shampoo and the two cans of soup he’d left behind in his cart.
Glancing back up, he could tell from Bryce’s expression that his face was set in its usual rigid lines—the look his younger brother, Zander, had coined his RBF, or resting bastard face—and he fumbled to pin on a suitable expression.
“Uh, thanks.” He paused, recalling the moment in the store when he’d been about to ask her name and then maybe ask her out. Maybe it wasn’t too late? His mind desperately tried to come up with a segue, and he spotted the cans of soup. “I’m the stereotypical bachelor—I don’t have the time or skills to cook, so canned stuff is my go-to.”
“Growing up with a short-order cook for a mom taught me how to whip up a good meal in under ten minutes.” Bryce shrugged, her hand coming up to brush an escaped strand of her brown hair from her eyes as the wind whipped around them in the parking lot. “It’s all in the prep.”
He was hoping she’d zero in on the “bachelor” part versus the cooking part of his statement, and was puzzling out another conversational transition to get her number when she gazed over his shoulder, her lips pursing. She pointed with two fingers to her eyes, then to something outside of his gaze, then back to her eyes in a classic “I’m watching you” gesture.
He swiveled his head to see a canary-yellow BMW the next lane over, with two girls’ heads—the one with the fairy wings and the one who’d been stuck under the shelf—pressed up against the glass of the car’s rear window. They were both taking turns smashing their lips into the window and puffing out their cheeks until they looked like blowfish under the glass, then pointing and appearing to giggle at each other.
“Your nieces are cute,” he said. Then snapped his fingers, finally figuring it out. “Oh, I get it. Aunt Beamer because you drive a BMW.”
The woman took her gaze off her car with a laugh. “Other way around. My initials are BMW, so I’ve been nicknamed ‘Beamer’ my whole life. I thought it was only fitting I owned one, and this was my first, non-parent-funded car purchase. It’s not very conducive to hauling three girls around, but it does the job until I can afford something bigger. Something road-trip friendly.”
