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They got the sheets on the bed and he straightened. “This was my room. My entire childhood, this was my haven.”
“Really?” She looked around.
He nodded toward the closet. “I used to pretend that was a fort. Sometimes I slept in there, but only with the door open.”
She went to the closet, opened it and looked inside. “I don’t blame you. It’s not very big.” Jim moved to stand beside her, laid his hand over hers on the door. She lifted her eyes to his.
“It means a lot, you coming over here like this. Your family... “ He stopped there, shook his head. It really did mean a lot. He didn’t have to pretend at all, he realized, his throat getting tight.
“We care about Tyler. And about you, Jimmy. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. She was sincere, right to her soul. She meant every word she said. He couldn’t think otherwise.
“I, um... have blankets and pillows in the car,” she said. “And another bag, just a small one.”
“I’ll get them for you.”
She nodded and they walked downstairs together. The phone was ringing before they reached the bottom. Jim hurried across the room to where he’d left his cell phone on the coffee table and yanked it up, knowing it had to be something important for anyone to call at this time of the night. And when he looked at the panel and saw the chief’s number on it, he was even more certain.
“Corona,” he said into the phone. “What’s up, Chief?”
“They found the Blazer, Jim. We were able to trace his cell phone’s ping to narrow down the search and an eagle eyed deputy spotted it.”
It was bad. He knew it was bad. The chief never called him by his first name. “Colby?” he asked, standing motionless.
“We don’t know yet. The Blazer took a plunge into a deep ravine. It burned. They only identified it by a license plate that got knocked free on the way down. There’s a crew out there now trying to find any sign of anyone inside, but with a fire that bad... “
“Where?” Jim asked. Kara was beside him, her hand on his shoulder, her face searching his as the chief told him where Colby’s Blazer had been located.
When he hung up the phone and related what the chief had told him, he thought Kara was going to burst into tears. Instead she set her jaw. “Colby wasn’t inside,” she said. And she said it firmly. “He wasn’t or they’d have found something, some sign.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“You have to go,” she told him.
He closed his eyes, feeling as if his heart was being torn right in half. “I can’t leave Tyler.”
“Jimmy, Caleb is here. I’m here. Nobody is going to get near that boy with me around. I swear you can trust me to keep him safe.”
He frowned as her words wormed their way deep inside him.
“I’m not Angela, Jimmy. I’d step in front of a freight train for that child.”
More amazing than the power of her words was the fact that he believed them, he thought. He believed her, trusted her, in a way he had thought he would never trust any woman ever again. He trusted her with his son.
Amazing.
He took enough time to jot his cell phone number on a pad by the phone and then went out to find his best friend.
* * *
Kara wasn’t sure how she was going to sleep in the room that had been Jimmy’s, much less live under the same roof with him, without giving in to what she was feeling.
She’d never been with a man. Not... intimately. And she was afraid to admit that to him, even a little bit ashamed of it. It seemed so backward in this day and age to be a virgin at twenty-three. She wanted to be with Jimmy. And she thought he wanted to be with her, too. But she was afraid—so afraid of him. He was making her believe things she had always thought were impossible. Making her think there was suddenly a chance she could win the heart of the boy of her high school dreams. The man of her grown-up dreams, now. She was scared half to death, because if it wasn’t real, it would kill her.
Maybe it was already too late to worry about that. Maybe she’d already let herself fall. She looked out the window and saw Jimmy talking to Caleb on his way out to join the search for his friend. And just how could she be thinking about her own problems, her own hopes and fears and silly little-girl dreams, when hell was breaking loose all around Jimmy and Ty? It was selfish of her. She needed to focus on what was important. Keeping Tyler safe, praying for Colby’s well-being. That was all. Whatever happened—or didn’t happen—between her and Jimmy Corona wasn’t important. Not now.
She walked through the house, checking every window to be sure the locks were in place, checking the back door to make sure it was locked, as well. Then she went to Tyler’s bedroom and stood looking in on him for a long moment. Her heart swelled. Jimmy was worried about Tyler getting attached to her. She wondered if he realized just how attached she was becoming to Tyler. To both of them.
