Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (12 page)

“He can’t wear his dentures anymore,” was all Caz said.
 

“Will you introduce me?”
 

Caz’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her, as if to weigh whether or not she was serious. “He’s not very with it. As you can see.”
 

Bonnie raised her eyebrows. She waited. Politely.
 

Caz moved forward and touched his father on the shoulder. “Dad, this is Bonnie Maddern. She’s here to meet you.” His voice was gruffer than the voice he normally used on patients at work, but Bonnie could see his touch was gentle. Carefully, Caz straightened the collar of his father’s pajamas. “He was always vain about his appearance. I know he’d hate this…” His voice trailed off.
 

Bonnie stepped forward and put her hand over Tony’s wrinkled one. His hand had been plucking at the sheet fitfully, but it stilled as she touched him. “Mr. Lloyd, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.”
 

Caz pulled up the sheet a little higher and then moved to take the blanket from the foot of the bed. Bonnie helped, unfolding it on her side, bringing it up so they could tuck it under his arms.

“It’s okay,” said Caz, as if she’d complained. “He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s in the last stages and—”

Bonnie put her finger over her lips. “
Shhh
.” In a louder voice she said, “So this is the amazing father you told me about.”

Caz shot a look at her that seemed more made of confusion than anything else.

“And you’re right. He is handsome.” Bonnie tilted her head. “No, not more handsome than you are, Caz, I think you’re wrong there. I think you’re both equally good looking.”

Caz made a choking sound as Bonnie winked at him.
 

“Mr. Lloyd, I work with your son at the Darling Bay Fire Department. I can tell you this, we sure were lucky to get him. I’m friends with one of the people in HR, and she says that he was not only the most competent applicant, but he was the most eager to work with us. She told me that he had family in the area he wanted to be near, and now I see why. With a place like this, I can totally imagine why he’d want to be home. You’ve built a beautiful house on an amazing spread of land.” Bonnie scanned the bed to make sure she wasn’t going to hurt him or sit on his oxygen tube, and then she perched on the edge. “You don’t mind, do you? I rode all the way here on my bicycle, and it’s a good ten miles. Of course, you probably know exactly how far it is to town from here, don’t you? Caz told me you know every inch of this ranch like the back of your hand. My family, we don’t have anything like this. Do you know my parents? You might, if you ever shopped for knick knacks in the antique section of downtown. My mother owns Darling Bay Trinkets, and if you’ve ever been to her shop, I guarantee you’d remember her. Very few people forget her.”
 

“Kind of like you,” said Caz quietly.

Bonnie looked at him as he leaned against an old, dark bureau. He’d been watching as she talked, his crystalline eyes intently focused on her.
 

Caz spoke again. “You’re lying to him.”
 

“I’m not.”
 

He arched an eyebrow. “Good looking?”
 

Bonnie felt color heat her cheeks and she lowered her voice to a whisper even though it felt rude to do so in Tony Lloyd’s presence. “I think he is. Look at those high cheekbones.” She spoke directly to Tony then. “Don’t listen to him. You’ve had a better shave today than your son has. He’s all stubble, but I can tell you’re a man who’s always taken care of himself.”
 

“He was,” said Caz in a low voice. “He really was. Can you…”
 

“What?”
 

Caz looked at the ground and then met her eyes directly. “I hate lies.”
 

“Caz, I’m not—”
 

“But can you keep talking to him like that for a little while longer?”
 

Bonnie blinked in confusion. “Okay?”

“It sounds…nice.”
 

“Okay, then.”
 

Caz took a hesitant step forward and then, confusingly, he folded his arms and pressed his back against the bureau again. He nodded, as if to give her permission.
 

Bonnie smiled. She might not know much about what to do with Caz, who sent windmills whirling in her stomach and made her ache in a way she didn’t understand, but she knew how to talk to a man locked inside his own body, a man who’d barely moved since they’d entered the room.
 

She scooted an inch sideways so she was more firmly planted on the bed. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting here with you, sir. Your son Caz is…I’ve…enjoyed getting to know him a little better. I told him just the other day that a man with such a big personality like his had to have had a strong father at home.” She’d said no such thing. “I know you don’t feel like talking right now. If that changes, you just let me know, okay? In the meantime, I’ll just tell you a little bit about my family. My maternal grandmother—maybe you knew her? Hazel Lake? She was a good woman. And the way she ended up in Darling Bay involved a pig in a wheelbarrow, if you can believe that…”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Caz watched.
 

He listened.
 

Bonnie spun a tale about a baby pig that fell out of a wheelbarrow on a road her grandmother was bicycling (maybe two wheels ran in the blood). The story included a dinghy that sank, and a man with silver eyes who saved her grandmother from drowning, and something about a lightning storm and a bag of oranges, or maybe it was lemons. Caz felt as if maybe he were the one with Alzheimer’s. He couldn’t remember where the story was going or why she was telling it. But when she said, a light lilt in her voice, “Can you believe it? A moth that blocked the whole moon!” he felt his mouth curve into a smile.
 

More incredible than the story, though, was the fact that Tony Lloyd opened his eyes. He looked right at the blonde sitting on the edge of his bed, his eyes focusing on her as if he saw her. As if he recognized her.
 

And then, miracle of all miracles, he
smiled
at her.
 

Taking care of an Alzheimer’s patient at this stage often felt like taking care of a baby. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to any of the sounds they made. They couldn’t control their limbs or their bodily functions. Their smiles could just as easily be gas.
 

But the smile on his father’s face now was his father’s old smile, the one he reserved for when he was happy with a horse’s recovery, or when he laid down a full house.

Tony
smiled
at Bonnie. He always had liked blondes.

Bonnie smiled back, and it struck a low bell inside Caz, a tone that rang through his entire frame. A tone he recognized, somehow.
 

Bonnie took his father’s hand, pressing it between her own. She leaned forward and said, “Well, hello there, handsome. You’re going to be just fine, aren’t you?”
 

Something lit in Caz’s father’s eyes. Something he hadn’t seen in a long time. Was it…hope? That couldn’t be…she shouldn’t…

Bonnie said it again, “You’re going to be fine. A strong man like you, I see where Caz gets it from. Now I’m going to tell you the rest of the story, okay?”

She kept spinning her tale of runaway pigs and red bicycles, and within a few minutes, his father was snoring softly, the way he did most of the day now.
 

Joyce put her head around the corner, and her eyes lit with surprise to see Bonnie on the bed. “Oh! Isn’t this something? You put him to sleep for me?”
 

Bonnie’s tale over, she slid sideways, careful to stand up from the bed without jostling Tony. “I’m so glad I met you,” she whispered touching Tony’s cheek with the back of her fingers.
 

Something inside Caz splintered, something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to sand away or fix with wood glue.
 

The thing was, Caz could tell she really
was
glad. She was happy she’d just spent thirty minutes with a man who only looked at her once. And even though she’d done her usual lying to a patient (
You’ll be fine, you’ll be great
), instead of being angry with her, his chest felt expansive. Grateful. Warm.
 

The very
least
he could do was cook for her.
 

He took her hand, ignoring her look of surprise. He led her through the house, out the back door and across the grassy area between the two houses. The sunset, red and orange at its heart, was starting to pale to coral on the edges.
 

Bonnie stopped, putting her head back. “Look at that view. You can’t see the ocean from here, but it doesn’t matter much, does it?”
 

“Incredible,” Caz said. He wasn’t looking at the sky.
 

In the kitchen of the cottage, he said, “Sit,” pointing at the barstool on the opposite side of a wooden island he’d built the winter the old maple came down. What was that, four years ago now? That had been the first Christmas he’d known something was really wrong with his father, the first time he thought he might have to move home. “Wine?”
 

“Sure,” she said. “What can I help with?”

“You can just sit there. You’ve done enough.” He straightened from reaching for the bottle opener. “You’ve done…” His brain whirred and stalled. He didn’t have the words he wanted. “You’re…”
 

“Bossy? Pushy? Annoying? I’ve heard all those this week, and that was only from my mother.”
 

“Amazing.”
 

Bonnie went all pink again. Caz loved it.
 

It was so
different
for her.

In a crisis, she was calm. Her head was in just the right place. Last week, when the seventeen-year-old skateboarder had landed in the gutter, giving himself a double compound fracture, she’d never paused chatting to the kid while they loaded him. She was able to treat and talk at the same time, all the while calming a kid who was almost out of his mind from shock and pain. Right now, though? She looked totally flummoxed, as if he’d gotten her drunk and then asked her to solve word problems with a pen and no calculator.
 

He worked fast. It was a simple dinner, the kind he made himself all the time. He led her outside to the deck and while she sat on the porch swing, he grilled the steak. He threw together a quick green salad, and brought out some bread and butter fresh from the Johnson’s dairy down the road. He added salt and pepper to the small table on the edge of the deck and brought out two cloth napkins, just to cover all his bases. Almost full dark, he added a brass camping lantern that gave a low, companionable hiss.

“Fancy,” she said, holding up her napkin to the yellow light. “The embroidered flowers are sweet. My mother would love these. Do you know who did it?”
 

He cleared his throat. “My dad.”
 

“Really?”
 

“My mom split on us. He kind of took on everything. Some things he was better at than others. He would sew—embroider, I guess—in the evenings while we watched TV. Said it relaxed him. I think it helped wreck his eyes, but I will say that it was one of his last skills to go. He lost the motor skills to undo his own pants, but he could still stitch a flower like it was a contest.”
 

“Do
you
embroider?” Her voice was a flirt. A tease. He wanted to cup his hand around the back of her neck and draw her in for a kiss that was hard and deep.
 

Caz paused. He wasn’t a good liar.

“You do,” she guessed.
 

He sawed at the edge of the steak he’d charred a bit too much. “I wanted to be just like my dad. What’s a kid gonna do?”
 

“That’s the most adorable thing I ever heard.”
 

Caz mock-glared at her. “I’m not adorable. I’m tough.”
 

“Sure. Embroiderer.”
 

“I build houses.” He held up his hands. “With these.”
 

He expected her to laugh, but instead she said earnestly, like she wanted to know, “Really? How?”
 

“How?” he repeated.
 

“Like, from scratch? Or do you mean you hire someone and then you help? Or do you just paint at the end?”
 

Caz felt warmth spread through him. “From scratch. We built most of this place, my dad and me. And…my cabin up north is almost done.”

“Everything,” she clarified. “Like, you put in the windows and the countertops? The electricity, too?”

“Yep. I did everything myself, with some help from a couple of guys when I needed manpower with things that were too heavy for just one person.”
 

Bonnie cupped her chin in her hands. “You love it. That’s why you whittle all the time.”
 

He shrugged. “I guess.”
 

“When will you finish the cabin?”
 

The skin on his arms felt chilled. “When I can.”
 

“Your dad.”
 

Caz tried to smile. “A lot depends.” Who was this woman who made him talk? Who made him tell her the important things? Why did he want to tell her more? Why did he want to tell her everything? He wanted to explain the beams that ran under this cottage, and he wanted to tell her the dream he’d had about her the night before, the one he could barely remember now, except that it had warmed him to his fingertips. “So,” he said. “You gonna tell the guys?”
 

“About what?”

“The embroidery.”
 

Bonnie grinned. “Of course I am.”
 

“You wouldn’t.”
 

“How are you going to stop me?”
 

It was a challenge. A direct one. There was nothing for him to do but stand and walk the two short steps around the small table. Bonnie looked up at him, and the question in her eyes was gratifyingly replaced by understanding. He sunk his fingers into the back of her hair and leaned down, kissing her the way he’d wanted to since she first skidded her bike to that short, quick stop in front of the house.