Page 50 of Smoke and Roses

I turn around and look at Travis.

“Every inch of me?” I say.

His ears turn red.

“That just came out,” he replies quietly.

“Mm-hm.”

He grips my arm gently. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. I was handling it.” Mostly. But I was nervous about where it was going. I just don’t say that.

“I know you were.” Travis puts his hand on my back, lightly between my shoulder blades. “I just didn’t want to watch you do it alone.”

I’m so gone for this man. My ears turn hot too as Heidi finishes stamping my envelopes. She doesn’t charge me for them.

Outside on the sidewalk, Travis takes out his phone and calls Gabe to relay exactly what Wade said, word for word, in that same calm voice.

Gabe says he’ll go have a talk with Wade at the gravel pit and he’ll make it clear.

He finishes with, “Thank you, son.”

When Travis hangs up he’s studying me. “You’re shaking,” he says.

“I am not.”

He picks up my hand. It is, a little.

“Okay,” I admit. “A little.”

He pulls me against his chest right there on the sidewalk in front of the post office, in front of the bank and the Mountain Market and three cars waiting at the stop sign.

Betsy Morris drives by in her Buick. She honks twice and gives us a thumbs-up out her window.

I laugh into his shirt.

“Don’t,” he says into my hair.

“All of me.”

“Lindsey.”

“That’s my favorite thing anybody’s ever said,” I tell him, and his chest shakes under my cheek. He’s laughing too.

By four o’clock, it’s all over town.

I know this because when I walk into the fire station with two big pans of Marlene’s green chile enchiladas to say thank you to the crew, every man in the bay stops what he’s doing and turns around and looks at me.

Then Ryan Novak, the new one with the shaved head, puts his hand over his heart.

“Every inch,” he says reverently.

The bay erupts. Clint is bent over the hood of Engine 1, wheezing. Devin is slapping Bear on the back. Even Caleb, standing in his office door with his coffee, is carefully looking at the ceiling.

“Heidi Stokes,” I say grimly.

“Heidi Stokes,” Cassia agrees from the hose rack. She can barely stand up straight. “She called Betsy before Wade even made it to his truck.”