Protecting What's Mine(47)

Mack barely had a chance to draw a breath when Linc’s sister pressed her hipbones firmly into the table.

She felt the resistance, was convinced she was going to snap in half, and then breathed a huge sigh of relief when something gave way with an audible pop.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Mack whimpered. “Much.”

“Good.” Christa worked her way up the spine. “Linc is one-of-a-kind, you know. He’s got a reputation.”

“I don’t mind a reputation,” Mack admitted. “I’m just not looking for any—” Crack. “—thing right now,” she gasped.

“Just because you’re not looking doesn’t mean you can’t find something,” Christa said cheerfully.

“It’s true,” Jillian said, poking her head into the room. “I wasn’t looking for Vijay when I stumbled into that karaoke bar ten years ago, and look at us now. Three boys, an aquarium full of goldfish, and no time to ourselves.”

That did not sound like the life for Mack. That sounded like a dozen disasters waiting to happen every day.

“Not that you’d need to go that route with Linc,” Christa said, working her thumbs between Mack’s shoulder blades.

“Gah,” Mack whimpered.

“He’s the greatest guy. You can trust us. We’ve known him since he was born,” Jillian said knowledgeably. “I think you two would be very happy together.”

“I don’t think one kiss means happily ever after,” Mack gritted out.

“Oooooh! A kiss! Tell us more,” Christa squealed.

The boys passive-aggressively turned up the TV volume.

“Turn it down,” Jillian yelled. “I wanna hear about the kiss!”

Mack politely declined to share any sordid details. But she did begin to wonder why it had been only one kiss. He hadn’t kissed her this morning before he abandoned his dog with her.

“It was worth a shot,” Christa said, working her way through all the kinks in Mack’s back.

After her adjustments and a lunch of chicken corn soup and half a turkey sandwich prepared by Jillian, Mack felt almost human again. Or at least human enough to give the sniffly Mikey a quick exam.

“He’s old enough that you could look into allergy shots,” she told Jillian.

“Shots?” Mikey’s bloodshot brown eyes widened.

“Are you afraid of needles?” Mack asked him.

He shrugged a bony shoulder, the picture of eight-year-old nonchalance. “They’re no big deal.”

“Well, if they did bother you,” she continued, “I could tell you a trick so it’s not so scary.”

“What kind of trick?”

She reached over and pinched him lightly on the arm. “Feel that?”

“Ow. Yeah.”

“Okay. This time take a deep breath.”

He inhaled skeptically.

“Good. Now hold it for a second. And then blow it out really hard.”

On the kid’s exuberant exhale, she pinched him again.

“Hey! That didn’t hurt as much,” he said.

“That’s the trick. A really big breath out, and your body is focusing more on the breath than the teeny tiny poke.”

“Pinch me next, Dr. Mack,” Griffin insisted. She felt pretty good about it.





Half an hour later, a grateful Mack with a folded load of laundry, sparkling kitchen, and pee-breaked Sunshine waved Linc’s sisters off. She hadn’t even made it back to the couch when there was another knock at the door.

Aldo and Gloria grinned at her from the front steps.

“Hey, buddy! How’s it going?”

“Shouldn’t you two be at work?” Mack asked wearily.

“We decided to forego our weekly scheduled afternoon delight to pop in and see how you’re doing,” Aldo said.

Gloria elbowed him. “Not everyone needs to know about our sex life, Moretta.”

“Oh, good! It’s a party!” Mrs. Washington called out, hauling a grocery bag up the walk.

It was barely one p.m. And it was already the longest day of Mack’s life.





22





Linc gave the incident report a cursory final glance before hitting submit.

How some yahoo managed to get his big toe stuck in a motel bathtub faucet was another one of life’s great mysteries.

Checking the time, he noted he could squeeze in another hour of paperwork before heading out. Or he could cut that to thirty minutes and check in with the crew downstairs for the remainder.

The latter sounded like a much better plan. He pulled up the department calendar to refresh his memory on the maintenance and training for the rest of the month.

Brody strolled in without knocking and planted himself on the narrow, rock-hard couch that squatted against one wall. “Tanker’s on E. Wanna ride shotgun on a gas run?”

“Hell yeah,” Linc said, gratefully pushing away from the computer.

He followed his captain downstairs into the bay. It was spotless thanks to several slow days. They’d trained hard on forcible entries and coordinated attack drills this week and then resealed the concrete floor. The apparatus all gleamed under a fresh coat of wax.

There was an almost tangible crackling in the air. Firefighters going stir crazy. Sure. There were the usual calls. The faulty alarm at the high school—twice—a few lift assists with EMS, the now infamous odor investigation on Pine Avenue that turned out to be a faulty bathroom exhaust fan and a whole lot of tacos. Then there was the ferret in the tree that required rescue. Par for the course in a small town.