Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(68)

Colleen had a pull on him. That same sense he had when he first laid eyes on her in that classroom so long ago, that locked-in feeling, as if he’d waited all his life to see her...that still pulsed between them.

She felt it, too. She licked her lips, and the pink stained her cheeks again. He could swear he heard her heart beating.

“What seems clear,” he murmured, stepping a little closer so that they were almost touching, “is that this is going to happen. You and me. It’s just a question of when.”

She looked at him a long minute. Then she pressed her forefinger into the hollow at the base of his throat, gently, forcing him to take a step back.

Closed the door in his face. Didn’t slam it; just closed it.

Lucas found he was smiling all the way to the truck.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IN THE THREE weeks he’d been in Manningsport, Lucas had had no success in pinning Bryce down on his hopes and aspirations, careerwise. Nope. That was a black hole. Lucas, on the other hand, was acting as project manager for the public safety building, had been asked to consult on a new wing for the senior citizen community and was putting on a new room for Colleen’s mother. A couple had asked him about building a superdeluxe chicken coop for their free-range chickens, and while Lucas didn’t particularly want to be building that sort of structure, he’d sketched out a plan for them nonetheless.

It had always been that way. Work found him.

Work cowered from Bryce. And his cousin, let’s be honest, excelled at laziness. Bryce had been rather thrilled with his injury, and while it had been a little on the gruesome side, it really was something that he could’ve taken care of with a couple of Band-Aids, rather than the wad of gauze he was currently sporting.

Since construction was clearly not going to work (Bryce had knocked a pallet of shingles off the roof, lost his hammer seven times and dropped his phone into the roofing tar before mishandling the nail gun), Lucas had talked to a few people, studied Craigslist and had gone over to Didi’s to rouse Bryce out of bed for a little swing through town.

First stop, the firehouse.

Lucas had become friendly with Gerard Chartier, winning the man’s loyalty when he agreed that fire services outranked the other two. (Lucas had also told Levi that police services were the most important, and agreed with Kelly Matthews that EMS clearly came first. Hey. It made everyone happy.) At any rate, Gerard told Lucas they were hiring five new people; apparently there’d been a big house fire up at Blue Heron, and the good people of Manningsport had agreed to fund a paid department.

Perfect job for Bryce’s type. Bryce was in great shape, liked people and...and...well, maybe he’d make a good firefighter.

Bryce seemed suitably awed as Gerard gave him the talk, staring in childlike wonder at the fire trucks. Lucas felt the same way. Every little boy wanted to be a firefighter, after all.

“This would be awesome,” Bryce said. “Not to brag, but I have already saved someone. Lucas? Remember? When I saved you?”

“Yep.” At Gerard’s questioning look, he added, “I got my foot caught in the train tracks, and Bryce knocked me free.”

“In the nick of time, too,” Bryce said happily. “So what do you have to do to qualify?”

“There’s twelve weeks at the fire academy,” Gerard began. “Firefighter I, Firefighter II—”

“Whoa. There’s school?”

“Yeah. You learn about hazardous materials and how to contain them, incident command system, blood-borne pathogens. Oh, and you have to be an EMT, too, but that’s easy. Just a six-week class.”

“Bummer. That’s really not my thing.” Lucas’s head jerked back a little. “But thanks for your time, Gerard!” Bryce shook the firefighter’s hand vigorously. “See you at O’Rourke’s!”

“Bryce,” Lucas said as they crossed the green, “what’s the problem here? Is it fire academy? Twelve weeks will go by like that.”

“I’m not going back to school,” he said.

“It’d be fun,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. I mean, jumping out of windows and rescuing dogs and stuff? That would be fun. Hazardous material containment? No way.”

“You’re not stupid, Bryce,” he said, though he did sometimes fear that his cousin had taken a sharp blow to the head. “You could pass, I’m sure.” Especially if Lucas tutored him.

“You’re probably right,” his cousin said blithely. “I’m just not interested. Plus, it might interfere with my work at the shelter.”

“You’d have health benefits, vacation...”

“You know, the more I think about it, the less I want to do it. I mean, what if I got hurt on the job? I could be disabled for life.”

“Or not.”

“No, it’s a good thing I thought this through. Kinda dodged a bullet there.”

Lucas closed his eyes briefly. Once Bryce made up his mind, there was no talking him down.

Their next stop was the bakery. Lorelei, the owner, had advertised for an apprentice baker; apparently she supplied quite a few of the local restaurants with bread and desserts. “Hi, guys!” she said with a sunny smile. “Bryce, what happened to your hand?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, proudly holding up the heavily bandaged extremity. Honestly, amputees used less gauze. “Put a nail through my hand when my cousin and I were doing this job up on the Hill.”