Page 68 of Combust (Everyday Heroes 2)
“Shush. I’m just trying to get to know her better, and be nice to your brother.”
“She wants to see how long you’re going to be in town,” he says and lifts his eyebrows. “She’s plotting out when she can expect her next grandchild to be born.”
I sputter out a laugh as Betsy reaches her hand out to pat my arm. “No, I’m not, dear. I just wanted to know more about you.”
“Famous last words.” He laughs. “I bet if you ask Emerson, she’ll tell you that she got asked the same questions, and look what happened. Now she’s pregnant.”
I can’t help but smile at his ribbing and the annoyed look on Betsy’s face as she shoos him away before turning her attention back to me. “So will you be here for very long?”
I bite back my laugh because Grayson nailed her intentions on the head. And I’m not the least bit fazed, either. Grady warned me that she’ll try to corner me and figure out when the next Malone is coming.
Is she forward? Yes. Is she also adorable and madly in love with her sons and her family? Absolutely, and no one can fault her for that.
“Four or five more weeks,” I answer, and her smile falls a moment before she refortifies it.
“But you’ll be back, right? I mean you like Grady enough to come back?”
“Yes, I like Grady,” I say, my voice softening as I look at him throwing the football to Grayson’s son, Luke. And for a moment, I watch the two of them, and when I realize I am, I snap my eyes over to see Betsy staring at me with a knowing look on her face.
“Uh-huh.” That’s all she says.
“Leave poor Dylan alone, Betsy,” Grady’s dad says as he sits on the picnic bench beside me and nudges my elbow. “Just ignore her. She’s been known to run off some of the women the boys have brought home in the past.” He winks as she swats at his arm and laughs. There is a brief exchange of a look between the two of them, and their love for each other can be felt as if it were tangible.
Laughter erupts on the lawn when Grady tries to evade Grayson’s tackle, but he gets his hands in Grady’s shirt and pulls him down.
“He’d be better if he ditched the shirt,” Chief Malone mutters under his breath. “It’s just us, for Christ’s sake.” There’s hurt there. The parental kind. It’s hard to hear it and not feel for both parties.
“He’s getting there,” Betsy murmurs in response, but the chief’s face is still full of concern as he watches his son.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to watch their son go through the horror of his accident and the long, dark time it took to recover. Physically. So often, we focus so intently on the injured person that we give zero thought to the family standing behind them, supporting them, loving them, and helping them heal. It’s unfathomable to me. First they went through the fear of losing their son and then were forced to watch him struggle. Because they have to know what he’s going through, and it has to be so hard to stand by in silent support as he figures it out on his own.
Hell, it’s killing me, and I’ve only been here such a short time in the overall time of his recovery.
The scanner goes off behind me. Some call. Somewhere. I shake my head at the fact that the Malones seem to bring work with them everywhere.
“I know,” Betsy says and laughs when she realizes what I’m shaking my head at. Thankfully, the chief is oblivious to my reaction since he’s homing in on what dispatch is relaying. “That damn scanner is like an extra appendage for all of my boys, but you get used to it. What’s worse is that when they’re out on the line, you find comfort in hearing it because you know what they’re doing. It’s ten times better than the horrors you’re imagining in your head.”
I hold her eyes and nod. She’s right . . . and yet, it’s still funny that on this rare occasion when all three of her sons are off duty, they are still, in a sense, on-duty.
“What can we say? We’re creatures of habit,” Grady’s dad says, surprising me when he reaches back and turns the scanner off. “Are you having a good time, interrogation notwithstanding?”
“I am, thank you. It’s just what the doctor ordered.”
Betsy and the chief look to where Grady has tackled Luke to the ground and is tickling him before looking back toward me. The smile, the joy, on his face causes a flutter in my chest I try to ignore, but can’t. “It most definitely is,” Betsy murmurs.
“Are you glad you came?” Grady asks and pulls my attention from where Luke and Grayson and a few others are taking bets on who can clear the longest distance by swinging from the rope into the water.
“Yes. You?” I murmur as Luke flies with a shriek through the air and lands with a huge splash into the water.
“Yes. I’m glad you came too.” There’s something about the way Grady says the words—suggestion riding shotgun with playfulness—that grabs my attention and doesn’t let go. He sits beside me on the dock with a smirk on his lips as we let our toes dangle in the water, feet lazily kicking back and forth.
His comment may have suggestion written all over it, but there hasn’t been a single moment during the course of the day where anyone who looked at us would have thought there was anything more between us than roommates.
I study him and wonder how this works. Are we just going to ignore the fact that we had sex two nights ago and never talk about it? Are we not going to acknowledge that every time we look at each other, I stare at his lips because I want him to kiss me and he undresses me with his eyes? Or do we sit here and ignore the sexual tension that increases with every accidental touch of a hand or brush of our bodies against each other’s?
“What?” I ask after he never looks away and I’ve grown self-conscious under his silent observation.
“How come you haven’t braved the lake yet?” he asks, making me cringe internally.
