Page 94 of Combust (Everyday Heroes 2)
“I can still hear his mom screaming when she saw us loading him in the chopper.” He sniffles, and I shift immediately to turn over, but he holds me in place where I am. “Uh-uh. Can I just—I need this right now. Need you right now. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“I could listen to you sing all day.” Grady’s sleep-drugged voice interrupts me from where he stands on the porch, hair a mess, and sweatpants hanging dangerously low on those strong hips of his. I blush at his compliment, and my cheeks heat with embarrassment. I can sing in a studio full of techs and musicians, but tell me Grady is listening, and I want to die of embarrassment. “It’s late.”
I look up from my guitar and over to the clock. “It’s eleven. In my world that’s early.” I laugh. “It isn’t late until you’re waking up after lunchtime.”
“Sounds similar to the station.” He stares at me for a beat. I can tell he wants to say something but is unsure, so I wait him out. “How are the songs coming?”
“Good.” That isn’t what he wanted to ask, but I let it slide. “I have most of them started. About eighty-five percent finished to the point that I’m happy with them for now. They’ll need some further tweaking once we hit the studio and I can hear them played back to me. And the other fifteen percent I’m hoping to wrap up in the next two weeks.” The last three words are hard to get out. They put an expiration date on this. On us. And I’m having a difficult time accepting that.
“We’ll have to celebrate when you finish.”
I nod but swallow over the sudden lump in my throat. Celebrate? Does that mean he’s happy I’m leaving?
“We should,” I lie and then change the topic because leaving here is the last thing I want to think about. “I turned the scanner down so I could work and you could sleep, but it sounds like there is a pretty big fire up north.”
“I heard. Bowie called and woke me up.” Concern fills his eyes.
“Are you guys going to be called out to help?”
“Not sure,” he says. “But I want to take you somewhere today. Do you have plans?”
“Let’s go hiking, he said. It will be fun, he promised.”
Grady laughs as he strides ahead of me, barely out of breath while I huff and puff like a little old lady who smokes a carton of cigarettes a day.
“If I wasn’t aware I was out of shape, I am now.”
“You aren’t out of shape,” he says, stopping and putting a hand on my back to help me up a slide of rocks. “It’s just the altitude that’s getting to you.”
“Is that all?” I laugh. “Didn’t you know I’m allergic to exercise? How long have we been doing this? And if you say ten minutes I’m going to push you off that ledge over there.”
“Nah. We’ve been going for well over an hour now.” He ducks as I swat at him.
“And we’re doing this, why?”
“Because I wanted to show you how beautiful wine country is.”
“Couldn’t we have done it while sitting in a winery drinking some of the libations that said wine country has produced?”
“We could have.”
“Then why aren’t we?” I ask and wheeze in a breath. This seriously is not what I thought we’d be doing when he said he wanted to take me somewhere.
But I have to admit the view isn’t too shabby. Watching Grady’s ass as he climbs the mountain is a sight I’m not complaining about in the least.
“How come I haven’t seen anyone else on the trail?” I ask, looking behind me and growing slightly dizzy at how high we’ve ascended. “Should I be worried that Mallory called and wants to have some fun, and you aren’t sure how to tell me so you’ve brought me up here to off me instead of hurting my feelings and telling me so?”
Grady’s feet falter, and he turns back to stare at me from beneath the brim of his Sunnyville Fire Department baseball hat. The sexy-as-hell smirk on his lips makes me want to kiss him. “Off you?”
“Yeah.” I shrug playfully, needing this banter to distract me from realizing how much exercise I’m actually getting. I bring both hands to my neck as if someone is choking me. “Off me.”
He takes a step toward me. “For the record, Mallory has called, and I’ve told her not to bother calling again because my bed is otherwise occupied.” He presses a chaste kiss to my lips, which have fallen lax from his comment, and then turns around and starts walking again.
I stare after him, the cavalier way he made that statement more striking than the confession itself. Almost as if he thinks I’m crazy for thinking otherwise.
My mind spins at breakneck speed as I wonder if this means Grady Malone has feelings for me like I do for him. Sure we’re having sex. Yes, he cuddles up to me at night after a long day at work. Admittedly he just said he turned down his in-the-meantime-in-between-time girl, but that doesn’t mean I can read into his words any more than I can let myself believe when my time is up here he might actually ask me to stay.
