His eyes sharpened, along with his voice. “Nothing blew up. Everyone thinks something happened, and it didn’t. I’m just taking a break, okay?”
Whoa, defensive much?
His chest rose on another great breath. “After doing SAR for the past fifteen years, it was time.”
“Right. And then there’s your knee.” She wanted to help; she really did. Not only was it in her nature, but shecaredabout the big lug standing in front of her—banished romantic feelings aside—and didn’t want to see him hurting. But opening up was nothisnature, and she was wasting her time. Besides, she had a date she’d been looking forward to ever since Leo’s call, and she needed to put bells on her fingers and rings on her toes.
His expression turned puzzled. “My knee?”
“The one that needs to heal?”The one I was trying to inspect that had me posing like I was about to lower your zipper and suck you off right then and there?She reddened with renewed mortification.
Realization seemed to dawn on his chiseled face. “Oh yeah. My knee.” Sliding his hand from his pocket, he reached down and rubbed it.
Yeah, sheknewReece had been fibbing. She could always tell—not that he lied much, but he had a telltale tic in his jaw that gave him away. It always had.
Neve’s embarrassment disappeared in the face of a smirk she couldn’t hold back. Though she couldn’t figure out why he was faking the injury, she decided to give him a pass so she could hurry him out the door.
“Go ice it. Go on, gimpy!”
Mercifully, he did.
Chapter 3
That Others May Live
Reece raised a pickaxand brought it down hard, striking a hunk of granite. The impact juddered up his arms. Ignoring the unpleasant sensation, he raised it higher and swung down with more force. The pick buried itself in the ground beside the rock, and he pried at it, straining to dislodge the small boulder.
“Why don’t you just use the chisel side and pry it up that way?” Six feet away stood Charlie’s helper, Cade, a smug smile on his peach-fuzzed face as he rested an elbow on the haft of his own tool.
“Why don’t you get back to what you were doing and let me focus on what I’m doing?”
“Whatarewe doing?”
“Trail maintenance, and when we’re done here, we pick up the Christmas decorations for downtown.”
Cade’s beanie rode low on his eyebrows, so his squinty eyes were barely visible. “You mean Bowen Street, right?”
“Yeah. Downtown.” All four blocks of it.
Charlie hadn’t been able to keep Cade busy today with his own projects, and the kid had been getting in the way, so he had pawned him off on Reece. “Better you work him than we let him sit home alone, where he can get into a mess of trouble.” His mother, Luanne, was working the day shift at Miners, and while Cade was a good kid used to being home alone, he was also nineteen years old. Besides, Reece reasoned, it was good for kids his age to be exposed to civic duty. And yeah, sometimes itdidtake a village to raise a kid.
“So what are we doing with Christmas decorations?”
“We’re going to put them up.”
“Wait. Fall River has a shit ton—I mean, Fall River has a lot of Christmas decorations.We’regoing to do all that work?”
It was true. Fall River had been getting decked out for the holidays every year for the past decade, ever since Reece had taken on the project. And it wasn’t that they got the town dressed up for tourists. Nope, this was strictly for the residents. Other volunteers would take care of the ice rink and the entrances to the town—all two of them, on the same road—but Reece always decorated the lampposts and trees lining Bowen Street. Charlie was in charge of the old train depot, even though the place was in shambles. Someday it would be completely remodeled, but those strings of white lights outlining it during the holidays added to the town’s festiveness while disguising its peeling paint, rotted wood siding, and boarded-up windows.
“Yeah. Do you think elves hang this stuff every year? They’re too busy putting in long shifts at the North Pole, dude.”
Cade’s mouth opened and closed. For several beats, he seemed to process Reece’s joke. “Are we getting paid for this?”
Reece adjusted his leather gloves. “Yeah. In attaboys.”
“Attaboys? Do they spend like Andrew Jacksons?”
“Nope. They spend way better.”
