Vee crinkled her nose. Granted she hadn’t been working here very long, but she wouldn’t classify any of the food she ate at the firehouse as decent. Acceptable at best, and barely palatable at worst. Cans of plain chili might be a promotion from what she was usually subjected to.
“And I visit my mama every Sunday afternoon,” he added, more as an exclamation than an afterthought. “She enjoys cooking for her son, and naturally I’m keen to eat whatever she makes for me.”
“Spoiled,” she quipped, but she nodded in approval just the same. He might be a player with the women he dated, but she knew he took good care of his parents, which Vee had to admit was a small mark in his favor.
Not enough to erase the black smudges, but perhaps a small offset.
“A little,” he admitted. “But mostly I’m just being a dutiful son.”
“I’m sure your parents appreciate that, especially your mother.” Her voice cracked a little on the last word, and she scolded herself for being so transparent in front of him. But she couldn’t help remembering how blessed she had felt to have had the chance to spend time with her own family, before her mother’s recent passing. Now her dad kept to himself, and neither she nor her two brothers could help him get beyond his grief.
Ben regarded her with a thoughtful frown. “I’m so sorry for your loss. It must be difficult for you, losing your mother.”
“What? No. I mean, thank you. At least I know she’s with the Lord.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Your mom’s faith was a real inspiration. But it still must be hard on you, having her pass so suddenly.”
She didn’t know whether she was more surprised by Ben’s openness or the fact that there was a genuine note of compassion in his voice. She knew he was a churchgoing man, but then, so was almost every man in Serendipity. Attending church didn’t necessarily mean he was a man of faith.
“It was difficult to lose her,” she admitted, wondering how they’d gotten on such a serious topic—how he’d turned the conversation and gotten her to talk about herself. She didn’t know why she continued, but she did. “It’s still difficult. To be honest with you, I don’t quite know how to respond when someone says they feel sorry for me.”
She shrugged away the statement, wishing it could be simple to shirk off the turmoil of emotion teetering near the edge of her consciousness. She didn’t like feeling as if she were on the verge of an emotional breakdown all the time. She preferred to keep her feelings locked tightly away.
“It’s a good thing that you’re close to your family. There’s nothing wrong with that. And despite my loss, I’m still blessed to have my father and brothers, although we don’t get together as often as I’d like now that we’re all grown up and living away from home.”
“Right. There’s a change in family dynamics when we reach adulthood. How does Cole like the Navy?”
“Are you kidding? He was born for service,” she said, cheering up a little at the change of topic. Cole was the middle of the three Bishop children, the one who was always causing mischief of one sort or another—often involving his naive little sister and leading her into trouble. Now those days seemed pleasantly nostalgic.
“Cole was always one of the tough guys, and serving the country in the military suits him. Same with Eli. He was playing cops and robbers from the time he could walk,” she commented of her oldest brother. “I guess it’s lucky for us he ended up on the cop side of the equation.”
Ben chuckled at her weak attempt at humor. “And you, the firefighter.”
“Me, the firefighter,” she agreed. “But I never played with matches. No correlation there.”
“Never?” he asked, a curious gleam in his eye. “Come on. You can admit it. I won’t tell.”
She gnawed thoughtfully on her bottom lip, wondering how much she should divulge. Was he baiting her, or was this a sincere attempt on his part to be civil? She decided to take a chance on him. A very small chance. “I might have lit a twig on fire...once or twice, when I was little.”
One side of his mouth crept upward in an appealing half smile, the one that sent the single female population of Serendipity all aflutter. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff. If the fellows here at the firehouse ever learned that you—”
“But you said—”
Jerk.
“Your secret is safe with me,” he assured her. “I’m just teasing. I won’t say anything. Besides, if that’s the worst of your record, I can assure you that you’re lagging far behind me.”
“Is that right? How so?”
He returned to his folding chair and leaned his elbows against the long table. His gaze met and locked with hers. “We all have some skeletons in our closets, don’t you think? I’m every bit as human as the next guy.”
“Really?” Was he sorry for the mistakes he’d made, the way he’d hurt people like Olivia? As far as she knew, he’d never apologized. And even if he had, he’d done some truly callous things in his past, things Vee was slow to forgive.
“I’m just saying my secrets are probably, shall we say, more interesting than yours?”
If he thought of his secrets as “skeletons in the closet” then they were probably nothing she would want to know. Her own best, most closely held secret was light and bright and made her grin every time she thought of it. In this case, she highly doubted that any one of his secrets could rival hers. She smothered her grin behind her fist.
Lighting a few pine twigs on fire with a magnifying glass in the sunshine didn’t even begin to cover the mysteries she was hiding in her heart. Her mind immediately flashed to the wonderful internet relationship she was building with BJ. She’d met him through a college-level online Spanish class. They’d been paired up together for a project and had been emailing each other daily for the several weeks since. She’d started anticipating his emails, and reading them had become the best part of her day.
That she’d never seen him in person was just a trivial detail. They weren’t officially dating or anything—it wasn’t probable that she could form a truly romantic relationship in cyberspace—but they’d often spoken of working at the same mission, more and more as the days went by—and who knew what would happen then?
BJ definitely qualified as a secret. She hadn’t told a single soul in Serendipity about him, not even her best friend, Olivia. It might be pride, or even embarrassment at the fact that the closest thing she had to a real relationship was a cyber Prince Charming, but right now, this minute, BJ was hers and hers alone. Her heart warmed just thinking about him.
She realized Ben was staring at her speculatively and a blush rose to her face. It was disconcerting to realize his gaze could affect her, even if what she was feeling was discomfiture.
“You look like you’re deep in thought,” he teased. “Anything else you want to ’fess up to?”
Like she’d tell him.
She tossed her chin and scoffed dramatically. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“You’d better believe it,” he agreed, his grin deepening to reveal his dimples. His eyes sparkled.
She took a deep breath, mentally coaching herself to relax her shoulders. The warmth spreading from her chest to her face had nothing to do with Ben, she assured herself, but it still disquieted her.
Ben was a flesh-and-blood man sitting directly opposite her. She could reach out