Tall, Strong & Cool Under Fire. Marie Ferrarella

reached for the bell again when the door abruptly opened. Instead of Lisa, he found himself looking down at a woman who could have been mistaken for a slightly older version of the woman. Rather than shorts, she had on a sundress and her short, stylishly cut dark blond hair had a ribbon of gray running through it.

      But she looked up at him with Lisa and CeCe’s blue eyes. “Yes?”

      “I’m not sure if I have the right house, but do Lisa Billings and her daughter, CeCe, live here?” Even if he hadn’t been certain that he had the right house, one look at the woman would have assured him that he did. Still, it seemed a good enough way to begin.

      Cecilia took swift measure of the handsome young man at the front door. She made decisions quickly. In her life, there hadn’t always been much time for debating.

      She liked his mouth. The lines around it indicated that he was given to smiling frequently. It was a good trait. And his eyes were kind. You could tell a great deal about a man by his eyes. Her husband had had kind eyes. CeCe’s father hadn’t, but she’d found it a difficult thing to convey to Lisa at the time. You had to let your children make their own mistakes, no matter how much it pained you to watch.

      “Yes.” Cecilia saw the broom leaning against the wall. The young man seemed to come with an odd assortment of things. He was holding flowers in his hand and there was some sort of thin book held flat against his side by his arm. She couldn’t begin to guess what he had in the bag. “You are selling brooms, perhaps?”

      Bryce shifted his weight. It wasn’t often he felt self-conscious. “No, I—”

      Curious who her mother was talking to, Lisa hurried over to the open door. “Who is it, Mother?” Peering around the door, she stopped short. “Oh God, it’s you.”

      Intrigued, Cecilia stepped back from the doorway, allowing the visitor better access. “You know him?”

      She hadn’t expected him to actually come over, Lisa thought. He must have watched her leave with CeCe. “It’s the fireman I told you about, the one who I found with CeCe.”

      Interest transformed into something akin to pleasure. A smile bloomed on Cecilia’s face as she took hold of his wrist, drawing him into the house. “Ah, please come in, yes?”

      Lisa’s immediate response was, “No,” but it was already too late. Her mother was shutting the door, after pulling the firefighter inside.