He covered her hand with his and squeezed gently. “Me, too. He was a great dad, and I missed him a lot?
??still do, but back then I channeled the anger and sadness into acting like a fuckup. Lost interest in school, started hanging out with a bad crowd. My mom couldn’t do anything with me.”
He could still picture her sitting at the kitchen table, anxious and exhausted, when he’d stumbled home at two in the morning yet again. The shame he’d been too selfish to feel as a teenager found him much more easily now.
“Loss is a difficult experience to handle,” Melody said quietly, and threaded her fingers through his. “Especially when you’re so young.”
Sweet of her to cut him some slack, but he knew the truth. He brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed hers. “I handled it badly. My two older sisters were quick to point out that if Dad were still around he’d have kicked my sorry ass for the way I was behaving, but he wasn’t, and they were away at college, so their criticism was easy to ignore. What wasn’t easy to ignore were the men from my dad’s division, who saw I was floundering and interceded. It’s a brotherhood, and when a brother falls, the others step up and do what needs to be done. In my case, that meant dragging me to the fire station after school, keeping me too busy to feel sorry for myself and make self-destructive decisions. They got me involved in the junior firefighting program, held me accountable for my actions and my choices. Chief Warren—my former boss in Cincinnati—was one of those guys. He became my unofficial mentor, supporting my decision to become a firefighter and providing assistance and advice every step of the way.” Josh shook his head. “I would not be here today without him.”
“It must have been a difficult decision to leave Cincinnati,” she said, and tightened her fingers around his.
“There are things about the city I love. The action. The diversity. The fast pace. But it was time to move. My oldest sister lives in New Jersey, the other just moved from San Francisco to San Diego, and my mom lives in Florida with her new husband. They’re happy, and we know how to Skype, so geography is irrelevant. Professionally, I couldn’t stand in my mentor’s shadow forever. I was ready for a new challenge.”
“And has Bluelick provided the challenge you sought?”
The careful way she asked the question made the broken condom flash through his mind. He straightened, let go of her hand, and ran his suddenly damp palms over his jeans. “Bluelick is an interim step toward a larger goal. One stop on a track I need to stay on if I’m going to achieve everything I want to achieve in my career.”
Now she straightened, too, and he saw something beyond idle curiosity in her pretty blue eyes. “Goodness, sounds ambitious. What’s the larger goal?”
“Chief of the kind of department I came up in.” The kind of department his dad had chosen. Just thinking about it reaffirmed the goal in his mind. He had a plan. Fulfill the dream his father never got the chance to fulfill. Do his dad proud. His gaze wandered to the trash, and he mentally cursed. He needed to be more careful, because they both had plans, those plans didn’t overlap, and shit like what had happened tonight could derail them both.
Chapter Eleven
Melody stood in a pew at Bluelick Baptist next to Ginny, trying to concentrate on singing the closing hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” All around her, members of the congregation raised their voices in song while she mouthed the words and thought impure thoughts.
Last night had been amazing. The A-play, the kitchen sex. Asking Josh how Bluelick was working out for him had kind of pulled things off the sexy track, but they’d found their way back easily enough. Somehow, on the way to the door, they ended up necking on the couch, where he’d proceeded to wring another devastating orgasm out her with nothing but his tongue. No matter how hard she’d begged, pleaded, and insisted she couldn’t get there with just his mouth, he’d stayed the course—and proved her very, very wrong. Talk about new experiences.
Waking on her sofa, naked and alone, constituted a new experience, too. One she was a lot less enthusiastic about. Not that she’d expected Josh to spend the night, but…heck, she didn’t know what she expected, but a note that might as well have said, “See you around,” propped against a beer bottle, missed the mark.
A tug on the hem of her dress brought her gaze down. Ginny tugged again, and pointedly looked around. The hymn had ended. The entire congregation had taken their seats. Except her.
She dropped to her seat.
Reverend Carlson smiled his appreciation, and then, in his best effort to provide both a workout and a Sunday service, gestured the congregation to its feet again for the benediction. The blessing ended a minute later and the organist swept into the postlude while elderly members and families with antsy young kids made their way down the aisles to the exit at the back of the church.
Ginny turned and craned her neck toward the exit. “Who’s that guy?
“What guy?” Melody followed her friend’s gaze. She watched a tall, broad-shouldered man head to the door.
“I saw him in town last week—once at the gas station and once at Dalton’s Drugs. He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.”
He gave off the impression of someone close to her age, but it was hard to judge. His dark hair needed a trim, and a shadowed jaw suggested he hadn’t seen a razor in a while, either. Not that she got a good look. He slipped out of the church like a shadow.
“Wolverine?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know, but he could really use your expertise.”
Her friend smirked. “Which expertise would you be referring to?”
“Please. I’m referring to your grooming expertise. We are in a house of God here. Besides, I thought you were on a hiatus?”
The corner of Ginny’s mouth turned down and she nodded. “Naturally. As soon as I put myself on a sexual moratorium, a mysterious new man appears on the scene. It’s like how every time I wash my car it rains.”
“Okay, first, that one looks a little dangerous, so I’d say it’s for the best. Second, you’re not allowed to say ‘sexual moratorium,’ or sexual anything, while we’re standing in the shadow of the Lamb of God.” She jerked her thumb at the stained glass window, which depicted Jesus in all his haloed majesty, kneeling in a green field, smiling down at a lamb.
“Oh, he’s heard it all.” She led the way out of the pew. “Besides, don’t you think Jesus would give a big thumbs-up to my moratorium? One less sin I’m engaging in these days.” They reached the foyer, but had to pause there to let a clog of other attendees filter through the double doors and down the short granite stairs to the sidewalk. “But speaking of sins, do you have anything to confess?”