“You mean the one from Sephora?” Wade deadpanned.
Jack laughed, despite his foul mood.
“Seriously, though. You could have been nicer.” Wade held on to his seat belt as the engine rounded the curve leading back to the station. “Or at the very least, civil.”
“I was perfectly civil,” Jack said. Granted, he hadn’t exactly been chatty, but he’d done his job. What more did Wade want from him?
“Don’t you think she seemed a little...” Wade’s brows rose, prompting Jack to fill in the blank.
“Out of place?” Granted, she’d been beautiful—in a just-rolled-out-of-bed sort of way. But she’d had big city written all over her. It was practically stamped across her forehead. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“That’s not what I meant at all.” Wade frowned. “I was going to say she seemed vulnerable.”
The engine slowed to a stop in front of the familiar red brick building decorated with a large American flag blowing just below block letters that spelled out Engine Co. 24. They idled for a moment until the diesel engine powered down with a prolonged whoosh that almost made it seem like the big red truck had sighed. Jack could relate—he felt like sighing himself.
“Vulnerable?” He let out a sharp laugh as he unfastened the buckle of his harness and hopped down from the jump seat. “I don’t think so. She’s a grown woman. Adults aren’t vulnerable. Babies are vulnerable.”
The second the words left his mouth, he wanted to swallow them up again and reel them back to the place where he kept all his frustration buried deep. Talking about it didn’t help matters. So far, the only thing that had made him feel better about his current difficulties were the ridiculous letters he’d been writing lately. They were strangely cathartic, and they weren’t hurting anyone.
Were they?
For a brief moment Jack wondered what Wade would have to say if he knew about his recent correspondence. Nothing good, that was for sure.
“You’re right. Babies are indeed vulnerable.” Wade shrugged out of his turnout gear as they walked toward the station. “But I don’t think you noticed how that woman back there looked at you. I sure did.”
Jack just shook his head. Maybe she’d seemed a little lonely, standing there all wide-eyed in her polka dot bathrobe. Jack recognized loneliness when he saw it. Hell, he knew that feeling better than anyone.
He’d even caught a glimmer of a spark between them when their fingertips touched. But a spark didn’t mean anything other than a simple transfer of electrons. It was just science, and as Jack knew all too well, sometimes a spark could set off a burning rain of destruction.
No, thank you. Not again.
“Not all women are like Natalie, you know,” Wade said. The earnestness in his voice made Jack’s head hurt.
“Never mind,” Jack muttered.
He’d said too much. He knew better than to drag his daughters into this conversation.
Adults aren’t vulnerable. Babies are vulnerable.
Why hadn’t he just kept his head down and his mouth shut? Now he was sure to be on the receiving end of more pitying looks from Wade. The rest of the guys at the station, too.
He could feel Wade’s gaze on him even now, weighted down with concern. He didn’t dare look up.
Jack didn’t need anyone’s pity. He had a roof over his head, food on his table and two precious babies waiting for him at home. Other than being a little sleep deprived, he was perfectly fine. Not lonely. Not wounded. Not miserable.
Certainly not vulnerable...
Even if he almost felt that way, every now and then.
Chapter Two
Just like everything else in Lovestruck, the office for the local newspaper bore no resemblance whatsoever to its Manhattan counterpart.
Before Madison’s charmed life had been so rudely interrupted by the horrors of corporate downsizing, she used to walk past the New York Times building on a semiregular basis. Honestly, it was impossible to miss, even from a distance. It loomed over the midtown skyline, its sleek gray exterior as strong and serious as a pinstriped suit.
Not so in small-town Vermont. If the building that housed the Lovestruck paper had been an outfit, it would have been a seersucker sundress...with a wide-brimmed hat. Tucked neatly between her aunt’s yarn store and the post office on Main Street, where every storefront was painted its own bright hue, the newspaper operated out of a cheery blue space with lemon-yellow trim. Even its name was ridiculous—the Lovestruck Bee.
Seriously, what did that even mean?
Madison didn’t know, and nor did she care. It wasn’t as if she aspired to climb whatever quaint, homespun career ladder existed at the Bee. She didn’t dream of running the place someday, or—heaven forbid—being named senior editor of her section. She hadn’t spent four years at Columbia followed by four more as a lowly assistant at Vogue before finally seeing her byline on the magazine’s glossy pages in order to throw it all away and live in a barn. Not even a barn that was rent-free, thanks to Aunt Alice.
Madison was grateful for the help. Life in New York hadn’t come cheap, and while she had more designer dresses and Jimmy Choo stilettos than she could count courtesy of the infamous Vogue “closet”—which, in reality, was even larger than depicted in movies and TV shows like The Devil Wears Prada and Sex and the City—she had next to nothing in her bank account. Getting laid off had never been part of the plan. Neither had her recent job search, which felt more like The Hunger Games than an interview process. As it turned out, “a million girls would kill for this job” wasn’t just a movie catchphrase.
She’d needed a soft place to land. It had been years since Madison spent summer vacations visiting her aunt in Vermont. She wasn’t sure she’d even seen Alice since her father’s funeral, but she’d always had an open invitation to stay at the farmhouse and desperate times called for desperate
