Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 22

“Someone’s got a spring in his step,” Dan observed as we walked down the aisle of the Piggly Wiggly. I was shopping for firehouse groceries. Dan was shopping for home. Saundra had told him not to come home without diapers so we were pushing twin carts down the aisle. The contents of my cart foreshadowed that a gourmet meal would soon be underway. The contents of his cart made it seem like he was about to throw a baby shower.

I didn’t deny what he said about my spring. Kissing Loretta had kept me in good spirits for a solid twenty-four hours. I’d woken up that morning just like I’d gone to sleep: with a smile on my face and Loretta on my mind.

“Things going well with your lady friend, I take it?”

“Better than they were before,” I confirmed. “I don’t like to kiss and tell, but I’m hoping things are moving in the right direction.”

“If you’ve gotten to that part, you ought to be sure which way things are going. A kiss’ll tell you all you need to know.”

Kissing Loretta had been luscious. Her lips were soft and she smelled even better up close. It had driven me wild to feel her commit to the kiss. It was proof positive that I hadn’t imagined our mutual attraction.

“Trust me. There’s nothing wrong with the kissing,” I reported.

“Then why do you have to hope? If the kissing’s right, all the rest should be locked in.”

“She’ll be up for kissing me again,” I said with confidence. “But when it comes to dating me, I have some convincing to do.”

“Let me guess. The job?”

Women either loved or hated the idea of dating a firefighter. Some embraced the hero-slash-sex-symbol aspects of the job. Others wanted no part of the danger.

“She thinks I’m too young.”

“How much of an age difference are we talking? When you stay at her house, is there a glass on the bedside table where she puts her dentures?”

I chuckled. “She’s still got all her teeth. She is very much in the prime of her life. She’s only thirty-five.”

“And you are . . .”

“Twenty-six,” I reported. “But when I look at her, I don’t see her age. All I see is beautiful.”

Dan rolled his eyes in a way that let me know exactly how sappy I was acting.

“She got kids?”

I paused by the cantaloupes, picking one up and giving it a little squeeze.

“No kids,” I confirmed.

“What does she want?”

“Want, like, how?” I moved on to the honeydew.

“What does she want out of life?”

I blinked. “I don’t know.”

“But she likes the kissing?” Dan prodded.

I nodded and grabbed a carton of grapes.

“Sounds like she likes your body just fine. But she doesn’t think you have the same goals. You can’t find your way into her heart unless you know what she wants.”

It made all the sense in the world. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself. That’s not true—I did know. Women were not my forte.

“So how do I get her to take me seriously?”

We turned into the dairy aisle. Dan stopped his cart long enough to grab two containers of squeezable yogurt with cartoon characters on the box. I thought about how I wanted what he had.

“You gotta see it from her standpoint. Look at Huey and Louie. That’s what most twenty-six-year-old guys are like.”

I was offended. “You know I don’t act like them.”

“Yeah, I know that. But does she? Most guys your age are busy smoking doobies, drinking too much, and chasing tail. After a certain age, some women want a man to commit.”

“I’m not afraid of commitment,” I said with a proud raise of my chin.

“You can’t expect her to believe that. How many of your friends are married?”

“Pretty much all of them,” I said honestly. “But none of my friends are twenty-six.”

“That’s another thing you’ve gotta let her see. You’re the same age as Huey and Louie. But how you act versus how they act is night and day. You being used to more mature company has made you comfortable with her out of the gate. But you can’t expect her to get there as quickly as you.”

Dan was absolutely right and I wasn’t too proud to take as much advice as he would give. “So how do I show her I’m not like most twenty-six-year-old guys?”

“The first thing you gotta do is let up on the physical. I don’t care how good the kissing is. You can’t have her thinking you’re too interested in the sex.”

I didn’t mention that I’d already resolved to stop making kissing during working sessions a thing, or that I was already starting to rethink the wisdom of my own promise. “What if me backing off makes her think I don’t like her?”

“That’s where part two comes in. Appeal to her primal instincts. Biology is on your side. Convince her of your resourcefulness and your physical strength. Show her you’re a family man and help her around the house. And for God’s sake, grow a beard.”

Full beards were strictly prohibitedfor active firefighters. Facial hair could cause SCBA masks to break their seals. In the Green Valley Fire Department, a light beard was all that was permitted. It had never occurred to me to grow one for dating purposes, but Dan’s suggestion wasn’t bad. I’d grown a beard in college to save me from looking sixteen. Fortunately for me, it had worked.

A good beard would take time for me to grow, even if it was only stubble. Any beard worth the face it sprung up on needed grooming and shaping to look like anything at all. But I didn’t have half a week to wait before I hatched the next part of my plan. I wanted to strike now, while the kiss was still fresh in Loretta’s mind.

This required meticulous strategizing. Dan had been right about one thing: I couldn’t appear beholden to the trappings of a twentysomething. I needed to show her that I was a serious person if I wanted her to think of me as mature.

It didn’t do me any favors that I’d acted so impulsively, showing up on her doorstep late at night begging her to take my case, or that she’d seen the baser side of me one rowdy night at the bar. It made me seem impetuous, and rash. I needed to show her a different side of me—Buck, the responsible adult. Buck, the future family man.

“Oh, hey there, Loretta.”

I did a superb job of acting surprised when I walked around the corner of my house to find her crouched down in my backyard. I would let her believe I’d wandered back to use the hose, the hose she kept right next to her whenever she spent Tuesday and Friday evenings hand-watering the bushes. Not that I’d been watching. My brain was just good at noting patterns. She’d be out here a good, long while.

“Buck! My gosh, you scared me.”

I flashed her a subtle smile. This was the first time we’d seen each other since our return from Hinckley. On the car ride back, we’d talked about the case. We’d parted ways with me thanking her. She hadn’t called or texted, and I’d given her some space.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” I motioned to the hose at her side. “I was hoping we could share. I’ll need a bit of water to wash Carolina.”

“Carolina?” She seemed flummoxed, though I couldn’t tell whether she was surprised or shy. Whether she ever planned to walk through the door I’d left open was up to her. Either way, that kiss was impossible to forget.

“Carolina’s my ’72 Nova.” I hooked my free thumb behind me, motioning over my shoulder. “I’ve had her since I was sixteen. Found her in a junk yard. Rebuilt her from scrap.”

I’d had her parked in the driveway for the better part of the day. Loretta had noticed her on other occasions when I’d had the garage open. Taking Carolina out now would give her a better impression. It would show her that I wasn’t like every other young guy compensating for his penis size with a big pickup truck. I could drive her around in a serious car.

Loretta looked past me with interest. Good. She was taking the bait. I stepped aside to give her a better look.

“She’s beautiful . . .” Her compliment gratified me.

I raised an eyebrow in invitation. “You want to check her out?”

I jutted my chin toward the driveway and took the hose from her hand. “Door’s open. Go on ahead.”

I hung back long enough to fill my bucket with water. Loretta circled her appreciatively for a long minute, running light fingers over the hardtop, and Carolina’s custom finish in a lustrous gunmetal gray. Coming around front, Loretta touched her finger to one of the matte black racing stripes and smiled a bit more reverently. It made me fall a little more in love with her.

“Do you drive her much?” Loretta asked, not taking her eyes off of Carolina. I didn’t know she’d heard my approach. I couldn’t say I minded the way she’d tuned in to my presence.

“You might laugh,” I warned before answering.

She looked up at me with her signature smirk and I nearly lost my restraint not to kiss her again.

“I rarely drive her, but we go on dates.”

Loretta’s smirk turned into a light chuckle. “You go on dates with your car?”

“Hey, don’t judge. I spent a lot of quality time with her in the garage before she was ever ready to drive. Even if she’s not roadworthy, you can still have a fine relationship with your car.”

“So tell me about these dates of yours...” Loretta was still amused. Good. I liked it when I got her smiling.

I held up my bucket. “Washing and waxing her is quality time. For two years, when I was working up in Crosby, she was by herself in my parents’ garage. Now that I’m closer to buying my own place, I’m spending time with her again. I’m just glad to have her back.”

Loretta smiled. “That’s sweet.”

I shrugged. “I’m just a guy who loves his car. When I buy a place, I want somewhere with a big garage, some place I can have room to maybe get another.”

“So you’re looking to buy a place?” When Loretta seemed surprised, I knew Dan’s advice had been on point. How could I expect her to know if I didn’t come out and tell her?

I leaned my hip against my car and crossed my arms. “That’s why I moved to Green Valley. I’ve had a lot more than I ever wanted of my father’s kind of life. I just want to live in a nice town, with nice people. Go to work every day and make a difference. Help old ladies across the street. Rescue kittens from trees. Help my neighbors with home repairs. Speaking of which, I wouldn’t mind taking a look at your deck.”

“My deck?” she echoed.

“You’ve got water damage on two of your steps. I could replace them for you.”

She smirked knowingly. “I see what you’re doing, Buck Rogers.”

“What am I doing, Loretta Boggs?” I pretended to look confused.

“You’re trying to ingratiate yourself to me. Well, it’s not going to work.”

I meant for my smile to be charming, but I suspected it came out smug.

“Thanks for showing me your car.” She started to walk back toward my yard.

I resisted the urge to tell her I’d take her for a ride any time.

“And if you want to help,” she called over her shoulder, “you can take a look at my kitchen sink. It started to leak last week.”