the door to Birdie’s house, wearing a plunging, lacy dress Mary considered more appropriate for Madonna than for a plump, widowed retiree.
“It’s not even eight-thirty.” Mary tried to keep her tone even as she stepped inside, although she longed to snap at someone. It wasn’t Marguerite’s fault that Mary was late to the group’s weekly bridge game.
Mary wasn’t upset at Jackson for delaying her, although he hadn’t wanted to listen to the rest of what she had to say about his relationship with Lexie. Mary’s mood had more to do with her anxiety about her own love life. She had recently made a decision to return to dating.
For nearly twenty years, Mary had avoided thinking about men as anything other than friends. She’d warmed her toes at night with her grandmother’s hot-water bottle while she kept her mind busy worrying about her kids and the business she’d started with Jeremy’s life insurance money. She had the Painted Pony to run, gray hair she’d earned every right not to color and an occasional whisker she plucked off her chin. She thought men, romance and sex were a thing of the past.
That all changed a few months ago when Sirus Socrath, Jackson’s former Hot Shot superintendent, stopped to help Mary change a flat tire alongside the road. She’d been driving into Boise to pick up supplies, when a tire blew. While she was struggling to loosen the last lug nut, Sirus had pulled up.
“Having trouble?”
“I think this one lug is rusted on.” Mary gaped at Sirus’s long, lanky frame. From that angle, he looked like the cock-of-the-walk, as her mother used to say. Mary blinked, unused to thinking of Sirus as anything other than a hardworking man of the community and her friend. In that moment, she saw him for the first time as M-A-N as if she were W-O-M-A-N. Mary shook her head and dismissed the odd feeling. She was a grandmother, for heaven’s sake.
Sirus knelt next to her on the road’s dirt shoulder and loosened the lug nut with ease. His hands were as long as the rest of him, his arms strong from years of fighting fires.
“Not rusted. It just needed a man’s touch, you know?” Sirus’s faded blue eyes gazed directly into Mary’s and his lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners.
Was Sirus Socrath flirting with her? Mary reminded herself that she was fifty-five, and Sirus was sixty if he was a day, and twice divorced to boot. But that didn’t stop her heart from pounding as it hadn’t for years.
A few days after the flat tire incident, Sirus showed up at Birdie’s on bridge night even though he’d never been there before. He claimed to have come to replace Smiley, who could barely see the cards anymore, although Mary imagined Sirus joined them to spend more time with her. Still, nothing changed between them. Sirus didn’t seek Mary out or call her, try to hold her hand or kiss her. Sirus never gave Mary any reason to think he wanted her to be anything more than a friend. Yet, Mary was sure he did want more.
Either that or she was going insane.
Perhaps she’d swallowed too much river water, or maybe she was finally completing menopause. It didn’t matter what the cause was. Once Sirus lit the dormant spark within her, Mary couldn’t seem to put it out.
The seed had been planted—she’d been alone too long.
Mary stepped inside Birdie’s house, feet thumping on the hardwood floor as loudly as her heart pounded now in her ears. She could feel Sirus’s eyes upon her. He had kind eyes. Patient eyes. Eyes that let her know he’d wait for Mary to decide when she was ready for him.
Ready for him? She’d been alone for nearly two decades. She could take care of the house, her car and her business. But she’d forgotten how to take care of a man.
Mary had promised herself she’d work up the courage to ask Sirus back to her house for coffee tonight, the same as she’d been promising herself every Sunday night for the past month. They’d sit on the couch and talk. She’d ask him how he’d come by that scar on his forehead. Later, when she’d drunk some coffee that she planned to lace with a little confidence-building whiskey, maybe she’d work up the courage to kiss Sirus.
Mary couldn’t look at Sirus now, for fear she was suffering from an overactive imagination and Sirus would be looking at her as just a friend. If he’d awakened these longings accidentally, Mary wasn’t sure what she’d do.
There were snacks on the green felt-covered card table and mints in a crystal bowl that Birdie insisted was from France, though Mary had seen bowls just like it at the dollar store in Boise. The television blared. Someone, probably Sirus, had scooted Birdie’s brocade wing chair up close to the set and Smiley perched on it, leaning so close to the screen that Mary thought the old barber might fall into it.
Sirus and Smiley had been sharing Sirus’s small cabin since Smiley drove off the road two years ago and nearly killed himself. They weren’t related, although Smiley was old enough to be Sirus’s father. But neither of them had any family close by. It was just the way of the community to take care of its own.
Sirus gazed up at Mary from his seat at the card table and sent her a smile that warmed her to her toes.
Would you like to come over to my house later for coffee?
The question remained unvoiced.
She was such a coward. She couldn’t even risk a little rejection from an old friend.
Mary slid into a metal folding chair across from Sirus. She’d found true love once, over thirty years ago with Jeremy Garrett, a Hot Shot, and had been blessed with that love for more than a decade. Then, eighteen years ago, Jeremy died while fighting a wildland fire. It had very nearly broken her heart when Jackson followed in his father’s footsteps. Every time Jackson went out on a fire, Mary smiled bravely and prayed for his safe return.
“How are you this evening, Mary?” Sirus asked, bringing her thoughts back to the present.
The blender whirred in the kitchen. Marguerite and Birdie were making the strawberry daiquiris they loved so much. A quick glance at Smiley showed him engrossed in a television reality show. This was about as private as the evening was going to get.
“Jackson came home today.” Mary tried to send Sirus a smile, but smiling at Sirus had become a self-conscious act for Mary, as if she were a teenager with an unrequited crush.
“Yeah, he stopped at the office. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him.” No longer able to keep up with the younger firefighters, yet still a prime physical specimen, Sirus now worked at the National Interagency Fire Center as an incident commander. He coordinated fire attack crews in the field. That meant working nontraditional hours and days. It wasn’t unusual for NIFC to be staffed round the clock during fire season.
Sirus kept his warm brown gaze on Mary, while his large hands shuffled the deck of cards. His face was as long and narrow as the rest of him, but not sharp. Nothing about Sirus was sharp, not even the faint scar along his temple. Carrying himself tall and proud, he was a handsome man in his own way. Mary liked looking at him. He was a sturdy man, too, in both stature and personality. You could rely on a man like Sirus.
“Jackson’s staying at my house.” She’d known Sirus for years without so much as a stray spark of interest flaring between them. Why now? She was happy with her life the way it was. Wasn’t she?
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s…” Mary frowned, struggling for the right word. Her son was still heartbroken over Lexie, but there was something else about his demeanor that didn’t seem right, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “I don’t know. He’s quiet. You know Jackson, he’s always got something to say.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m probably just imagining things.”
Sirus considered her words for a moment. “Does he seem—”
“Look at this, Sirus,” Smiley interrupted loudly, pointing at the television screen. “This fool’s going to eat raw snake eggs.”
Sirus shrugged apologetically and obliged Smiley by acknowledging