“I can’t wait to get out of that place.”

“I remember that feeling. I have to tell ya, though . . . it only gets harder after high school,” Matt told him.

“That’s what everyone says.”

“Are you going to college?” he asked.

Austin shook his head. “Trade school, I think. I’m taking the summer to figure out which one.”

“Parker’s okay with that?” While Parker was the sister and not the mom, she stood in as a parent for Austin and Mallory for the past three years.

“She’s cool. Says that college isn’t for everyone. Besides, it isn’t like colleges are going anywhere if I decide to go.”

“That’s true,” Erin said.

Matt found his attention back across the table. “Did you go to college?”

She nodded.

“Where?”

The question seemed to have caught in her head because she didn’t answer right away. Finally she said, “Back east.”

He found the answer strange. Most college graduates boasted their alma mater with a Go Cougars, or Yeah, Huskies.

Much as he wanted to press, he saw her thumb start to rub against her finger as she pushed food around her plate instead of eating it.

“Did you go to college?” Austin asked him.

Erin grew silent as Matt told Austin his journey to becoming a firefighter. Junior college, then time on a hotshot crew before finally landing a position in LA County Fire. It had been his dream and it had taken forever. Five years of applying and testing all over the state and even Arizona, Idaho, and Nevada. Not that he had any desire to move away from his family . . . but he was willing to go anywhere to get into the field and then bank on the ability to transfer out and back home later in life if he needed.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” he finished his story. “A lot of my buddies gave up. Some went on to join the police force, some went back to school or took other labor jobs in construction.”

“I don’t see a person who wanted to be a firefighter working behind a desk,” Erin said.

“That sounds like my personal hell.”

She smiled at that.

“Mine, too,” Austin said. “Which is why I think college is a waste of my time. I liked the heavy equipment that was here all winter.”

Matt nodded. “Good work. Great pay. Can’t be outsourced.”

Austin dished up another portion of mashed potatoes. “I know, right? Can’t buy that from China.”

“Another great job is a lineman,” Matt told him.

“What’s that?”

“Working on power poles. Running lines.”

Erin placed her fork down on her plate. “Oh, God . . . don’t put that in his head. Parker will have a heart attack.”

Matt grinned. “It’s okay. I taught Colin CPR. She’ll be fine.”

And so the conversation circled. Austin kept things interesting with only a few comments from Erin. When they were finished, only half of the food on Erin’s plate had been eaten, and he and Austin made a pretty good dent in the rest of it on the table.

“That was really delicious.” Matt took his plate to the sink.

“You helped,” Erin told him.

“Tossing a salad isn’t really cooking.”

Austin placed his plate next to Matt’s and moved back into the dining room. “So are you guys dating, or what?”

Erin’s plate hit the counter a little too loud. “What? No.”

Her cheeks were crimson in one second. They matched her red hair, which was fading to more of a strawberry blonde. Emphasis on the strawberry. He would bet his next paycheck red was not her natural color. In the six months that he’d known her, she’d grown out her hair past her midback. Her skin was quickly bronzing with the addition of sunshine, further making him believe that the trait of red hair was not in her gene pool. “Not for my lack of trying, kid,” Matt said, bringing a new shade of red to Erin’s face.

She glared now, in a playful kind of way. “You do need to be destroyed.”

Hearing his words tossed back at him had him wiggling his eyebrows.

Erin, on the other hand, rolled her eyes. “I guess you’ll be wanting coffee, since you wheedled happy hour and dinner out of the evening.”

“And here I thought I was being stealthy.” He cleaned off his plate into the garbage can and moved to help with the dishes. “But since you offered, coffee would be great.”

That earned another chuckle before she turned to put on a pot.

Ten minutes later the dishes were done, Austin had gone to his room, and Matt sat with Erin on the front porch drinking coffee while the sun went down.

“Next time I’ll cook you dinner,” he told her.

Erin stared at him over her cup of coffee. “I already told you I wasn’t ready to date.”

“I didn’t say date. I said dinner.” He sipped his coffee. “Oh, wait. Was this a date? I didn’t realize or I would have brought flowers.” Teasing took the worry out of her eyes.

“Does this work on all the ladies?” she asked.

He played dumb. “Does what work?”

“Assuming a position in someone’s life.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

“Oh, please. Your moves are very practiced and smoother than a newborn’s bottom.”

He put his coffee aside, purposely drinking it slowly to prolong the night. “As crazy as it sounds, I don’t usually have to ask a woman out repeatedly before she says yes. Since that didn’t work with you, I’m trying something different.”

“Assuming a place in my life.”

“Technically, I’m already in your world since it is in Parker’s and Parker is in Colin’s . . . and Colin—”

She stopped him with a wave of her hand. “Okay, okay.”

He flashed his dimples. “So you’ll go out with me.”

“Oh my God. I didn’t say that.”

From dimples to pout. “Fine. Dinner, not dating. I’m at work tomorrow but I can do Saturday.”

She put her cup down. “Matt. We are not . . . I don’t have time to date.”

“You need to eat.”

She paused.

He was getting to her, he felt it.

“Mallory and Jase are coming over on Saturday.”

“Great. I’ll barbeque. And it will be ‘just dinner.’ Not a date.” Which is what she needed to hear. The fact that he’d caught her checking out his butt earlier and that all the teasing resulted in her blushing like a woman with a crush told him all he needed to know.

Erin Fleming was into him. She just didn’t want to be.

And that, Matt could work with.

CHAPTER NINE

“It’s been a solid year since the protection order was in place so the judge is granting a hearing.”

Just listening to Renee’s words made Erin’s pulse race.

“He almost killed me.”

“Which I will argue on your behalf. But there was no official police report and the car accident was recorded as just that. The only reason we received the protective order in the first place was because of the stack of ‘accident’ reports obtained by urgent care. Since there is nothing new, and no contact between the two of you, I don’t think we have much hope of keeping the order in place.”