Page 25 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

Somebody made him wear the shirt.

I know it was Tater. I know because Owen is standing there like a man facing a firing squad, jaw set, ears red, in a dark T-shirt that fits like it lost a bet, and Tater is grinning at him like a proud arsonist.

The stars are open above him. The fairy lights are doing their thing. And my pulse, my traitor pulse, the one I have trained for thirty years to stay professional, forgets every rule I own.

Airway clear, I tell myself. Breathing elevated. Circulation compromised. Patient is an idiot.

"Next up," Tater booms, "you know him, you fear him, the nurses have a folder on him. Owen Peterson. Chicago trained, Willowbend raised, currently single-handedly keeping the butterscotch industry afloat. Gals, this man once carried Amos Kessler AND Amos Kessler's dog down a—"

"The dog walked," Owen says into the crowd. First words. Flat as a pancake.

The room loses it. Somewhere behind me a woman whistles with two fingers.

"Bidding opens at fifty dollars," Tater says.

Silence. Total, coordinated, small-town silence. Locals studying their drinks. Millie beaming like a woman watching her plan work.

Then a Dallas voice cuts through it.

"One hundred." A gorgeous woman in white linen with a blowout you could land a plane on, raising a champagne flute like a paddle.

Millie's head whips around so fast her earrings keep going.

"Two hundred," calls a second Dallas table, where three women in real diamonds have put their heads together and come up dangerous.

"NOBODY TOLD THEM," Millie hisses at me, scandalized, like Dallas broke a law.

"Two-fifty," says White Linen.

"THREE HUNDRED!" And that is my table. That is my table, that is Marisol from day shift with her hand in the air and my dignity in the other.

I grab Debbie's arm. "Call it off."

"Three-fifty," says White Linen, cool as an alcohol swab.

"Debbie. Deborah. I will quit. I will transfer to Alaska. They have signing bonuses."

"That's seven hundred in engine money, folks," Tater croons into the mic. "God bless Grant Walker."

"Three-seventy-five," say the diamonds, conferring.

On stage, Owen has located our table. I watch it happen. I watch his eyes find the cash pile, then Debbie, then me, and I watch one corner of his mouth do a thing it has no legal right to do.

"Four hundred!" White Linen is standing now.

The diamond table confers again. Heads shake. They're out.

White Linen looks around, triumphant.

And Debbie Sue Monroe stands up on her chair.

On her chair. In heels. Holding the entire cash pile over her head like a championship belt.

"FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN DOLLARS," she bellows, "AND A BOOK OF CAR-WASH COUPONS."

Silence. Then the loudest sound I have ever heard a barn make.

Tater is pounding the podium. The band hits a rimshot. Millie is on her feet screaming like her horse came in. White Linen throws up her hands, laughing, done.