Page 110 of Burning Love
“Actually, no,” Janey said. “Jace doesn’t give us much. We just know you donated to the firehouse. We saw the picture in the paper. I thought it was from that.”
“No,” she said. “I wish it was a better story, but instead it’s more embarrassing. I’d had a long travel day and got home. My mother was working. I was dying for chocolate chip cookies. I’ve got an apartment with an oven in the basement of our house, but the upstairs has double ovens and I could do a whole batch at once there. I turned the ovens on to preheat, then went downstairs to shower, and change.”
“She likes long showers.”
“Oh boy,” Lauren said. “This doesn’t sound good.”
“I had the music up loud and when I got out of the shower I realized the smoke alarms were going off. I wrapped a towel around me and ran up the stairs into a kitchen full of firemen opening windows.”
Everyone was laughing in the room, including Talia.
“That’s embarrassing,” Lauren said.
“My mother had put a package of chicken in the oven to thaw and like an idiot, I didn’t check before I turned the oven on.”
“Thankfully, it didn’t catch on fire,” he said. “But it smoked the house out.”
“Jace politely kicked everyone out of the room to open the windows while I was stewing over my embarrassing idiotic move.”
“He gave you shit over it, didn’t he?” Janey asked.
She held her fingers up in a pinch. “Not enough for me to not want to know more about him.”
“Did you ask her on a date right then?” Kelsey asked. “In her towel?”
“No,” he said, his face scrunching up. “I was working.”
“My mother brought cookies to the firehouse as a thank you the next time Jace was working.” She went on to tell the rest of the story. “So there you go. And here we are.”
“We are so happy that Jace found someone. I wondered if he’d ever have a girlfriend,” Kelsey said.
He rolled his eyes.
Talk about embarrassing and idiotic statements.
“Jace, your father needs your help to move something in the barn. I know he won’t ask because he always thinks he can do it on his own.”
He stood up. “Not a problem. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be fine. It will give your sisters and stepmother a chance for some girl talk with me. Go.” Talia waved her hand at him, laughing.
She could handle herself. He wasn’t too worried.
“Was that a ploy?” he asked his father when they were in the barn.
“Yes and no,” his father said. “The girls do want to talk to Talia, but I need help moving this saw. I’ve got another being delivered on Monday morning.”
“That’s good. Your old one you gave me years ago still works great. I’ll start getting to work on the hall bath soon.”
He and his father went to each end of the saw table and lifted, then shifted it to where it had to go.
“I thought you were taking a break from things now.”
“Yeah, well, things have changed.”
“What’s going on?” his father asked.
Jace trusted this man more than he did himself. “Talia is pregnant.”
