Page 4 of A Baby for the Firefighter
“Is something wrong?” Dean asked me after another moment of silence from me, a look of concern on his face.
“No,” I hurried to say. “I was just wondering if you... uh...”Jesus, Griff, get over yourself and get it out.“I was just wondering if you'd like to... come over to my place this weekend. Like, Saturday? I don't know. We could... uh... watch movies or something. I don't know if you've already seen them, but there's some new horror movies up on Netflix. You remember how we tried to get horror movies from the video store but they wouldn't let us? But we're adults now, so I thought... you know...” Great, now I was rambling. I stopped and bit my bottom lip.
Dean wore a curious expression that I wasn't quite sure how to read. He was probably surprised, but surprised that I invited him or surprised that I'd turned out to be a rambling lunatic? Then his features smoothed over and a warm smile spread on his face. “I'd love to watch movies with you.”
“Great!” I inhaled. I didn't know why I was so nervous, but suddenly I couldn't wait to get out of the park and get back home. “I'll see you Saturday then.”
“At seven?”
“Sure.”
“I'm looking forward to it.”
“Yeah, me too.” I gulped, and then I turned on my heels and left, wondering why I was such a mess. It wasn’t like anything was ever going to happen between Dean and me. There was no way he liked me like that, and even if he did… I sighed.
Even if he did, I was still a blushing virgin with no experience. There was no way I could land a guy as hot as him, no matter what fantasies I held in my heart. They were just fantasies.
Nothing more.
2
Griffin
Ihadto be quiet now. Real quiet. Carefully, I adjusted my camera's focus as I looked through the viewfinder at the bird I was trying to photograph. A blue jay. The lighting was perfect today. Clear sky. Just enough sunlight without being too much. And not a cloud in sight.
Luck was with me.
Or not.
Because the moment I clicked the shutter, a loud noise startled the bird and it took to the air.
I suppressed a sigh. The loud noise was my nephew of course.
“Uncle Griff!” he called out.
“Yeah?” I glanced at the kid, who was pointing downhill from where we were, a short way into the forest behind the town.
“I think I saw a fox! Can we take a picture of it?”
I'd be happy if we could takeanygood pictures today.
Jake had asked me to teach him about photography, and I'd thought it might be fun to take him into the woods, but so far the only thing that kept the nine-year-old's interest seemed to be catching bugs and stomping through the underbrush.
“You know what's important when you're trying to take shots of animals?” I asked him.
He tilted his head to one side and looked at me curiously. “What?”
“Not scaring them away by yelling your uncle’s name is a good start.”
“What else should I yell?”
Smart ass. “You shouldn’t yell at all!”
“I'm sorry,” Jake said. “But there was afox.”He stressed the last word and waved his arm as if I was being ridiculously dense by not seeing how important this was.
“We're in the forest. We'll see tons of critters. If you don't spook them all.” But knowing my nephew, I had come prepared. It was time to enact plan B. Reaching around, I dug a little compact camera out of my bag. I'd taken it as a last resort, so to say. I loved Jake, but he was famous for breaking my stuff. Still, he wasn't going to learn anything if I never gave him a camera. I showed it to him. “Next time you see a cool animal, don't tell me about it. Take a picture.”
“Ooooh, cool!” He grabbed the small device out of my hand without hesitation.
