Jack’s wedding last week, and in the process, he stumbled upon a job opening on the Stone Gap Fire Department.
A job he hadn’t even been looking for. But once the idea took root in his head of a change, a new start, Colton thought it wouldn’t hurt to at least check it out. Maybe at a new department, people wouldn’t look at him with eyes filled with a mixture of pity and mistrust. Maybe he could finally leave the shadows behind him and begin again. He’d lost his love for firefighting after the accident, and wondered sometimes if he’d ever get it back. Then he’d talked to Harry and the first glimmers of excitement about his job returned.
That’s what had him turning around almost the minute he got home to Atlanta. He’d returned to Stone Gap, both to have a little time to get to know his brothers and father, and to meet with the fire chief for a formal sit-down. Except Fire Chief Harry Washington wasn’t a formal sit-down kind of guy, more a walk-and-talk, see-how-it-goes man. Which was why Colton was strolling through downtown Stone Gap, while Harry gave him a guided tour of the town.
“Best apple pie in the county is served right there,” Harry said, pointing at a little restaurant on the corner. A bright red-and-white awning above the Good Eatin’ Café pronounced the same thing in a dark blue curly script. Harry, a short and slightly pudgy man with a white buzz cut, looked as if he might indulge in the pie on occasion. He had a wide smile, a twinkle in his eyes and a friendly manner, which most everybody in Stone Gap seemed to respond to, given how many people had shouted a hello on their walk so far. “And if you ask Viv real nice, she’ll give you an extra scoop of ice cream on top.”
So far, Harry had talked about the best place to buy a pair of work boots, how to unclog a drain, the top menu items at Mabel’s diner and a whole host of other topics that didn’t have a damned thing to do with firefighting. Colton kept expecting some kind of questions about his skill set, but in the half hour since Colton had met Harry at the station and they’d started walking, nothing related to his occupation had come up in conversation. Maybe Harry was a circuitous guy, Colton thought. One who needed to be brought back around to the real reason he was here. “Sir, if you want my résumé—”
Harry put up a hand. “Let me stop you there, son. I don’t hire people based on a piece of paper. You and I both know how quickly paper disappears when you set it ablaze. I make my decisions based on the person, not their fancy-dancy credentials.”
“But surely you want to know if I have experience—”
Harry squinted in the sun. “Do you like fishing, Colton?”
The non sequitur made Colton stumble over a crack in the sidewalk. He pushed his sunglasses back up his nose and fell back into place beside Harry. “Uh, yes, sir.”
Harry nodded. “Good. Go home, grab a pole and meet me down at Ray Prescott’s place ’round three this afternoon. We’ll do the whole formal interview thing then.”
“While we’re fishing?”
Harry grinned. “It’s called multitasking, son. Now, if you ask my wife, she’ll tell you I can’t talk and breathe at the same time, and while that may be true, I sure as hell can talk and fish at the same time.” He gave Colton a little salute then strode off down the sidewalk toward the brick fire station.
Colton stared after him for a long time, then decided that if he wanted a job in Stone Gap—and he still wasn’t sure he did—then he should get a fishing pole. Not that Colton had gone fishing much. A few times with his uncle Tank, but that was about it. He’d been too busy trying to be the man of the family, a job thrust on him from the minute he could walk. Even now, even all these miles away from his mother and sister, he felt that mantle of responsibility. Of course, Katie was all grown up now, and their mother...well, she was what she liked to call “a work in progress.”
Which meant Colton shouldn’t feel bad about doing something for himself for once. Like going fishing.
Especially considering how much his life had changed in such a short period of time. A month ago he’d been working for the Atlanta FD, spending his free time working on his mother’s run-down car and urging his sister to take some time off, live a little, someplace other than the accounting firm where she spent a minimum of eighty hours a week. In return, Katie had needled him about being the quintessential bachelor, with an apartment as empty as a store going out of business. Sure, he had the occasional fling, but he wasn’t interested in serious relationships, and he made sure the women he dated knew it. He’d thought his life was more or less complete.
Then he found out that Uncle Tank—his real name was David, but no one ever called the barrel-chested, hearty man by anything other than Tank—whom Colton had always thought was just a family friend, was actually his real uncle, and that his biological father—a man his mother had never spoken about—lived in Stone Gap, along with the three sons he had raised. Robert Barlow had ignored Colton’s existence for thirty years, a fact that still stung, even though Colton told himself he was far too old to care whether he’d had a dad to teach him how to complete a layup or tell him how to win a girl’s heart.
But he did care. And working through the roller coaster of emotions that meeting his siblings and father had awakened was part of what had kept Colton here in Stone Gap. A saner man might have just turned his back on all of this and left town forever, but Colton had this need to know where he came from. His mother had called it his curiosity gene, the same need that had driven Colton to dismantle the dishwasher when he was eleven, and ask a thousand questions in every class he ever took.
Now he had a thousand and ten questions for Bobby Barlow, but Colton had hesitated to ask them. Had delayed seeing his father again, because Colton wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear the answers.
Nor was he so sure his father would want a relationship with him. Colton wasn’t the success that Mac was, the war hero Jack was or the second generation partner that Luke was. Sure, Colton was a firefighter, but he was barely hanging on to the job he had in Atlanta after the disaster that claimed two of his coworkers six months ago. A disaster that Colton could have avoided, if only he had tried harder.
The memory of that night had a way of stealing Colton’s breath when he least expected it. He’d catch a whiff of smoke or hear a crash, and he’d be there again, screaming into his mask for Willis and Foster. He’d see the burst of flame, hear the crack of the overhead beam, feel the heat crushing his gear. And see the yawning cavern that opened up like a hungry beast and swallowed the best men—and the best friends—Colton had ever known.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and willed the memory back into the shadows. It took a while, four deep breaths to be exact, but then he opened his eyes and reminded himself he was in Stone Gap, North Carolina, on a vacation of sorts. And about to go fishing.
Get it together, Barlow.
He jogged across Main Street, avoiding the lone car going south. He shook his head in amazement. Stone Gap wasn’t a hundredth as busy as Atlanta had been. That alone might be a nice change if he got offered a job at the department here.
If he even wanted to stay. Living in Stone Gap, becoming part of the fabric of the community, would mean being around his father on a regular basis. Dealing with all those questions that kept needling at his thoughts, the ones he wasn’t ready to face.
At the same time, it would mean having three brothers, three men who were the kind Colton had as friends back home. Three men he already genuinely liked. A lot.
He spied a familiar pair of legs sticking out from under the body of a Ford pickup truck at Gator’s Garage, the Barlow family business. Colton hesitated for a moment—this whole
