to be your lawyer, by the way,” I said with a smile.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re a corporate lawyer. You’re useless to me.”
“I know. I’m not sad about that.” Hal seemed sad, though, about a lot of things. It was almost enough to make me wish I was a divorce lawyer, just so I could help him out more directly. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Hal shook his head. “I’ll be fine. Eventually.” Then he raised his voice so the others could hear. “I’ve got my girls. You two get out of here.”
Marnie looked up. “Where are you guys going?”
“We’re going to go work on my house for a while,” Dominic said as he stood up from the table. I followed suit and got our jackets out of the closet then grabbed the pack that held my tablet. When I gave Dominic his, our hands touched, and I was pleased to see a familiar flush along his neck again.
“Can I come?”
“Not this time,” Dominic said, ruffling Marnie’s curls before leaning down and kissing her cheek. He kissed Steph as well, and then the girls looked expectantly at me.
“Uh…”
“Come on, Max!” Marnie patted her cheek, and I obliged with a kiss for both girls while their father laughed at me from behind his hand. For all that Steph looked more like Ariel, Marnie had so many of her mother’s mannerisms it was unreal.
“See you girls later.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Hal called out as we headed for the door.
“Gonna be a boring evening, then,” I called back.
“Gu—not like that, you asshole. I’m talking about on the repairs.”
“Daddy! Language!”
I shut the door with a chuckle. “Time to make a break for it.”
“Don’t run,” Dominic cautioned me as we walked down the driveway toward his Jeep. “I don’t want to have to catch you again.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Dominic looked at me with a glint in his eye. “I mean, don’t leap into my arms or anything, but maybe you could fall onto my bed?” He immediately put a hand on his face. “Oh my god. I’m not smooth. I’m sorry.” He unlocked the doors and got inside, and I followed him.
“That was actually pretty smooth. Maybe we can start with you showing me around the house and putting me to work. There have to be some two-person jobs around the place, right?”
“A few,” he admitted, starting up the car and glancing into the road before he pulled out. “If nothing else, you can act as my backup against any unwanted guests in the walls.”
I snorted. “I can do that.”
…
We headed away from the center of town and took a turn down the road that ran closer to the train tracks. The tracks were defunct now, a remnant of the logging industry that nobody had bothered to remove. Kids liked to go down and smash bottles against them while high schoolers liked to go there to hangout and drink. At least they had when I lived here. It was the opposite side of town from where I’d grown up, in a historic two-story Colonial on an acre and a half of land. My father had had to sell it when my mom divorced him. I wasn’t sure who lived there now—hell, I wasn’t entirely sure where he lived around here anymore.
I blinked away the memories and said, “You get called out to scare people down there?”
He rolled his eyes. “At least once a week from a parent asking me to check and see if their kid is there and bring them home if I catch them. As if they don’t scatter the second I show up.”
I knew how it was. I’d been one of those kids more than once. “That’s part of the thrill of going to the tracks.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I just never thought I’d be the one doing the scaring, you know? I didn’t see myself ending up as a cop when I was in school.”
I sensed a new avenue of conversation opening up. “What did you think you’d do?”
“I don’t know for sure. I figured I might become a teacher. I like working with kids.” His expression was easy now, probably thinking about his nieces. “I’m the one they always send to the schools to do the ‘stranger danger’ and drug talks.”
“I could see you being a teacher.” Or at least, I could see shy, gentle Nicky being a teacher. Dominic was a bit rougher around the edges, but it wouldn’t be impossible to go back to