“We’re here every once in a while. Marchy over there”—I point to where he is standing with his arm wrapped around his new girl, Haley—“is Joey’s brother and co-owner of this place, so if we do go out as a group, we come here.”

  “How long have you been a firefighter?”

  “Not long. I’m still the probie of the station.”

  “Probie?” She giggles at the name. “Is that a good thing?”

  “Just means I’m the new guy, so I’m on probation for the first year, almost done though.”

  “Ah.” She nods her head slowly. “So, were you the kid who grew up wanting to be a firefighter?”

  “Guilty as charged.” I smile with pride.

  She matches my expression. “Is it everything you imagined?”

  The mom’s scream from three months ago pops in my head, but I instantly grab my drink and take a sip, pushing it back down to the depths it came from. “Livin’ the dream,” I say out loud, hoping she believes me even though I don’t believe it myself.

  Joey approaches us again, motioning to Kara. “Here, come on back. I’ll save you from Fed here, and then we can discuss getting you on the schedule to play again.”

  “Really, dude? Save her from me?”

  He laughs. “Yeah, save her from you talking her ear off all night.”

  Kara grabs her water and stands. “See ya, Fed.”

  “It’s Silas,” I yell out, making sure she knows my real name.

  She turns and gives me a beautiful smile. “I know. I just like Fed better.”

  I nod my head her way. If she smiles like that at me again, she can call me whatever she wants.

  3

  Kara

  “Here, come on in.” Joey leads me to the back room, where they have an office set up. “Have a seat.” He motions to a chair on the opposite side of his desk.

  I sit down and place my hands in my lap, trying to hide the nerves racing through me.

  “Great job tonight,” he says, making me smile.

  “Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to play.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad you called.” He opens a book calendar he has on his desk. “I have some slots that I want to officially book you for.”

  “Really?” I nearly jump out of my seat, making him laugh.

  “Yeah. I thought you did a great job. I have a few open slots we can try out. They’re on our slower nights, so I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much, but if the crowd continues to like you, then we can look at some busier nights in the months to come.”

  “That would be amazing. I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity.”

  He explains how the compensation works, but honestly, I’m so in shock that I don’t even register what he’s saying. I played today for free and didn’t really expect to get anything, so the fact that I’ll be getting anything is huge.

  He gives me two dates, and I put them in my calendar. We say our goodbyes, and I walk myself out as he stays back. When I exit the back room, the first person I see is Silas standing there waiting for me to come back.

  When he looks my way, he raises his eyebrows, like he’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he raises them even higher, saying, “So …”

  His expression makes me look around as I wonder what he means. “So … what?”

  “How did it go with Joey? Are you coming back?”

  “Oh.” My smile grows big. “Yeah, he booked me for a few days.”

  To my surprise, he swoops in, picks me up, and swings me around, making me laugh out loud. I might not know this guy, but him doing this is the exact thing I wanted right now.

  I moved to Nashville all alone. I’ve made a few friends, but no one could come watch me tonight. I didn’t realize how much I needed someone there to share in the excitement with me until this very second. There is truly something special about having people in your corner, stranger or not.

  He puts me back on my feet, and I place my hand on his chest to stabilize myself.

  He lowers his head to meet my eyes. “I mean it, congratulations. You deserve it. Your set was really good.”

  Though I had my hand on his chest to help me gain my bearings from him twirling me around, now, I need it there to due to my weak knees from the spell he just put over me with his piercing green eyes that feel like they touch my soul.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, not sure if my lips will say much more.

  “Let’s get this girl a drink to celebrate!” he shouts out as he points to the guy behind the bar, who I assume is Joey’s brother.

  I check the time on my phone, seeing it’s eight p.m. My actual job in Nashville is as a nanny to the most adorable little girls. I’ve grown to really like the parents, and the mom asked me to come over tonight after they went to bed to help organize some things over wine, but I don’t need to be there until eight thirty. This guy has me wanting to stay after just that one look, so I shrug.

  “Only one though, and then I have to be somewhere soon.” I meet eyes with the bartender. “Can I get a Bud Light?”

  Silas cracks a smile my way, and I hold up my finger up at him.

  “No. I’m not one of those girls,” I say, not able to hold back my laugh after referencing the song he teased me about earlier.

  He nods his head slowly, like he’s weighing something over in his mind. “We’ll see about that. I can see how you broke every heart in your hometown before you came here.”

  His words make me blush, so I look away, hoping he doesn’t see. I’m not so lucky though.

  He leans in, whispering in my ear, “You’re gorgeous when you blush; don’t ever try to hide it.” He steps back, gives me a wink, then reaches over to grab the beer I ordered and hands it to me. “Let’s go over here, away from these troublemakers.”

  He nudges one of them, who turns around to face us.

  “Little does she know, you’re the worst one of us all,” the guy says.

  “Ha!” Silas laughs out loud. “You forget the stories I’ve heard. Just because your old ass doesn’t act like that anymore doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I might be wilder than you now, but I’ll never be who you were ten years ago.”

  The guy looks at me and shrugs. “He’s got a point.”

  He turns back to his crew while we walk to a table off to the side.

  “So, who was that?” I ask as we sit down, and I take a drink of my beer.

  “That’s Hayes. He’s the craziest one. I thought he would be like that forever, but ever since he got with Sienna, he’s calmed down a bit.”

  I turn back to the group of guys. “Who is everyone else?”

  “Well, Marchy—the guy behind the bar, who now has his arm wrapped around Haley—is Joey’s brother. Hawk is the guy on the end. Brax is the guy with the most tattoos in the middle. Let me see if you can guess who we call Hollywood.”

  I look with intent, then laugh out loud. “Must be the guy with the hair.”

  He nods. “Yep, that’s Rhett, but we call him Hollywood, and the guy on the end is Ghost Pepper.”

  I turn to him in question. “Ghost Pepper?”

  “His real name is Myles.”

  “Love the names.”

  He shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone have some kind of nickname?”

  I shake my head, taking another sip. “Not me. Everyone’s always called me Kara.”

  “Really? Your parents never called you anything but Kara?”

  “I mean, besides sweetheart or baby girl, no. You can’t really shorten Kara,” I tease.

  “Then, what is your last name?”

  “Parsons.”

  He tilts his head like he’s in thought. “Hmm … I’m going to think about this one. You can’t really shorten Parsons either, and KP doesn’t really fit you.”

  I shake my head even more. “KP sounds like a guy’s name.”

  “Yeah, you’re way too beautiful for a nickname like that. I’m going to think of one though. I’ll need to get to know you better in order to do so.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, it’s now my official duty to come up with a nickname for you, so you’ll have to give me your number, and then we’ll have to go on a few dates because one will definitely not be enough to come up with something so important.”

  I nod, holding up my finger at him. “I think we can make that happen, but you have to promise me one thing.”

  “Anything,” he says so smoothly with a sexy grin.

  “You can’t blend our names.”

  He squints, like he’s thinking in his mind how they would blend, then starts laughing out loud when he picks up what I meant.

  “Yeah, I agree with you there. Careless would not be okay.”

  I give him a big smile. “Good.”

  “So, then I can get your number?”

  I hold out my hand, silently asking him to hand me his phone. He reaches in his back pocket, pulls out his phone, unlocks it, and hands it to me. I take a second and stare at his home screen, where there are only two apps and a graphic that says, God created firefighters so policemen had someone to look up to.

  I turn it to face him with a laugh.

  He shrugs. “My older brother is a police officer, so it’s a thing between us.”

  “I get that then.”

  I click on his Phone app and enter my number, then close it and hand it back to him. He opens it up and clicks around before giving me the side-eye.

  I stand and grab my purse. “It’s in there, I promise. Once you give me a nickname, you can update it in your phone. See you later, Fed.”

  I walk around the table he’s sitting at and head toward the door, only looking back once as I exit to see if he’s watching and trying not to blush when I see he is.

  I exit the bar and instantly pick up my phone and call my friend Nikki.

  “How did it go?” she whispers into the phone as her greeting.

  “Are you at work?” I whisper back even though there’s no reason for me to be doing so.

  “Yes, but I saw your name and had to know how it went!”

  Nikki is a nurse who works all kinds of hours, so I shouldn’t be surprised she’s at work right now.

  “It went amazing and …” I singsong, trying to build up the excitement.

  “And what?” she whispers a little louder.

  “I met a guy. I’ll tell you all about it when you get off.”

  “Squee! I can’t wait to hear. Okay, bye.”

  She hangs up, and I put my phone back in my purse, feeling good about being in Nashville for once.

  Silas

  I couldn’t help but watch her walk out that door. Something about that girl caught me, and I’m not sure if I’ve been let go even though she’s gone and I’m still staring at the door.

  I look back at my phone to try to find out where she put her number. She didn’t text herself or call, so I know she doesn’t have my number. She didn’t put it under Kara or Parsons, so I start going line by line through all of my Contacts and laugh out loud when I see she added her name in my phone as Put My Nickname Here.

  Myles joins me at the table where Kara was just sitting. “Did you scare her off already?”

  “No, she had to go, but I got her number.”

  “Good shit. Now, come join the rest of us to drown our sorrows.”

  Memories of what brought us here tonight flood my mind again, hitting me like a ton of bricks. I drop my head to my chest, take a deep breath, and stand up, heading over to be with my boys again.

  4

  Kara

  Once I arrive at the Parker home, I exit my car and walk up to their front door.

  Heather, the mom of the children I nanny for, opens the door before I get there. Steve, the dad, is away for a business trip, and she wanted to get this stuff done while he was gone.

  “Right on time. I just got them in bed. Come on in. I want to hear all about how it went,” she says in a low tone so as not to wake up the girls.

  Being a nanny for them has been my only saving grace since I moved here. I realized real quick that I couldn’t just walk into a bar and they’d let me perform, so getting to spend my days with Katy and Lana have softened that blow for sure.

  We walk to the kitchen, where she pours me a glass of wine, hands it to me, and leans back, resting on the opposite end of the counter, taking a sip from her own glass of wine.

  “It went really well! They booked me for actual paying gigs.”

  Her eyes open wide, and she instantly holds her arms out and gives me a hug. “I knew you’d get your shot. I’m so proud of you.”

  My eyes well with tears that I blink away. Heather’s love and support has been amazing for keeping me focused on my dreams and not giving up.

  “So …” I drawl out, hiding my grin over my wineglass.

  She pauses, giving me a suspicious look. “So … what?”

  “I met a guy.”

  She places her glass down and sets her hands on the counter in front of her in excitement. “Do tell.”

  “He’s a firefighter. His name is Silas.”

  “And …”

  “And he’s super cute, kind of edgy, but in a good way with a faux-hawk and a nose ring.”

  “So, you gave him your number?”

  I nod. “I did, so we’ll see if he calls.”

  “He will. I have no doubt.” She picks up her glass again. “I’m glad you had a good start to your night because organizing all of this is not going to be fun, so we should get started.”

  I pick up my glass. “Lead the way.”

  I got home from the Parkers’ house a little past midnight and am getting ready for bed when I get a text message from an unknown number.

  Angel. That’s what I put you in my phone as.

  I smile, knowing exactly who’s texting me, but surprised he’s texting me so late and so soon after we just met.

  I text back, teasing him.

  I thought I told you not to call me Angel.

  Sorry. Not sorry. You’re an angel to me.

  As I read his text, I can tell he’s sending me another one, so I wait for it before I reply.

  Why did you have to leave tonight?

  I work as a nanny. Their mom needed my help in organizing things after they went to bed.

  A nanny, huh? I can see that.

  I smile at his text. I’ve always wanted kids, and getting to help raise these little girls has only solidified that I can’t wait to have kids of my own.

  How was the rest of your night?

  Just hung with the guys. Wish you could have stayed. It wasn’t the same after you left.

  What? You didn’t like the band that played after me?

  No.

  No one will ever beat your performance.

  You’re sweet.

  I mean it. You were really good up there.

  Thank you.

  When can I see you again?

  Ha! You don’t play games, do you? Right to the point.

  Never. Life is too short. Believe me, I see it firsthand.

  I pause with my fingers over the keyboard and really take in his words. I’ve never really thought about how hard it would be to be a firefighter. The stuff they see and deal with on a daily basis must be crazy.

  I pick up the girls from school tomorrow, but

  I’m off by 7. What do you have in mind?

  Let me take you out.

  OK. Where?

  I’ll text you tomorrow with the details.

  Sounds good.

  Good night, Angel.

  I smile at his text, then respond.

  Good night, Fed.

  I’m with the girls when I get a text from Silas.

  Meet me at Harrison’s rooftop bar at 8.

  The place downtown? I didn’t know they had a rooftop bar.

  I know … that’s why I’m taking you there. It’s VIP only.

  Oh. And you’re a VIP?

  You know it.

  I laugh out loud, then respond.

  See you then.

  “Who are you texting?” Lana, the older daughter, asks as she takes her homework out of her bag. She’s eight and very curious about everything.

  “A guy I met yesterday,” I respond, tickling her a little to mess with her for asking me a private question so openly.

  Her giggle always makes me laugh.

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “I just met the guy!” I overstate playfully.

  “So? When Prince Eric met Ariel in The Little Mermaid, he wanted to be her boyfriend right away.”

  I grin and nod. “You are correct.”

  “So, if you just met him yesterday and he’s already texting you today, isn’t that the same thing?”

  I chuckle under my breath. Kids and their black-and-white way of looking at life. If only it were that easy.

  “Well, real life is a little different from the movies. I’m not sure if I want him to be my boyfriend. I need to get to know him a little better first.”

  “I say you make it official. I saw the way you smiled as you texted him. You like him.”

  I lean back with a shocked expression. “Do I now?”

  “Yep. You look like Mom when she’s texting Daddy.”

  Now, that puts a smile on my face. The best part of nannying for this family is getting to be a part of the family, and she’s right; the relationship between Heather and Steve is admirable. It’s obvious they love each other very much. I feel like marriages like theirs are not as common anymore, and there have been multiple times when I’ve thought to myself that I hope I find a love like that one day.

 

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