No, seriously. He hadn’t been with a woman in … hell, months? After the wedding, he’d have to do something about that.
Relieved to have worked that out, he drew in a deep breath, turned up his music, and let U2 blast his thoughts away.
* * *
Eric hadhis head on straight and his hormones under control by the time he and Victoria headed up the canyon toward Scarlet, where Austin and Lexi were hosting a cookout for the bridal party. He cranked the music and the AC. “Are you cool?”
“Yes, thanks. It’s so much hotter down here than it is in Scarlet Springs.” A slight puffiness to Victoria’s eyes was the only sign she’d been crying.
“That’s the altitude.”
“I should have guessed. Here, everything is about altitude.”
That made him laugh. “Just about.”
“I like your mom.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “She’s good people. She did right by me, even when it wasn’t easy. She raised me by herself, you know.”
Victoria nodded. “She told me.”
So they’d had that conversation. It figured.
“Have you ever met your father?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t use that word to describe him. A father is a man who stands by his kids and their mother. That guy was a sperm donor—nothing more. He dumped my mom when she told him she was pregnant and never gave her a dime.”
“You don’t have any relationship with him?” She seemed to catch herself. “Sorry. That’s just me being nosy. I shouldn’t—”
“It’s okay.” Eric didn’t mind. He’d worked through that shit ages ago. “No, I don’t have a relationship with him. I tracked him down when I was seventeen, introduced myself, and found myself looking at an older version of my own face. He told me he had no sons and slammed the door. That was it.”
“God! I’m so sorry.” Those brown eyes went wide and soft. “I can’t imagine how you must have felt.”
“That day pretty much sucked, but I had good friends, a mother who loved me, lots of people who cared. Austin’s dad took us camping that weekend. He even let us drink a few beers.” He glanced over to find Victoria watching him. “When people make fun of small towns or talk down Scarlet, what they don’t get is that we’re a community. We might not always get along, but we’ve got one another’s backs. How many of your neighbors do you know? I know all of mine. Every last one.”
“That must be wonderful.”
“Most of the time. In my line of work, it also has its downsides.”
Silky, dark brows drew together in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are fewer than fifteen-hundred people in Scarlet. About seventy percent of our calls are for emergency medical services, not fires. When someone has a heart attack or gets into a serious injury accident or shoots himself in the head, there’s a good chance I know himandhis family.”
She was still watching him. “How do you cope with that? It must be hard enough to deal with people’s suffering when they’re strangers, but when you know them …”
“Yeah.” Faces and names slid through his mind—the living, the maimed, the dying, the dead. “People come up to me in the grocery store and on the street. They want to say thank you. Some have questions. They want to know if they could have done something differently. They’re searching for peace. I used to find that awkward. It made me uncomfortable. Now, I feel honored to play that role in their lives.”
He wasn’t sure that made any sense.
He glanced over to catch the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “What?”
“You are your mother’s son.”
“Yeah?” He’d take that as a compliment. “The two of you seemed to hit it off.”
“She said I set tongues wagging last time I was here.”
“She told you that?” It wasn’t like his mother to gossip.