Kathryn Springer - Tested by Fire

No one had given him a gift like that in years. No one except his colleagues at the Madison Agency, who had stopped treating him with kid gloves just a few months after he started working there. It hadn’t taken Finn that long. They had known each other less than twenty-four hours.

He wondered why he found the discovery so unsettling.

“Do you mind living so close to your grandparents?” John asked later as they headed back to the city limits. Now she was behind the wheel, which gave John a chance to study her. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was some emotion still lingering in her eyes that he’d noticed when they’d been at the range.

“No.” Finn shook her head. “When I got hired here, they wanted me to live with them, but I talked Gran into letting me fix up the stone house. I lived with my folks the whole time I went to college and I wanted a little space. They understood, and I don’t mind living in their backyard. Especially now that Chief is having some health problems.”

“I was surprised to see they had such a huge house to take care of.” John remembered his first glimpse of the sprawling two-story brick home as the taxi delivered him the night he arrived.

“When Chief retired, he and Gran handpicked Miranda Station. They were tired of city living and wanted a place that everyone could come home to. It’s still close enough to Chicago for impromptu family get-togethers. That’s why he had the pool put in, too, for all my relatives to enjoy when they come for a visit. I don’t think Chief has ever put his big toe in the water.”

The stately brick home they were discussing came into view and Finn eased the car into the garage. There was a vacant spot where the other car had been parked earlier.

“Looks like they went out,” Finn said.

“Your powers of observation are amazing, Officer Kelly,” John murmured.

She looked at him in mock surprise. “A sense of humor, Agent Gabriel? Be careful, I may think you are human.”

A strange expression suddenly came over his face, igniting some unidentified emotion in his eyes.

“Oh, I’m human, Finn,” he said quietly.

Finn tried to smile but found she couldn’t. A shiver of awareness rippled through her. She could hear Colin barking in the background, but everything else around her had gotten fuzzy. What’s happening here, Lord? Is John someone You’ve brought into my life for a reason…or am I supposed to run as fast as I can in the other direction?

“I think this is the night Chief and Gran play Scrabble with the Silvermans. I was thinking about grilling some burgers.” She offered the invitation as quickly as it popped into her mind. “Are you hungry?”

John hesitated. He reminded himself that he didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to get involved with Finn Kelly on any level, but he had made a promise to Seamus.

“Never mind.” She quickly picked up on his reluctance. “I just thought…”

The evening sun filtered through the trees and caught the fire in her hair as she pushed it away from her face in the unconscious gesture he was becoming familiar with. Remembering her lack of concentration at the range, he decided to push a little deeper to see if he could discover what was bothering her. Most likely she had been thinking about a boyfriend. Still, the way she seemed to disappear for a few minutes there worried him. A cop couldn’t afford to do that on duty. The stakes were too high.

“Sure. A burger sounds great.”

Her easy smile surfaced again, with no sign that she was aware of the tension that had just crackled around them minutes before. He didn’t even want to go there. The connection he felt with her was undeniable and unexpected. And unwelcome. In the first place, he was ten years older than Finn in age and one hundred years older than her in experience. Keep telling yourself that, Gabriel. He followed her into the house.

“What do you want to do?” she asked him.

“Let’s say I’m better at the outdoor range than at the indoor kind,” he admitted.

Finn studied him thoughtfully. “I’ll bet it’s hard to butter bread.”

Was she always this refreshingly honest? “I eat out a lot.”

“You can flip the burgers, then.”

“Can’t I just watch television while you make supper?”

“Very funny.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Am I laughing?”

“No, I think you fulfilled your quota of laughter already. Once a day?”

He had to actually try not to smile. She handed him a metal spatula, rummaged into the refrigerator for the pre-shaped hamburger patties and tucked a canister of seasoning salt under her elbow. “The grill is out the back door.”

The back of Finn’s house was a surprise. A flagstone patio fanned out in a V-shape, bordered by tall, colorful flowers and terra-cotta pots lined up on an old, weathered bench. The pots were home to a variety of vegetable plants. A faded quilt was folded neatly on a wicker chair and a grapevine wreath decorated an antique light pole.

Within minutes, she had the grill started.

“I’ll be right back.” Finn disappeared into the house and returned a few moments later with two glasses of iced tea.

“Thanks.” He started to take a drink and paused. “There’s something floating in it.”

“It’s a violet.” She inspected the coals and frowned.

“You want me to drink a flower?”

“Not necessarily. But it won’t hurt you if you do. Violets are edible,” she explained patiently. “I put them in the tea because they’re…”

“Go on. This is fascinating.”

He had that detached, intimidating look on his face again, and Finn suddenly balked at telling him why she had dropped two violets into his iced tea. It had been done out of habit and now she was backed into a corner, having to explain.

“Pretty.” She busied herself by salting the meat.

“Pretty.” He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before.

“Yes, pretty.” She straightened and suddenly wished she hadn’t done it in the first place. “Because they look pretty in the iced tea. Don’t you think so?”

He studied the glass again, and she finally clucked her tongue.

“John, it’s not a piece of evidence, it’s a glass of iced tea. Just drink it.”

He did, so cautiously that she had to chuckle, her initial defensiveness melting away.

John glanced at her and was relieved. If she was angry with him, it would be more difficult to find out if anything was going on at the Miranda Station P.D. He figured the sooner he found out what was wrong, the quicker he could get back to the Madison Agency and bury himself in the latest investigation he was working on. Seamus had been right about his not taking vacation time. He didn’t want time to relax or be idle. That gave him too much time to think about things better left alone.

Finn set plates on the small bistro-style table by the grill and put the food out. “Do you mind if I pray?”

John shook his head and waited to see if he recognized the table prayer, so he could stumble along.

“Lord, thank You for this day. For the things You’ve allowed in our lives—the challenges and the joys. Thank You for John and his willingness to take time from his busy schedule to spend some time with Chief…and thank You for the food you’ve provided. Amen.”

For a split second, he was frozen in place as her prayer sunk in. For the things You’ve allowed in our lives.

There’d been more challenges than joy in his life and he’d never stopped to consider that maybe God was there during both. Well, if He had been there, He’d been standing on the sidelines watching. Distant and unavailable.

When John walked into the chief’s house after supper with Finn, the telephone was ringing.