by Kathryn Shay
“What did he say?”
“That since they haven’t determined an exact cause, the blaze is suspicious.”
“He stopped in here, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Common practice to interview the firefighters on the scene. I imagine he’s talked to all of us by now.”
“Did you notice anything important?”
“Nah. I was too busy saving your hide.” He smiled. “They really want to talk to the guys who knocked the fire down.”
“Knocked it down?”
“Put it out.”
“Ah.” He appeared to study his hands, then said, “I can’t believe this might not be an accident.”
“Do you have any reason to believe it isn’t?”
“No.”
“Was anyone on the scene?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who reported the fire?”
“My brother. He was driving by and saw the smoke.”
“Oh.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, no.”
Alex leaned back and sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Sorry, I get carried away about my work.”
“It’s not that. The possibility that the fire was set intentionally is disturbing.” He paused. “But firefighting sounds fascinating. Tell me about the job—what you do, how you spend your days.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.” When she hesitated, he glanced at his watch. “We’ve got about thirty more minutes before our food comes.”
So Francey agreed, and for half an hour, she regaled him with tales of the characters in her department and some humorous stories about her training at the fire academy. He listened attentively and asked questions. The best part was when he laughed.
She was just finishing an anecdote about one of the lieutenants when there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she called out.
The Rio’s deliveryman, in a waiter’s black tux, entered the room and deposited their meal on a table in the corner, set out the plates, spoke with Alex, then left. Her mouth watered at the smell of fresh-baked bread, the sweet scent of seafood and the aroma of hazelnut coffee.
Alex dished up their food and brought a plate to her. He set it in front of her. “Your wish is my command, mademoiselle.” There was no missing the sexy inflection of his tone. When he reached out to position her tray table, his tawny hair tumbled over his forehead. Was it soft and silky or springy and coarse?
Forcing herself to focus on the dish, she said, “This is amazing, Alex.”
“Enjoy.” When she glanced up, he was sitting and biting into a plump shrimp. Her eyes fixed on his perfectly straight teeth, his sculpted lips, with the lower one fuller than the top. Jeez, she thought, tearing her gaze away, she’d never been distracted by a man’s mouth before.
She gave herself a shake and dug into the seafood, the twice-baked potatoes, the perfectly done asparagus. “Tell me about yourself. I talked about me for half an hour.”
“My life story’s nowhere near as interesting as yours.”
She cocked her head. Most men she knew outside the firehouse couldn’t wait for the attention to focus on them. Some firemen, too, though as a group, they tended to be more reticent.
“What?” he asked at her quizzical gaze.
“Nothing. What does Templeton Industries make?”
“Electronic equipment for the utilities and process industries.” At her puzzled look, he added, “Circuit boards, monitoring devices to measure temperature, pressure gauges…” He shrugged. “Sounds boring, doesn’t it? Especially compared to your job.”
The door opened, precluding her response.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Francesca. I didn’t think you’d have company during the dinner hour.” Diana stood in the doorway carrying a silver-wrapped package. Dressed in a taupe pantsuit, her golden hair held back with a clip, she was elegance personified. And to boot she’d more than likely designed the outfit herself for her successful clothing business, Diana’s Designs.
Alex stood. “Diana?”
Her mother blinked, came a few steps closer. “Yes?”
“I’m Alex Templeton. Maureen’s son.”
“Of course—I recognize you now. Elise has spoken of you several times.”
What the hell? “You two know each other?”
“Diana plays bridge with my mother once a month, and we’ve run into each other occasionally at Bright Oaks Country Club.”
Francey struggled to keep a lid on her disappointment.
“And you’ve played tennis doubles with Elise,” Diana added.
Abruptly, the attraction Francey felt for Alex a few hours before Diana’s arrival was doused.
Diana turned to Francey. “How do you know Alex, Francesca?”
“I pulled him out of a fire,” she said tonelessly.
Alex was from her mother’s world. That told it all. She didn’t need his life story.
“How do you know Diana?” Alex asked her.
Francey didn’t answer. After an uncomfortable silence, Diana said, “I’m her mother.”
The air in the room seemed to grow heavy, and Francey felt the way she had the first time she’d taken a gulp of smoke into her lungs. No one spoke. Pushing away the remnants of her meal, Francey sank back into the pillow. I should have known. I did know. The Rio. The cashmere robe. CEO of Templeton Industries. What was I thinking, flirting with him that way?
He was from her mother’s world, and as far as Francey was concerned, nothing could put a man more off-limits.
oOo
In the hospital cafeteria, hot coffee sloshed over Diana’s hand, stinging her skin. She set down the cup and wiped the spill with a napkin. Get a grip, she told herself. She’d stopped in to calm herself after her encounter with Francesca. Still shaken, she was in no shape to drive home.
At eight o’clock at night, the cafeteria was deserted except for a nurse who sat staring off into space, a mug in front of her. The drab beige walls and empty vinyl seats accented the ache inside Diana. So she repeated her mantra silently.
You have a mission. You can do it. You’re older, stronger now.
But Francesca’s injury and the fact that today was her birthday had eroded Diana’s certainty that she would accomplish what she’d come back to Rockford to do—salvage her relationship with her sons and daughter.
Even though it’s too late for Ben.
Damn, she wasn’t quick enough to short-circuit the thought. Usually she stopped herself from thinking about him, from wishing she could fix what had happened to them as a couple. But seeing him this morning, hearing him call her Dee, had made her memories excruciatingly painful. Every time she looked at his wary eyes and stiff posture she was reminded of what a first-class coward she was.
Diana forced her thoughts to her daughter. As usual, Francesca had been distant when Diana had raced to the hospital to make sure she was all right. But tonight, after Alex Templeton had left, she’d been more curt and close-mouthed than ever. Sometimes Diana wondered if she’d ever be able to scale the walls her two youngest children had built around themselves since she’d left Rockford. She’d done all right with Tony, her older son, managing to stay close to him over the years. Bolstered by that success, Diana assured herself she could win back the other two if she was patient and tried hard enough. She took a sip of coffee. It tasted bitter, like a lot of things in life.
“Diana?”
Her pulse leaped at the deep baritone of her husband. Her ex-husband, she corrected herself. Carefully schooling her features into a mask of indifference, she looked up into the craggy face of the man she’d loved since she was seventeen. “Hello, Ben.”
“What are you doing here?” He’d always reminded her of Robert De Niro in the movie Backdraft, and tonight the similarities were even more marked. His dark hair was cut short and sprinkled with gray. But his chocolate brown eyes were as knowing and watchful as ever. He was dressed in his
fire-department uniform—a crisp white shirt that set off his olive complexion, dark blue pants, which hugged his still flat stomach. The battalion chief insignia was proudly flaunted on his shoulder.
I’m gonna do it, honey. I’m gonna be a battalion chief someday.
The memory made her cringe, just as the words had when he’d spoken them more than three decades ago. Right from the beginning, his work in such a dangerous profession had filled her with fear.
“Can I sit?” he asked when she didn’t answer.
Say no. “All right.”
A big man—over six feet with linebacker shoulders—he grunted as he lowered his frame into the small chair across from her. “Why are you here?” he repeated.
“I came to see Francesca, of course. I didn’t get to visit with her this morning.”
“How is she tonight?”
“You haven’t seen her?”
“No, Ma and Pa went up first. I needed coffee, so I came in here.”
“You always need coffee.”
The memory came, unbidden, unwanted. First thing in the morning he’d nuzzle her breasts with his beard-roughened chin, run his callused hand down her body and promise her paradise if she’d get him a mug of high test.
He frowned at her remark. “You should wait and see Ma. She’d like that.”
Stalling for time, Diana took another sip from her cup. She’d had lunch with Ben’s mother yesterday, but she didn’t tell him that. Just as she hadn’t told him about the letters Grace Cordaro and she had exchanged, the pictures sent, the times they got together when Diana was in town to visit the kids. She wouldn’t tell him now, either. He’d get angry. And spout more of the mean remarks he’d made to her since her return to Rockford. “Maybe I will. She’d like talking about the store.”
Seeming to forget his animosity toward her, Ben leaned back, linked his hands behind his head and smiled. His shirt stretched across his wide chest. “Yeah, she’s proud as punch of your success. Remember how she taught you to sew?”
“On that old Singer.”
“Seems like a lifetime ago.”
Diana held his gaze. “It was.”
“Today’s Francey’s birthday,” he said huskily. “I remember when she was born.”
Oh, Dee, a girl! There hasn‘t been a girl in the Cordaro family for decades. I love you so much, sweetheart.
Diana swallowed, her stomach knotting at the recollection. They’d been so happy. “Hard to believe she’s thirty.”
Ben nodded and stared at the woman across from him. She looked terrific. And because her beauty had sucked him in from day one, he said unkindly, “You look good, Diana. For fifty. Have some cosmetic surgery?”
His ex-wife’s eyes clouded with pain. He felt like a heel. “No, just the right moisturizing cream.”
The comment reminded him vividly of the time she’d perched at the dressing table he’d made for her, in their cramped bedroom in his parents’ attic. He’d opened her lotion bottle and rubbed it on her body, and then they made love on the floor. Damn, he couldn’t afford this trip down memory lane!
“You shouldn’t have any trouble snagging another husband. Got any prospects?”
“I have no desire to remarry.”
“No? Not like the last time?”
She angled her head. “It was ten years after our divorce before I married Nathan.”
Nine years, three months and two days, to be exact, Ben thought. That was seventeen years ago. He’d gotten slobbering drunk the night he heard about her remarriage; his father had had to carry him to bed.
“Seemed quick to me.” Because the memory socked him in the gut, he swallowed the last of his coffee, plunked the empty cup on the table and stood. “I’m going up.” He couldn’t resist taking one last look at her. Her eyes were cool, her shoulders back, her chin lifted. Her debutante look. God, he’d always hated it. “Maybe you should rethink your strategy about remarrying. You don’t want to die a lonely woman.”
She didn’t respond, but her lower lip quivered and her hands were unsteady on the table top. He thought about her all the way to the elevator, though he tried to steel himself against the memories. But they wouldn’t go away, like scenes from a movie that kept replaying in his mind. Once inside the elevator, he reached into his pocket and dug out his wallet. From its deepest recess, he pulled out a photo. Crinkled with age, and yellow, it was Diana’s senior picture from high school. Blond hair so soft he wanted to bury his face in it. Violet eyes so huge and simmering he got lost in them. He’d met her when he was in the FDNY for a brief two years. The fire department had been called to Mercy High School. She’d been seventeen, he a cocky twenty-year-old rookie. A couple of coeds had been smoking in the john and had inadvertently started a fire in the waste container. Ben’s squad had marched in, all brave and hero-like, and put the thing out. The girls crowded around them afterward as if they were movie stars, though the nuns were beside themselves trying to shoo the students inside. Diana had slipped her phone number into his turnout coat. Like a fool, he’d called her. When he found out how old she was, he’d backed off. But she hadn’t. She’d pestered him with calls and letters until she turned legal, and once he’d agreed to take her out, it had been all over. Within two months, they were sleeping together.
The first time those violet eyes had sparkled with anticipation and a little bit of fear. Her reaction had made him say, “We shouldn’t be doing this. You’re too young.”
She’d given him a siren’s smile. “I want you to be my first.”
He couldn’t resist her. They’d gotten married a few months later. She was pregnant with Tony and deliriously happy. Given the circumstances, Ben had been right to marry her, but getting involved with her in the first place had been the worst mistake of his life.
Just as thinking about her now was a mistake. Why the hell had she come back to Rockford from New York City after her husband died? Why the hell couldn’t she just leave them alone?
oOo
The following afternoon, Francey fell back onto the pillow consumed by a fit of giggling. She laughed so hard she bumped her cast on the side of the bed. “Ouch.”
Chelsea Whitmore grinned. “Isn’t it great?”
Behind her, Beth Winters leaned against the wall, shaking her head in disgust. “What am I going to do with you two?”
“Come read the card, Beth. You’ll love it,” Francey told her friend.
Pushing away from the wall, Beth came in closer and sat on the side of the bed opposite Chelsea. “Hand over the smut.”
Francey did so. Chelsea’s choice of birthday greeting had been typical of her. On the front, a dark-haired guy wearing skin-tight jeans, a baseball cap and nothing else held a baseball bat, his muscular arms bulging. Below him it read, “Do you want to help me bake a cake for your birthday?” She watched Beth open the card. Inside, it said, “Or do you just want to lick the batter?”
Even Beth, whose smiles were as infrequent as eclipses, chuckled. Chelsea and Francey had come to accept their friend’s seriousness, but they worried about her.
“Oh, great,” Beth said dryly. “We’re reduced to adolescent cards.”
“And great presents.” Francey fingered the lavender silk tap pants and teddy in the box on her lap. “Thanks, Chels.”
Chelsea winked at her. “Wear it for a special occasion.”
Francey rolled her eyes. “I wish I had more opportunity.”
“Your own fault. The guys pant after you wherever you go. Then they’re devastated when you won’t give them the time of day.”
“Most men bore her,” Beth put in.
Her mind flashed to a man with tawny hair and laughing green eyes who didn’t bore Francey at all. Too bad he was off-limits.
“You should talk, Winters,” Chelsea chided.
“I date,” Beth said, haughtily lifting her chin. Beth’s delicate features and tall slender body belied the fact that she was one of the toughest women Francey knew.
She and Ch
elsea exchanged knowing looks but said nothing. Beth dated older men whom she dumped as soon as they got serious.
“Speaking of the male sex,” Francey said, “how’s Billy?”
“Okay, I guess.” She scowled. “He’s getting too serious, though.”
Francey worried about Chelsea, too. She was dating a firefighter, something Francey refused to do after her broken engagement to Joey Santori, a coworker in Group Three in her station house. He’d also grown up in her neighborhood.
“Open my present.” Beth purposefully changed the subject. Whenever the women launched into a powwow on their love lives, Beth got uncomfortable. They’d met when Francey and Chelsea had been in the academy and Beth had been their Emergency Medical Systems instructor. In the intervening eight years, they’d become good friends, but Francey felt she didn’t really know Beth Winters and the quiet sadness that shrouded her.
Francey tore open a big rectangular present wrapped in glittery gold paper. Inside she found a framed Mark Manwaring print entitled Silent Heroes. Dirt-tinged firefighter gear rested on a bench—a rumpled turnout coat, bunker boots with the pants and suspenders falling over them, an ax and a helmet, out of which peeked thick brown gloves. Bright yellows and reds provided colorful accents.
“Oh, wow, it’s beautiful. I’ve wanted one of these for a long time.” She reached out and squeezed Beth’s hand. “Dylan has a couple of Manwaring prints in his house.”
Beth scowled. “Boy Wonder would.”
Francey arched a brow. “Seen your nemesis lately?”
“Please,” Beth said. “We just ate lunch. Don’t make me ill.”
Though they occasionally joked about it, no one went overboard teasing Beth about Dylan O’Roarke, or vice versa. The two had a serious personality conflict that dated back to Dylan’s days in the academy. He was the one who had dubbed her Lizzie Borden, a name the recruits secretly bandied about when she was out of earshot. They’d clashed again when Dylan had gone to the academy to get more EMS training.
“I’ll hang this over the fireplace as soon as Dad and Grandpa finish my mantel. Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome. Happy thirtieth, one day late.”
