After the Storm

by Amy Knupp

  “You sure?”

  She could tell he was dying to get in there and discuss what had happened. “Absolutely.”

  He looked doubtful and she prodded him in that direction.

  “I’ll come find you in the coffee shop in a few minutes.”

  “You can buy me dinner when you’re done,” she said.

  “You drive a hard bargain for a short thing.”

  “Don’t forget it.” She walked away, happy to see Penn come alive. And happier still about the prospect of having dinner with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  NADIA HAD DOWNED two large mochas with whipped cream, trying all the while not to watch the clock on the wall of the coffee shop.

  How freaking long was she supposed to wait when he’d said “a few minutes”? She had above-average math skills and she’d go out on a limb and say that an hour and a half was more than a few.

  She pushed her chair back, causing the metal legs to screech loudly on the floor, picked up her empties and threw them in the trash on the way out. Maybe she’d misunderstood where they were supposed to meet, except it was hard to misinterpret “in the coffee shop.”

  Fresh air helped marginally. Sitting there watching people come and go while she waited and tried to concentrate on the newspaper someone had left… Her agitation had grown with every new customer’s coffee order.

  It was almost completely dark. Surely Penn and the others couldn’t see enough to still be working. They must be talking.

  Nadia tried sending him a text message and then walked toward the strip mall tamping down her annoyance. Penn had been more excited than he’d admit to go discuss the intricacies of the fire with his friends and colleagues. She shouldn’t begrudge him that. Didn’t.

  As she got closer to the fire scene, she could see that bright lights had been set up toward the rear of the north end. Without crossing the street—the yellow tape was as far out as the sidewalk in places, anyway—she veered to the right so she could see if they were behind the former diner.

  She had a clearer view of the lights, which were shining from the back of a truck, but the area was deserted. Several vehicles were still parked on this side of the tape, so they had to be there somewhere.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t exactly stroll over and look for them.

  Her stomach rumbled and her irritation soared again. It’d been an hour and forty minutes now. She truly hadn’t minded Penn going in there, but now she felt like a desperate loser to wait so long for him. There was a fine line between being understanding and being an idiot and she suspected she was well over that line.

  She crossed the street and followed the yellow tape around to the front. A policeman sat in his cruiser and watched her but didn’t get out or ask her if she needed help. She didn’t, anyway. She wasn’t about to have the guy run inside the building, where Penn and the others had to be, to remind him he’d forgotten all about her.

  Humiliating much?

  To give him the benefit of the doubt, she texted one more time and then kept walking until she’d done a complete circle of the building. Nothing. No one.

  Forget it.

  She strode back to the front and kept on retracing her steps to the coffee shop. As she went, she pulled her phone out and called Faith to ask for a ride.

  The unrest and distress about the fire victim that had plagued her all day had been blown away by anger. On the bright side, the best thing for her to do when she was angry had always been work. So much for quitting early—she couldn’t wait to get back to the peace and predictability of her office.

  * * *

  WHEN PENN, DAVE APPLBAUM, who was the arson investigator, his assistant, Robert Benitez, and the chief emerged from the fire-ravaged building, they were deeply engrossed in their discussion. Penn hadn’t expected to get so caught up in the investigation when he’d shown up. He’d been around during investigations before, been questioned numerous times about how a fire had advanced and behaved, but he’d never gotten involved beyond that. Following Dave around today, listening to him explain what he’d learned after several hours on the site, had been intriguing. Penn had gotten more than a little caught up in the process and had lost track of…

  Oh, shit.

  He’d left Nadia waiting for him.

  It hit him that it was now fully dark. The portable lights were shining down like noon, even inside what used to be the diner, so he hadn’t noticed the sun had set.

  It was going on seven o’clock. More than an hour and a half since Nadia had gone to the café. She had to be pissed.

  “Is my watch right?” he asked. “Six forty-nine?”

  Dave looked at his and nodded. “I’ve got 6:50.”

  “I’m in trouble. Thanks for letting me barge in and for explaining everything. Good luck finishing up.”

  Dave chuckled. “Thank you. Who knows how much time you saved with your find. We call that beginner’s luck.”

  The group of them, including Penn, laughed. He waved and hightailed it out of there—as quickly as he could with a leg that didn’t like taking directions from his brain.

  As he walked toward the coffee shop, he dug his phone out to text Nadia and found her messages waiting for him. He called himself some choice names and typed in an overdue reply.

  On my way. IOU big-time.

  By the time he got to the shop, he hadn’t received a reply. When he saw she was gone, he didn’t figure he’d hear from her tonight.

  His stomach was growling and his body ached now that he’d pulled himself away from the fire investigation, but he ignored both and took off toward the most likely place Nadia would be—the hotel. He had a good half-hour walk to figure out how to make it up to her.

  * * *

  IF HIS FIRST DAY ON THE JOB was any indication, Jamie Castigliego was going to work out just fine as the events manager.

  When Nadia returned after hours away, she found him still in his office, familiarizing himself with some of the upcoming conventions. When she’d suggested they have their canceled meeting, after all, he’d been all for it even though it was long after 5:00 p.m. Of course, for a manager at the hotel, five o’clock quitting time was a myth, anyway. They’d decided to grab dinner in the restaurant while she brought him up to date on the upcoming podiatrist conference details since they had a meeting with Stacy Keller, the planner, in a few days.

  The catering chef had been on his way home for the day and had made the mistake of exiting through the restaurant just as Nadia and Jamie were discussing menu possibilities. Now they were three.

  “According to Stacy,” Nadia said, “they want to go all out for their Saturday night dinner on the patio. She wants us to show her a couple of custom menu options that will impress.”

  “What kind of parameters?” Lyle, the chef, asked.

  Nadia snuck in a bite of her turkey club and finished chewing. She smiled, knowing Lyle would like her answer. “No parameters except classy. Of course, I’m sure budget will play into it at some point.”

  “What about some kind of seafood buffet?” Jamie asked. “You could have an oyster station. Maybe do a medley of shrimp dishes…”

  “And a fish entrée, depending on what I can get fresh at that time. And I would suggest a veal or sirloin option for those who don’t care for fish, as well as some other nonseafood side dishes.”

  Lyle carried on, throwing out more ideas than they could use, and Jamie was jotting them down religiously.

  Nadia’s phone buzzed and she glanced at the screen. She’d been ignoring texts all evening, especially those from Penn, but this was a call from the front desk.

  “This is Nadia,” she said, stepping away from the table so as not to disrupt the men’s conversation.

  “Hello, Ms. Hamlin. This is Elena from the front desk. I have a man here asking for you by name.”

  Nadia could guess just who that man was. “Wearing black shorts and a gray T-shirt? Short brown hair, really nice green eyes?”

  “Yes,
ma’am.” Elena’s voice held amusement.

  “Tell him I’m in a meeting and will call him tomorrow, please.”

  “Oh. Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Elena.” Nadia ended the call and attempted to focus on the menu conversation, which had turned to Asian cuisine options.

  “Everything okay?” Jamie asked her.

  Taking a drink of her ice water, she nodded, but her attention veered back to Penn.

  He must have walked all the way here when he realized he’d screwed up. If he thought she was going to honor their last-minute dinner plans, he was sadly mistaken. And now he could turn around and walk back home, since his mom wasn’t expected to return to the hotel until later.

  Realizing she held her glass with a vise grip, she pushed Penn out of her mind completely and got back to business.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NADIA BROKE OFF midsentence as she, Jamie and Lyle walked out of the restaurant. She promptly lost all sense of what she’d been saying.

  “I see someone I need to talk to,” she finally said. “Jamie, we can finalize this before we meet with the planner next week. Thanks for joining us, Lyle. Go home to your gorgeous wife.”

  The two men said goodbye and headed toward the employee lot. Nadia took a deep breath before turning around.

  “Penn?” she said, walking across the wide hallway to where he stood. “You’re still here? Standing instead of sitting?” It’d been well over an hour since Elena had called to tell her he was at the front desk.

  “Looks like it. No place close by that I could sit and I didn’t want to miss you.” He held out a white paper bag. “Last in the house.”

  She took the bag from him and peeked in, even though she knew what it was without looking. “Cookies.”

  “Repentance cookies. I’m sorry, Nadia.” His determined stare said more than his words. “I screwed up.”

  There were people all around them, half of whom she knew. She wasn’t in the mood to invite Penn to get comfortable and stay awhile, though his apology—and the cookies—were starting to wear down her anger. “Let’s move,” she said, pointing toward the front doors of the lobby.

  He didn’t argue, though he did look worn-out, making Nadia question her decision. They could sit on one of the benches out front.

  “Is your mom back yet?” she asked. They neared the doors and she nodded at Henry, a bellman who’d been with them for a dozen or so years.

  “I don’t know. I came here to see you.”

  “Elena was supposed to tell you I’d call you tomorrow.”

  “She did. I stayed to safeguard your health. Didn’t want you to fume at me all night and mess up your beauty sleep.”

  “God forbid.”

  “Not that you need any,” he said, backtracking. “Beauty sleep.”

  A half grin tugged at her lips, darn it. She breathed in the chilly November night, waiting until they’d distanced themselves from the doors and all the people going in and out of them.

  “You said a few minutes, Penn. It was an hour and a half.”

  “I know. I’d be pissed, too.”

  “I even went over to look for you.” She sat on a bench at the end of the hotel’s curved driveway. “I walked all the way around the tape trying to see you.”

  “We were inside. I lost track of time.”

  “You committed the worst of all sins possible,” she said. “You got carried away with your job. Or rather, a job.”

  The look he gave her told her he understood. He’d done the same thing she had, which he was still punishing her for.

  “On top of that, I’m a dumb male.”

  “You make it really hard to stay mad at you,” Nadia said, studying him.

  “Charming dumb male. Are you going to share your cookies?”

  “Did you walk all the way here?” She opened the sack and took out two cookies, then gave him one.

  “It’s not that far.”

  “You must be tired.”

  “It’s getting easier. Walking is good, according to my therapist. And since you weren’t answering my texts, if I wanted to apologize to you it had to be in person.”

  “There’s that. I was in a meeting.”

  “Didn’t intend to interrupt. Thought you’d left work for the day.”

  “I had. Opportunity arose and here I am.” She bit into her cookie and closed her eyes to savor it. “Did you find out anything more about the fire?”

  “We think we pinpointed the origin.”

  “‘We’?”

  Penn made a sound of disbelief. “Dave, the arson inspector, took me through everything he’d figured out so far today. I learned so much my head is swollen.”

  “I thought it looked big.”

  “He was showing me the area where the fire appeared to have started. It was in the diner, back in the kitchen. He was bending down, pointing out some stuff, looking for evidence. I, of course, couldn’t really bend like I wanted to, so I had a different angle or something. Anyway, I was shining the flashlight he loaned me around the area and spotted what appears to be the very end of a fire-starter stick.”

  Nadia tilted her head as she tried to follow.

  “An unoriginal method of arsonists,” he said.

  “So someone started it on purpose?”

  “Dave and his people have some more work to do but it appears so.”

  “And you found the clue?”

  “One of the clues. A small but important piece of the puzzle. It was luck, really. And looking from a different perspective, since I couldn’t move normally.”

  “Penn, that’s amazing!”

  “I hope it leads to them finding the sick bastard who did it.”

  She nodded, her thoughts drifting to the twenty-two-year-old woman again. The cookie had lost its appeal and she put the uneaten half back in the sack. They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the cars pass on the street, some of them turning into the drive.

  “I never really thought about the existence of arson investigators before,” she said, an idea sparking. “Tell me about what they do.”

  “They’re a combination of a firefighter and a detective, basically. They need to have the fire background to some extent, but they also have to know investigation techniques.”

  “But they don’t have to fight fires, right?”

  “Right. They come in once the fire is out.”

  “So no extreme physical superpowers necessary,” she said.

  He looked at her warily.

  “You should look into it.”

  Penn didn’t answer.

  “The more I think about it, the more perfect it seems,” Nadia said, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged on the bench. “You’ve got the background for it. You’ve been trying to figure out what you could possibly do for a career.”

  “Have not.”

  “You’re supposed to be. What would you have to do to get into the field?”

  “Take a bunch of classes. Get certified. Be able to move right and bend down, among other things.”

  “It’s perfect, Penn.”

  “Because I’m so good at moving.”

  “You’re one month off back surgery. Getting better every week. I assume the classes would take a while.”

  “I assume.” He kept his voice noncommittal, and though she tried to read some hope into his features, it wasn’t there.

  “What’s holding you back?” Nadia did her best to curb her impatience. “From where I’m sitting, this job has Penn Griffin written all over it.”

  Penn blew out a loud breath, his shoulders sagging. “It’s hard to swallow having to start over from scratch.”

  Her irritation dwindled. “There’s not a doubt in my mind you can handle it.”

  He scoffed. “How do you know what I can handle? Practically all I’ve done since I’ve known you is lie around uselessly.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nadia stared at him, stunned. “I’ve watched you fight every single day since
your surgery to get your mobility back. Remember that first day home, when you wanted to rip off my head for suggesting a three-minute walk? And today you went miles. If you make up your mind, you can do it.”

  “That was a sweet little rah-rah speech but I never said I couldn’t do it.”

  “Then get off your butt and do it.”

  “Swing bridge operator sounds a hell of a lot easier.”

  “Right. Except you don’t seem like the kind of guy to take the easy route on anything.”

  “I’m sitting here with you, aren’t I? Definitely not easy.”

  With an almost-smile, he touched her thigh and made her long for more contact.

  She wasn’t going to initiate anything physical, she reminded herself. He had to do it when he was confident enough, assuming he wanted to.

  “I should get back inside,” she said, even though she hadn’t yet decided if she would go to her office or revisit her earlier plan to take the night off. All he had to do was suggest it and she’d gladly spend the evening with him.

  Penn stood. “I’ll walk you in.”

  She didn’t allow herself to be disappointed, fully aware it was going to take him time to come around. “I’d ask if you wanted a ride home,” she said, “but I have a sneaking suspicion you’d turn me down flat.”

  “Your suspicion would be right. Besides, I should see if my mom is in her room yet.”

  They went back in the hotel. At the hallway to the executive offices, they paused. She took out her half-eaten cookie from the sack and offered the remaining cookies to him.

  “You don’t like my gift?” he asked.

  “It’s the best. But I sense that you need them more.”

  He took the bag from her. “Sacrifices.” He looked toward the elevators, then back at her. “I owe you dinner.”

  “Good point. Unfortunately, I’ve already eaten.”

  “I didn’t mean tonight,” Penn said. “Tomorrow. It’s my mom’s last night. I’ll put something together for both of you.”