Finding Nick

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s none of your business.”

  “True. It really isn’t.”

  “Well,” he said. “It must be a red-letter day. A reporter admitted the truth.”

  Shannon reared back. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard a slur against her profession, but she was surprised by the bitterness in his voice. “You should be aware that you and I have something in common.”

  “I doubt that,” he said.

  “Oh, but we do. You see,” she told him, “I don’t lie, either. Not face-to-face, and not in my work. If you’d ever read any of my work, you’d know that.”

  “Good for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say goodbye and be on my way.”

  “Whoa, wait.” She reached out and grabbed him by the arm to keep him from leaving. In the next instant, she jerked her hand away and stared at him in shock. She shook her hand as if trying to fling water from her fingertips, hoping that would somehow alleviate the sizzling kick she’d gotten from his arm.

  They stood there on the sidewalk beneath the Texas sun staring at each other, breathing hard, braced as if ready to fight or run, she wasn’t sure which.

  Suddenly Carlucci laughed harshly and stepped back. “This is crazy. I’m going back to work.” He turned away, toward the school.

  “But school’s out for the day.”

  “Which means I can finally clean up after these little mutants.”

  “Wait.” She leaped after him. “I thought maybe we could talk.” She couldn’t let him get away so easily.

  “We did,” he said without slowing down.

  “How late will you work?”

  “Until I’m finished.”

  “Carlucci,” she said with a growl. “What time do you get off work?”

  “At five,” he snapped. “Don’t be here.”

  She was there. He’d seen her drive away at 3:30 p.m. Now it was 4:50 p.m. and she was waiting outside the door for him, with no car in sight. For one impossible instant, he was glad she was there. Then he swore at himself. All she wanted to do was pick his brain, then bare his soul to the world because the public has a right to know.

  “The hell they do,” he muttered. Neither the public nor Lois Lane had a right to look inside him. To pat him on the shoulder and offer their pity while calling him a hero.

  He hated reporters.

  It was a shame, too, because Malloy sure was easy to look at, and he could get used to that sharp sensation that happened when they touched. If it felt that great to touch her, he couldn’t imagine what a kiss might do to him. He might be willing to find out, even if she was a reporter.

  He wondered how long he could string her along before she gave up on interviewing him and went back to New York. Maybe he shouldn’t be refusing her. Maybe he should tell her he’d considered it and see where that took them.

  He unclipped the wad of keys from his belt, then stepped outside and locked the door behind himself. “You’re back.”

  She smirked. “Great powers of observation. Maybe you should be a reporter.”

  “Prompt, and a sense of humor. If you tell me you sew your own clothes I’ll have to marry you.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him through narrowed eyes. “I sew my own clothes.”

  Nick nearly swallowed his tongue. She’d called his bluff. Now what was he going to do?

  Her grin turned pure evil. “Cat got your tongue, Carlucci? You’re not going to go back on your word, are you? How about we keep it simple and just fly to Las Vegas? My mother will be disappointed, but she’ll get over it. What’s the matter? You’re looking a little green.”

  “You’re a regular comedienne.”

  “That’s what they tell me. So, what do you say? Are you a man of your word, or were you just leading me on?”

  He eyed her up and down. “Deal’s off. You didn’t make those jeans.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t get out of it that easily. You didn’t ask if I made all my clothes. I’ve made plenty of them, just not these.”

  “And you have a great personality.”

  Her eyes popped wide. “Are you calling me ugly?”

  Nick burst out laughing. Considering what he thought of reporters, and the way he had continually dodged this one for months, he couldn’t believe how good it felt to joke and laugh with her, and had no idea why he was doing it.

  “How many times,” she said, “did your mother try to fix you up with some girl who sewed her own clothes and had a great personality?”

  He rolled his eyes. “It was my dad and my brother, but it was more times than I care to count.”

  “Save us all from our well-meaning families,” she said with a chuckle.

  “You, too?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. My dad was a cop. A guy had to be pretty sure of himself to knock on my door to pick me up for a date.”

  “I can imagine. What’s he do now, your dad?” Nick asked.

  Her smile turned sad. “He died in the line of duty, on 9/11. Same as your dad and brother.”

  “Ah. Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  She shook her head. “No reason you should have. Is that why you left New York? Because your dad and brother were gone?”

  Whatever openness he felt around her slammed shut. “I’ll walk you to your car. Where’d you park?”

  “Come on, Carlucci,” she said quietly. “I’m just curious, that’s all. I know what the loss feels like, but it’s a simple enough question.”

  “The answer’s not so simple,” he said grimly.

  “Why?”

  “You didn’t say where you parked.”

  She held his gaze for a long time, then sighed. “My car’s in the motel parking lot. I walked here.”

  Relieved that she seemed to have accepted his refusal to answer her question, Nick smirked. “Walked? Your New York is showing.”

  “What’s that mean? It’s only a few blocks.”

  “Nobody walks in Texas. Not on purpose, anyway, or by choice.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because that’s why God made cars. And horses.”

  “Hmm. Okay. But you walked to work yesterday.”

  “And today. I’m a New Yorker, too.”

  “I’m surprised you walk so much.”

  “Why? It’s not so much,” he said.

  “It is for somebody the doctors said would never walk again.”

  Nick wanted to sneer. At the doctors, and at her. Instead he kept his expression bland. “I’d call you a cab, but we don’t have any in Tribute, so come on, I’ll walk you back to your motel.”

  She stood where she was and pursed her lips in thought. “No,” she finally said. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you left the fire department. I know guys like you. The FDNY was your life. Yet you walked away from it. Why?”

  “I left,” he said curtly, “because I was no longer fit to serve. I couldn’t pass the physical.”

  She eyed him up and down. “You look pretty fit to me.” When he didn’t respond, she gave him a hard look. “Does this leave us at a stalemate?” she asked.

  “Weren’t we always?” He took her by the arm to get her to head down the sidewalk with him, but there was that sharp zap of sensation again when the flesh of his fingers met the bare skin of her arm. This time he held on, and everything seemed to settle.

  “Except for that,” she said.

  “Yeah, well. So, what have you been doing with yourself all day besides badgering me and trying to pick up high-school boys?”

  “I haven’t begun to badger you,” she came back. “When I do, you’ll know it. Meanwhile, I spent most of the day touring the town, visiting the shops, and sitting in my room working on my manuscript.”

  “Tell me about this book you’re writing.” He steered her south, toward Main Street. Tribute had only three motels, two at the west end of town, one at the east end, all of them on Main.

  “I told you,” she said.
“It’s a ‘five years later’ look at specific individual 9/11 rescue workers.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What’s the point? It’s old news.”

  “How the work you did affected your life, how you dealt with it in the early days, how you deal with it now.”

  Nick still didn’t get it. “Who wants to read that garbage?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said.

  “I guess I would,” he admitted.

  “Okay, look. Here’s one angle. At the Oklahoma City bombing back in 1995, during the initial response, everybody pitched in and did everything they could. Later things got organized, and rescue workers worked specific, limited shifts, then were replaced by fresh crews. At the end of every shift, they moved out of the way, to a semiprivate area and unloaded.”

  “Unloaded what?”

  “Whatever they needed to unload, mentally, verbally, whatever. They talked about what they’d seen, the smells, the heat. The frustration of not finding survivors. Anything and everything on their minds. And whatever was said in these meetings stayed there, no exception. At the Twin Towers, the job was so overwhelmingly huge, that type of session wasn’t available to the workers. None of you got any counseling until much later. Many of the Oklahoma City guys, despite all the help they had, have ended up with lots of problems—emotional, marital, you name it. If it’s been that bad for them, what effects are the New York guys suffering? That’s what this book is about.”

  Nick restrained a sneer, while inside he wanted to weep at the memories she evoked. “So we’re supposed to spill our guts so you can write about our poor, pitiful lives, huh?”

  She gave a little laugh. “That is pretty much what I made it sound like, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t mean it to. It’s more of a chronicle. Some of the rescuers I’m including are doing really well, leading totally normal lives.”

  “And others?”

  “Others have had some problems. The same as in the regular population.”

  “Some people shake it off, some don’t?”

  “It’s not that cut and dried, and you know it,” Shannon countered. “Is the man who has trouble merely weak? Or is the one who lets it roll off his back unfeeling and heartless?”

  “Your verdict?”

  “No verdict. Again, it’s not that cut-and-dried. Each individual case is different.”

  At Main Street, Nick stopped. “Which way to your motel?”

  Shannon stared at him and blinked. Was he actually inviting himself to her motel room? They hadn’t so much as touched since leaving the school. Yes, being around him excited her, but jumping from how do you do and shaking hands, to doing the motel mamba in one day? “I don’t think—”

  “Unless you were heading someplace else,” he interrupted.

  She paused. Maybe she had jumped to conclusions? Maybe her brain was on vacation. “There’s no need to walk me,” she said. “Unless you were heading someplace else?”

  He nodded once. “Yeah, there’s someplace I need to be pretty soon, but I’ve still got time to walk you to wherever you’re going. Did you think I’d just dump you here on Main and leave you?”

  She laughed. “I think I can make it a few blocks down this street in broad daylight without your help.”

  “I’m sure you can, but I’ve got better manners than to let you. This way?” He motioned left.

  Shannon sighed and shook her head. “Thanks, but I’d just have to turn around and leave as soon as you were gone. I’m hungry. Are you going to eat with me?”

  Nick paused. He would very much like to have dinner with her. Any excuse to spend more time with the first woman to interest him in a long, long time. But he didn’t want to have to watch every word he said around a reporter, and he’d promised his aunt he’d have dinner with her at home tonight.

  “Sorry,” he told Shannon. “I can’t tonight. How long will you be in town?”

  “I’m not sure.” Shannon bit back a sigh. Obviously she had misunderstood. He wasn’t trying to lure her someplace dark and private for a little one-on-one. Dammit. “I came to do an interview,” she told him. “However long that takes.”

  “Yeah? You might want to think about buying a house in the area, then. If that interview’s with me, it could be a while.”

  “Tell you what,” she offered. “I’ll let you off the hook for this evening.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “If you’ll talk to me, really talk to me, tomorrow when you get off work. Over dinner. I’ll buy you dinner. How’s that?”

  Nick almost smiled. “First rule of janitorial work—never turn down a free meal.” Besides, he thought, she was probably working on an expense account.

  “Good. I’ll meet you in front of the school at five. Or did you want to go home and change first?”

  “Why would I change? Are you saying you don’t want to have dinner with a man who smells like industrial-strength disinfectant? Or maybe it’s the tie-dyed shirt I’ll have on.”

  “I don’t care what you smell like, or what you wear,” she claimed.

  “So you say.” He laughed. “Give me until five-thirty.”

  “It’s a date.”

  It was a toss-up as to which one of them looked more startled at the idea.

  Chapter Three

  With Tribute being such a small town, it shouldn’t have surprised Nick that the first words out of his aunt’s mouth when he got home were “Well, well, sweetie, you going to tell me who she is?”

  To her credit, Beverly wasn’t usually a nosy woman, especially for a relative. A female relative, at that. She wasn’t demanding information. She was smiling eagerly, hoping, Nick knew, that he’d finally met someone. As in…Someone.

  He should have realized that word of a strange woman in town—a woman specifically seeking out Nick—would have arrived home ahead of him. He had not only stood in front of the high school with her, in plain sight of half the town, he’d also introduced her to a trio of big mouths. After that, he had walked her right up to Main Street, for the other half of town to see.

  Nothing on earth or in the universe traveled faster than the speed of gossip, and he’d provided plenty of grease.

  And dammit, more people than Aunt Bev were going to wonder who she was and what she was doing in town. Beautiful woman like her, people were bound to be curious.

  Heck, they’d be curious no matter what she looked like. She was a stranger. That was all it took.

  He should have asked her, bribed her, threatened her, whatever it took to get her to keep his past to herself. It was one thing for him to fend off gossip about his love life. His past was another matter entirely.

  “She’s an acquaintance,” he told his aunt. Aunt Bev knew his past better than any person on earth, so she would understand his reticence. “Shannon Malloy. A reporter.”

  “Reporter?” She looked blank for a moment, then alarmed. “The one who’s been leaving you phone messages for months?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Oh, my.” She took him by the arm, pulled him into the kitchen and led him to a chair at the table. “Sit down, dear, let me get you a glass of tea.”

  He was so disconcerted by her obvious concern that he did as she said and watched as she filled a tall glass with ice, then poured sweet tea. The ice cubes cracked and popped.

  “What are you going to do?” Aunt Bev asked. She handed him the filled glass.

  “Thanks.” He took a long swallow. “You mean about the reporter? Not much.”

  “Not much?” She stood back and put her hands on her hips. “What does that mean, not much?”

  Nick sighed. He and Aunt Bev had a standing dinner date every Tuesday night, just the two of them. Sometimes they went out, but usually she cooked. Neither of them had ever canceled on the other. Sharing a house, they of course saw each other all week long, but Tuesday evening was always their special time. He hadn’t wanted to drag his current predicament or his past
into their time together.

  It looked, however, as if Bev was going to insist on it.

  “It means,” he told her, “that she wants to interview me for a book she’s writing, and I have told her no. End of story.”

  “Ah.” Bev nodded and poured herself a glass of tea. “Okay. I guess it makes sense then, since you’re not going to let her interview you, that she would hang out at the school, and you would walk her halfway across town.”

  Nick tipped his glass back and drained it of tea. His aunt had something on her mind, so he would just wait and let her get it out.

  She turned away from him and took two thick pork chops from the refrigerator and set them next to the stove. “After all,” she said, still not looking at him. “It would take you several blocks to get your message across, no being such a long word, a difficult concept to convey.”

  He snorted. “Don’t look at me. It’s all her doing. And you’ve got that last part right. I’ve been telling her no for two days, and I’m still not sure she believes me.”

  Bev turned the heat up beneath the skillet on the stove and poured in enough oil to cover the bottom. “Persistent, isn’t she?” she asked. “She doesn’t seem to be taking no for an answer.”

  He smiled. “She’ll get the message eventually.”

  She coated the pork chops in flour, then sprinkled one side with black pepper, the other side with seasoned salt. When the skillet was as hot as she wanted it, she eased the chops in.

  She dusted her hands off and turned to face him. “There’s another way to get rid of her, of course.”

  “There is?”

  “Talk to her.”

  “I’ve been talking to her,” he protested. “I’ve been telling her no, no, no. She just keeps coming back.”

  Bev shot him a look. “You know that’s not what I mean. I mean talk to her, answer her questions. Let her interview you.”

  “Why in holy hell would I want to do that?”

  “You watch your language at my table, young man.”

  Nick had the good grace—and the brains—to bow his head in remorse. “Sorry.”

  “Hmph. Apology accepted, even if it wasn’t heart-felt. But I wish you’d think about talking to her. Or talk to someone else. Anyone.”