“No. Well, I mean, there’s a tape in there, but we used it.”
“Do you have a new tape?”
She still couldn’t read him. “What’s this about, Nick?”
“Get the tape. There are questions you didn’t ask me.”
Startled, she came to a stop halfway to the closet where she kept her supplies. “What didn’t I ask?”
He shook his head. “The tape.”
She swore that if he came up with some lame question she was going to kill him. She didn’t need him to fly halfway… Oh, my goodness. He’d flown halfway across the country. He’d come back to New York, the place he’d been adamant about never facing again. He wouldn’t have done that for something trivial.
The hope inside her swelled and nearly burst out of every pore. She got the tape and inserted it for him.
“What am I supposed to ask?”
He took a long, slow breath. The muscles in his jaw flexed. “Here.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it before handing it to her. He looked at the recorder in his hand for a moment, then pressed Record. “Read the first question.”
Shannon looked at the list in her hand, but her vision blurred. She had to blink several times to bring the words into focus. Then her heart thundered. “Mr.—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Mr. Carlucci. When, if ever, are you returning to New York?”
“Well, Ms. Malloy, I’m back.”
“Nick.”
“This will work better if you stick to the list for now,” he said, not meeting her gaze.
“Okay, sorry. It says, ‘Oh, really? When did you get back?’”
“Just today as a matter of fact. My luggage is out in the hall. You see, I haven’t found a place to stay yet. I wanted to get this interview finished first.”
“Nick—”
He shot her a look.
Trembling in equal parts anticipation and frustration, she looked at his list of questions again. “Mr. Carlucci, will you take a position with the FDNY?” Oh, Nick.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I will.”
“But you were adamant recently that you would never do it. What changed your mind?”
“The answer to that one’s easy, Ms. Malloy.” He pulled the list from her hand and let it drop to the floor. His dark eyes captured her gaze and held it, as his hands held hers. “I met a woman named Shannon. Just talking to her eased the darkness inside me and made me believe life was worth living. Not only that, she made me start to believe that I deserved to live and be happy. I happen to be in love with her and I’m hoping she’ll give me a second chance.”
Weeping with joy, Shannon threw herself into his arms.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Tribute Park
Tribute, Texas
The big unveiling took place at 3:00 p.m. on a bright spring day. A new name had been added to the Tribute Wall. If the new bride had to practically hold a gun to her newly honored husband’s thick head to get him to come back to town and let people fuss over him, well, he wasn’t talking about it. They would just laugh at him.
But in spite of himself, Nick was humbled by the sight of his name on that wall. Shannon had done it. She’d gotten together with Bev and they had gone through whatever channels they’d had to in order to have his name added.
Nicholas Giovanni Carlucci
For uncommon bravery in saving several people from fire at the Tribute Inn by waking them in the middle of the night and even, in one instance, jumping through a wall of flames to reach Shannon Malloy and save her life.
“Congratulations, man.” Fire Chief Lon Wallace slapped him on the back. “I know you don’t like everybody making a fuss over you, but you know how it is. People gotta say thanks, you know?”
Nick sighed and shot his new wife a look. “Yeah, I know.”
Half the town had turned out for the event. School-kids, teachers, parents. Some enterprising soul had even set up a refreshment stand over by the courthouse.
As Dixie and Wade said their goodbyes and everyone else wandered away, Shannon slipped her hand in his. “You did good today. I was proud of you.”
“I can’t believe you pulled this off completely behind my back.”
She looped her arms around his neck and pressed a quick kiss to his chin. “I was desperate. I knew if you found out, you’d flip.”
He studied the monument thoughtfully. “It’s nice, you know? Having my name up there like that. I did something good, and somebody cared enough to tell people about it.”
“There, see?” His wife of three months grinned at him. “You’re my hero all over again.”
He looked down into her eyes and knew he was the luckiest man alive. “I’ll be your hero every chance I get. But I think your name should be up there in the hero column. You saved me, too, you know. If not for you, I never would have gone back to New York, I wouldn’t be instructing at the academy and taking classes for arson investigation. So you’re my hero, too.”
“Oh, wow,” she said softly, her eyes glowing. “Nick, you take my breath away.”
“You took my fear away, and now you hold my heart. I love you.”
Tears of joy trickled down her cheeks. “I love you, too.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1837-6
FINDING NICK
Copyright © 2006 by Janis Reams Hudson
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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* Wilders of Wyatt County
† Men of the Cherokee Rose
** Tribute, Texas
Finding Nick Page 16
