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One broad finger touched the edge of an old photo in a faded frame. “Is this you?”
She noticed the one he was indicating and froze. These photos had been here for years, and she rarely noticed the old ones anymore. The one he’d touched featured her as a little girl, not much older than James, standing beside her father, who was kneeling. She was in a Sunday dress, all pink lace and frills and crinoline, her blond hair long and curled. Her father was kneeling in his fire gear, soot on his cheeks and hands, probably fresh from a fire. She was holding his helmet, a huge toothy smile on her face. Her father was smiling back at her as if she made the sun rise and set each day.
She couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her like that.
“Blondie?” Then Irish caught himself and smiled. “Hannah?”
“Yeah.” She coughed. “It’s me. That’s back when my dad was just a fireman.” She paused. “He didn’t start training to be a fire marshal until I was in middle school.”
Irish studied her. He must have heard the bitterness in her voice. “You don’t like what he does for a living?”
“Not as much as he does.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He gets off on it.” She smiled, and it felt a little sinister. “I’m glad you turned down the beer. I’d bet money he knows you’re on call.”
Irish’s eyes lit with surprise—then settled into something like challenge. “Oh. So he’s like that.”
“Yeah. Keep up with the sir stuff. He’ll eat it up.”
Irish sobered. “Too much?”
“Nah.” She paused. “Do you really want to be a fire marshal? Or were you just kissing ass?”
“Oh, that’s real. My dad is a detective in Chicago. I think he always expected me to follow in his footsteps, but I wanted to make my own way.” He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “Sometimes I feel like there should be something more, you know? It’s a career path to look at.”
“You’re a good firefighter,” she said.
His eyes met hers again, and she blushed. “But don’t let it go to your head,” she added.
“I won’t.”
“You want to do something else?”
“I don’t know.” He looked back at the picture. “Maybe.”
“My dad took a lot of crap when he made the decision to switch. It’s a lot of work, and you’ve got your foot in both departments. Not quite a cop, and not quite a fireman either.”
“He took a lot of crap?” His voice dropped.
She glanced at the kitchen doorway. Her parents were still having a heated conversation, but she couldn’t make out anything but whispers. What on earth was up with them?
Irish was waiting for an answer, so Hannah looked back at him. “Yeah. He was in line to be chief, and he turned it down. He’d been a great fireman, but there was a massive fire and some people died during his shift. He couldn’t get them all out in time. After that, he didn’t want to walk into another active scene. The guys in his crew thought he got afraid. They thought he was running from his job.”
rish was standing by the counter, looking almost as good as he had this morning.
When he’d been shirtless and shaving.
She smacked her brain into submission—but now she had no idea what to say.
He smiled when he saw her. “You look like you just woke up.”
Oh. Nice. “You look like a man who wants me to spit in his water glass.”
“Hannah!” Her mother sounded horrified. “That’s disgusting!”
James came bursting into the kitchen. “Do it, Mommy! Do it!”
