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“Are you the type of girl who’d do the right thing, no matter what?”
His voice was full of something she couldn’t identify. She lost the smile. “I like to think so.”
Irish shrugged a little. “I’m just saying. Sometimes right and wrong aren’t easy to identify.”
“You’re a lot deeper than I expected, Irish.”
He smiled. “Sometimes people see a big guy and they think stupid. I like to prove them wrong.”
She smiled back.
Just as she wondered if his smile meant a little more, Irish stood, breaking the eye contact. He gestured at the back wall of the dining room, where more than fifty photos had been arranged in mismatched frames. Some were old: her parents’ wedding picture, or a shot of Hannah as a baby. Some were new, like James’s kindergarten photo.
He glanced down at her. “Your mom loves family photos, huh?”
“You should see the basement.”
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.
