by Marta Perry
But Gabe was already nodding. Apparently, having decided to do this thing, he wanted to do it all the way.
“Sure, Nolie can come, too. We’ll ask your mom when she comes back. Maybe we can meet you there this afternoon.”
“Wow.” Danny seemed to have run out of words. “Wow. Lady, did you hear that?” He wheeled himself toward the two dogs. “We’re going to the fire station. With a real firefighter.”
Gabe straightened, watching the boy. Nolie moved closer to him. “That was nice of you,” she said softly. “I know it won’t be easy.”
“No.” His lips closed on the word. Then he shrugged. “I owed him. It seemed like that was the least thing I could do.”
“It’s—” She struggled to find the right words. “It’s a costly gift.”
“You’d do it. If you were in my place.”
“I hope so.” She tried to think of a sacrifice that would be comparable for herself, but she couldn’t.
His hand closed over hers, and a wave of warmth seemed to flood straight to her heart.
“You would. You’re a brave person, Nolie. And a tough taskmaster.”
It was hard to sound normal when her heart was singing. “I was afraid maybe I’d alienated you entirely.”
“You couldn’t do that.” His voice lowered to a baritone rumble that set up a vibration deep inside her. “I know I’ve been fighting you every step of the way. I probably will again. But that doesn’t mean I don’t admire you.”
“I—I don’t—” She was stammering, but she couldn’t seem to find the right response.
Gabe’s fingers tightened on hers. “Just say thank you. That’s enough when someone compliments you.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t dare look at him, because she was afraid he might read too much happiness in her eyes.
She’d like to believe that happiness was for the progress Gabe was making. Unfortunately, it seemed to be more for how their relationship was progressing.
That wouldn’t do at all, but she didn’t have the slightest idea how to undo it.
Gabe’s tension increased exponentially with each block closer to the fire station they came. If Nolie was aware of that, she didn’t show it. She just frowned slightly as she negotiated afternoon traffic in the city.
Admitting his condition to Danny had been difficult, but some things were right, no matter how hard. Even if he never had another seizure, he’d had to tell Danny. It had been the only way to make up for his failing.
The image of Danny’s seizure was burned into his brain. He hadn’t remembered anything about his own seizures. Maybe he’d been lucky. He’d been able to convince himself that he’d just passed out. He still didn’t know the truth, and maybe he should.
He glanced at Nolie. She would know the answer to the question that haunted him. “Danny’s seizure—was that typical?”
She blinked, as if taken aback by the abrupt question. “Typical? Well, I guess you might say that. A very mild seizure might only manifest as dizziness and disorientation. A severe one could last even longer, be more violent. But I’d say Danny’s was fairly typical.”
“So that’s what I looked like.”
He wasn’t sure why he could be so honest with Nolie, but he could. Maybe she was the only one.
“You can’t help how you look when you have a seizure.”
If he was fishing for pity, he clearly wasn’t going to get it from Nolie.
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Sorry.” Nolie glanced at him. “But that’s one of those unpleasant truths we sometimes have to live with.”
He didn’t intend to live with it. He leaned forward, planting one hand against the dashboard.
“The station is in the next block, on the right. You can pull into the parking lot behind the firehouse.”
Nolie nodded, frowning as she watched for the turn.
“A couple of the guys from my crew were in the hospital visiting me when I had the first seizure.” He didn’t know he was going to say that until the words came out. “I found out firsthand what Danny meant about people looking at you as if you’re weird.”
Nolie pulled into the familiar gravel lot and turned off the motor. For a moment it was very quiet.
She looked at him gravely. “It took courage to offer to bring Danny here. On a couple of counts.”
He shook his head. “Not courage. Like I said, just something I had to do to make it up to him.”
She nodded toward the van pulling in next to them. “Judging by the look on Danny’s face, I’d say you’re going to be successful.”
He took a steadying breath and opened the car door. Showtime. That was what Dad always said when the station call came.
It took a couple of minutes to get Danny unloaded and into his wheelchair—a couple of minutes during which he steeled himself for what was to come.
He wasn’t worried about how the guys would relate to Danny. It was a foregone conclusion that they’d be kind. That was an unwritten rule. Firefighters didn’t disappoint the kids who looked up to them.
No, the tension that knotted his nerves had nothing to do with Danny. It had to do with how the guys looked at him.
Get it over with. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. They stepped into the huge, echoing garage. Four firefighters, leaning against one of the rigs, looked up at the sound, their conversation breaking off abruptly.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Seth was the first to spot him, and he approached with a huge grin. “Good to have you back, buddy.”
Danny glanced up at him with a pleased expression. “That’s what you call me,” he whispered.
“Well, maybe I can call you that, too.” Seth squatted next to the wheelchair. “You must be Danny. I’m Seth, Gabe’s brother.”
Seth, everybody’s friend, would of course be the first one to welcome them. As if that had broken the ice, the others came toward them.
“Danny, these are some of the firefighters I work with.” He’d keep this perfectly normal, for Danny’s sake and his own. “This is Jake. Dave. And Laura.”
Jake Peters and Dave Hanratty had gone through the academy with him. They’d been in the hospital room when he’d had his first seizure. He managed to look at them squarely. If they were made uneasy by his presence, they were hiding it pretty well.
Danny’s attention was focused on Laura Bristow. “I didn’t know ladies could be firefighters.”
Laura grinned. “Sure they can. If you know any girls who are interested in fire fighting, you send them to me, okay?”
With her brown hair pulled back in a braid and her green eyes dancing, Laura looked like a kid herself, but she was a skilled firefighter. She’d proved her worth, just as every recruit had to do.
Just as he’d have to do all over again, when he came back. If he came back.
“I promised Danny a tour of the station.” He pushed everything else out of his mind. “What do you say we start upstairs, okay?”
He bent to pick Danny up, but Seth beat him to it.
“I’ve got him.”
He bit back a sharp response. Seth was being kind. He didn’t mean to imply that Gabe couldn’t carry the boy upstairs.
They trooped up the steps. He heard Nolie and Danny’s mom carrying on a conversation with Laura as they folded the chair to take it up, but all his attention was on putting one foot in front of another and keeping a smile on his face.
He’d suggested starting upstairs because he thought that would be easier than the engine room, but no place in the station would be free of memories. He had a lifetime of memories here, starting with the visits he knew only from photos of his father proudly carrying his baby son into the station.
Seth lowered the boy into the wheelchair once they reached the top. He wheeled him into the kitchen. “This is the most important room in the firehouse, Danny.”
“It is?” Danny looked up to see if he was kidding.
“Sure thing. There’s nothing firefighters
like better than eating.”
“Except cooking,” Jake put in.
“Speak for yourself, Peters. I’d rather do anything else than cook,” Laura said.
“We’d rather you do anything else than cook,” Seth retorted.
The familiar banter was reassuring. Some things hadn’t changed.
He wheeled the boy’s chair over to the long wooden table, scarred from hundreds of meals, many of them interrupted by the alarm. The kitchen was pretty bare bones, but Dave had taped a couple of bright crayon drawings done by his kids on the refrigerator.
“Don’t let them fool you, Danny. We’re all pretty good cooks. We have to be, because we take care of everything in the firehouse when we’re on duty. We cook, we eat, we study and we even sleep here.”
“Hey, who’s conducting this tour, anyway?” Seth elbowed him out of the way. “I get to show Danny the rest up here.”
“Then I get to do the engine room,” Dave said.
Gabe stepped back, letting the tour flow on without his help. Maybe that was better. He was so keyed up that Danny would probably sense it.
Nolie moved unobtrusively to his side as they went from the kitchen to the living area, where some castoff family-room furniture in a garish plaid was arranged in front of the television.
“It’s not too bad being there, is it?” she asked him softly.
He glanced at Danny, his face alight as he leaned forward to ask Seth something. “It’s worth it to see that look on his face.”
Somehow her hand had linked with his. Hers felt small, but strong and capable in his. “You’re a good man, Gabriel Flanagan.”
The others started back toward them then. She drew her hand away from his, but her words lingered, warming him. That was something, to have the respect of a woman like Nolie.
They finished the upstairs, including a snack of Seth’s cookies and a display of pole sliding by Laura. Then they trooped back downstairs to view the rigs.
This wasn’t hurting as much as he’d thought it would. The guys’ attitude toward him seemed pretty normal, although he’d caught Dave eyeing him warily once or twice.
He’d get back on the job soon. They’d see, once he’d been around for a week or two, that nothing bad was going to happen. That they could rely on him.
That was the crux of the matter. No one wanted to be backed up by a firefighter who couldn’t do the job. Their lives depended on it.
He wouldn’t have a seizure on duty, ever. The job was too important for that. Sure, the work was stressful, but it was good stress, the kind that let him do the job he’d prepared all his life for.
Dave was doing his usual polished tour of the engines. With kids of his own, he knew how to relate, never using words or concepts that were too big for his young audience. It ended, as Dave’s tours always did, with Danny wearing a bunker coat and helmet, perched behind the wheel of the rig.
Danny’s mother snapped picture after picture. If the boy’s grin got any bigger, his face would split.
He could feel Nolie’s gaze on him. “Looking good, Danny,” he called to the boy. He’d show her that he could cope with being here. He’d be back soon, to stay, and the accident would be just a painful memory, to be revisited now and then in bad dreams. All this would be over.
The shrill sound of the alarm pierced the air. Heads came up as the radio crackled, announcing the call.
Seth swung Danny from the rig, depositing him in his chair.
“Sorry, kid. Got to go.”
The others were already scrambling into bunker pants and coats, faces intent as they listened to the details of the call. They rolled into action like the well-rehearsed team they were. The three guys who’d been sleeping upstairs were down the pole in less time than it took to tell it.
Gabe’s muscles tensed with the instinct to respond in exactly the way he’d responded hundreds of times before. But he couldn’t. He had to step back out of the way, just as much a civilian as Danny or Nolie.
Bitterness rose in his throat like gall. They were going, the truck rolling out onto the apron already, siren wailing to warn passing traffic. He was left behind.
“Come on, Danny.” The boy’s mother began pushing the chair. “We’ll go outside and watch the engine go down the street.”
He didn’t move. He couldn’t.
“I’m sorry.” Distress filled Nolie’s soft voice.
He swung toward her, pain clutching his throat.
“I have to come back. I have to.” He grabbed her hands, feeling the jolt of emotion flooding from him to her and back again, as if they were connected at some elemental level.
“I understand.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. For him.
His arms tensed as he battled the urge to pull her into his arms. He wouldn’t do that again. He couldn’t kiss her, couldn’t let himself feel anything for her, because whether she wanted to or not, she stood between him and the thing he’d been put on this earth to do.
He let her go slowly, reluctantly. He wouldn’t. But he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.
Chapter Nine
“Have another biscuit, Nolie.” Gabe’s mother urged the basket on her.
Shaking her head, Nolie passed the basket to Gabe, who sat next to her at the Flanagan dinner table. Siobhan had insisted they come for dinner after the fire station visit, but of course she hadn’t known then that the trip would be interrupted by an alarm. The faraway look in the woman’s eyes suggested to Nolie that her thoughts were concentrated on Seth, not the fried chicken and biscuits.
She’d like to ask if anyone had heard from Seth since he’d gone out on the call, but maybe that was something one didn’t ask in a fire fighting family.
Be with them, Lord. Keep them safe.
That was probably the same prayer that was in Siobhan’s heart right now.
Ryan, across the table, smiled at her as he passed a platter of fried chicken. A charmer, that one. He’d probably gotten away with a lot in life on the basis of that smile.
“Nolie, why didn’t you bring the dog along this time?” he asked. “We all want to meet him.”
She didn’t need to look at Gabe to know he’d tensed. She could feel it as if they were touching, which was a pretty sad commentary on the state of her emotions where Gabe was concerned.
“I thought maybe one Flanagan at a time was enough for Max,” she said lightly.
Gabe’s father, in his usual seat at the head of the long table, grinned. “You might have a point, Nolie. But at least the hooligans aren’t with us tonight.”
“Joe Flanagan, don’t you call your grandchildren hooligans.” Siobhan took mock exception to that. “They aren’t nearly as bad as our kids were, as I recall.”
“Only because there were more of us, Mom,” Terry said.
“Speak for yourself,” Gabe said, grinning. “I was the perfect child.”
The others hooted at that, and Nolie relaxed, relieved that the conversation had moved so easily from the subject of Max. She could hardly have said that Gabe had flatly refused to have the dog with him on his trip to the fire station.
She’d understood, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have insisted, had it not been for Danny. She hadn’t wanted to take the risk of Danny’s visit to the fire station being put in jeopardy because the adults couldn’t come to a reasonable agreement.
Still, she had to accelerate the pace of Gabe’s work with Max. Time was slipping away, and they hadn’t done nearly enough teamwork in public places. She couldn’t let her sympathy for Gabe interfere with the work they had to do.
Sympathy? The voice of her conscience inquired. Is that what it is?
She didn’t think she was ready to answer that question.
Lord, help me with this, please. I don’t want to let my feelings for Gabe override my good judgment.
She glanced up to find Gabe’s cousin, Brendan, watching her. She looked away quickly, concentrating on cutting up her chicken. It wasn’t Brendan’s fault that s
he felt uncomfortable in his presence. He certainly couldn’t have known that she was praying, or what that prayer was.
Had Gabe told him about her past? She’d like to believe Gabe wouldn’t have talked about what she’d told him, but she honestly didn’t know. For that matter, she still didn’t know why she’d told him. She didn’t normally talk about that to anyone.
If you were really over the past, the way you say you are, you wouldn’t mind talking about it.
Her conscience seemed remarkably active today. She told it to be quiet and returned her focus to the dinner-table conversation, which had moved on to an assortment of stories about the Flanagan brood’s misadventures when they were kids.
She leaned back, enjoying the tales even without being able to take part. By the sound of it, Ryan and Terry had been the mischief makers, constantly having to be pulled out of trouble by Seth or Gabe.
“What about you, Nolie?” Terry smiled at her. “Don’t you have any hair-raising stories of driving your poor parents crazy when you were a kid?”
Gabe’s hand closed over hers under the table. Well, obviously he hadn’t told Terry, at least.
“I’m afraid I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to lead me into trouble.”
“Maybe you were lucky, at that,” Ryan said. “There are days when I’d give you some of mine.”
“Not a chance.” Terry gave him a mock punch. “You can’t give us away. Who’d keep you out of trouble? We’ll just make Nolie an honorary Flanagan. Then she can have all the pleasure of having a big family with none of the disadvantages.”
“How do you figure that?” Brendan asked. “If she’s an honorary Flanagan, don’t the disadvantages come with it?”
“What disadvantages?” Joe demanded.
She listened with amusement to the argument that arose over whether there actually were any disadvantages. They didn’t begin to know how lucky they had it, but she didn’t feel even remotely envious. Instead, she almost felt as if she did, indeed, belong.
That was a dangerous thing to start feeling. When her relationship with Gabe ended, her relationship with his family would, too. She glanced down at his hand, still holding hers. She didn’t want that to happen. But it would.