She watched Ben standing in line from across the room. He was so damned handsome. She glanced around, noticing the looks he was getting from the other women customers. There was something so graceful in the way he moved, broad shoulders back, chin up, eyes intense and aware of the surroundings.
Racine said he was too “spit and polish,” but after working with Ben on a school contamination case last fall, even Racine had a new respect for him. The uniform did make him look pressed and proper, but Maggie had seen him out of uniform enough to know that this man had a keen sense of who he was and what he valued, and he knew it without the uniform, without a stitch of clothing on.
That’s when it hit her. The obvious smacking her in the face. Ben didn’t consider a phone call from her a courtesy or an obligation. He hoped it would be an extension of herself. An instinct, second nature. Of course he did.
And why wasn’t it?
Was she simply not capable of allowing someone else to be a part of her?
She watched him let a mother with a little girl go in line before him. She saw him smile down at the girl. The mother looked like she was giving her daughter instructions to thank him.
Even from across the restaurant Maggie could see the sadness in his face. That was where the major difference lay between them, like a thick wedge. Both of them had scars from their pasts, but the hole Ben’s daughter, Ali, had left in his heart was not one Maggie would ever be able to repair.
For the first time Maggie realized this was why she hadn’t called, why she hadn’t allowed him to get any closer. Rather than lose him, she was already pushing him away. And suddenly that revelation made her feel terribly sad and empty.
CHAPTER 16
Patrick unpacked the last of the groceries that he’d picked up on his way back from his official slapdown. At least it didn’t come with a suspension. Since he was fifteen he had had some kind of job. Money was always tight, but he had always pulled his weight, paid his way. He promised—no, he swore—he wouldn’t take advantage of Maggie’s generosity.
He stood in front of the open kitchen cabinets trying to figure out her system. She was neat and tidy, but it looked like she didn’t cook beyond the basics. Patrick had been cooking since he was ten. During college he volunteered at the fire department in a nearby community outside of New Haven, Connecticut. Firefighters were some of the best cooks and Patrick had learned how to experiment and improvise, building a repertoire that included everything from chateaubriand to a killer jambalaya. Tonight he’d fix pan-seared scallops with a rice pilaf, a baby-greens salad, and a peach-raspberry crisp for dessert. Hopefully it wouldn’t make her suspicious.
Maggie had already made it clear that she didn’t like him working for a private firefighting company. Like government-run departments were any more ethical? He did have to hand it to her. She listened, heard him out, even refrained from commenting many times when he could see her pretending not to wince, not to clench her teeth. As a public servant, she believed it was wrong to decide who to save and who not to save depending only on whether they could afford it.
“Are you saying you wouldn’t stop to put out a fire at a house because the owner wasn’t on your roster of policyholders? You’d drive your truck and equipment and special skills right on by? Could you really do that?”
“It isn’t my decision,” he’d argued. Reasoning that if he hadn’t been paid by the policyholders he would not be driving by that house in the first place. Even he didn’t quite believe that logic, but that’s exactly what had been drilled into him during training.
Yet that’s exactly what had happened during this last assignment. There hadn’t been just one house—there were dozens. The fire had spread quickly, like liquid racing over the grass. The policyholders they had been sent to protect were a good ten miles away from the fire. They had spent the day cleaning gutters, removing flammables from the yards, hosing down the houses and the perimeter with fire-retardant chemicals and helping to evacuate. They were finished with all their preparations. There was nothing more to do except sit back and wait until and unless the fire got closer.
So Patrick and his partner, Wes Harper, drove back to their staging area. To get back they had to maneuver around the burn zone. Patrick was team captain for the day. Switching built confidence, fairness, and reliability. You didn’t screw with your partner because tomorrow it was his turn to screw with you. That’s not exactly the way they explained it in training, but that was the basic idea. And that was what happened. Because Patrick made the team decision to stop. And Wes made the team decision the next day, to rat Patrick out.