She waved him toward the table and said, "No, you just sit down. I'll be right back."
She hurried into the kitchen and returned with the pot roast. Cole had not taken a seat as she had intended, she saw, but was instead standing with his hands on the back of one of the chairs. He waited until she had placed the platter of roast and vegetables on the table, then pulled out the chair for her.
"There's still bread," she said somewhat awkwardly. "I'll just . . . get it . . ."
She practically ran to the kitchen and back.
This time, she let Cole hold her chair for her and slide it underneath her as she sat down. He went around the table and picked up the bottle of wine, then worked the cork free with his thumbs. It came out. with a faint popping sound. Cole leaned over the table to fill their glasses, set the wine to the side, and lowered himself into the chair opposite Annabel's.
He picked up his glass, and she waited to hear what he was going to say. He hesitated, then finally said, "I’ll never be some silver-tongued orator, Annabel, but what I say, I mean." He held the glass out toward her. "To the most lovely woman I know." She smiled and clinked her glass against his, then he added with a smile, "And a pretty doggone good fireman, too."
Annabel's heart leaped in her chest When she'd caught her breath, she whispered, "To the best fireman—and the best man—I know."
Cole inclined his head in pleased acknowledgment of the compliment and tapped his glass against hers again. They each took a sip of the wine, and the glance they exchanged over the rims of the fine crystal glasses was positively smoldering. Annabel knew she certainly felt the heat of it and from the look in Cole's eyes, so did he.
She took a deep breath and set the glass aside. "We'd better eat before the food gets cold," she suggested.
"Good idea. You went to so much trouble, I'd hate to waste it"
As far as Annabel was concerned, they could leave the food right here on the table and race each other upstairs, tearing their clothes off as they did, and it wouldn't be a waste at all. But she knew Cole had to be starving. It had been a long time since that picnic lunch: And for that matter, she was more than a little hungry herself.
The food was good. Annabel had never prided herself on her abilities as a cook, but from time to time, everything came together just right in the kitchen, and this was one of those times. She found herself enjoying the meal, and as she ate, she asked Cole, "What happened down at the waterfront?"
He sighed heavily, and for a second she thought she had blundered badly by asking the question. But then he said, "I'm glad you brought that up. The whole situation has me bothered quite a bit, and there's no one else I'd rather discuss it with than you."
She felt a warm glow. Being able to share a person's troubles, she'd always known, meant just as much as sharing the good times. She reached across the table and laid her hand on the back of his. 'Tell me about it."
Between sips of wine and bites of roast, he proceeded to do so. The longer he talked, the more outraged she grew. Finally, she said, "You mean this man, this Tobin, actually accused you of having the fire at his warehouse set? He thinks you're to blame for it?"
"That sums it up pretty well," Cole said with a nod.
"He's crazy! You'd never do that."
"That's just about what I said, only I was getting ready to take a punch at him while I was doing it."
"Good for you. You should have coldcocked the son of a—?" Annabel caught herself and drew a breath before saying, "You didn't get into a fight, did you?"
Cole grinned. "No, Chief Sullivan was there, and he got between us. But I felt like it." He paused, then added, "I don't think I'd have had to take a swing at Tobin if you'd been there—you might have beaten me to it."
"Could be," she admitted, returning the grin. "Obviously, he doesn't know you as well as I do. You're the last person in San Francisco who'd have a building deliberately set on fire. Why did he think you had anything to do with it?"
"Business reasons." Cole drained the last of the wine in his glass. "Tobin's been talking to another man who owns property on the waterfront, a fellow named Garrett Ingersoll. Ingersoll is the one who put the bug in Tobin's ear, I suspect. He and I have never really gotten along very well. Ingersoll has the idea that I'm trying to run all the other warehouse owners out of business so that I can take over the entire waterfront. He thinks I had one of my own buildings torched first to throw suspicion off me."
"That's ridiculous."
"That's what I told Tobin. And I'll tell Ingersoll the same thing the next time I see him." Cole shook his head, frowning in thought. "You know, I had an offer not long ago from someone who wanted to come into Brady Enterprises as a silent partner."
"Who was that?"
"A man named Wing Ko, the leader of one of the tongs here in the city."