Читать книгу Aftershocks - Nancy Warren - Страница 10

THE SOUNDS OF their approaching rescuers had Briana and Patrick pulling reluctantly apart.

“Okay, guys, stand back now,” Shannon’s voice came through the metal door, and before Briana could take a step backward, Patrick was reaching for her hand. Not that she was scared anymore, but it was nice to have the comfort of his warm hand in hers. A loud bang sounded, then a creak, followed by the screech of metal pulling against metal.

As light flooded the elevator, Briana freed her hand from Patrick’s and shaded her eyes.

“Good to see you, kid,” Patrick said to his sister. Anyone could tell they were related, Briana thought every time she saw the siblings together. Both were tall, athletic, black-haired and blue-eyed. They shared the trademark O’Shea grin she’d also seen in his children.

The grin on both faces was particularly broad this time. Briana knew that not all Shannon’s rescues turned out this well, yet she risked her life day after day, as her brother had done in his previous career.

In full uniform, Shannon seemed tough, and she was, but Briana knew she had a soft heart under all the protective gear.

The elevator had come to a stop about three feet above the main floor, so they had to bend down and jump to get out. Patrick naturally gestured for Briana to go first. She did, pulling off her high-heeled shoes and clutching the hands of Shannon and another firefighter. She managed to land on her feet without any injury, other than to her pride.

“I think you lost a button in there,” Shannon said in an undertone just after Briana landed.

A quick glance down showed her blouse gaping open to display a good bit of cleavage and the ice-blue silk of her bra. Briana grabbed the front of her blouse to cover the gap, forcing back the blush that threatened. It didn’t help that she caught one of the male firefighters checking her out with an interested expression on his face. She gave him the ice-queen don’t-even-think-about-it look she’d perfected in high school and turned back to Patrick’s sister.

“It must have come off when the elevator lurched and threw us to the ground,” she said.

“Must have,” Shannon replied in a dry tone, giving Briana a look that suggested more than her button was missing.

Briana knew she must appear mussed and hastily put back together. She detected the same telltale pewter color in Shannon’s eyes that were a dead giveaway in Patrick’s that he was angry about something. In this case, Briana realized that Shannon had made an educated guess at what had happened in that dark elevator and she didn’t like it one bit.

Patrick landed beside Briana a moment later and she couldn’t stop herself from looking up at him, seeing him in the light for the first time since they’d made love.

The blush she’d managed to suppress a minute ago swept over her cheeks now as she read the passion, intimacy and some other emotion she didn’t want to name deep in Patrick’s eyes. His weren’t pewter now, but the deepest Irish-Sea-on-a-sunny-day blue she’d ever seen them.

Her heart seemed to stutter as the full impact of what she’d done hit.

“Patrick, I—”

“You forgot your purse,” Shannon said, reaching up into the elevator to haul Briana’s bag off the floor and hand it to her.

“Thanks,” Briana said shortly, grabbing the thing. Her bag hid so much. The evidence of their passion, tucked neatly away, and that tape recorder, which she’d managed to switch off before their second bout of lovemaking.

“Well, I guess you missed your meeting with the police chief,” she said to Patrick.

“Yes.” He grimaced. “I doubt he even noticed. I bet he’s had a busier night than I did.”

She stared at him, and he must have realized what he’d said, for it was his turn to display ruddy cheeks. She and Patrick had not been idle in that elevator.

They were saved from awkwardness by the second firefighter, who said, “It’s been a busy night for EMS all right. Another one.”

It was no longer night but morning now, Briana realized. Almost 3:00 a.m. If she weren’t torn between elation and guilt over what had transpired in that elevator, she’d probably be pretty tired.

“What’s happening out there?” Patrick asked his sister, reverting from the tender loving man of the past few hours to the mayor of a town once again facing disaster.

“Not good,” Shannon told him, her voice neutral. It was a tone Briana had come to associate with emergency personnel who were sometimes forced to give the worst news possible. “One woman was killed in the convenience store collapse. She’d been pinned under a beam, and by the time we got there…” She shook her head. “There was a second woman, a fire victim. We pulled her out of the basement suite still alive, but I wouldn’t put her chances of recovery past fair.”

Shannon’s emotionless delivery almost fooled Briana into thinking Shannon was taking the violent deaths in her stride, but not her brother.

“Hey, kid. I’m sorry,” he said, pulling his sister in for a hug, regardless of her bulky uniform and helmet.

Amazingly, the tough, strong woman of a second ago let herself lean on her older brother. “Yeah,” she said, and in that one word Briana heard fatigue, despair and anger. “If we weren’t so stretched, and all of us running on too little sleep, maybe we could have got there sooner. Maybe—”

“You can’t beat yourself up over this. You know that. Sometimes there are fatalities.” Patrick spoke with the authority of a former firefighter who’d been there and seen it all, but he still held his sister in his arms.

Shannon couldn’t see his face, but Briana could, and almost as though she’d read his mind, she knew he was doing exactly what he’d told Shannon not to do. Blaming himself for the stretched resources, the exhausted emergency crews—the deaths of two more Courage Bay’s citizens.

Their brief romantic idyll, Briana realized, was over.

“I’m going to go home and get some sleep,” she announced. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Patrick said. “Let me drive you home.”

She smiled at him, wishing it were that easy. Wishing she could just say yes. “No. My car’s in the lot. You get home and check on your kids. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Are you sure?” The words were urgent, the meaning behind them obvious to Briana, but, she hoped, not to the other ears listening in. He was asking if she really wanted to keep working for him. Since her other choice was sleeping with him, it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done when she said, “Yes. I’m sure.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Sleep in tomorrow morning.” He shook his head. “I guess I mean this morning. Come in to work when you can. I’d give you the whole day off, but frankly, I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

Briana knew that the phone was going to be ringing like crazy tomorrow as city residents phoned in to complain about the latest disaster and the city’s response.

The media would hound Patrick; councilors would be calling, as would the fire chief and the police chief. On top of that, she had a pretty good notion that once the story spread that he’d been trapped in the elevator, his family and friends would be on the hotline making sure he was okay. It was going to be a busy day. As kind as it was of her boss to offer her the morning off, Briana knew she wouldn’t take him up on it.

He needed her.

As soon as she’d given her car a quick check, Briana drove carefully through the quiet streets. She went more slowly than usual, since a couple of the traffic lights were out, probably due to the aftershock. Maybe it was a result of being cooped up in that dark elevator so long, but the first thing she’d done when she started the engine was to roll down all the windows. She decided to take the route that hugged the coastline on the outskirts of the city, and as she drove, she could hear the quiet shush of the ocean, smell the clean air coming off the bay. She tried not to think too much about what had happened to her personally tonight.

She’d vowed not to sleep with the man she was trying to topple, so how had she come to do it?

It was easy to blame circumstances. The euphoria following their escape from serious injury or death. The intimacy of being together for all those hours. Briana knew she could have managed to get through a hurtling fall in an elevator and a few hours in the dark with any other man and not jump his bones. But Patrick O’Shea was not most men. And the plain truth was, their attraction had been immediate and intense from the first moment they’d met.

As she drove home, she tried to convince herself that nothing monumental had happened. That it was only sex. And that everything would go back to the way it had been before the aftershock.

When she finally reached the apartment she rented on the main floor of a house, she was still keyed up. Her eyes were gritty with fatigue, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while.

Besides, her stomach reminded her that she’d missed dinner. Unable to face cooking, she toasted whole-wheat bread, dished up a bowl of yogurt and sliced a banana into it. She poured a glass of apple cider to accompany “dinner.” While she ate, she flipped through the day’s mail. A couple of bills, a promotional flyer from a high-end fashion store and this month’s copy of Gourmet Magazine, which she subscribed to, even though she barely had time to cook for herself these days, never mind entertain.

Still, there was something about reading up on other people’s elegant dinner parties, checking out the international destinations featured, and imagining she was tasting all those wonderfully photographed dishes that made up in a small way for the fact that too many of her meals lately had been like this one.

She had dinner tidied away by 4:00 a.m. and was no more tired than she had been earlier. So she drew a hot bath, throwing a few handfuls of lavender milk crystals under the running faucet. While the tub was filling, she fetched a clean nightgown and her slippers.

When at last she eased herself into the warm, silky milk bath, magazine at hand, Briana breathed deeply of the lavender, in dire need of its soothing aromatherapy benefits.

She was in the middle of reading about a romantic springtime feast for two, when she caught herself changing places with the attractive couple in the magazine. She projected Patrick into the photo with her, fantasizing about him sitting across the cozy round table, toasting her with the California sauvignon blanc, eating the food she’d cooked and staring warmly into her eyes.

Smiling slightly to herself, she went back over their evening. Her spine was a little sore in places, and there was definitely some incipient whisker burn on the slope of one breast. She touched the spot. Next time, they’d have to find a bed.

Next time…

She got out of the bath with more haste than grace, slopping water on her magazine in her agitation. What the hell was she doing? Patrick was a good man. She was sure of it.

Drying off and pulling on her robe, she reminded herself that Uncle Cecil was a good man, too. But Patrick couldn’t have deliberately damaged her uncle’s career and her aunt’s peace of mind. There had to be another explanation.

Someone had done it, though, and Briana was going to find out who.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth and crawled into bed, knowing she’d be crawling out again in three hours. She only hoped she could manage to sleep some of the time.

Tomorrow was going to be a very busy day.

PATRICK STAYED at city hall long enough to make sure the fire department had put up emergency tape over the elevator doors.

“Thanks for getting us out of there,” Patrick had said to the crew as they left. Since he knew them all, he hadn’t bothered with the formality of handshakes, but slapped them on the back and joked around a little. Shannon had hung back and made sure she had a minute alone with her brother.

“You okay?” she’d asked.

“Sure. I don’t think I even got bruised when the elevator jolted.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, big bro. You know what I’m talking about. You and your model-gorgeous secretary looked like you were rolling out of bed when you got out of the elevator.”

“So we fell asleep while we were waiting. Get your nose out of my business.”

Whatever she’d guessed had gone on in that elevator, it was only a guess. He didn’t feel like talking about what had really happened, why and what he felt about it, because he wasn’t even sure himself.

Like most of his family, Shannon had urged him to get back out and start dating again. But he didn’t think sex in the elevator with his admin assistant was quite what she’d had in mind.

It wasn’t what he’d had in mind, either. But he had a feeling fate had taken a hand in his love life. And he was feeling pretty damned grateful to fate.

“I’m fine,” he said to his sister, and she knew him well enough to know that if he didn’t feel like saying more, he wouldn’t.

“You don’t look fine. You look like an eager boy with his first crush.”

“I can handle it.” He grinned ruefully. “At least I think I can. Speaking of nosy questions about love, how’s John?”

Shannon’s tired eyes brightened at the mention of John Forester, the man she’d fallen for last summer. He was still living in New York and they were making do with a long-distance relationship. She sighed. “He asked me to move in with him.”

“In New York?”

She nodded. “Don’t say anything to anyone else. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

“Can’t he be a modern man and move out here where all your family and friends are?” Patrick couldn’t imagine not seeing Shannon for months at a time, which would happen if she moved clear across the country.

“He can’t leave his mother. She’s…sick. Oh, hell, the woman’s a hopeless alcoholic, and she couldn’t function without him.”

Patrick shoved his hands in his pockets and wished he knew the right thing to say. Probably there wasn’t a right thing. “What are you going to do?”

“Think about it. John’s coming up for a visit in a few weeks. I guess we’ll have to decide then.”

“I’d miss you like crazy.”

“Hey, I love you,” she said.

“Back at you.” He’d given her a thumbs-up and sent her on her way.

Before he left, he called the building superintendent at home. “Sorry to bother you, Bert. I’m not sure if you heard, but the aftershock messed up the elevator at city hall.”

Bert Wilson sounded gravel-voiced with sleep. “I didn’t know about the elevator. I was planning to get in early anyway. I’ll do a post-incident property inspection before any of the employees arrive for the day.”

“Thanks, Bert. Give me a call if you find anything, will you?”

“You bet.”

Patrick would have made do with the leather couch in his outer office for a bed if it weren’t for the kids. But there was no way he could let them wake up without him being there when he hadn’t been able to tuck them in the night before.

Patrick never pretended to himself or anyone else that he was managing to be both father and mother to his kids, because it wasn’t true. He hoped he was doing his best, but with the string of disasters Courage Bay had faced, he’d been home less than he’d liked, even if Janie were still alive. Without her there, he had to rely on his housekeeper and sitters more than he wanted to. He always tried to be home to put Dylan and Fiona to bed, and not to leave for work before they woke. This morning, he was determined to eat breakfast with his children.

As he drove home through the dark, now quiet streets, he was conscious that he’d moved another step away from his wife. For the first time since she’d died, he’d made love to another woman. For all the euphoria that had pumped through his blood when he’d been with Briana, in the back of his mind and heart had been the knowledge that he was breaking another tie to the woman with whom he’d hoped to grow old.

“Oh, Janie,” he said into the silence of his car. “I hope I haven’t messed things up.”

When he’d finally seen Briana in the light after they’d been rescued, he wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but it was clear it wasn’t all champagne and roses. Of course, she’d looked a little shy when they’d first made eye contact after what they’d shared in the dark elevator, but she’d also looked…troubled.

She’d been as eager as he was in the elevator, though. Briana was the one who’d begged him to fire her temporarily so there’d be no sense of impropriety in what they were doing. Of course, her temporary dismissal was about as legal as a polygamous marriage, but right at that moment, neither of them had worried too much about workplace ethics. She’d wanted him as fiercely as he’d wanted her. What bothered him was afterward. How doggedly she’d insisted on staying on his staff. She was as good as telling him they wouldn’t be sleeping together again in the near future.

Patrick was no expert on the subject, but he had a feeling that now that his body had enjoyed sex with a warm and wonderful woman again after three years of celibacy, that same body was going to remind him with annoying frequency that it wanted more—lots and lots more—sex.

If he weren’t such a responsible guy, he’d almost have considered quitting his job so he could take his relationship with Briana out into the light. That’s how strongly he felt that the two of them could make a future together.

Of course, Briana shouldn’t have to quit her job for the sake of their sex life. She’d made it clear that she felt committed to Courage Bay. A sense of duty was rare these days, and that kind of high-minded attitude only made him want her more.

Well, as soon as he got the extra staff and funding that the emergency teams so desperately needed, and as soon as natural disasters started happening somewhere else on the globe for a change, Patrick was going to make sure one of them started looking for a new job.

However, at the moment he couldn’t forget about the job he did hold. He drove home by way of the convenience store, his belly knotting when he saw the mess. The roof had caved in, one wall was mostly rubble, and the windows had blown out.

On impulse, he pulled over and stopped the car.

The physical damage didn’t worry him so much. Walls and roofs and windows could be replaced. A human life never could.

He recalled the older woman who’d served him and his family. She always had a kind word for the children, and often a couple of lollipops would find their way from the jar she kept behind the till into two eager little fists.

God, the kids could have been there when the shaking began. Anyone’s kids could have. The corner store was a popular after-school hangout. If he could be grateful for anything, it would be that there weren’t more casualties.

It wasn’t much comfort, because even one death was a tragedy, but he’d have been less than human if he didn’t say a quick thanks that the children of Courage Bay, including his, were now sleeping peacefully at home.

He drove to his house, then entered as quietly as he could through the door that led from the garage into the laundry room. From there he crept into the kitchen. He headed for Fiona’s room first.

His heart squeezed as he gazed down at his little girl. She’d only been two when Janie died, and she didn’t remember her mother at all. In sleep she was angelic, her soft brown curls framing her round face, her lips opening and closing slightly as she breathed. She held her favorite stuffed hippo in her arms.

Patrick straightened the covers on her bed, kissed her forehead and went next door to his son’s room. Dylan wore baseball pyjamas and had kicked all his covers onto the floor. Patrick picked them up and replaced them, though he knew they’d be back on the floor by morning. He swore his son got more exercise when asleep than he did running around or playing sports.

He tousled the black hair that stuck out in tufts behind Dylan’s ears, just as Patrick’s had when he was a kid.

Returning to the kitchen, Patrick opened the fridge. Often the housekeeper left him a plate of dinner to microwave if he was late coming home, but since he’d planned to dine with Max Zirinsky, the police chief, there was nothing for him.

Most of the food in the fridge had been bought to appeal to people under the age of ten. Patrick passed on the hot dogs, the gelatin jigglers, the yogurt tubes, the peanut butter and the cheese strings. The mixed tropical fruit juice was no doubt healthy, but right now he didn’t want to drink anything quite that color.

Instead, he cracked open a beer, found some crackers and a block of cheddar. He made short work of all three, before taking himself off for the world’s quickest shower. In minutes he was falling into bed.

Tomorrow was going to be a hell of a day.