Where There's Smoke

The problem, thought Sloane, was that she didn’t want to be anywhere near Nick Trask, certainly not for a period of weeks. “All right.” She turned to Nick. “It’s for you.”

Sloane walked out into the hall where she could finally breathe. The testing couldn’t be interrupted. Everything depended on getting the gear qualified. Everything.

After a moment, she looked around. To her left was the stairway that ran down to the apparatus floor. To her right, the hall ended in a T, with the dormitory on one side and probably a kitchen and rec room on the other. Without even trying she could picture the latter—worn, comfortable furniture, a TV and VCR, probably some back issues of Fire Engineering magazine tossed down on a table. Before she could block it, the image of a lanky, boyish-faced redhead sprawled on a firehouse couch came to her with painful clarity. Oh Mitch, she thought and grief and loss surged in for a blinding instant.

“Ms. Hillyard,” Nick’s voice called to her. “Grant wants to talk with you again.”

She responded automatically, entering the office, reaching for the phone. “Yes?”

“Hi, Sloane,” Grant answered cheerily. “I just wanted to apologize for the mixup over there. I’ve discussed the situation with Nick and he’ll be happy to work with you on this project.” Sloane glanced over to where Nick stood, staring at her again. Oh, she could see how happy he was about the project. “It’s up to you, of course,” Grant continued, “but it’s really best. It could take quite a while to get another company lined up.”

Sloane bit back a protest. Grant had her neatly cornered. The testing had to be finished in two months, when production was scheduled to begin. There could be no delays and he knew it. Sloane sighed. “All right. Let’s stick with the plan.”

“Wonderful.” She could hear the satisfaction in Grant’s voice. “If you have any more hitches with the testing, just give me a ring and I’ll take care of things, okay?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. Can you put Nick back on?”

The clamor of the alarm bells shattered the quiet of the firehouse. Sloane couldn’t prevent herself from jumping.

Nick was galvanized into action instantly. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” he barked over his shoulder, sprinting for the fire pole in the dormitory.

“He’s got…”

“I know, an explosion at the oil-tank farm. It just came in here. Sloane, thanks very much.” Grant’s voice was hurried as he said goodbye.

The previous atmosphere of calm had been replaced by one of controlled urgency, the air charged with tension. Even as Sloane rushed down the stairs, most of the men were on the apparatus floor pulling on turnouts, grabbing waiting helmets and gloves. A stocky firefighter turned away from the enormous district map that covered one wall and climbed into the cab of Ladder 67. “I got it, cap. Let’s fly.”

Sloane hurried to get clear as the last of the men vaulted aboard the gleaming apparatus. Already the motors throbbed, the station door was peeled back. She slipped outside as the ladder truck and the pumper hit the street, lights flashing and sirens shrieking.

The firefighters were on their way.

Chapter Two

If he ever won the lottery, Nick thought, he’d hire people to shop for him. Not just certain kinds of shopping—pretty much anything that involved cash registers and standing in line. Certainly anything with narrow aisles and those shiny chrome racks crammed so close together that he was perpetually bumping them with his shoulders.

“Can I help you?”

A teenaged sales clerk popped up at his elbow. The fixed, Mouseketeer smile on her face scared him a little. On the other hand, having to spend more than two more minutes in the boutique scared him more.

He looked at the piles of silky scarves and fancy handbags. “I need a birthday gift for my mother.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place. How about something to add a little color to her winter wardrobe?” she asked, holding up a sheer band of fabric with a twisting pattern of burgundy and gold.

The dark red brought Sloane Hillyard to mind. Not that he needed a prompt. She’d been in his thoughts since she’d come to the station two days before. Granted, she had a face that was hard to forget, but if it had only been that, he could have dismissed her as a high-tech huckster. What had made her linger with him was the way she’d looked at the end. There had been that instant that she’d paled. And the words, so impassioned she’d practically vibrated with them: If I save one life, just one life…

There was something driving her, that much was obvious. He couldn’t help but admire her for it. There was a “Why” there and it was enough to make him wonder about the project. Of course, if his mind returned to the generous sweep of her mouth, the fire of her hair, the heat that had flashed between them in his office, he was only human, right?

Forget about the project, it was enough to make him wonder about her. And wonder where the testing might take them.

“Do you see any scarves your mother might like?”

The clerk’s voice broke into his thoughts and Nick brought his focus back to the task at hand. There was plenty to think about there, too. “My mother’s not much of a scarf person,” he answered. At least not scarves that were more for looks than for warmth. On the other hand, why not? He’d come in with the vague idea that he wanted to get her something different, something other than a new plant or a sweater from L.L. Bean.

Something that would surprise her, maybe put the spark back in her eye, the spark that had been missing since his father had died the previous spring.

Somehow, though, a scarf didn’t quite seem likely to do it.

“How about something to pamper her?” The sales clerk was twinkling at him, he noticed uneasily. “We have some nice bath sets with body gels and lotions.”

“Not sure I want to go there. How about something else?”

“A watch?” She led him from the small gift section over to the glass display cases.

“I don’t think so.” A watch would be unnecessary at the Trask family farm; there, you simply rose before dawn with the shrieking alarm clock and worked until long after dark. He looked at the velvet-lined cases filled with rings and bracelets of gleaming metal. Shiny and cold and all so unlike Molly Trask. He’d never actually seen her wear jewelry anyway, except for the plain band of gold his father had given her. The band of gold she still wore. “Do you have anything else?”

“Well, we’ve got—”

“Hold on.” A warm, soft gleam caught his eye. “What’s that?”

“Oh, good choice.” The clerk’s eyes brightened, this time in a decidedly mercenary fashion as she led him over to the far end of the case. “That’s our Vintage Collection, made by a local designer out of antique and rose gold. She does some really lovely pieces.”

For those prices they ought to be, Nick thought, but there was a simple grace to the necklace that had first caught his eye. “How about that one?”

She beamed. “Perfect. It’s a charm necklace. The artist has made a whole collection of birthstone charms that go with it.”

Perfect, indeed. “That’s it,” he decided, reaching back for his wallet. “Let’s see…give me a charm each for October, May, January, September and December.” One for her, his father, his two brothers and himself. A reminder of family around her neck all the time. She’d like that, he thought. You needed family around when times were tough.

And sudden guilt nipped at him with tiny, sharp teeth.

He hadn’t left Vermont to hurt anyone. He’d left because it was the only way he could breathe. As much as he’d loved his family, he’d needed more than anything to find his own way. He’d always assumed they’d be there when he went back.

He’d never expected his father to die so young.

And yet, in its own way, firefighting was his way of honoring his father’s legacy. For as long as Nick could remember growing up, Adam Trask would drop anything he was doing at the sound of the town siren and rush to join the other volunteer firefighters to beat back flames.

Nick remembered the day the siren had sounded when they’d been at the farm supply store: the exhilarating drive to the firehouse, the purposeful rush of the men as they’d leapt into the fire engine. Instructions to Nick to stay put had held only as long as it had taken the pumper to leave, then he’d jogged out into the street and down toward the scent of smoke. The mixed terror and pride of watching his father plunge into the burning building was still as fresh in memory as it had been that day. Seeing him hurry out, soot-streaked, with a young girl clutching at his neck, had filled Nick with a kind of baffled awe.

Somehow, Nick thought as he signed the charge slip for the clerk, staying on the Trask farm to make maple syrup had never even come close.

He walked outside, fishing in the pocket of his bomber jacket for his cell phone, flipping it open to punch up a number.

The line clicked. “Gabe Trask.”

“You owe me two hundred bucks,” Nick told his younger brother as he crossed the pavement to his Jeep.

“You don’t say. You late on your car payment again?”