America's Bravest (51 page)

Hell, he was a man, and Max noticed she
looked good from the back, too. Then he turned to Cal. “Some
show.”

Cal rolled his eyes. “That woman drives me to
distraction. I’ve left messages for her. Emailed her. Wrote her
open letters on the blog. Nothing. Now, she flounces in here and
wants a drink! Jesus.” He gulped the last of his.

“I won’t ask what have you’ve got on her, but
I have the same question. If you can stop her with it, why don’t
you?”

“It’d be cruel.”

The hostess came up to them. “Your table’s
ready, Chief. The one by the window that you like.”

“Thanks, Cindy.”

Both men stood. “Feel like talking more about
this?” Max asked.

“Nah. Feel like talking about Sydney?”

“Nah. Let’s forget all about women
tonight.”

“Easier said than done, buddy.”

Thinking of Sydney, Max said, “Yes,
unfortunately, it is.”

oOo

Sydney glanced over to the bleachers and saw
Max, Amber and Chief Erikson sitting on the top row. Amber waved
and she waved back. Max stared at her, at least seemed to, but he
was wearing dark sunglasses and he could be watching anybody.

Next to her on the bench, Tony nudged her.
“Who you looking at, kiddo?”

“Um, the chief is here.”

Tracking her gaze, Tony said, “Hmm. And he’s
not alone.”

Sydney jumped up and clapped when Gabe got a
line drive to third and Ryan O’Malley fumbled the ball. It was a
hot night and she was edgy so it felt good to move. “Way to go,
Cap,” she yelled through cupped hands.

Tony pulled her back down. “You can’t avoid
this conversation forever like you’ve been doing since we played
basketball.”

“I know. It’s complicated.”

“Listen, all I care about is that you’re
happy.” He kept his voice low for privacy. “If this guy’s nice
enough to you, go for him.”

“It’s complicated,” she repeated.

He let it drop and they both watched the
play. Grady O’Connor was up and hit a fly ball to one of the cops
in left field. When the inning ended and she headed to shortstop,
she thought about how Max had respected her wishes when he was at
the firehouse this week and hadn’t pressed her to talk to him. He’d
interview her tomorrow before they went off for four days. She
should be looking forward to a respite from his nearly irresistible
presence. But she wasn’t. She had the absurd urge to confide in him
about Ken’s demands and get his advice on what she should do. Would
he be sympathetic to her or would he understand a father’s rights?
Did Ken have rights? The question had kept her up at night.

Megan Hale grounded a ball to her. She shot
it to the first baseperson for an out, then concentrated on the
game. The next cop got a home run and it was all downhill from
there. The police won, but they were due as the fire department was
beating them regularly.

When her team returned to the dugout, Cal
Erikson was waiting for them. He was out of uniform, in jeans and
an HCFD polo shirt. She glanced to the stands. Max was gone. A
heavy disappointment filled her chest and she chided herself for
it. She’d gotten exactly what she’d asked for.

“I’m buying you guys ice cream at Abe’s as a
consolation prize.”

Most of the team was in, and Sydney agreed to
go. She needed to get away from her conflicting feelings about Max:
wishing she could see him, wishing she didn’t want to. Dreaming
about him, then remembering his reaction to Daisy’s father and
subsequent treatment of her that night at his house.

Because she’d hurried out of the softball
field, she arrived first at Abe’s—a cute outdoor stand with several
picnic tables for patrons. When she got out of her car, Amber
Delinsky came running up to her. “I
hoped
you were coming.
I haven’t seen you in ages.” She threw herself at Sydney and hugged
her. “I miss you and Daisy.”

“We miss you, too.” The girl felt solid and
right in her arms as Sydney hugged her tight. “Tell you what. I’m
off, and the day after tomorrow, Daisy and I going to the beach.
Want to come with us? I’ll pick you up.”

“Yes!” Amber said excitedly.

Taking her by the hand, the girl dragged
Sydney over to where Max sat, a dish of ice cream in front of him.
Amber bubbled about the invitation. He raised his brows as he
looked at Sydney. She nodded.

“Sounds great,” he said. “You’ll have
fun.”

“Wanna come, Dad?”

He avoided Sydney’s gaze. “No, honey, I’m
busy finding a new place for our business.”

Amber shrugged at his comment, not knowing
the significance of it. “Sit here, Sydney. I’ll go get you ice
cream. Uncle Cal called and set up a tab.” She asked Sydney what
flavor, then headed to the line.

Max watched her go, turned and faced Sydney.
“I wouldn’t have come but Cal invited me and Amber, and she said
yes. I couldn’t disappoint her. Sorry to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding. I don’t want Amber to
suffer in all of this.”

“I know. Right away, you said you didn’t want
to hurt her with our problems.” His green eyes were full of
feeling. “I can’t tell you what that means to me. And what it says
about you as a person.”

“Kids shouldn’t pay for the sins of their
parents.”

He ate his pistachio, and as she watched his
sculpted mouth surreptitiously, Sydney was hit by a bolt of desire,
so much so she could hardly speak. She didn’t know what to do with
all the emotion he stirred inside her.

After he checked his daughter’s whereabouts,
Max spoke again. “I’ve given you space, sweetheart, but know that I
want to see you.”

Before she could answer, she noticed the rest
of the team had arrived and Sophia, Tony and the kids joined them
at the table. There was no time to talk privately, so Sydney tried
to enjoy the repartee.

“Feeling good?” Max asked Sophia when Tony
went with the kids to get their treat.

“Remarkably. I never felt this good carrying
a baby before.”

“An untroubled pregnancy,” Syd blurted out,
not censoring her words because she was used to talking openly with
Sophia.

The beautiful woman reached across and
squeezed her hand. “How is my little Daisy? When are you going to
let us have her overnight? Mari keeps asking.”

“Now that you mention it, the female
firefighters in the department are getting together tomorrow night.
It’ll be a late one. Then?”

“Great. Make arrangements with Tony.”

Max asked, “What do you do when you get
together?”

“Dress up fancy, go to the Lakeside and girl
talk.”

“Will you be trashing Parker Allen? I met her
by the way. At the Lakeside, as a matter of fact.” He explained the
circumstances. “She was very flirty.”

Sydney’s pulse sped up, but she didn’t
comment because Amber came back with a chocolate cone for her, then
left to join the other kids.

“You’re an attractive man, Max.” Sophia had
touched his arm.

“I meant she was flirty with Cal.”

Sydney almost dropped her cone.
“Seriously?”

Sophia laughed. “He probably seems like an
old man to you, you’re such a baby. However, your battalion chief
is attractive, too.”

As if on cue, Cal arrived, then the kids
returned, but Sydney had something else to think about. She’d seen
pictures of Parker Allen. The woman was drop-dead gorgeous in a
purely feminine way that Sydney would never, ever be. Watching the
man across from her, she had the unpleasant image of some woman
like Allen scooping him up. The notion sat heavy in her heart.

oOo

The morning was too bright and cheery for the
question Max asked. But any magazine featuring a fire department
had to include their experiences on that fateful day in September.
“Tell me what happened to you all on 9/11.”

An eerie silence invaded the firehouse. Brody
got up to get coffee, Tony swore under his breath and Sydney
glanced down at the newspaper she’d been reading.

“I’ll start.” Gabe Malvaso was always the
leader. “Mitch and I went down to Ground Zero. We’d been rookies
with the FDNY and knew a lot of smoke eaters who were trapped.”
Here his voice got hoarse. “Most of them didn’t make it out. The
worst part of the recovery was finding missing body parts. Only two
hundred and eighty-nine bodies were found intact and almost twenty
thousand body parts were unearthed. After finding some of them,
Mitch and me had to get away. When we did, we cried like
babies.”

Again, stone-cold silence.

Brody’s face was bleak and his eyes glistened
as he started out. “The brass wouldn’t let me go down. I was a
rookie then and the captain in my house refused to send me. He also
told me if I went down on my own, I’d be suspended, maybe even
kicked out of this department. I didn’t know he was looking out for
me. He’d heard my firefighter uncle had died in the attack, but it
hadn’t been confirmed, and he didn’t want me”—here he glanced at
Gabe—“finding what you guys found. I did some research afterward
and a lot of firefighters discovered their buddies. The PTSD they
experienced stayed with them a long time. But I felt so impotent.
It’s why I like to control things.”

No one teased him about his doggedness.

“Felicia?” Max asked when no one offered to
go next. “How about you?”

“I didn’t know anybody in the FDNY, though I
was working in Binghamton at the time. I went down to the pile, of
course, as did scores of other women to work as rescue workers,
nurses, police, chaplains. All we hear about are the policemen and
firemen who were heroes. Hundreds of women were there, too.”

“She’s right,” Brody added. “And she wrote a
moving portrait of the three women we know of who died at Ground
Zero. Captain Kathy Mazza, EMT Yamel Marino, Police Officer Moira
Smith were all casualties.”

“You remember their names, Brody.” Felicia
smiled at him. “How sweet.”

“Tell us about them.” Max’s tone was
grave.

“Kathy Mazza was a Port Authority Police
Officer who ran into the towers and led groups of people down the
stairs when the building began to collapse. She shot out glass
windows with her sidearm, allowing them to escape.
She
wasn’t so lucky.” Felicia sighed. “Moira Smith was the only NYPD
female officer killed, after saving hundreds of people before Tower
2 collapsed on her. And EMT Yamel Merino was working on an
ambulance crew and volunteered to go inside to help the wounded.
She never came out. She was only twenty-four.”

Whispers of incredulity, sympathy. More
silence.

“I’ll go next.” This from Ramirez, whose face
was ravaged. “It’s no secret the problems Sophia and I had this
year. She couldn’t let me go there because she was worried. I went
anyway and didn’t tell her. I carried out body parts, but when I
found a kid, I lost it, too.” He looked around. “I never told
anybody that story.”

“Thanks for sharing it with us, Tony.” Max’s
tone was grave, befitting the admission.

Tony nodded.

“Sydney? You were very young when 9/11
happened. Do you remember anything?”

“I was Amber’s age.” Her beautiful eyes were
bleak. “Two of the firefighters from the house I hung out at were
killed. One, I…” She swallowed hard. “One I liked best. His name
was Danny and he used to let wear his helmet. He was like an older
brother. I never forgot him. And it was never the same at the
firehouse after that day.”

Last was Chief Erikson. Somber, he pulled his
wallet from his pocket and took out a yellowed-with-age paper.
“Most people know about the good-bye calls the victims in the
towers and on that plane made. But they don’t know that a lot of
the firefighters who went down to Ground Zero knew they weren’t
coming back. They left letters to their wives and lovers in their
lockers.” He stared hard at the paper. “This is from a kid who was
a rookie in Hidden Cove, then joined the FDNY to roll with the big
guys. I was the only person he wrote to. The letter says I was the
reason he became a good firefighter. I shouldn’t feel guilty that I
hadn’t taught him well if he died down there. He said it was
because of me that he could save people.” Cal bit the inside of his
jaw. “Word has it he carried out ten to safety before he got
crushed by a girder.”

When everyone finished, the house quieted
again. One by one, the firefighters of Hidden Cove got up and left
the room. There was nothing more to be said.

oOo

The following afternoon, Max was ready to
interview Sydney, or at least he thought he was, until he sat at
the kitchen table once again having coffee with the group. The bell
at the back door rang. Felicia, cleaning up at the stove, from
where she’d cooked enough bacon and eggs for lumberjacks, said,
“I’ll get it,” and headed out to see who was visiting at this hour
of the morning. When she came back, her expression was grim.

“I had to let the first one in, Syd,” she
said soberly. “He’s legal. This other one insisted, saying it would
be best if you heard whatever they have to say from him.”

Sydney’s face went pale, and Max would have
gone to her, but he recognized the guy as the father of her child.
Much of the progress Max had made in accepting Sydney’s situation
weakened with Ken Kessler’s physical presence. Damn it, he hated
vacillating like this, but images of Annette and Tim haunted him.
Still, he’d made a decision. He wanted Sydney in his life. So he
sat by as she stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do
you want?”

Instead of answering, the guy nodded to the
other man. He was little and wiry with narrowed eyes. “Sydney
Sands?”

Max saw Tony creep up behind Sydney and place
his hands on her shoulders. “Yes.”

“You’ve been served.” He held out an
envelope.

Sydney didn’t take it, but Tony did. The
others in her crew made a semicircle around her as the processer
left and Kessler stepped forward. Max felt like he was watching a
play on stage. “Read it Syd, then I’ll explain.”