Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay (7 page)

“Nah. She just liked to save money. I kind of like it, too. It’s fun to make new things out of old.”

“Were you two close?”

Samantha's face softened. “The closest.”

“She’s…”

“She died when I was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. She was only forty-five.”

“Too damn young.”

“Yeah. You? Your parents?”

Hank said, “Both died when I was twelve. Both of cancer.”

“Bad year.”

“Really bad year.”

Samantha pushed those invisible glasses up on her nose. “Anyway.”

“Do me a favor and get better extension cords?”

Her look was patient. “Look. I’ll try to remember to do that, but I tend to live life on the edge a little bit. I drink milk that’s expired, I light my own pilot on the stove, and I’ve never had trouble with extension cords or people breaking into my apartment. Until you, that is.”

“You light your own pilot?” No one did that anymore. It was hot.

“I smelled gas the other day and I hesitated a little, but I figured if the other pilots were on, the house was in no danger of exploding.”

“You
smelled
natural gas? You sure it was just your pilot?”

“Hank?” She touched his arm, and he completely forgot what they were talking about.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go climb a rock.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AT THE CLIMBING gym, Samantha proved to be an eager pupil. Hank enjoyed the feeling of teaching after being her student the day before.

It would have been normal if she’d been a little hesitant when she first looked up at the rock walls. Six stories overhead, people hoisted themselves, using nothing more than their body weight to scale the height. Ropes dangled from the very highest heights, and everywhere, men and women in harnesses glided and soared.

But instead of looking worried as she craned her neck to look up, she seemed to glow.

There she was, the girl who taught him never to trust in love, looking almost as young and even more beautiful as she had back then. And
damn
, the woman looked good in a harness. The canvas straps cupped and outlined her rear end in a way that might be classified as dangerous. It was a good thing he was hoping to just have a physical fling with her to get her out of his system, for once and for all. Because how could a man hope to keep up with a woman like her in the long run?

Men didn’t keep up with Samantha Rowe. That’s why she was still single. And that was why, when this whatever it was ended, he’d be ready to get into a good relationship. A healthy one.

Samantha pulled the rope tighter around her waist, touching the knot at her bellybutton with her fingers. “Did I do this one right?”

The first time she’d done the figure eight knot, she’d done it wrong. It was that kind of mistake that killed people, and Hank had a hard time slowing his breathing, looking at it.

But this time, on only her second try, she’d gotten it exactly right. She held her arms out. “Check me!”

“Yes.”

They’d spent the first hour with Raul, the manager. Although Hank was experienced enough he could have taught Samantha all the rope moves, all the safety information, he’d left that to Raul. What if he got distracted by something Samantha said or did and forgot to show her something important? He wouldn’t take that chance. Besides, it never hurt for anyone to get a brush-up.

Samantha struggled with her first attempt going up. It was never as easy as it looked, and everyone found that out in their own way. Those rock handholds looked as if they were in reasonable places, but once your body was on the wall, it was different. The blue 5.6 grade you thought would be simple would turn out to require taking a toe-jump or a spiderman-stretch.

“Take,” she yelled at him from only about four feet up. This was the signal that she was going to come off the wall, that in a second he’d be supporting her weight on the leveraged rope.

“I’ve got you.”

Hank had to hand it to her—he’d heard a lot of women, and men, for that matter, fall off the wall their first time with a sharp scream that sent grins around the climbing gym. But she didn’t yell.

Instead, when the rope caught her, leaving her dangling in midair, she laughed. She whooped with delight, and when he let her down to the ground, when her feet made contact, she was still laughing.

“That was the best thing ever!” She stood straight, brushing the chalk off her hands, leaving white handprints on her leggings. “I want to do it again, but I can’t. My arms need a break. My
fingers.
I had no idea it would be that hard to hang on.”

The delight in her voice was almost something palpable, something he wanted to hang at his waist with his chalk bag and extra carabiners. “It’s fun.”

“It’s not simply
fun
. It’s
amazing
.” She held out her hands, already red and scratched. “I am
so
badass.”

She was. But Hank had a sneaking suspicion she’d been born that way. “My turn.”

Samantha, undoing her rope, looked up at him with a sudden hesitation. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re big.”

“Yeah.” He made his own figure eight knot.

“Really big. I mean, what do you weigh?”

“A little over two hundred.”

“You’re sure this whole leverage thing will actually work?”

Hank had seen ten-year-old kids hoisting their adult fathers. “It’s going to work.”

They checked each other for safety. She was good. Thorough. She’d listened to Raul, and she was bringing back every part of the lesson, not forgetting a thing. He moved to the wall and said, “On belay.”

She responded correctly, “Belay on.” She would do well. He wasn’t surprised.

“Climbing.”

“Climb on.”

He started up the wall. This was the best part, whether he was indoors or out. Some people liked the coming down part, that quick rush of falling down the hill, supported by the rope and nothing else. But Hank liked the feeling of using his body and his brain together. He liked the fact that it was harder than anything else. When you were running, you could shut your brain off and just do it. Kayaking, same thing. But every single second that you were climbing, you were thinking.

“Nice view, Coffee,” she called from two stories below.

His hands suddenly got sweaty, and he fumbled for the chalk.

Usually on this particular grade, he could get to the top in less than ten minutes. But this time, it was proving harder. Knowing she was watching was part of it. It made his nerves jangle. But more than that, for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t that interested in being on the wall, making it to the top. It was more fun, being on the ground with her.

“Take,” he called.

“What?” she yelled back. “Am I supposed to be holding on to the rope right now?”

He swung his head around and stared down at her in disbelief.

“Just kidding! Go ahead!” She laughed.

It wasn’t goddamn funny.

Hank came off the wall. She controlled his descent at a good rate—not so fast the bottom of his stomach dropped out and not so slow that he’d get bored dangling.

But no matter how perfect his descent was, it didn’t take an iota away from his fury.

“That was amazing,” she said, her cheeks pink with excitement. “You went so high! I couldn’t believe it!”

He clawed at the knot and ripped off the rope. “We’re done. Untie.”

“What?”

“Do it. We’re leaving.” His hands shook, not from the difficulty of the climb but from the white-hot rage that pulsed through his body.

“Oh,
no
. Is it because I teased you? I was just joking. I’m so sorry! I never let go of the rope. I wouldn’t do that. Raul scared the hell out of me with his lesson.”

If Hank had been in a mood to give her any credit, she did look horrified. But he wasn’t. “Just take off the rope.”

“But…”

“Change into your street clothes. I’ll pay and meet you at the car.”

He’d been planning on taking her to the Crab’s Claw. White tablecloths, red napkins, the kind of place a woman liked to be wined and dined, if anything he read in the Yelp reviews were right. He’d planned on plying her with two glasses of wine, and then he’d planned on walking to her door and kissing the breath out of her in front of it.

“I’ll take you home.”

“Wait, you’re punishing me for—”

“Go change,” he growled before stalking away from her, leaving her open-mouthed.

He wasn’t
punishing
her.

But outside, leaning against the Mustang, he could admit it. He
was
punishing her. It wasn’t fair—she didn’t know his history. There’d be no reason for her to. It was his history, not hers.

She came out of the gym, her sports clothes in the small green bag she’d brought. “Are you still mad at me?”

“Yep.”

“Well, you’re being an ass.”

Wait a minute. That wasn’t what he expected. “Excuse me?”

“I made a mistake. And it wasn’t even like I made a safety error because I never let go of the rope. It was totally wrong to joke about it, but I apologized. There’s no good reason for you to act like this, and I’m starting to think you’re right to end this date, because I’m not that big on going on dates with jerks.”

She was right. But no way was he going to let her know that. Hank didn’t get upset often, but his grandmother Maureen always said, “when you do, it’s atomic. And it’s always for a good reason.”

It
was
for a good reason, but it wasn’t one he wanted to talk about.

Maybe it was just easier to let her think he was a gigantic jerkwad and drive her home.

“Let’s go, then.” He opened her car door. She shook her head but got in. Right before he closed the door, she looked up at him with those clear green eyes and said, “You’re fired. Again.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT WAS THE only thing she could do. She
had
to fire him.

But maybe she could have waited until he’d gotten her back to the apartment.

He slid into the driver’s seat, dangerously quiet. He started the car and pulled out, driving smoothly. No fast revs, no quick turns, no slam of brakes. Anger pulsed from his body.

No
way
was she letting someone who could get this mad so fast near her students.

Outside her passenger-side window, the world passed quietly. At the turn on First Street, the marina came into view, the lights on the pier burning dimly through the fog that had rolled in like a thick blanket of dark wool. The red Closed sign glowed in the bagel shop window. Above it, she could see her white twinkle lights gleaming against her windows.

“You shouldn’t leave those on when you leave.”

“Fine.” She wasn’t going to argue with him. She just wanted him to pull into the parking lot and let her out. The disappointment was thick in the back of her throat. She’d been strangely excited about this date, and now she even more strangely let down. Yeah, she’d screwed up. But this anger of his was apparently coiled like a rattler under a wood pile, just as unexpected and twice as unpleasant.

“You shouldn’t leave those on when you’re home, now that I think of it. Not till you get a better extension cord, a heavy duty one with a surge protector.”

She turned in her seat as she unsnapped the seatbelt. Facing him, Samantha said, “I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you don’t get to give advice on my life.”

“As a member of the local fire protection district—”

“What are you going to do, write me a ticket?”

“You have to—”

“Oh, screw you, Hank.” Angry at herself for having that ridiculous tiny little hope, she pushed open the heavy door.

“Wait.” His voice was low.

Samantha owed him nothing. She didn’t have to wait. But she gave him the second. If he was going to ask for his job back…

“I killed someone.”

She turned toward him again, one leg out of the car, one leg in. “Are you kidding me?”

“Wish I was.” Hank leaned his head back on the vinyl headrest and looked in the rearview mirror as if the car was still moving. “Right before I graduated. Not long after you left, actually.”

“What happened?” Samantha's voice was still curt and she’d lost all ability to figure out what to feel next.

“We were climbing in Colorado, on a trip with some other guys in my paramedic training. We were trying a cliff face none of us had done before.”

“He was going up, I was belaying. His hand slipped at the same time that the foothold he was using gave way. We hadn’t double checked our knots. The rope slid through my hands, and I tried to grab it, but it was like I was moving in slow motion and the rope just twisted away from me so fast. There was nothing I could do.” Hank’s voice was even. Calm. It was as if he were relaying a story about someone else, someone he didn’t know very well. “He twisted in the air when his foot hit the wall and he landed on his back, snapping his neck. I knew he was dead even before I took the twelve steps to get to him.”

Samantha's breath caught in her throat. “It wasn’t your—”

“Oh, it was totally my fault. Our fault, but I was the one who lived, so it’s all mine. I was cocky, and going too fast, and I hadn’t used the right protocol. I wanted to be a
firefighter
. I wanted to protect people, and I’d done it wrong and killed someone instead. There are rules for everything, everywhere. Protocol for safety in firefighting, in stocking grocery shelves, even in relationships, for cripe’s sakes. And I’d ignored protocol.”

Softly, she said, “What was his name?”

Hank glanced at her. “Jimmy. His name was Jimmy.”

She didn’t remember a Jimmy in the group of people that had hung around with Hank back then.

“He was a redhead. The one who insisted on riding his skateboard everywhere, even if I offered him a ride.”

“Oh!” She remembered Jimmy. He’d given her a piece of Bazooka bubblegum and they’d laughed together at the comic inside the wrapper. That day in the cafeteria of their junior college felt like it had happened last week. She didn’t recall anything else about him, but she remembered clearly how hard he’d laughed at that silly comic strip. “He gave me gum once.”