didn’t want to flirt. He could understand that on one level, but he felt instinctively that it went beyond being on duty or in charge. She’d hightailed it out of there, if such an elegant woman could be said to move so hastily, yet they’d just experienced chemistry with a capital C. Chemistry that couldn’t be denied. Chemistry that Luke wanted to explore.
“You ready?” he asked Zach. Without waiting for Zach’s grunt of agreement, Luke stood, then started picking up coats, gloves, and his helmet. As the men headed toward the exit, they passed Patricia’s table. Luke dropped one glove, kicking it mid-stride to land precisely under a chair. Her chair.
Zach noticed. “You gonna get that now or later?”
“Neither,” Luke said under his breath. When they reached the door, he bent to scoop up Zach’s helmet. They stepped outside, into the blinding Texas sun.
Luke handed Zach his coat and helmet. “I’m gonna let her bring that glove to me when she’s ready.”
“You never leave your equipment behind, rookie.”
“True enough.” Luke wasn’t going to argue that point. He was a rookie for the fire department, but he was a twenty-eight-year-old man who’d been running a cattle ranch for seven years. No cowboy worked without gloves, so he’d known to bring more than one pair. He could leave that one for Patricia to find. To find, and to decide what to do with.
Zach smacked dirt and grit off the polished black surface of his helmet. “For future reference, rookie, throwing a helmet on asphalt scratches it all to hell.”
“Battle scars, Zach. We’ve all got ’em.”
Luke didn’t mind his engine’s tradition of calling the newest member “rookie” for the first few months of service, but Zach was laying it on a bit thick, considering they’d gone to school together. They’d played football, suffered through reading Melville and handfed goats in 4-H together.
Zach shook his head. “You may have a way with the fillies on your ranch, but that woman isn’t a skittish horse. She runs this whole place, whether it’s official or not. I worked with her last summer after those twisters in Oklahoma. If you think she just needs patience and a soft touch and then she’ll follow you around like a pet, you’re wrong.”
“We’ll see.” Both men started walking toward their fire engine, taking wide strides out of necessity in their bulky turnout pants and rubber boots.
“You’re too cocky, Waterson. Go ahead and ignore my advice. It’ll be good for you when she shuts you down before you even make it to first base.”
“First base? A kiss? High school was a long time ago, Zach.”
“You won’t get that much, I promise you. You aren’t her type.”
Luke remembered that moment of impact. Chemistry with a capital C, all right. He smiled.
Zach shook his head. “I know that smile. Tell you what. You manage to kiss that woman, and I won’t make you repaint my helmet.”
Luke’s smile dimmed. On the surface, Zach’s casual dare seemed harmless enough. They’d been through plenty of dares before. You buy the beer if I can sweet talk that waitress onto the dance floor while she’s still on the clock. But this was different. Somehow.
“You’re forgetting two things,” Luke said. “One, my mama raised me better than to kiss a girl for a dare. Two, my daddy raised me that if I broke it, I had to fix it. I’ll paint your damned helmet when we get back to Austin.”
“Two more things,” Zach said, laying a heavy hand on Luke’s shoulder. “One, thanks for getting me out of the sun when I was too dazed to do it myself. Forget about the helmet. I owe you more than that.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Zach let go of his shoulder after a hard squeeze. “And two, that was my glove you left behind, Romeo. If your filly shies away from you, you’re gonna have to go back and get it. Today.”
Darkness came, and Luke was glad that a strong breeze from the ocean came with it. Cutting vehicles loose from downed trees had been grueling in the motionless air the storm had left behind. When the order came to stand down, Luke was glad for that, too. He considered himself to be in good shape, working on the ranch day in and day out, but wielding an ax for hour after hour had been back-breaking, plain and simple.
The one thing he would have been most glad of, however, never came. Patricia never appeared, not in a flustered way, not in a collected way, not in any way. Whatever the beautiful personnel director was up to, she wasn’t up to it in his part of the relief center. But since impatient Zach wanted his damned glove back, Luke was going to have to go and get it.
Determined to make the best of it, Luke had hit the portable showers when the fire crew had their allotted time. He’d dug a clean T-shirt out of his gym bag and run a comb through his hair while it was still damp. Shaving was conveniently required of the firemen, since beards could interfere with the way a respirator mask sealed to the face. He’d been able to shave without drawing any attention to himself.
All he had to do was tell the guys to head off for chow without him, and then he could take a convenient detour that would lead him past Patricia’s tent on his way to supper in the mess tent. He’d listen for her voice, and if she was in, he’d go in to retrieve his glove. Damn, but he was looking forward to seeing her again.
He was so intent on reaching her tent that he nearly missed her voice when he heard it in a place he hadn’t expected. He stopped short outside the door marked “pharmacy,” a proper door with a lock, set into a wooden frame that was sealed to an inflatable tent, similar to the kind he knew were used for surgeries and such.
“The rules exist for a reason.” Smooth but unyielding, that was Patricia’s voice.
“I thought we were here to help these people,” another female voice answered, but this voice sounded more shrill and impatient. “These people have lost their houses. They’ve lost everything. If I can give them some free medicine, why shouldn’t I? When I went to Haiti, we gave everyone months’ worth of the drugs they needed.”
There was a beat of silence, then Patricia’s tone changed subtly to one of almost motherly concern. “It might help if you keep in mind that this isn’t Haiti. Half of the homes in this town were vacant vacation homes, second homes for people who can well afford their own medicine. You don’t need to give them a month’s worth, just a few days until the town’s regular pharmacies re-open.”
“Then I don’t see what the big deal is.” The other woman, in response to Patricia’s gentle concern, sounded like a pouting teenager. “Nitroglycerin is cheap, anyway.”
“It’s not the cost, it’s the scarcity. I had to send someone almost all the way to Victoria to get more. He was gone for nearly four hours. He used gallons of gasoline that can’t be replaced because the pumps aren’t running yet because the electricity isn’t running yet.”
Luke nearly grinned when he heard that steel slip back into Patricia’s voice. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head back to look up at the stars. She was right about the electricity being out, of course. When an entire town’s streetlights were doused,
