Sabina could barely believe her own ears, but there it was. And there was Carly, her hot chocolate halfway to her mouth, which had dropped open in complete astonishment. Luke gave Carly a high five, which missed its mark and hit her shoulder, spilling a bit of hot chocolate.
What had she just done? After years and years of living solo, she was about to share her home with not only a difficult movie star, but a moody thirteen-year-old. Why, why, when all she wanted to do was fight fires and be left in peace?
But maybe that wasn’t all she wanted. The warm, arrested look in Roman’s eyes made up for a lot.
Anyway, she couldn’t back out now, not with Carly exchanging behind-the-back low fives with Luke. “We’ll have to talk with your mother first,” she reminded the girl. “And it’s just temporary.”
“I know.” Mention of her mother brought the mini-celebration to a crashing halt. “Can you come with me to talk to her? If you’re there it’ll go better.”
“Of course.”
In the end they all went. Roman wanted to see for himself what Carly was dealing with, and he didn’t want Luke to leave his side.
In a tiny Fern Acres apartment, with bars on the windows and broken lawn chairs out front, they found Carly’s mother, Amarinda, just emerging from a three-day binge. Empty rum bottles littered the filthy carpet, along with old copies of Travel magazine.
“She likes to plan trips when she’s drinking,” explained Carly, her face dusky red from mortification. “And she cries a lot. A lot.”
Amarinda squinted at her daughter. “How was school, baby?”
“I haven’t been at school. I went to prison.”
“Que?” She slipped into Spanish.
Sabina interrupted before things got ugly and explained what Carly and Luke had done, and why. Luke, nudged by Roman, stepped forward and introduced himself, then offered a grudging apology.
“Sorry for what we did. But you shouldn’t let that man near Carly.”
“Hell, boy, I wasn’t even conscious. Save your sorry for someone who deserves it.” Amarinda swiped her hand across her streaming eyes.
“Mami, don’t start crying,” groaned Carly.
She sobbed. “I let you down, baby.”
Carly rolled her eyes.
Roman, who’d stayed in the background, stepped forward with the commanding manner Sabina knew so well. “Ms. Epps, I’m Battalion Chief Roman from Fire Station 1. We need to talk about your daughter’s future.”
“A chief? Am I in trouble?”
Roman flicked a glance at Sabina, who shrugged. If Carly’s mother was going to accept a fire chief’s authority, why not go with it? “I think we can work things out, as long as we keep Carly’s best interests as our top priority.”
“Sure, mister. I mean Chief.”
And so they made a deal. Amarinda promised to spend two weeks in rehab and gave Carly permission to stay with Sabina until she got out. She also vowed to never let the aspiring pimp in the house again.
After packing up some of Carly’s clothes and her baseball gear, they drove Amarinda to a detox unit at Good Samaritan. Roman told her not to worry about the money; she didn’t argue because he said it in such an authoritative way. Privately, he told Sabina he’d figure something out.
Next, Roman drove everyone to Sabina’s house. Annabelle had gone out, which gave Sabina a chance to get Carly settled in before breaking the news to her mother. Luke and Roman made lunch while Sabina got Carly set up in her bedroom.
When they all finally sat down at her tiny kitchen table, Sabina could barely believe her eyes. “This is what you whip up for lunch?”
A savory, tenderly steaming casserole sat on the table. They all inhaled the mouthwatering scent.
“Mushroom risotto. More or less.” He shrugged. “I did what I could with what you had in the kitchen. Not a lot you can do with instant rice and ramen noodle soup.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m an invalid. My cooking efforts are on hiatus.” She winked and brushed her good leg against his thigh. He responded right away, hooking his leg under hers to draw it closer. Warmth spread all the way to her core. It felt so intimate, sitting in her kitchen with two runaway kids and a lionhearted fireman. It felt like a dream, as if everything that had happened since she’d left the Green Elephant was part of some kind of fantasy.
“Whatever you need me to do while I’m here, you just tell me,” Carly promised fervently. “I like doing laundry. I’m good at folding. I do all the cooking at my house. Not as good as Chief Roman though.”
“There’s one problem with Roman’s cooking,” Sabina said. “He doesn’t live here.” His strong thigh moved against hers, radiating heat. “I suppose we could invite him over to cook for us now and then.”
That suggestion made Carly and Luke clap their hands in delight. Roman cast a severe look at his son.
“Luke and I are going to need some family time for a little while,” he said. “We still have a few things to settle. I’m not sure losing the computer for a week is a strong enough consequence when I think of how many things could have gone wrong with that cockeyed plan.”
Luke held his tongue with a visibly painful effort. Soon afterward, Roman pushed back his chair and gestured for Luke to follow. Sabina swallowed hard as she rose to her feet to see them out. After spending every second of the past twenty hours with Roman, it felt strange, wrong, to separate.
Outside, Luke ran ahead to the Jeep while Roman lagged behind. “Give us a minute, Lukey, all right?”
“Sure, Papa.”
Roman pulled Sabina around the side of her porch, behind a camellia bush that gave them some privacy. The fresh scent from its early morning watering rose around them. He turned his body so she was shielded from the street and examined her closely, until she thought she might faint under his intent gaze. “Are you sure about what you’re doing here? With Carly?”
Sabina fought back her disappointment. She’d thought he was going to say something about their night together, and those amazing words, “I love you.” She was starting to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing. “She needs a place to stay.”
“And it’s generous of you to step up. But the more I think about it . . .”
“What?”
“Well, that night I came over and made an ass out of myself with that movie script.”
“I remember.”
He made a little face. “It seemed you and your mother were getting along pretty well. Mostly.”
“She’s been okay.”
“Seems like an opportunity.”
She poked her crutch at a brown-edged camellia rotting on the ground. “To what? Bicker? Relive our sorry past? Disrespect each other’s careers?”
“Sabina. She’s here, isn’t she? Give her a chance. Don’t use Carly as a distraction.”
Sabina felt her nostrils flare. “You don’t know anything about me and Annabelle.”
He pulled back, just a little, but she caught it. “I know enough.”
“Then you should know to stay out of it.”
He held up his hands to show his innocence. “I’m not getting into it. I was just suggesting . . .”
“Well, don’t suggest.”
“Dio, you’re stubborn. Are you going to shut her out your whole life?”
She tore her arm away from his grasp. “I said, keep out of it.”
He took a big step back, then another. From a distance of about four feet, he stared at her with the intensity of a blowtorch.
“Is that what you do? Shove people away and keep them there?”
The shock of that accusation rippled up her spine. “How dare you?”
“How dare I?” He wheeled around, stalked away a few feet, then spun around to face her again. “This is how. Last night, I told you how I felt. You looked right in my eyes and didn’t say a word in return. And before, you said it was just one fun night. I didn’t believe you meant it, but . . . I get it. Now I get it.”
Wordless, she stared back at him. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, then forced out a crooked grimace of a smile.
“I get it,” he repeated in a low voice.
By the time she snapped out of it, he’d made it all the way across her front yard to his Jeep.
“Roman,” she croaked, but he was already inserting himself into the car, turning the key in the ignition.
Disappearing down the street.
“Sabina?” Carly called from the front door. “Can I take a shower?”
“Sure.” She slowly stumped her way inside the house, thoughts crowding her mind like a swarm of voracious gnats. Annabelle . . . Roman . . . I love you . . . fear . . . joy . . . confusion . . . that crystal moment . . . what was it again? . . . fear . . . need . . . Roman.
“Papa.” Luke poked Roman in the ribs as they drove away from Sabina’s house. “You’re such a dork.”
“Huh?” Roman scowled at his son, who was looking pretty cheeky for someone facing an unknown punishment.
“You didn’t even kiss her good-bye.”
Roman nearly drove off the road. Of course he hadn’t kissed Sabina good-bye. They’d . . . well . . . had a fight. “Why would I do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you? You like her, don’t you?”
“None of your business.”
Luke snorted. “And you want her to like you. I don’t know why she would, though, the way you keep frowning at her and yelling at her.”
Roman took a turn that put them heading directly into the sun. He grabbed his shades from the visor and slid them on. That little extra bit of protection gave him the guts to continue with the conversation. “Sabina and me . . . well, don’t worry about it.”
Luke put his hand out the window to play with the onrushing wind, a move that always made Roman nervous. He gritted his teeth and suppressed the impulse to make him stop.
“Did you break up with her?”
“There’s nothing to break up.”
“Yeah, right. You’re different with her, Papa. I can tell.”
Roman suppressed a sigh. Kids always picked up much more than you realized.
“Doesn’t matter. It takes two, son.”
“Carly says Sabina’s in love with you. That she’s never seen her act like that with anyone.”
Roman tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Right now, after what had just happened, he didn’t need to hear that. “Can we change the subject?”
“Why? Why can’t we talk about Sabina?”
“Because I don’t want to.” He ground his teeth together.
“Well, geez, Papa, that’s a big surprise. You never want to talk about anything.” And he subsided into his own thoughts.
Roman silently cursed a blue streak the rest of the way home. Damn his sleepless night, the stress of two days of anxiety, the mouth that said all the wrong things—too much to Sabina, too little to Luke.
When they pulled into the driveway, the sight of their squat little bungalow swept Roman back to the state of mind in which he’d left the night before—the stark terror of no Luke. That horrifying black pit opened under his feet again.
What was worse, losing Luke or talking to Luke? Maybe it was time for another little vent hole.
“Okay, Lukey, you asked for it. I love Sabina, even though it tears me up inside because of your mother. I told her I love her, but she didn’t have much to say about that. And just now I said something she didn’t like too much. So that leaves us pretty much nowhere.”
He stared ahead at the little garage, at the fence that separated the front yard from the back, the glossy-leaved orange tree studded with exuberant fruit. A sick feeling grabbed his throat in a suffocating grip. He’d said too much. Luke couldn’t handle all that. He braced himself for an explosion: What about my mom? Did you forget about her? How come you get to find someone new while she’s dead?
Instead, he felt his son’s hand clap onto his shoulder.
“You’ll work it out, Papa,” said Luke confidently. “You just have to hang in there. Sabina loves you back. Carly said so and she knows all kinds of girl stuff like that.”
Whaaat?
The slam of the car door penetrated his shocked trance. He watched his son lope across the lawn toward the front door. Of all the ways he’d imagine his son reacting, man-to-man advice hadn’t come up. Maybe his son had grown up more than he’d realized.
“Hang on a second there, buddy,” he called, jumping out of the car and striding after him. “We still have a consequence to discuss.”
Luke sat down on the front stoop and propped his chin on his folded hands. Roman settled opposite him. Eye level; that was different. He was used to looming over his son.
“Maybe I am a little overprotective. I couldn’t help it after your mom and . . .” Spit it out, bozo. “The attacks.”
Luke fixed wide eyes on him, as if Roman was the oracle or something, when he was only a tongue-tied man trying to spit a few words out. Roman scratched at the back of his neck.
“I can’t let anything happen to you,” he said flatly. “The worst punishment I could think of would be for you to feel, even for one second, what it was like to get that e-mail and find your room empty. Nothing I lay down can even come close.”
Luke went so pale his freckles glowed. “I’m sorry, Papa. But . . .” He chewed on his lip.
“I hear you. I do. You’re getting older. You want me to give you some slack.”
Even though it killed him to say those words, the hope dawning in his son’s eager brown eyes made it worth it. “Yeah. I’m pretty smart, Papa. I didn’t want you to worry too much. That’s why I sent the e-mail. And I didn’t want to lie. I could have just said I was spending the night at Ralphie’s.”
“I’m glad you didn’t lie, but that doesn’t absolve you of the rest of it.”
“I know, I know. I said I was sorry. Like a million times. But Papa . . .”
“No buts.”
“But . . .”
“That’s a but.”
“I know, I know, but . . . I mean, nevertheless . . . Arrgh!” Luke threw back his head in frustration and yelled. “I just wanted to help her. I couldn’t just do nothing, or let her go off by herself. Would you? No way.”
“Are you blaming this on me?”
“Papa! You’re twisting it. I always try to think what you would do. You’re my hero! I guess . . .” He buried his face in his arms. “I guess I just got it wrong this time.”
“Aw, son.” Roman put a hand on his son’s shoulder. All his worries, and his son’s problem was an overactive need to protect. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. “You could have done worse. You both came back safe. But next time, come to me first. That’s what I’m here for.”
“No, but . . . Carly doesn’t know you the way I do. She didn’t want me to say anything to you. She’s actually kind of scared of you. Or she was.”
“Well, I am terrifying. Especially when I’m telling you no Internet, Wii, or any video games for two weeks. That includes the time we’re in New York.”
“Two weeks?”
“After the two weeks, we’ll talk about lightening up on some of the rules.”
“Really?” The eager look on Luke’s face made Roman cringe. Had he been that strict?
“Yes. But you have to talk to me, not go off and do crazy things like this.”
Luke nodded. Even his freckles looked serious. “I will.”
“And before we leave for Christmas, you have to clean up your room. That gives you two days.”
“Clean up my room? What does my room have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with the fact that Sabina nearly ate it with her crutches when we checked your computer.”
Luke gulped. “Sabina came into my room?” Roman could practically see the wheels spinning, Luke trying to remember all the potentially embarrassing things he’d left strewn about the room.
“Got a problem with that?”
“No,” he said in a small voice. “Can we go inside now?”
“Sure. I love you, son.”
“Yeah. I better get to work. It’s gonna take me the entire two days to clean my room.”
Luke dug out his keys and trudged inside the house. Roman headed to the Jeep to grab his bag. Truth to tell, he was proud of his son. Luke had gone about it wrong, but his intentions were good. He’d been trying to protect Carly. He was a Roman through and through.
No, scratch that. He was fifty percent an O’Keefe, which meant double the trouble. Maureen had possessed the gene too, the one that compelled you to throw yourself in front of a moving car to save a pedestrian, or into a dying building to save the panicked office workers inside. Maureen would be proud of Luke too. He was a good kid.
Our son thinks I’m a hero, Maureen, he thought. Even though I couldn’t save you.
In his mind’s eye, he imagined Maureen laughing. I held my own, big guy, all the way to the end. You worry about saving your own ass.
Saving his own ass? What did she mean by that?