“Anything’s more practical than what my flaky artist friend here does,” Charlie explained jovially.
“Hey,” Jane said. “I helped personalize gifts for your last three girlfriends, not that it did you much good.”
Charlie’s smile faded for a moment and he drummed his fingers on the table. “Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he commented. “And there’s no doubt your paintings will easily outlast any of my relationships.”
Jane stacked up the menus and folded her napkin into neat triangles, creasing them mercilessly with one finger. “I hope so,” she said.
“So you’re not an artist?” Charlie asked, looking at Nicole.
Nicole leaned back in her seat. “I majored in business. I just finished my MBA and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.”
“And you’re new in town.”
Five or six men, all big, all loud, burst through the door and headed straight for the bar.
“Yes,” Nicole said, raising her voice over the noise. “I’m going to be Jane’s business manager.”
Charlie exchanged a look with Jane, one eyebrow raised just enough to imply a question.
“Lucky me,” Jane said. “You know I’m lousy at spreadsheets and paperwork. And Nicole’s a great photographer—”
“Hey, Charlie,” one of the new arrivals, a big buzz-cut blond at the bar, shouted. “Get over here. You gotta hear this one.”
The man next to him on the bar stool turned around and locked eyes with Nicole. From a short distance away, his green eyes reminded her of a stormy sea. His dark hair and shoulders as wide as a truck combined with those stormy eyes mesmerized her. The blond buzz-cut guy slapped stormy-sea man on the shoulder.
“Kevin here has a peach of a story.” He paused to laugh. “He took the door off some stupid tourist’s car with the squad this afternoon.”
Nicole felt her face fall, all the warm blood draining away to be replaced by ice water.
“Those double-parking sons of guns,” one of the other guys added.
Charlie laughed and Jane elbowed him in the ribs.
“What?” he said. “I’m joining the cool kids at the bar.” He nodded to Nicole. “Nice meeting you. Jane can give you my number if you’re serious about finding a place.”
“Thank you,” Nicole said coldly. She made brief eye contact with him and then turned back to the group at the bar. So Kevin of the stormy green eyes was the man who welcomed her to Cape Pursuit by slicing off her car’s door?
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Jane said. “I forgot Thursday night was Testosterone Night.”
A waitress appeared at their table, blocking off the bar stool crowd and asking for their drink orders.
“I’m not sure we’re staying,” Jane said, raising a questioning glance to Nicole.
“Sure we’re staying. They have fried everything on the menu, and we’re already here,” Nicole replied, her tone like that of a lion handler assuring the terrified crowd that everything is just fine. “I’ll have wine. Moscato, if you have it.”
“Still having your love affair with Italy?” Jane asked. A smile lit her eyes. She turned to the waitress. “Orange soda for me. I’m the driver for the night.”
“Rub it in that you still have a car,” Nicole said after the waitress left. “After I have that wine, I may just go over there and tell—what was his name? Kevin?—just how much I appreciated the special welcome he gave me this afternoon.”
Jane’s smile disappeared. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? Will he accuse me of being one of those double-parking sons of guns?”
“Kevin didn’t say that. Rick did.”
“Rick of the blond buzz cut?”
“Affectionately known by several unflattering names,” Jane confirmed.
Loud laughter echoed from the bar. It wasn’t much of a mystery what they were all laughing about. Nicole’s cheeks heated. She swallowed. Maybe Jane was right. They should leave.
The waitress placed a wine glass on a paper coaster in front of Nicole. Little bubbles rose from the stem to the top. It smelled like heaven. Fermented heaven.
Maybe they could stay.
The twentysomething server parked a steaming basket of french fries in the middle of the table. “They’ll keep you company while you decide what to order,” she said. “Kitchen’s a little backed up tonight and we hate seeing people go hungry.”
They were definitely staying.
NO MATTER HOW much fun the other guys were having, the accident was a dark cloud over Kevin’s day. He had no choice. He knew that. Kid not breathing, life or death. He couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t hit those teenagers on bikes. And who the heck had asked that red car to park right there in the street and leave the door open?
But still. He felt bad about it. The two-year-old lying on the sofa in the house where a panicked father had flagged them down was, technically, breathing. But he was unconscious due to a febrile seizure. It was the kind of thing Kevin had seen a number of times, but the child’s parents had not. And the terror in their eyes made Kevin wonder if he was ever brave enough to have children of his own.
But everything had worked out. The boy would recover once the hospital got his fever down. The damage to the front bumper of the ambulance was minimal. The department’s insurance agent had chalked it up to one more statistic, one more example of the 10 percent of emergency vehicles involved in scrapes and accidents every year. The chief had talked to him, and the write-up in his employee folder declared it not his fault, unavoidable. No disciplinary action assigned. The chief had even congratulated him on following the department’s mantra: life over property. No exceptions. Ever.
But he was never going to hear the end of it from his fellow public servants who were currently buying him drinks. They weren’t impressed by his life-saving defensive driving. They all did that kind of thing every day. The firefighters and cops leaning on the bar were raising their beers over the gritty details.
“Did the door actually get airborne or was it more of a twist-off?” Rick asked. He punctuated his question by twisting the cap off his beer with his bare hand.
Kevin’s cousin Tony slid a basket of fries down the counter to Kevin. “No air,” he declared. “Saw it all in the side mirror.”
Kevin stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth and hoped desperately for a kitchen fire. A false alarm. Anything to change the subject.
“Kev here had his eyes on the road, so I’m the one you should be asking,” Tony added. “Barely even felt it when the bumper tore off that door and dropped it right in front of the car. Like roadkill. Glass shattered to hell.” He paused and swigged his beer. “Great story for the Wall of Flame. Hope one of the hundreds of tourists who witnessed it got it on video. Maybe they’ll put it on social media.”
Kevin cringed. The Wall of Flame was likely to be misunderstood by normal people. People who were not in the business of responding to accidents, digging through gutted houses for the cause of the fire, and facing some of the truly lousy things that happen to people. Every day. The Wall of Flame was just a bulletin board with an attached shelf. It hung in the bunk room at the station, where they posted newspaper clippings, photographs, thank-you notes and the occasional artifact. It was a daily reminder of what they did, but its goofiness took