Chapter 10
She was doing this on purpose, Mason decided as he flipped on flashing emergency lights and headed for town. Winding him up in knots for the fun of it.
“I’m very sorry for teasing you,” she said after a few minutes of silence.
“You’re not one bit sorry.” She was fun to be around. That much was for certain.
Her low snort of laughter confirmed her lack of contrition. “I’m a little bit sorry.”
He glanced at her, struck again by how naturally beautiful she was. “No, you’re not.”
“I am!”
“So this was a date, then?” He cringed to himself at how stupid he sounded. That he’d even had to ask.
“Sure, we can call it that if you’d like.”
“I can do better than a walk on the beach in the dark.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Let me check my schedule.” She pulled out her phone and pretended to peruse her calendar. “It appears I’m free.”
“Good,” he said, amused by her even when he should be annoyed by the way she was yanking his chain. “I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
“Where’re we going?”
“You’ll find out.”
“What do I wear?”
“Whatever you want.”
“That’s not enough information.”
“That’s all you’re getting.” He’d never sparred with a woman this way, especially one he wanted the way he wanted her.
And yes, he wanted her, even if his better judgment was still urging caution.
He’d heard all the reasons his better judgment had come up with for playing it cool with her.
And then, within thirty seconds in her presence, his better judgment had been thoroughly overruled.
He’d have to be dead not to want her, especially after the way she’d tried to kiss him when he was saving her life.
Speaking of that… No, he wasn’t going to play that card. Not yet.
In town, they arrived at the scene of the crash, where numerous other public safety vehicles had already converged. “I’ll try to be quick.” He parked his SUV off to the side so it wouldn’t get hit while Jordan waited for him.
“Take your time. I hope everyone is all right.”
“Me, too.” If they were, he could get back to her that much sooner.
He stepped out of the SUV and crossed the street toward the island’s one rotary, the scene of many a crash over the years.
He and Blaine had tried for a while now to get the town to consider putting a light at the intersection, but so far, they’d been unsuccessful in making that happen.
The islanders liked their rotary and didn’t want any stoplights on their unspoiled island. So the crashes continued.
“What’ve we got?” he asked Blaine, who was also in street clothes.
“Oh, hey, sorry you got called in. I could’ve handled it.
” They did that for each other often—one covered so the other didn’t have to.
“Three injured, one seriously. I called the chopper for him.” He gestured to where Mallory and another paramedic nicknamed Boner were doing CPR on a man in the street.
“I called David to let him know we’re bringing in two others. ”
“Tourists or local?” He didn’t recognize the cars.
“Tourists hit a local.”
“Fucking rotary.”
“You said it.”
They went their separate ways to supervise their subordinates. Blaine saw to traffic control while Mason ducked his head into the back of the ambulance where Shorty, one of the firefighter-paramedics, was with a woman who appeared to be about fifty. “What’ve you got?”
“Head lac and possible fractured wrist,” Shorty said.
“Is Jeff all right?” the woman asked. “No one will tell me.”
“Is Jeff your husband, ma’am?”
“No, my boyfriend. He was driving, and I can’t get anyone to tell me what’s wrong with him.”
“I’ll check on him.” Mason went to talk to Mallory.
“He suffered a cardiac event.” She was breathing hard from the exertion of performing CPR. “We’re not sure if it was before or after the accident, but we’ve been working on him for ten minutes already. No heartbeat yet.”
“Crap.”
The roar of the approaching helicopter drowned out everything else as everyone took cover while it landed in the middle of the normally busy street.
His personnel loaded the patient onto a gurney, hustled to the chopper and turned him over to the paramedics on board.
They’d have him at a level-one trauma unit in Providence within minutes.
As the chopper took off again, Mason made his way over to the ambulance. “Ma’am, your friend has suffered a cardiac event and is being transported to the mainland.”
“Oh God. Oh no. Jeff.”
“Please try to stay calm, Carol,” Shorty said in a soothing tone. “He’s in the best possible hands.”
The woman broke down into tears as she nodded to acknowledge what Shorty had said.
“Where’s our other casualty?” Mason asked.
“Still in the car.”
Mason went to look in on the young woman, who’d been given an ice pack to hold against a bump on her head. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay. Just bumped my head.”
“I’d like to get you to the clinic to be sure it’s just a bump. Is that all right?”
She nodded. “My mom is coming. She’ll be here in a minute. That other car, it just cut me off, and there was nowhere to go. I don’t know what happened.”
“We think he might’ve suffered a possible heart attack.”
“Oh, well, that explains why he was in my lane.”
Mason waited with her until her hysterical mother appeared on the scene to take her daughter to the clinic.
“Write it all up and get me a report by the morning,” Mason said to Carl, his other lieutenant.
“Yes, sir.”
“Call if you need me.”
“Will do.”
With everything under control, for the moment, anyway, Mason returned to his own vehicle. The alluring scent of his passenger was the first thing he noticed after he closed the door.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
“Two are. The guy in the helicopter isn’t so good.”
“Is he going to die?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you deal with this stuff every day? I’d be a mess.”
“Believe it or not, you get used to it and become a little numb to it after a while. That doesn’t make you less compassionate for people in crisis, but you don’t take them all home with you the way you do at first.”
“I suppose you’d have to become a little numb to it or go mad.”
“Some people don’t last in public safety because they can’t deal with the stuff they see. I never blame anyone who can’t handle the job. It’s not for everyone.”
“How’d you end up the fire chief on Gansett Island?”
Mason pulled into traffic, following the direction of the officer who was guiding vehicles around the accident scene.
He took a right turn that would eventually lead them back to Eastward Look, but he took the long way around the island so he could have more time with her.
“I went to college for criminal justice, planning to be a cop. I applied all over but didn’t get picked up, so I started applying for fire department jobs and was hired in Worcester before I finished college.
I spent nine years there, working my way up to lieutenant.
When I heard about this job, I applied thinking I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting it—and at first, I didn’t. ”
“What do you mean?”
“They hired someone else, who couldn’t handle the winters or the isolation. He lasted four months. The mayor called to ask if I was still interested. I’ve been here four years this December, and I love it.”
“Isn’t it boring after working in a big city?”
“It can be, but I was never going to be chief in Worcester. I would’ve been lucky to make captain there.”
“And you wanted to be chief?”
“It’s nice to be the boss,” he said, winking at her.
He loved her smile, would do anything to make it happen, especially when it was directed at him. “I see how it is.”
“Then again, sometimes being the boss sucks, such as when you’re doing something fun and you get called into work, which happens far more often than I’d like.”
“So you have a lot of fun, then?”
He looked over at her, wishing he could see more of her face. “Not this kind of fun.”
“What kind of fun is this?”
“The best kind.”
“Is it?”
“Uh-huh. At least it is for me.”
“It is for me, too. The most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
Her revealing statement filled him with an unreasonable amount of hope. The many reasons why he shouldn’t be letting himself become enthralled by a woman who was still married to someone else failed to matter in the face of all that hope. “Are you in a rush to get home?”
“Not really. Why?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
“Where have I heard that line before?”
Mason laughed. “No, I really want to show you something. Trust me?”
“Since you saved my life, I suppose the least I can do is trust you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
He grinned like a loon, thankful for the darkness that made it impossible for her to see how delightful he found her, how refreshing and special.
When they reached the access road that led to his favorite place on the island, he took a left turn and navigated the bumpy dirt road that wound through a dark thicket of trees.
“And then they found her body two weeks later.”
Laughing, he said, “Your imagination is creative.”
“This is how every episode of Dateline begins. A woman goes for a ride with the burly fireman, and only one of them comes back.”
“You think the fireman is burly?”
“Duh. Like you don’t know you are.”
“I’ve been called a lot of things. Burly ain’t one of them.”
“What else have you been called?”
“Stretch was my nickname growing up. My grandfather called me that. My brother calls me Roid from the days when I lifted competitively, and PS, I never once took anything other than vitamins.”
“Your brother is funny, and hello, you lifted competitively?”
“For a couple of years, until life kicked in and I had to get a real job—you know, the kind that paid actual money.”
“I know what that’s like. That’s how I became a model.”
“You were a model?”
“For years.”
“What kind of model?”
“Mostly underwear. I did pretty well because my look is nontraditional, or so they used to say.”
“I bet you were in hot demand.”