Page 77 of The Fire Captain's Unexpected Baby
Prologue
Zachary
Three Years Ago
“Another?” the bartender asks.
I look at the dregs left in the glass. “Not yet. Pacing myself.”
The bar is packed, the liquor strong, the music and chatter loud enough to drown out my thoughts for a while. I hate New York. I liked it as a kid, when my father would bring me with him to the office and show me off like a circus monkey, then take me for shakes at Serendipity after, or let me choose whatever toy I wanted from FAO Schwarz.
Funny, that I’m here to sign off on his successor, tying a bow on the life he led before he’s even cold in the ground. Funnier still that he gave instructions to have the funeral at the ranch in Arizona, when my mother will just sell it once enough time has passed. She can’t stand that place.
“Whiskey sour!” a voice calls over my shoulder, a hand stretching out with a twenty-dollar bill.
I clock the pretty braided bracelet on a slender wrist, and the little tattoo of a dove just below it. But it’s the numberembellished on a flat, blue glass bead that holds my attention: 59. The number of my station. And the initials on the next bead over,MDT.Mark Dale Turner.
My dead friend.
“I could dance around naked and still wouldn’t get served before midnight,” the same voice mutters. Familiar, but one I haven’t heard in a long time. Seven years, give or take.
I turn, and there she is: a piece of Crown Hill transplanted into this busy dive bar down a back alley in the West Village. A decade older than the college girl who once answered the door in the tiniest shorts I’ve ever seen, who mostly made herself scarce after that whenever I’d pick her brother Mark up to head to the Academy or out to the bar. Unlike me, however, the years have beenverygenerous to her; time has practically stood still.
Her black hair is held up in a clip, her glasses are designer, framing eyes the color of those blue beads on her wrist. Eyes that I remember all too well, widening at the sight of me on her porch, though her glasses weren’t as expensive then. She’s wearing trousers that cinch her waist and a floaty shirt rolled up to the elbows, the collar open enough to reveal the curve of full breasts, a gold necklace practically inviting my gaze down.
I called your house after the funeral, but you were already gone,I want to say, but it seems too much, too soon, when I haven’t seen Summer Turner in about seven years.
I remember her mom telling me she’d gone back to college. I guess she never went back home.
“Summer?” Her name seems like a safe bet.
She flinches as if I’ve struck her, her blue eyes widening once again as she takes a long, hard look at me. “Zachary Murphy?”
There’s a breathiness in her voice, like she can’t quite believe it.
I turn to the barman. “Two whiskey sours, thanks.”
“I… uh… was just about to do that,” she mumbles, as someone tries to muscle past her.
I grab her by the arm and pull her closer, sliding out of my seat at the bar so she can have it. She stares at my hand on her arm, then her gaze lifts to mine, a thousand emotions playing out on her beautiful face, her mouth opening and closing without a single sound coming out.
She was always the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, though I wouldn’t have told Mark that; he’d have kicked my ass if I’d said anything close to that about his sister.
She stillisthe most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“You’re… here,” she says, at last.
I nod. “Temporarily.”
“How come? The FDNY need some extra hands on deck?” She laughs awkwardly, the amusement not quite reaching her eyes. I imagine it’s a hard topic for her to joke about.
“My father died,” I say with a shrug. “I had to sign some things in person at the New York office. And I had to check something before I head back to Crown Hill.”
Her throat bobs, and she looks toward the bar in desperation, like she needs that whiskey sour pronto. “You’re still… there, then?”
“I am.”
“Well, that’s… um… good for you.” She pauses. “And you’re still married? You have a kid, right?”
