Page 20 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

“I don’t do that!” Did she?

“I’m just saying. Be friendly. He’s earned it.”

“Friendly. Right. How are you feeling?”

“A thousand percent better. This is so much more fun than Teen Mom reruns. Call me after, okay?”

Rachel hung up and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked too pale, and not so much friendly as … alarmed. If only she’d gone to a normal high school and had slumber parties and done makeovers and gone to proms. If only she’d casually dated, fallen in love, gotten her heart broken, all the usual teenage rites of passage. But she’d done none of those things. She’d alternated between pricey, private Everwood School for Girls and home tutoring. In college, for the first time, she’d made real friends, not fake whose-family-has-more-money friends. But she still hadn’t gotten the hang of casually dating. Face it, doing anything casually was pretty impossible for her.

But none of that meant she couldn’t give a nice, cute fireman a tour without looking like Wednesday Addams. She pinched her cheeks, trying to give them some color.

“Ow.” That hurt. But it did make two distinct dots of pink appear on each side of her face. She rubbed at them, trying to make the color spread. Would a slap in the face work better, give more of an all-over flush? Then again, it might be hard to look friendly if her cheeks were in pain.

She poked at her hair one more time, then made a face at the mirror. Who do you think you are, Scarlett O’Hara? With a roll of her eyes, she abandoned her reflection and went back to the foyer.

As it turned out, her ridiculous efforts paid off. She experienced the thrill of seeing Fred’s eyes widen and an appreciative grin spread across his face. “Your hair looks pretty like that,” he said. Such a simple compliment, and yet it kindled a trickle of warmth in her heart. Maybe because he said it so sincerely. He obviously meant it. Compliments usually made her suspicious, especially when they came from men back home trying to suck up to her father.

But Fred had no idea she had anything to do with America’s third wealthiest man.

“Thanks,” she said, then stuffed her purse behind her desk. It was safe here. Everyone who worked at the Refuge had been extensively vetted by her father’s security team.

She led the way onto the gracious grounds of her favorite spot on earth. She’d worked so hard to create the Refuge for Injured Wildlife. No one knew how hard, and she couldn’t tell Fred without revealing her true identity. She wasn’t ready for that. “Is Stan pretty well behaved around other animals?”

“If you have any rescued squirrels, I’d tell them to hide,” he said lightly. “And your sheep will be herded so fast they won’t know what hit them. On the other hand, if anyone’s trapped, he’ll let you know. He used to be a rescue dog.”

She led the way down the main path that wound through the grounds. “I’ve thought about training my border collie to be a rescue dog. She has an amazing prey drive.”

“Stan has an amazing sleep drive, but I’m sure he used to be great. Right, Stan?”

The beagle gave Fred a world-weary sort of look. Rachel smiled to herself. Whether he intended to or not, Stan was telling her a lot about her visitor. All good, so far.

“What would you like to see first? Do you like birds? Camelids? Foxes? Goats? Someone just brought in a wounded short-eared owl.”

“Do you take in every sort of animal?”

“Yes,” she said proudly. “At least temporarily, until we can figure out the best place for them. We don’t turn any animal away. We only have a small staff, about six people, plus security, but we manage to do a lot.”

“I’ve got this bruised nose,” Fred mused, running his hand across it. “Is there a space for me?”

Again, she laughed. Fred had a way of drawing the laughter from her. “I hope the other guy looks worse.”

“Nope. The other guy looks pretty good.” He cast her a sidelong glance that made her face heat.

“Well,” she said tartly. “If it’s any comfort, no one watching me walk home that night thought I looked good. I had blood speckles everywhere. People probably thought I had chicken pox.”

He stopped, turning her to face him. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask how you got home. I was worried but didn’t know how to find you.”

“I was fine.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Honestly, after being penned up in that limo, it felt good to walk for a while. I went home and then to the hospital.”

“You know, I’ve been at a lot of accident scenes, and I’ve seen some strange things.”

Rachel dreaded what was coming next. People often thought she was odd. It came from spending too much time with animals and a taciturn security guard. “Let me guess. I take the cake?”

“Well, it’s true that I’ve never been punched in the nose during a rescue before. But that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say you’re one of the toughest accident survivors I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh.” The way he was looking at her, so closely, his dark eyes taking in everything about her, made her feel very exposed. “Really?”

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