Page 287 of Her Reluctant Hero
She shifted in the chair and studied her hands. “I hardly expected you to jump up and down, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“No, I—look. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.” He glanced at the door as if half- expecting to see Peyton walk back in.
Jen didn’t miss it, but she didn’t comment. “That’s very adult of you,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m all grown up now.” He was rewarded by her laugh, dragged a hand over his face and grimaced at the growth of stubble. He had to say it, had to put it in the past or he couldn’t move forward, couldn’t go after Peyton. “You’ll be a great mom.” The hell of it was, he meant it. Jen would give motherhood the focus she’d given her job. And she and Doug loved each other. Their children would grow up understanding that. But now, when he pictured his own children, their mother was Peyton. God. Another jab to the heart.
“Cut it out, Gabe.” Jen pressed her fingers to her eyes. “You’ll make me cry.”
Gabe glanced at Doug in alarm. “You don’t cry.”
“Hormones,” Doug said with a casual wave of his hand. “You can’t talk to her anymore.” Gabe relaxed marginally. “As long as it wasn’t me being nice.”
She snuffled a watery laugh. “Trust me, that’s more shocking than anything. Listen, I’ve decided to finish out this season, but they’re going to need another good man in management. If she doesn’t like you being on the fire line, maybe that’s something to consider. I’d be happy to recommend you.”
He waited for the resentment. Still trying to change him. But it didn’t come. Hell, he even considered it—for about a second. It might be nice to have some control and not run up a damn mountain. He was getting old for this.
She stood and bent to kiss his cheek. He closed his eyes to brace himself against the onslaught of emotions but instead felt—warmth. Just warmth and affection toward the woman who had ripped his heart out. He opened his eyes to meet Doug’s. Doug nodded his acknowledgement of the change in Gabe and slipped his hand around Jen’s elbow to lead her outside.
Jen paused at the door. “Don’t let her walk away, Gabe. Not if you love her.”
No, he wouldn’t let her, he decided, as the nurse worked to repair the damage he’d done with the IV. He’d made that mistake once.
A knock sounded at the door not long after Jen and Doug left. An older man who looked more tired than Gabe felt stepped inside. “I’m Agent Devlin, FBI. Are you up to talking to me about Kim and Kevin O’Doul?”
What the hell kind of invalid did the man think he was? Gabe sat higher in the bed, wishing he’d had the foresight to move to the chair. He didn’t want to project any kind of weakness. Bad enough he’d had an arsonist on his crew and hadn’t suspected.
“I don’t know what I can tell you.”
Agent Devlin stopped beside his bed, consulted one of those flip notebooks. “According to your crew, Kim was closest to you.”
Gabe shifted. “She hung around a lot. I wasn’t her confidant, or anything.”
Devlin nodded. “It can happen. But maybe she said something to you to help us locate her and her brother. We’ve tracked down every member of her family, no one has seen her, no one will tell us where she might have gone.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” he said again. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it. The woman had nearly killed Peyton, after all.
“Try.”
Gabe sighed and rubbed his forehead. “She’s from back east. Her parents didn’t want her to do this job, thought it wasn’t feminine.” Huh. Almost sounded familiar.
And shit. That was what it was. That was what had bugged him about her burn story. She’d said she was cooking with her mother. She didn’t even like her mother.
Goddamn, he was an idiot. Why hadn’t he been more suspicious? Bev would be alive.
“Why did she join anyway?”
“I’m not sure. I think she washed out of college. She’d wanted to be a zoologist or something, an outdoors kind of thing, but she couldn’t get the hang of—damn, I don’t remember. Some biology class.”
“It’s a leap going from zoologist to firefighter.”
“She was a ranger for a bit, with the fire seasons so bad lately, she was drawn to it.”
Devlin looked up. “You don’t think she started any of the fires you worked on before, do you?”
Gabe jolted. “No. No, she couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
