“—unrestrained fall.”

“—fracture.”

As they shut up at the same time, she forced herself not to look away. “David is a minor, and his mother is on the way.”

Moose gave her a smile and then it was all about the patient, he and Chavez following a protocol that Anne knew only too well. In New Brunswick, the fire service also functioned as paramedics and EMTs, and she ran through each assessment step in her head.

I can still do this, she thought. I can still do the job.

But even as the conviction hit to her, it was a useless revelation, a lantern without a wick. This kind of a run was only part of it. Sure, a person on the fire service needed to be able to handle a kid with a broken leg in a non-confrontational, non-emergent environment like this. But they also dragged charged lines up stairs, punched through drywall with axes, pulled downed colleagues out of hot spots.

Danny moved over to her, his head tilting as he watched the IV line get set. “How you doing?”

The words were so quiet, she almost missed them, and she was reminded of the way he’d always spoken to her on the job. Private, even in public.

Anne opened her mouth to I’m-fine him, but didn’t follow through on the impulse. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t speak the lie—and had no intention of looking too closely at why a perfectly appropriate deflection dried up in her throat.

After Dave was on a board with a cervical collar around his neck and his lower leg stabilized, Moose and Chavez got him up on the stretcher. Mom arrived just as they were strapping him down, and she was in full scramble, hair a mess, her coat flapping, her purse clapping against her leg as she ran to her son.

“What the hell is wrong with you!”

Danny muttered, “Not the first time she’s been in this situation.”

“Yeah.” Anne went over and got her duffel. “Let’s go.”

This show-off session had been a colossal mistake, and the fact that it was ending with her on the sidelines as Moose and Emilio did the job she’d had to leave behind? She’d been right. God did not like the prideful, and although she had wanted to prove to Danny she was a-okay, she had to cop to some ego being involved.

As Moose interceded with Mom and brought the woman up to date, Emilio hesitated and then approached. He nodded at Danny, but it was a cursory hello—because hey, those two were going to see each other on next rotation.

Besides, this was about her. “How are you, Anne?”

Chavez had always been a good guy, and the gentle way he looked at her was everything she remembered about him. He was also still the tall, dark, and handsome firefighter hero who belonged in a centerfold calendar of guys in turnout bottoms holding long hoses—and yet he’d never been her type. Nope, back in the day, she’d never managed to look past Danny Maguire.

What was the question?

“I’m good.” She smiled brightly, and then hit the dimmer switch so she didn’t come across as desperate. “I’m great.”

After the collapse in that warehouse house, Emilio had come by the rehab hospital once, and the resolute way he’d focused on her face and not her arm had made her rush through the visit. He’d seemed relieved at the excuse she’d given him to leave, and she hadn’t faulted him. As he’d stood awkwardly next to her hospital bed, no doubt he’d been glad that he hadn’t been hurt—and he was decent enough of a guy to feel bad about that understandable relief.

“How’s you?’ she asked. Because she had to.

“Ah, great. I’m great. Yeah, thanks.”

He smiled, but then lost the expression. When he resolutely put the lift back on his lips, she wanted to tell him not to bother.

Anne rubbed her sweaty palm on the seat of her legging again. “I’m glad. That’s good.”

“Yeah, it’s . . . it’s good.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like we’re moving. Good to see you, Anne—later, Dannyboy.”

“Great to see you,” she said too loudly. “Really great.”

Chris came over. “I didn’t know you’re friends with the EMS guys.”

“I’m not. I mean, I was. I used to be—” She shook her head. “Listen, I’ve got to say it again. I feel really badly about all this. I shouldn’t have been showboating.”

“That kid’s been trouble since he joined. At least now we have an excuse to cancel his membership. And he signed the standard release, so hopefully we won’t get sued.”

Danny stepped in. “If you need us to make statements, you know where to find us.”

“You have my number,” she corrected. “Let me know if I can help. I feel responsible.”

Chris smiled. “You’re the best, Anne. Chilli and I appreciate you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Danny said as he barged in and stuck his hand out like it was a sword pointed at the other man’s gut.

There was an awkward pause before Chris shook what was put out there, and then Anne headed for the door before Danny broke the poor guy over his knee and threw the two halves into the street.

Outside, it was dark as midnight, and Moose was closing up the back of the ambulance. The flashing red bubbler on the cab took her back to the job again, the rhythmic pulses of light so familiar and yet so foreign, now.

Sadness, insidious and castrating, stole her breath.

“So,” Moose said as he looked back and forth between them.

His smile was slow and suggested Danny was going to get a boatload of shit back at the firehouse. And all she knew was that if Maguire tried to put his arm around her shoulder or insinuate anything, he was going to learn firsthand what it was like to be in her situation.

’Cuz she’d rip his damn limb off.

“Don’t you have a patient to take care of,” Danny muttered.

Moose shrugged. “Chavez is taking a medical history.”

“Which can be done in transit.”

“Mom asked us to wait so she could bring her car around. She wants to follow.”

Anne was tempted to walk off, but then Danny wouldn’t have a ride, and no doubt that would come up in conversation.

“So.” Moose rocked on the heels of his boots. “Nice weather we’re having—”

Danny glanced at her. “Come on, let’s go.”

Damn it.

“Hey,” Moose said, “we should do dinner this Saturday. Come to our place—Deandra is taking a cooking class and she loves to show off.”

As a tense silence bloomed like a bad smell, Anne threw some words out to fill the void. “I thought she was going to be a hairdresser.”

“Well, that’s just the first tier of her lifestyle business. She wants to be into hair, makeup, skin care, fashion, home decor, healthy eating. She’s going all the way. I’m very proud of my wife.”

When the guy gave Danny a look, Anne lost her patience—and was rescued by Mom tooling up in a minivan that had led a very hard life. The thing had a ding on the front bumper, scratches down the side, and a side-view mirror that was hanging by its proverbial optic nerve.

Made you wonder whether the apple didn’t fall far from the tree—either that or it just stole the car keys a lot.

Moose clapped his hands. “Gotta go! See you Saturday—Anne, I’ll give Deandra your number so she can text you with instructions.”

Instructions? And how the hell did she yell out, Please don’t, without being offensive? The last person she wanted to get to know better was that wife of his. She’d been through the wedding, and that had been more than enough contact.

The ambulance left sweet diesel fumes in its wake as Moose piloted it off in the direction of University of New Brunswick Hospital, the beaten-up minivan a sad-sack wind sock following its path.

Anne looked at Danny. “I’m not going to dinner with them. Or you. It’s not appropriate.”

“Not worth the time, is more like it.”

They stepped off the curb at the same moment, and the fact that they fell into stride together as they headed for her car was the kind of thing she deliberately messed up with a hop and a skip. The good news was that as they got in, he seemed uncharacteristically quiet. At least he wasn’t spewing a bunch of it’ll-be-great rhetoric about the never-happening, in-Moose’s-dreams Saturday dinner from hell.