After the Fire by Kathryn Shay

Author:Kathryn Shay [Shay, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Detectives, Fire fighters, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425193044
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Published: 2003-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

BECAUSE OF HER meeting with the chiefs early that day, Megan couldn’t stop thinking about her father. So, in her one-room apartment, she stuffed her legs into black spandex, yanked on a T-shirt, and donned her boxing gloves. A punching bag the size of a tree trunk hung in the corner. Sometimes the streetlamp, shedding light through the window, cast it in eerie shadows so it looked like the Headless Horseman. She left it there to remind her that appearances could be deceiving.

Punch. Punch. But her phantom opponent couldn’t take away the images of her dad.

“Stop it!” she told herself. “Think of something else.”

Lance.

Not exactly stress free. Punch. Punch. Punch. Harder, sending pain up her arm.

Her husband’s craggy face superimposed over the bag. She’d met him when she joined the NYPD. An experienced cop, he’d been paired with her in a program to give new recruits a taste of many facets of police work.

“Son of a bitch,” he’d said when he’d gotten his first glimpse of her. “A cherry. And a looker at that.” Sarcasm dripped from his mouth. “Must be my lucky day.”

She’d been intrigued by the twinkle in his deep blue eyes and the cleft that claimed his chin, and couldn’t stop staring at him that first night in the car on a stakeout. Later, when she’d watched him scoop a baby out of harm’s way in a subway accident, then disarm a mugger, she’d been impressed. It took her two years to catch his attention as a woman. And then she’d gotten him to notice her only because they’d been drinking at The Dragnet on Eighty-fifth Street after a retirement party.

“Oh, hell,” he’d said when she’d come on to him in the parking lot. “I been trying not to do this for...how long has it been, little girl, since you joined the department?”

She’d smiled a very grown-up-woman smile. “Twenty-five months.”

Against his better judgment, she knew, he’d grabbed her and kissed her right there in the dark parking lot. She lost her heart after that. He’d tried to tell her he was a bad bet, twice divorced, too old for her at fifteen years her senior, far too cynical. Even though he went home with her that night—the sex had been so good it was criminal—he still warned her to run the other way.

She hadn’t listened. Her father had liked him in that peculiar Band of Brothers way, and that was all the approval she needed.

Sure, her dad had been royally pissed when she’d come to him three years after she and Lance were married. “Daddy, I...” Hiccups. Crying. Megan, who rarely cried.

“What is it, baby?” Patrick had asked.

“I found out that Lance...there’s another woman...oh, Daddy.”

The infidelity had driven her and her husband apart, of course. But it had sobered Lance, too. After months of separation, she’d finally agreed to meet with him.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I love you, Meggie.” All the significant men in her life called her Meggie.

“Fuck it, Lance. If you think I’m going to forgive you for humping that bimbo, you’re crazy.

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