Nancy Warren - Aftershocks

On impulse, he pulled over and stopped the car.

The physical damage didn’t worry him so much. Walls and roofs and windows could be replaced. A human life never could.

He recalled the older woman who’d served him and his family. She always had a kind word for the children, and often a couple of lollipops would find their way from the jar she kept behind the till into two eager little fists.

God, the kids could have been there when the shaking began. Anyone’s kids could have. The corner store was a popular after-school hangout. If he could be grateful for anything, it would be that there weren’t more casualties.

It wasn’t much comfort, because even one death was a tragedy, but he’d have been less than human if he didn’t say a quick thanks that the children of Courage Bay, including his, were now sleeping peacefully at home.

He drove to his house, then entered as quietly as he could through the door that led from the garage into the laundry room. From there he crept into the kitchen. He headed for Fiona’s room first.

His heart squeezed as he gazed down at his little girl. She’d only been two when Janie died, and she didn’t remember her mother at all. In sleep she was angelic, her soft brown curls framing her round face, her lips opening and closing slightly as she breathed. She held her favorite stuffed hippo in her arms.

Patrick straightened the covers on her bed, kissed her forehead and went next door to his son’s room. Dylan wore baseball pyjamas and had kicked all his covers onto the floor. Patrick picked them up and replaced them, though he knew they’d be back on the floor by morning. He swore his son got more exercise when asleep than he did running around or playing sports.

He tousled the black hair that stuck out in tufts behind Dylan’s ears, just as Patrick’s had when he was a kid.

Returning to the kitchen, Patrick opened the fridge. Often the housekeeper left him a plate of dinner to microwave if he was late coming home, but since he’d planned to dine with Max Zirinsky, the police chief, there was nothing for him.

Most of the food in the fridge had been bought to appeal to people under the age of ten. Patrick passed on the hot dogs, the gelatin jigglers, the yogurt tubes, the peanut butter and the cheese strings. The mixed tropical fruit juice was no doubt healthy, but right now he didn’t want to drink anything quite that color.

Instead, he cracked open a beer, found some crackers and a block of cheddar. He made short work of all three, before taking himself off for the world’s quickest shower. In minutes he was falling into bed.

Tomorrow was going to be a hell of a day.

PATRICK WALKED into his office next morning at nine, having taken the time to have breakfast with Dylan and Fiona, and to thank Mrs. Simpson for staying the night. She’d had to run home and feed her cat and change clothes before returning for the day.

He knew he could call his parents, or his brother, Sean, or Sean’s wife, Linda, to help out when these emergencies arose. They would be there in a flash, if he called. But all of them had their own lives, their own responsibilities. And from the way Dylan and Fiona had climbed all over him and talked his ear off in their excitement to have their father to themselves for a morning, Patrick knew that he was the one his children needed to have around.

Sure, Courage Bay needed him, too, but his kids came first. He pledged right there at the kitchen table over the Cheerios and milk and grapefruit sections that he was going to find more time for Fiona and Dylan.

In his fantasy world, he could work from eight to five and come home to enjoy a civilized family dinner. His job often required him to be out again in the evening for civic meetings, award presentations, any number of social and business functions, but he wanted to be a good father, as well as a good mayor.

In reality, with all the pressures of the past year, it was rare for him to see his kids for more than an hour or two a day, even during the weekends, and that lack of parental involvement was beginning to show in their behavior. The truth was, he could work twenty-four hours a day and still not get everything done either at work or at home.

If only Fiona and Dylan had a mother, he thought, and he had a partner with whom he could share the joys and trials of parenting.

Well, he didn’t. If the image of Briana rose to taunt him, he resolutely banished it. He realized now that if she wouldn’t leave her position as his admin assistant, there wasn’t much of a future for them.

Once Mrs. Simpson returned to the house, he dropped a kiss on Fiona’s head. The housekeeper would drop her at her kindergarten class later in the day. He and Dylan got into his car and headed for Dylan’s school. Patrick made sure to choose a route that wouldn’t take them past the ruined convenience store.

No doubt the collapsed store would be a big topic of discussion at school, but Patrick didn’t feel up to explaining to his son that the nice lady who worked at the store had died last night. He didn’t trust himself. He was too angry that the emergency response time had been slow. If the paramedics had reached Mrs. Harper sooner, maybe she would have been saved. He didn’t want Dylan to pick up on his anger and frustration. Later, when he got home, he’d answer all the questions he knew his kids would pepper him with.

When he arrived at his office, he noted the door was already open and the light on. He wasn’t surprised. He’d told Briana to take the morning off, but deep down he’d known she’d ignore the offer. Her work ethic was one of the attributes that made her such a terrific assistant-along with her smarts, her initiative and her ideas.

If it weren’t for one big drawback, she’d be perfect for him-the fact he wanted to take their relationship beyond one night in a broken elevator.

Even though he’d known she’d be there, his breath caught in his chest when he entered the open door and saw her at her desk, a phone glued to her ear, and her fingers busily tapping away at a computer keyboard.

Her blond hair was drawn back in an elegant kind of ponytail, and her skin was lightly tanned with a hint of apricot at the cheekbones. She was staring at the screen in front of her, but even from here Patrick could see dark smudges under her eyes. From overwork and lack of sleep, no doubt.

Today she wore a pale green sleeveless cotton blouse that showed off her firm arms. The first button was undone, leaving a respectable vee at the neck, but his gaze traveled down lower, to where her breasts filled out the blouse, breasts he’d kissed so hungrily last night.

His mouth went dry as he stood there, and his mind was filled with remembered sensations. The sound of her helpless panting, the feel of her skin, like warm velvet, the taste of her nipples, hard beneath his tongue.

He’d touched her, inhaled her scent, tasted her-and had no idea what she’d looked like while he did. He was suddenly overcome with a gnawing urge to find out. Were her nipples the color of raspberries? Or apricot, like the blush on her cheeks? Mocha? Caramel? Peaches and cream?

What did the woman he’d so recently made love with look like naked?

He wondered if he’d ever find out.

Perhaps he made a sound, or maybe the intensity of his desire for her caught her attention somehow. Whatever it was, Briana lifted her head and their gazes caught and held. Patrick was tempted to put a hand on the warped oak door frame for support at the impact of her gaze on his nervous system.

The emotions and events of the night before roared back and thickened the atmosphere between them. He felt the sexual tug that had been there from the beginning, only this time it was like a grappling hook.