Sean's Reckoning - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,8

jubilation even as she uttered the word, she’d better make very sure that all of her carefully honed defenses were firmly in place.

“And Mom said I shouldn’t bother you because you’re probably really busy, but I was thinking that if you weren’t busy, maybe you could come over in the fire truck and take me for a ride,” Kevin Blackwell was saying earnestly to Sean.

The call had come in on the nonemergency line at the fire station about five minutes earlier. Sean had barely gotten a word in edgewise. The kid definitely had a lot to say, and he was saying it all in such a rush that Sean could barely keep up with him.

“Hey, Kevin, slow down, okay?” he said, laughing.

“Oh, okay. I thought you might be in a hurry.”

“Not right this second,” Sean reassured him. “How did you know how to find me?”

“It was easy. Ruby found the number in the phone book.”

Ah, so the notorious Ruby was promoting this idea. For whose benefit? Sean wondered. The kid’s or her own? Or was she by any chance matchmaking? That possibility intrigued him far more than it should.

“Is she there now?” Sean asked, hoping to clarify things before he agreed to anything.

“Uh-uh. I’m at the pay phone outside the laundry. Ruby’s inside. She’ll be out in a minute, though. She said it was okay if I called. It is, isn’t it? You’re not mad, are you?” he asked worriedly.

“No. I’m not mad. I’m glad to hear from you,” Sean said, realizing it was true. He’d thought about the boy—and his mother—a lot the past couple of weeks. He’d dismissed the thoughts as perfectly normal under the circumstances. He often worried about people whose homes had been destroyed, though few of them haunted his dreams the way Deanna Blackwell had.

“How are you and your mom doing?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess. Staying with Ruby is kind of cool,” Kevin said. “She keeps way better stuff in the refrigerator than Mom did.”

Sean bit back a chuckle at the boy’s standards. “Such as?”

“Ice cream and sodas and a whole bag of candy. Mom says I’m not supposed to touch that ’cause it’s Ruby’s crisis food, whatever that is. But I don’t think she’d mind if I ate one candy bar, do you?”

“No, I don’t imagine she would, as long as you asked permission first.” More curious than he cared to admit, Sean asked, “Does Ruby have a lot of crises?” And what kind were they? he wondered. The kind no five-year-old should know about?

“I don’t know,” Kevin told him. “Maybe you could ask her. She just came out.”

“In a minute,” he said, hoping to put off a conversation with Ruby until he had plenty of backup to distract her, namely Hank. “I can’t get away from here, but maybe you and Ruby can come on over to see the fire truck, like I promised.”

“Wow, that would be cool,” Kevin said enthusiastically. “You talk to her, okay? She’ll do it if you ask. Here.”

Sean heard the flurry of excited conversation on the other end, then finally Ruby took the phone.

“You sure know how to win a kid’s heart,” she said.

Sean ignored the compliment. “What about it? Can you bring him by?”

To his surprise she hesitated. “How about in a couple of hours? Will you be around after seven?”

“Never can tell when we’ll get a call, but I imagine we will be. Any particular reason you want to wait?”

“Deanna will be home then. I know she wants to come along. I think she has some money she wants to pay you.”

“I told her that there was no rush on that,” he said, feeling unreasonably irritated that Deanna was in such a hurry to pay him back. Since he never liked being indebted to anyone himself, he realized he should be more understanding, but it rankled nonetheless. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. She can’t possibly be on her feet financially already.”

“She isn’t, but you don’t know her,” Ruby said, sounding every bit as exasperated as Sean felt. “She’s got this mile-wide stubborn streak and more pride than any woman ought to have. She won’t rest until she’s paid you back every cent.” She lowered her voice and confided, “Frankly, I think she’s on the verge of collapse from exhaustion. She was already working two jobs. Ever since the fire, she’s added extra hours at the restaurant. Tonight’s her first night off, and she wouldn’t have taken that if I hadn’t called and told Joey