could have let it alone, but it wasn’t in her nature. She might not pry into Ruby’s social life, but she did pay attention when her friend was behaving weirdly.
“We never leave the house before seven-thirty,” she pointed out. “We’re not due at the office till eight. It takes us five minutes to walk to work. What’s the sudden rush? Are you trying to avoid talking to me?”
Ruby evaded Deanna’s direct gaze. “I’m filling in for Cassandra this week, remember?”
“So?”
“I’ve got a lot of typing piled up. I’m not as fast as she is, and I still need to get out so I can be home when Kevin gets here after school.”
Deanna’s gaze narrowed at the mention of her son. “Is baby-sitting Kevin getting to be a problem?”
“Of course not!” Ruby said, staring at her indignantly. “Don’t you dare think that. You know I love that kid as if he were my own. Heck, I’ve been around since the day he was born.”
“Well, something’s going on here,” Deanna said, studying Ruby thoughtfully. She decided to go for broke and throw her suspicions on the table. “You haven’t been yourself for days now, not since the night you got together with Hank at the fire station.”
“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” Ruby insisted, her jaw set stubbornly.
Deanna wasn’t buying it, but she couldn’t very well drag the truth out of Ruby if she wasn’t willing to share it. “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll drop it for now, on one condition.”
“Anything that will get you to back off,” Ruby agreed.
“Have dinner at Joey’s tonight.”
“Dee!” Ruby protested.
Deanna held firm. “That’s it. That’s my condition. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to convince me that Hank’s not at the bottom of your weird mood.”
Something that might have been a tiny flicker of relief passed across Ruby’s face, then gave way to an air of resignation. “Okay, okay. Geez, you are such a nag.”
Deanna grinned at her. “I should be. I learned from the best.”
Ruby shook her head. “Obviously I should have kept that lesson to myself.”
Sean and five other firefighters in uniform piled into Joey’s Italian Diner around six o’clock. Deanna was just coming out of the kitchen with an order when they arrived. She heard her son’s whoop of delight, but missed the fact that he was racing straight across the restaurant toward Sean. He bumped into her at full throttle, knocking her off-balance and sending the tray of spaghetti dinners tilting toward disaster.
“Whoa!” Sean said, rescuing the tray in midair and managing to keep Deanna upright at the same time. He stared down into her eyes. “Are you okay?”
Deanna gazed up into blue eyes bright with amusement and felt her knees go weak again. “Having you come to my rescue is getting to be a habit,” she told Sean, then turned to her son and scolded, “Kevin, you know you’re supposed to watch where you’re going in here.”
“Sorry, Mom!” Kevin said. “I didn’t see you. I was excited to see Sean.”
Deanna could relate to the feeling. A part of her hadn’t expected him to actually show up, not because he was likely to change his mind but because of the unpredictability of his job. “There should be a table for six opening up in a minute,” she told him as she reached for the tray. “Let me serve these dinners, and as soon as it’s clear, I’ll get it ready for you.”
Sean held tight to the tray. “Where do you want this? It weighs a ton.”
“I’m used to it,” she protested.
His stubborn gaze clashed with hers. “Where?”
She shrugged and gestured toward a stand across the room. “Over there, by that table in the corner. Kevin, go on back to your table, before someone else gets tripped up.”
Kevin regarded her with disappointment. “But, Mom…”
“I’ll see you before I go,” Sean promised him. “If your mom says it’s okay, you can come have dessert with me and the guys.”
Kevin’s eyes lit up. “Really? And you’ll tell me all about fighting fires? I want to be a fireman when I grow up, so I need to start learning stuff.”
This wasn’t the first Deanna had heard about her son’s career plans, but she wondered how Sean was going to respond to Kevin’s blatant hero worship. Glancing at him, she realized she needn’t have worried. He grinned and assured Kevin he could ask all the questions he wanted. The last traces of Kevin’s scowl promptly faded. Deanna had to admit, Sean had a definite