Free Come Morning by Pat Warren

man in the jump seat and the engineer driving. Not on their way to a fire. Probably heading for a nearby fireplug to practice hose evolutions. No longer his problem, he reminded himself.
    “Here’s your coffee,” Briana said at his elbow, her fingers brushing against his.
    “Thanks.” Her touch, slight as it was, felt too welcome, her freshly bathed scent snaring him in. Or was it just that he’d been without the softness of a woman in way too long?
    She stared after the speeding truck. “I hope they’re not rushing to a nearby fire.”
    “More likely a practice run or an equipment check.” He took a swallow and noticed that she liked her coffee as strong as he did.
    Turning, she squinted up at him. Lord, but he was tall. “Are you on leave from the fire department or did you quit?”
    “On leave. I just haven’t gotten around to quitting.” But he would, and soon. Walking back, he drank more coffee, then set the mug on the windowsill.
    Briana trailed after him. “You won’t miss the work?”
    “No,” he said emphatically. He’d answered his last fire call.
    Well, she thought, that was definite enough, and left little room for further discussion. Firefighting had to be a very stressful occupation. Perhaps that stress had gotten to him.
    “You know, these shutters are only decorative,” Slade said, gazing up at the window, deliberately changing the subject. “The way they’re screwed in here, you could never release and swing them over to protect the window in a heavy storm.” He nodded his head toward his father’s house. “Those kind are better. Decorative
and
protective.”
    Alongside him, Briana studied the shutters. “You think I should get rid of these and buy new ones?”
    “Yeah, I do. You could get aluminum ones, heavy grade. Never need painting. They come in lots of colors.”
    “All right, then. Let’s do it. If you can somehow manage to get these off all the windows, I’ll look into ordering the others. There’ll be that much less to paint.”
    He raised a quizzical brow. “Are you always this decisive?”
    Briana drained her coffee cup and set it on the ground. “Actually, I haven’t been too good in that department lately. But I’m working on it.”
    Slade thought he knew the reason why, so he decided not to comment. The last thing he wanted was for her to break down again. Picking up his scraper, he angled his head to study the side of the house mat was almost ready for paint. “Looking good. Maybe you should take some before and after pictures. You got a camera?”
    Scraping away beneath the window, Briana glanced up as he climbed the ladder. “Actually, I have several. I’m a professional photographer.”
    “No kidding?” He hadn’t pegged her as a professional anything. He’d rather imagined she’d graduated from some Ivy League college with a degree in flower arranging or something useful like that before marrying an upwardly mobile type. Just full of surprises, was Briana Morgan. “How’d you get into that?”
    Briana’s eyes clouded over, remembering how she’d loved staying home after Bobby was born and hadn’t thought about working again. He was a year old before she’d gotten restless and started fooling around with photography. Robert had insisted on buying a house in Cambridge and they needed money. He’d refused to accept anything from her trust fund. Commuting to her old job in Manhattan had been out of the question, if they’d even have taken her back. She felt lucky that her hobby had begun to pay off.
    “Kind of by accident, I guess.”
    “Do you have a studio?”
    Briana sat down in the grass so she could reach the lowest section. The Boss was hitting the high notes on the radio, telling the world about Philadelphia. “Not that kind of photography. I do coffee-table books, working around a theme, like Manhattan at midnight, which would be night scenes in New York, or Boston by the bay, snapshots taken all around the bay area. Then I pick out