Letting out a rough sound that might have been sympathy, compassion, or sheer frustration, he held her down when she tried to rise. “You never used to have panic attacks.”

“They’re not all that bad.”

“Come on.”

“All right, they’re bad. But rare. Really,” she said to his disbelief. “At least until I came back here.”

“Because of that first warehouse fire. When you got caught beneath that beam.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t remember.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Now who’s the liar,” he chided softly. “Tight places upset you, and so does talking about the fires, two of which you’ve been trapped in. Now I’m asking you to talk about them, and I’m sorry, so fucking sorry. But I have to know what happened to make it right.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“How about we just take it slow. Together, okay?”

She nodded, and concentrated on breathing for a few minutes. Feeling like a wimp, she glanced over her shoulder to where Kenny was clearly entertaining her mother, making her smile. “It took me until this morning to get a real smile. He gets one just by walking in the door.”

“Kenny gets a smile from any woman, and he could do it at a hundred paces.”

“That makes it even stranger.”

“She’s young enough, and he’s old enough. Don’t worry about them.”

“I won’t, because I can’t concentrate on anything knowing we still have to do this.”

“Just keep breathing, slow and relaxed.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “How about another lesson in relaxing? The one you gave me last night is wearing off.”

“Red. I can’t talk about this on the job.”

“You’d rather talk about it tonight? On my living room floor? Okay, but I don’t remember having a lot of breath for talking last night.”

He kept his voice low and quiet with what looked like great effort. “Last night was a little more than just stress relief.”

She hadn’t expected him to give in and discuss it, but she should have known better than to bait him because he never backed down, not from anything. “You know what? I don’t want to get into this.”

“Right.” He let out a harsh laugh. “We only talk about things on your terms. Fine. Back to the fire then.”

“I really don’t want to get into that.”

“I bet.”

“In fact, I just remembered. I have to have my wisdom teeth pulled out, slowly, without Novocain.” She surged to her feet but he was quicker and gently took her arm.

“Red.”

She sat and sighed. “Yeah.”

His eyes were solemn, his voice quiet. Calm. “Who did you work with yesterday?”

“You have the schedule.” She pointed to the top sheet of his clipboard, where he’d pinned the schedule Tina had just given him.