Delilah was good at playing roles. Her personality flipped with a speed that made my head spin, rotating between wounded ex, sexy siren, and strict professional. All of those were usually easy for me to ignore. It was when she wore the depressed-friend role that I ended up sitting next to her at the bar.
The crew greeted her warmly. She was well-liked at the station. In truth,she was well-liked just about everywhere she went because she made friends easily. It was a skill she’d learned from her parents, the mayor and the chief. Only the Campbell girls and Delilah didn’t get along.
Del had valid reasons for hating Chelsea. But her reasons for disliking Maisey were as skewed as her beliefs about me.
“Your dad isn’t here,” I told her.
“I know. I’m dropping off the latest budget proposal for you and Nancy to look at,” Delilah said, waving a stack of papers at me.
It wasn’t really a secret around town that Rose Nattingly was grooming her daughter to take over as mayor someday. But what I wasn’t sure many people knew, and what I wasn’t sure even Del herself remembered these days, was that politics had been the last thing Delilah had wanted to do growing up. Even in college, when we’d carpooled to Fresno and back, her heart had been in her art classes, not business lectures.
“I’ll just go through the numbers with you,” Delilah said when I hadn’t moved.
The anger I’d spent an entire morning and early afternoon trying to tame after overhearing the chief’s decision about me flared back to life. Billie Nattingly hadn’t even looked at the budget in the last eighteen months. That had all been me and Nancy.
The truth was, I hadn’t minded taking it on because it had been one more item for my resume. One more reason I’d be qualified for the fire chief role when it became available. Now, I wondered exactly why he’d handed me the responsibility if he hadn’t believed I was ready for the actual job.
“Nancy isn’t here today,” I reminded her. As our department's admin, HR representative, and accountant, Nancy worked purely Monday through Friday, eight-to-five, unless there was an emergency that required all-hands-on-deck.
“You can pass on what I share to her next week.”
Delilah headed for the hall leading to the offices, and I sighed before going after her. A soft whistle followed me and a quiet, “Have fun with that,” from Tejas.
I flipped him off over my head but didn’t look back.
The team thought Delilah and I were doing the horizontal mambo on a regular basis, mostly because of the innuendos she dropped. Even her dad had to have heard the rumors. But the more I’d protested, the more my crew gave me shit, so I just left them to their own beliefs while holding on to the knowledge I’d never be sliding beneath her sheets.
My feet stalled, nearly causing me to trip, as an ugly thought slammed into me. Was the chief putting this new requirement on the job because he was pissed? Did he think I was slipping it to Delilah without asking her tomarry me? That idea was followed by an even worse one. Were the chief and the mayor hoping that marrying us off would also help put their daughter in office? Perhaps this entire scenario wasn’t about me and the fire chief position at all, but some mastermind plan to help make Delilah the next mayor.
A bitter, ugly taste coated my tongue.
By the time I got my feet working again and joined Del in my office, she’d already slid the papers onto my desk and turned to lean against the edge of it.
Her gaze skimmed my uniform, she bit her lip, and then said, “You ran out before we got to finish our talk last night.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and leaned a shoulder up against the wall by the door, careful not to smudge the schedule Stoney and I had written on the whiteboard.
“I’m not sure we really have anything to talk about, Del.”
“He’s not going to hire you. He’s looking externally.”
“I know.”
Surprise flitted over her face. “You do?”
She pushed off the desk and took a step toward me. “Do you know why?”
“I’ve heard a little something on the topic.”
She tilted her head. “I can fix it.” She stopped and cleared her throat. “We can fix it. Together.”
She ran her hand along her arm from her elbow to her wrist. It was an old habit. A tick. Her thumb lingered on the old scars.
Wounds from a night that had marked me almost as much as it had scarred her.
Life had piled up on her at seventeen. Vicious rumors. Cruel names. Things that had nothing to do with me, and yet I’d added a brick to the pile already weighing her down. The guilt still haunted me.
“If Daddy thought you and I might actually make it official, I know he’d reconsider his position on the matter,” Delilah said. She stared for a few beats before her eyes dipped to my mouth and back.