Page 47 of Protecting What's Mine

“Thank you so much for this,” Ellen said, sighing happily. “Do you hear that?”

Mack looked around them. The low buzz of conversation, the tinny sound of music coming from the crappy outdoor speakers mounted on the building. “Hear what?”

“No one asking me to doanything. No mom or wife or daughter-in-law, you know? Just me.”

“When’s the last time you had a girls’ night?” Mack asked, wondering if she’d ever had one.

“Do baby showers count?”

Mack wasn’t a socializing expert, but evensheknew the answer to that one. “They do not.”

“So I heard Lincoln Reed sent you flowers,” Ellen said, leaning in and taking another slurp of pink alcohol.

Andthiswas why she didn’t do girls’ nights.

“It was just a joke.”Mostly.

“Our Chief Reed doesn’t joke about women,” Ellen said knowledgeably.

“He does have a reputation,” Mack agreed.

Ellen waved her comment away. “That’s mostly just good fun. He’s not a misogynistic womanizer. He just loves women and dates them, serially and monogamously without any intentions to settle down. I mean, who can blame him? I settled down, and look at my life. I’ve got two kids who don’t listen to me, a husband who thinks I’m a laundry service, and my minivan smells like sports equipment and feet.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Sometimes I wish I would have kept right on dating Linc.”

It was Mack’s turn to lean in. “You dated Linc?”

This was insider information she wasn’t sure she wanted.

Ellen fluffed her shoulder-length auburn hair. “It was ten years and twenty-nine pounds ago. We went out a few times before I met Barry. He’s got a way with women. You know?”

“He certainly does.” A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Mack’s mouth. “Why did you stop seeing each other?” Great. Now she was prying into a patient’s personal life. Benevolence was rubbing off on her already.

Was she going to start asking trauma patients what their tattoos meant now?

Ellen shrugged. “Why does anyone stop seeing a beautiful firefighter?”

“Ah. The schedule,” Mack guessed. She understood that to “normal” people, the on-call shifts, long hours, and physical danger didn’t make a lot of sense. But she also knew exactly why some were called to those professions.

“Life-and-death jobs aren’t exactly conducive to family life,” Ellen agreed. “I was ready for kids and a house and a husband who would be around on weekends. Linc’s first love is his job. It was as amicable as splits get. I still get to wink at him in the produce department every once in a while.”

It sounded a lot like Mack’s splits. Easy. No strings. No harm, no foul.

“Has he ever been serious about anyone?” Mack asked.

Ellen shook her head with a giggle. “Linc doesn’t have a serious bone in his body. He’s fun. You know? If he’s sending you flowers, you should go for it. No one has ever regretted a fling with Chief Sexy Pants.”

Fun.

Would it really hurt Mack to have a little fun while she was in town? Maybe not. But it would go against her new code. The New Mackenzie O’Neil was too busy finding herself and being admirably healthy to fall into bed with handsome acquaintances.

The New Mackenzie O’Neil was a real buzzkill.

Ellen’s phone rang shrilly from inside her purse. “Ugh. That’s Barry. Hang on. What do you want, Bare?”

Mack watched Ellen’s eyes roll dramatically. “No. I didnottell him that he could have cake for dinner. Don’t let him play you. You’re better than that, Barry.”No, he’s not, she mouthed.

Mack snickered.

Sophie swung out onto the patio, her hands full with their food. The patron who held the door watched her admiringly.