When she lifted her head, she found Jake watching her closely. She could not escape the niggling sensation that she was forgetting something important or the way Jake’s stare made her feel squirmy inside. Her stomach rumbled and she latched on to the distraction.
“Hey, I wonder if I can get another sandwich or something? The first one got trampled and, oddly enough, I feel like I could eat now.”
The request startled a laugh out of him. “Yeah, I bet you can get your probie friend to bring you something. How’s your water?”
She shrugged. “Gone. I think it rolled off.” Cassidy turned one direction, then the other, trying to catch sight of the firefighter usually hovering nearby. “Hey, T.B.?” she croaked when she spotted him propped up against one of the generator trailers at the back of the ride.
“Ma’am?” he replied.
But Jake spoke up for her. “Can we get some more water and something to eat brought to Ms. Walker? Nothing with onions though.” He paused, turning to look at her, brows knit tightly together. “Or do you eat onions now?”
Her heart slammed into her rib cage and she must have sucked in a breath when she heard him add the special request. She swallowed hard, touched he remembered such tiny details. She shook her head, but her voice was barely more than a whisper. “No. No onions, please.”
“Anything else?” T.B. asked, looking past Jake to her.
She forced a weak smile. It went against the grain to ask anyone to go out of their way for her. Especially when they all had much more important things to do. But she had been spinning around on this thing for hours, and her cheeks and lips were parched and windburned.
“Some lip balm? Or petroleum jelly?” The tentative quaver in her voice annoyed her almost as much as asking for help did, but this was where she was at the moment. Hungry and parched in almost every conceivable way.
She glanced down at the phone clutched in her hand as Jake relayed her additional requests. He cast a sidelong glance at her, then added, “And something sweet. A cookie or brownie. Something with some sugar.”
She pinned him with a curious stare as he settled back onto the bench. “You think I need sugar?”
He shrugged. “I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
Cassidy chuckled, her cheeks warming with pleasure despite her best efforts to play it cool with him. “You’re probably right.”
He tilted his head as he studied her, looking every bit as curious as Max. “You’re not saying something.”
She shook her head. “I’m not…I can’t…” She gave a full-body shake and let out a grunt of frustration, then thumped her temple with two fingers. “There’s something right there about the Baker case, but I can’t quite pin it down.”
“Let’s talk about something else for a while. Maybe it will come to you if you’re not pressing so hard,” he suggested.
Knowing he was right, she waggled the phone at him. “Did Colonel Aronson show you the footage?”
Jake wet his lips, then shook his head. “No. He was too busy telling me what a damn fool I was, and that I might as well have knocked down a hornets’ nest.”
Leaning in, Cassidy pulled up the message containing the clip and let it play. “I wasn’t kidding about your farm. You can still swing for the fences.”
Jake’s grim expression softened, but his eyes narrowed as he watched. “I don’t regret taking it out,” he said as the video stopped.
“I would have done the same.”
“Aronson tells me the governor’s press person is having a fit.”
“No doubt.”
With Max resting at their feet, they lapsed into companionable conversation, discussing the bureaucracy surrounding their jobs, the members of the various response units they’d encountered throughout the day and the repairs that would need to be addressed if the fair was indeed going to open after all. She had no idea how much time had passed, but it was significant enough that Jake sat up and looked around.
“Your pal must have had to go off site to get some food.”
“I guess so.” Cassidy scanned the area with each pass. It seemed hard to believe, given how the scent of tantalizing fair food lingered in the air. “Maybe I should have had Manny stay behind after all,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the battered food stand. “I could go for a corn dog.”
“I can radio for someone else,” he offered.
She waved the offer away. “I’ll get Bud to raid my office. I have everything there.” She placed a quick call to her second-in-command, who responded right away.
Minutes later, Bud pulled up on his golf cart with bottled water. “I’ll go raid your desk drawer for protein bars,” he said as he tossed bottle after bottle to Jake, who snagged them like fly balls.
