She turned around to see one of the most beautiful men she had ever known.

It was Patrick Farrell.

And he was holding a rose.

While Peter took Sophie to his house, Jessica and Patrick sat in a dark corner of the Quiet Man Pub on the lower floor of Finnigan’s Wake, a popular Irish pub and cop hangout on Third and Spring Garden Streets, their backs to the Strawbridge’s wall.

It was not, however, dark enough for Jessica, even though she had done a quick remodeling of her face and hair in the ladies’ room.

She nursed a double scotch.

“That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life,” Patrick said.

He wore a charcoal cashmere turtleneck and black pleated slacks. He smelled great, which was one of the many things that time-tunneled her back to the days when they had been an item. Patrick Farrell always smelled great. And those eyes. Jessica wondered how many women over the years had tumbled headfirst into those deep blue eyes.

“Thanks,” she said, instead of something remotely witty or minutely intelligent. She held her drink glass against her face. The swelling was down. Thank God. She didn’t relish looking like the Elephant Woman in front of Patrick Farrell.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

Jessica shrugged her best aw shucks. “Well, the hard part is learning how to take a shot with your eyes open.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Of course it hurts,” she said. “You know what it feels like?”

“What?”

“It feels like getting punched in the face.”

Patrick laughed. “Touché.”

“On the other hand, there’s no feeling I can think of like the one you get from decking your opponent. God help me, I love that part.” “So, do you know it when you land it?”

“The knockout punch?”

“Yes.”

“Oh yeah,” Jessica said. “It’s just like when you catch a baseball on the fat part of the bat. Remember that? No vibration, no effort. Just... contact.”

Patrick smiled, shaking his head as if to concede that she was a hundred times braver than he. But Jessica knew this wasn’t true. Patrick was an ER physician, and she couldn’t think of any job tougher than that.

What took even more courage, Jessica thought, was that Patrick long ago stood up to his father, one of the most renowned heart surgeons in Philadelphia. Martin Farrell had expected Patrick to pursue a career as a cardiac surgeon. Patrick grew up in Bryn Mawr, attended Harvard Medical School, did his residency at Johns Hopkins, the path to stardom all but furrowed in front of him.

But when his kid sister Dana was killed in a Center City drive-by shooting, an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, Patrick decided to devote his life to working as a trauma physician at an inner-city hospital. Martin Farrell all but disowned his son.

It was something Jessica and Patrick shared—a career selecting them, as a result of a tragedy, instead of the other way around. Jessica wanted to ask how Patrick was getting along with his father now that so much time had passed, but she didn’t want to open any old wounds.

They fell silent, listening to the music, catching each other’s eyes, mooning like a pair of teenagers. A few cops from the Third District stopped by with congratulations for Jessica, drunkenly shadowboxing their way to the table.

Eventually, Patrick brought the conversation around to work. Safe territory for a married woman and an old flame.

“How is it working in the big leagues?”

Big leagues, Jessica thought. The big leagues have a way of making you seem small. “It’s still early days, but it’s a long way from my days in a sector car,” she said.

“So, what, you don’t miss chasing down purse snatchers, breaking up bar fights, and shuttling pregnant women to the hospital?”

Jessica smiled a little wistfully. “Purse snatchers and bar fights? No love lost there. As far as pregnant women go, I guess I retired with a record of one and one in that department.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I was in a sector car,” Jessica said, “I had one baby born in the backseat. Lost one.”

Patrick sat a little straighter. Interested, now. This was his world. “What do you mean? How did you lose one?”

This was not Jessica’s favorite story. She was already sorry she brought it up. It looked like she had to tell it. “It was Christmas Eve, three years ago. Remember that storm?”

It had been one of the worst blizzards in a decade. Ten inches of fresh snow, howling winds, temperatures around zero. The city all but shut down.

“Oh, yeah,” Patrick said.

“Anyway, I was on last-out. It’s just after midnight and I’m in a Dunkin’ Donuts, getting coffee for me and my partner.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow, meaning: Dunkin’ Donuts?

“Don’t even say it,” Jessica said, smiling.

Patrick zipped his lips.

“I was just about to leave, when I hear this moaning. Turns out there was a pregnant woman in one of the booths. She was seven or eight months pregnant, and something was definitely wrong. I called for a rescue but all the EMS units were on runs, skidded out, frozen fuel lines. A nightmare. We were just a few blocks from Jefferson so I got her in the squad car and we took off. We get to around Third and Walnut and we hit this patch of ice, skidded into a line of parked cars. We got stuck.”

Jessica sipped her drink. If telling the story made her feel bad, wrapping it up made her feel worse. “I called for assistance but by the time they got there, it was too late. The baby was stillborn.”

The look in Patrick’s eyes said he understood. It is never easy to lose one, no matter what the circumstances. “Sorry to hear it.”

“Yeah, well, I made up for it a few weeks later,” Jessica said. “My partner and I delivered a big baby boy down on South. And I mean big.Nine pounds and change. Like delivering a calf. I still get a Christmas card every year from the parents. After that, I applied for the Auto Unit. I had my fill of ob-gyn work.”

Patrick smiled. “God has a way of evening the score, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Jessica said.

“If I remember correctly, there was a lot of craziness that Christmas Eve, wasn’t there?”

It was true. Generally, when a blizzard hits, it keeps the nut jobs indoors. But for some reason, the stars lined up that night and they were all out. Shootings, arson, muggings, vandalism.