Reckless Page 3

  But she wasn’t alone in the dining room.

  Zoe’s heartbeat locked in her throat as she registered the man sitting at one of the tables closest to the counter, although sitting was actually pretty generous. His long, jeans-clad legs were kicked out in front of him, crossed one over the other at the ankles of his heavy-soled brown leather work boots. His chin lay tucked against the chest of his navy-blue jacket, just enough for his fashionably tousled blond hair to obscure his face, and the soft sound rising up from his chest doubled the shock pumping through her veins.

  Her party crasher was snoring.

  “Okay, Sleeping Beauty. Time to rise and shine.” Zoe barked the words in her best drill-sergeant voice, although she kept her Danskos planted firmly on the business side of the counter. This guy was pretty horizontal for someone with bad intentions—not to mention far more well-kept than their average residents—but she was still on this side of the shelter all by herself. Looks could be deceptive as hell, and despite the security measures she and Tina had been scraping to put into place, Hope House wasn’t exactly in a pristine neighborhood. No way was she taking any chances by sounding too mousy or getting too close. “I don’t know how you got in here, but breakfast doesn’t start until seven. You’ll have to wait back in the residence until then.”

  He woke up all at once, perfectly upright and focused with just two blinks, and holy cheese on a cracker, he was gorgeous. “I’m not here for breakfast. I’m—”

  “Alex?” Recognition slammed into her senses, working on a five-second delay with her mouth. But this had to be a mistake. No way could Alex Donovan, the cockiest and most reckless firefighter in her father’s entire house, be standing here in front of her with shoulders twice as broad as the last time she’d seen him and a smile so sexy, the damn thing should come with a sternly worded warning label.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his Caribbean blue eyes tapering in confusion as they took a slow trip from her face to her feet and then back up again. “Do I know you?”

  Zoe’s cheeks went hot, although whether it was from the way Alex was focused on her so intently or the fact that she was forgettable enough to go unrecognized, she couldn’t be sure.

  “Zoe.” She paused, waiting out his continued lack of a lightbulb moment for another few seconds before adding, “Westin.”

  Alex’s eyes went as round and dark as ripe blueberries in August, and ding, ding, ding. They had a winner. “Holy shit. I mean—” He straightened, tugging a hand through his sun-kissed hair as his grin turned decidedly sheepish. “Your father mentioned you’d moved back to town, but I didn’t realize you were . . . jeez, didn’t you just graduate from college?”

  Zoe’s defenses prickled to life. “Five years ago.” Two months before the last time she’d seen him, to be exact. Come to think of it, Alex had treated her like a little girl that day, too.

  Right. Because just what her blush needed was more fuel.

  “Oh. I guess time really flies, huh?” He tried on another smile, this one all sweet talk, and God, some things never changed. “Anyway, you might be able to help me out. I guess I’m looking for your boss.”

  “My who?”

  Alex pointed toward the painted cinder-block wall that the soup kitchen shared with the shelter. “The only door that was open when I got here was the one to the shelter. The lady behind the desk walked me through the security doors and told me to wait here for the director of the soup kitchen. It’s kind of a long story, but I got stuck with this stupid community service assignment because of an even more stupid work thing, and this was the first available placement. To be honest, I just want to get it over with.” He tipped his head at her, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans like no great shakes. “What’d you do to land here, anyway?”

  Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Of all the possible community service assignments in the galaxy, this one took the freaking crown. She might not have clapped eyes on Alex Donovan since she’d made a colossal idiot out of herself in front of him at the Fairview Fire Department annual barbecue five years ago, but clearly, he hadn’t broken the firefighter mold, and she’d been around Station Eight enough to know his reputation by heart. Alex flew by the seat of his bunker pants twenty-four/seven, taking unnecessary risks the way most people took Motrin.

  Not happening in her soup kitchen. She might be understaffed, but she wasn’t overstupid.

  “The way I landed here was simple, actually,” Zoe said, knotting her arms over her chest tight enough to test the seams of her T-shirt. “I interviewed for the position as director and I got the job.”

  The silence extended between them for a beat, then two, before . . . “Wait. You’re the director of the soup kitchen? As in, you run the whole program? I thought you went to some five-star culinary school.” Alex stared at her over the glass and stainless steel food service counter, and at least she’d found the antidote to his smirk.

  “Surprise. But don’t worry. You won’t be stuck with this stupid community service assignment for long.”

  Her pulse kicked into motion along with her feet, and she angled herself toward the darkly shadowed hallway leading to the pass-through to the shelter. With any luck, Tina would get to work early and could send his arrogant ass packing before Zoe served her first cup of coffee.

  “Zoe, wait.” Alex’s long legs ate up the space between them before she could even make it halfway to the dining room door. “I think we got off on the wrong foot here.”

  She gave him a tight smile without breaking stride. “At least being a firefighter has kept your observational skills sharp.”

  His shoulders snapped into an unyielding knot, his stare flashing cool blue as he kept up with her, step for step. “You want to know what else I picked up with my keen observational skills? You’re in here by yourself, Gorgeous. And that tells me that like it or not, you need all the help you can get to run this place.”

  Zoe’s gut took a downhill slide toward her hips, and she froze mid-pace on the threshold of the shadow-lined hallway. “Help from someone who isn’t serious about being here isn’t going to help at all.”

  “Oh, I’m absolutely serious,” Alex said, triggering a borderline unladylike snort from her lips.

  “You fell asleep on the job before you even started, then you called your assignment in the program I started from scratch ‘stupid.’ As far as I’m concerned, that makes you about as serious as a tabloid headline, no matter how short-staffed I happen to be.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted upward, disappearing briefly beneath his golden-brown stubble before he folded his lips back to neutral-expression territory. “Look, you and I might not see eye to eye on the value of community service, but I can promise you this. I’m as determined to do my job as you are to do yours. The city sent me here for a reason. I can’t go back to Station Eight until I do my time, and you need a volunteer. So are we going to help each other out here, or what?”

  Zoe opened her mouth, her own personal version of or what preloaded and ready to launch from her tongue. But if there was one rule she lived by above everything else, it was not putting what mattered most at risk, and what mattered most was feeding the residents at Hope House. As much as she knew firefighters—especially ones like Alex Donovan—were nothing but a great, big recipe for disaster, Zoe needed him.

  And that meant she had no choice but to spend the next four weeks with the arrogant, impulsive firefighter in her kitchen and under her skin.

  “Fine. But let’s get one thing perfectly clear. There’s no freelancing on this job. I run a tight kitchen with even tighter rules.”

  But rather than argue, Alex laughed long and loud, the sound sizzling all the way through her as he said, “Funny. That doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed hard, wondering how she’d managed to carve out top honors at one of the most prestigious culinary schools on the East Coast but couldn’t come up with anything more intelligent than a single syllable to cover up the
heat in her blood or the shock in her chest. “Well, you can hang your jacket in the back. We’ve got a ton of work to do before the other volunteers get here to serve breakfast, and we’re already behind.”

  Sixty seconds later, Alex pushed his way back through the swinging doors from the kitchen, and the gray T-shirt hugging his every last muscle did nothing to bump her vocabulary out of the range of pure idiocy. God, had she learned nothing at that barbecue five years ago?

  “You didn’t grab an apron,” Zoe managed, gesturing to the swath of white cotton knotted around her waist.

  “They’re not part of the rules, are they?” Although he kept his expression mostly cool, the challenge edging his deep blue stare was just visible enough to blot out the last of the weird shot of warmth she’d felt at his laugh.

  “No.” It figured he’d start by pushing his luck. “But the kitchen gets pretty messy. You’re probably going to want one.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “I’ll bet.” Zoe reached into one of the stainless steel utility drawers behind the counter, unearthing a black three-ring binder and propping it open between them. “This is Hope House’s kitchen manual. There’s another copy in the back, by the pantry. It’s got separate sections for delivery guidelines, kitchen tasks and procedures, and step-by-step directions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner service, with house rules in the front of the book and all the health department regulations in the back.”

  Alex’s brows traveled up his forehead. “This has to be three hundred pages all told.”

  “Welcome to running a nonprofit. We have a lot of guidelines. I’ll walk you through most of the work today, but breakfast starts in”—she flipped her wrist to get a glimpse of her watch, and ugh, this was going to take an act of God wrapped up in a winning lottery ticket and sealed with a get out of jail free card. “Fifty-six minutes, so we’re going to need to go fast.”

  “Now you’re speaking my language.” His charming smile made its way back home in less than a breath, but Zoe met it with a frown.

  “Right, I forgot. You just want to get this over with.”

  Alex shrugged, following her down the main aisle in the dining room and mirroring her movements as she began to flip the chairs from their upside-down perches on the tabletops. “You’re not really surprised that I want to get back to Eight as soon as possible, are you? I mean, no offense, but if I had my heart set on doing community service, I’d volunteer of my own accord.”

  Well, at least his slick charisma came with a side order of no bullshit. Zoe shook her head. “I guess not. What’d you do to get yourself four full-time weeks of mandatory CS anyway? That’s a pretty long assignment.” In fact, it was the longest one she’d seen since she’d come back to Fairview.

  “I told you, it was stupid. I had a difference of opinion with a captain at another house.” He curled his palms over a pair of chairs, one-handing each of them to the time-scuffed floorboards with a clunk. The long, lean muscles in his forearms flexed and released as he repeated the process once, then twice, and Lord, she really needed to get out more. Or at the very least, dig up her DVD of Magic Mike for a good, long re-watch.

  “Sounds like a little more than a difference of opinion,” Zoe said, her field-tested caution sensors thankfully dousing her libido with a giant bucket of ice cold don’t be stupid.

  “Well, obviously the department agrees with you, which is why I’m here.” Alex finished clearing the table next to hers, his no-bones-about-it shrug making an encore performance. “We were second on scene at an abandoned warehouse fire four days ago. Not far from here, actually.”

  Recognition tugged at her mind. “The old chemical place over on Roosevelt.” According to Tina, the place had been boarded up for at least a year.

  “Yeah. Anyway, the captain over at Thirteen was being a dick about us searching ahead of the water lines.” He paused, inspecting the floor beneath his boots as he cleared his throat. “Uh, pardon my language.”

  Zoe huffed out a laugh, although the back of her neck heated upon its exit. She wasn’t in middle school, for God’s sake. “I’m familiar with the word dick, Alex.”

  “Right. Of course. So Captain McManus told us we didn’t need to sweep the warehouse, but I thought it was a bad call. He and I got into it and I went in anyway, and I guess the rest is history.”

  Hold on . . . “So you ignored a direct order from a captain in an already dangerous situation.” Jesus, that took brass.

  Alex’s shoulders became a rigid line beneath the thin layer of his T-shirt, but he didn’t stop flipping the dining room chairs into place. “It wasn’t that big a deal. McManus just blew it out of proportion because he was pissed I knocked him down.”

  Zoe took it back; brass didn’t even begin to cover this. “You knocked him down?”

  “Not intentionally,” he argued. “The situation got heated and I just shoved past him to get to the scene. There could’ve been squatters in that warehouse. It’s my job to get them out, period.”

  “You didn’t find anyone, though, did you.” No way she wouldn’t have heard about a rescue like that in this part of town, especially one where her father’s house had responded, and the tight silence filling the dining room hammered her suspicion home.

  Of course, Alex wouldn’t stand down in the face of a little thing like common freaking sense. “Making absolutely sure the building was empty was a risk I was willing to take.”

  “But you were clearly told it was an unnecessary risk. Captain McManus must’ve felt sure no one was in there if he told you not to go inside, plus, there was obvious danger. The place was on fire.” A sudden burst of realization had her chin snapping up. “Did you go on this little recon mission all by your lonesome?”

  “Of course not.” He turned to look at her, his hard, blue stare narrowed in confusion. “You know the drill. Everything in pairs. Cole went with me.”

  “So not only did you go all commando against another captain’s orders, but you risked Cole’s ass, too.” The words flew past her lips, brazen and unchecked, but come on. There could’ve been forty-seven kinds of danger in that warehouse, and Alex had not only barged right into the middle of it against a fire captain’s better judgment, but he’d rolled out the red carpet for another man to take the same impetuous gamble.

  And Zoe knew all too well how much a risk like that could cost.

  “Let me make something perfectly clear, Zoe.” Alex set the last chair over the floorboards with an impetuous clunk, crossing the room until he was close enough to make her heartbeat hijack her lungs. “I’m in this soup kitchen because I have to be, not because I want to. No amount of rehabilitative community service, including judgment from you, is going to change who I am or how I do my job. So do yourself a favor. Don’t try.”

  With that, he turned and walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen, not even sparing her a backward glance.

  Chapter Three

  Alex sat back against his bar stool, his mood in the shitter despite the cold beer in his hand and the warm smile of the waitress who’d brought it. But the ten hours he’d spent hitting the bricks in Hope House’s kitchen today had done their level best to kill both his stamina and his patience.

  The grunt work, however, couldn’t even hold a flamethrower to his new boss.

  Alex tilted his bottle to his lips, swallowing a long, smooth sip of pale ale to cover his frown. Yeah, he’d cop to the fact that he hadn’t come out of the gate with a stellar first impression, but it wasn’t as if he’d meant to drift off to dreamland while he’d waited for Zoe in the dining room. With the circadian rhythms that went hand in hand with Alex’s job, five minutes in the dark meant one of two things—either he was falling asleep or getting laid. He had to admit, when he’d first seen Zoe standing there in Hope House’s dining room, with those blazing brown eyes and jeans that showcased more curves than a Grand Prix racetrack, the option behind door number two had seemed awfully freaking appealing.

  Unti
l he’d realized who she was. But how the hell was he supposed to know his captain’s only daughter had ditched out on her fancy career as an up-and-coming chef to direct a small-time soup kitchen in Fairview’s projects? Or that she seemed to have been living on a steady diet of no-risks, all-rules since he’d last seen her five years ago?

  Or that despite the fact that she’d pulled a Judge Judy on his ass over the way he’d landed his community service sentence, then met his cold shoulder with an equally arctic counterpart as she’d worked him into the kitchen tiles, he still found her unbelievably and unequivocally hot as hell.

  God, he was screwed. And not even in a way that would leave a smile on his face.

  “What’s the matter, Donovan? One day of plates and pots enough to send you around the bend?”

  Alex blinked himself back to his usual table in Bellyflop’s bar area just in time to catch the good-natured glint in the eyes of his former squad mate Nick Brennan. If anyone knew the twists and trials of working in a professional kitchen, it was definitely Brennan. After suffering a career-ending injury two and a half years ago, the guy had spent his time doing exactly that before coming back to Fairview last month to teach at the fire academy.

  After all, once a firefighter . . .

  “Laugh it up, fry boy,” Alex said, giving up half a grin before sliding off his padded leather bar stool to shake his buddy’s hand. “I take it you heard about my disagreement with McManus.”

  “Who hasn’t? The story’s all over the department.” Brennan tipped his darkly stubbled chin at their passing waitress, pointing to Alex’s beer bottle with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other as he parked himself across the table. “Gotta hand it to you, dude. When it comes to going all-in, you are definitely committed.”