Page 12 of Reckless
The heel of her shiny black and silver clogs gave a squeak as she turned back toward the kitchen, but she’d barely gotten past the swinging door before Alex had caught up with her.
“You didn’t answer the question.” Somewhere, way in the back room of his brain, he knew picking at her probably wasn’t the brightest idea. But he’d never been too partial to holding back, and anyway, he couldn’t deny his irritation at the extra assignmentorhis ripping curiosity at how fast she’d been to swerve around the subject.
Zoe had been unapologetic about standing her ground since the minute he’d laid eyes on her yesterday, to the point that she’d marched him around the kitchen like a lieutenant doing stair drills with a squad full of rookies. No way would she scale back over something like a refill rule.
Unless he’d hit a nerve.
“No, I didn’t.” She crossed the kitchen tiles, propping the dry goods pantry door open with one denim-wrapped hip before sliding a wooden doorstop into place. Alex followed her into the warm, tightly packed space, the residual sounds from the kitchen receding into a distant thrum of background noise as they moved farther into the galley-style storage room.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“A day and a half’s worth of zipping your lips and walking around here like you don’t care about anything, and you want to break your code of silence over a cup of coffee?” Zoe’s hands moved just a fraction too quickly as she searched the open-air metal shelves in front of her, and just like that, Alex left propriety in the dust.
“Obviously,” he pointed out, taking another step toward her until he was close enough to feel the vibration of her surprise. Her movements slid to a halt, her fingers halfway over a carton of vegetable stock, and he didn’t waste any time taking advantage of the hitch. “So, humor me. Are you really so bound and determined to go by the book that you can’t give a poor old man a second cup of coffee? I thought the whole point of a soup kitchen was to feed people when they’re hungry, not turn them away because of some stupid rule.”
In a hot instant, Zoe knocked the surprise directly back to his court. “You really don’t get it, do you?” She turned to face him, her chin tipped defiantly so she could meet his gaze despite the seven-inch height difference between them. “It’s not that I don’t want Hector to have a second cup of coffee. Hell, Alex, I want to give him enough refills to float him to France. But I can’t.”
Something Alex couldn’t label with a name flickered in her caramel-colored stare, replaced by her standard-issue seriousness before he could even be one hundred percent positive he’d seen a change. “Why not? You’re the director.”
“Exactly,” she said, the softness of her voice refusing to match the sternness of her expression. “I’m the director. It’s my job to feed as many people as possible so no one goes without. And if Hector gets two cups of coffee, someone else gets none, so yeah. I have to bethattight with the rules.”
His gut sank in sudden understanding. “Your funding is really that thin?” he asked. The flicker in her eyes made a repeat performance, and Alex was unprepared for the vulnerability in Zoe’s answer.
“I treat feeding people the way you treat being a firefighter. Do you really think I’d pull up on doing it for one second unless I didn’t have a choice?”
Oh, hell. He opened his mouth, but before he could form an answer, her eyebrows tugged into a deep furrow.
“Wait…what’s that smell?”
Alex blinked, trying to process the question despite all thewhaaaaaatrunning rampant in his melon. “Don’t look at me,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I took a shower this morning.”
“Not you.” Zoe frowned, pressing up to her toes to scan the pantry’s top shelf. Rocking back on his heels, Alex mimicked her movements on the other side of the narrow storage space, and come to think of it, now that they were all the way inside, the pantry did seem to be giving off kind of a funky odor.
With their argument seemingly forgotten, Zoe turned toward the deepest stretch of the corridor-like room, where she’d had him unload all those endless cartons of who knows what yesterday. “You double checked the contents of these boxes before you put them on the shelves, right?”
He swallowed hard, his throat tightening into a knot full of very bad things. “You said to unload them and put them in the pantry, not open them up.”
“I said to unload them per the guidelines, which means they should’ve been checked. Did you not readanyof the book?”
“Not to move a bunch of boxes,” Alex argued. “And anyway, that thing is a doorstop.”
“That thing is important!” Zoe’s eyes flashed with the color and intensity of double-batch bourbon as she started shushing boxes over the metal wire shelves, popping them open and muttering something unintelligible under her breath. A few seconds later, she jerked back from the ominously stained cardboard carton in her grasp, turning to throw a hard cough into the crook of her elbow.
“Ugh.” The pungent smell of something rotten hit Alex right in the gag reflex, and he squeezed his eyes shut against their involuntary watering. “What is that?”
“Thatappears to be one of the boxes that should have been sorted with the meat delivery and put in the walk-in for today’s lunch and dinner service,” Zoe bit out, her lips flattening into a hard seal as she swung her gaze from the soggy box to his face.
“But it was on the kitchen counter with all the other stuff during yesterday’s dry goods delivery.” It had to have been, otherwise he never would’ve shoved the thing back here with all the others like she’d told him to.
“The individual boxes aren’t always marked with what’s inside, which is exactly why whoever unloads them is supposed to do an inventory of each one to make sure the items go to the right place, especially on days when we have multiple food deliveries. The procedures are very clearly outlined in the manual.”
All of a sudden, the very bad things in the pit of his belly grew into something even worse. “I guess I must have missed this one. I’m sorry.” Alex took a few steps toward the kitchen for a trash bag to just suck it up and take care of the mess when the harsh burst of Zoe’s exhale stopped him dead in his Red Wings.
“Sorry’s not going to cut it,” she said, meeting him toe to toe on the dark brown pantry tiles. He could admit to screwing up—hell, he justhad,and he’d offered a genuine apology to boot. What else could she possibly want?
“Look, I get that you’re mad, Zoe, but it was a mistake. I didn’t knowingly put that box back here.”
“You also didn’tknowinglydo your job like you were supposed to. It’s one thing for you to put out minimal effort while you do your community service.” A muscle ticked in her jawline, punctuating the absolute certainty of her words as she added, “But I don’t have room in my kitchen for blatant screw ups, and I certainly can’t babysit you every second of the day. Sorry, Alex. But you’ve got to go.”
