Page 33 of Reckless
Zoe laughed softly, the sound taking him by surprise. “You really are no holds barred, aren’t you?”
“’Fraid so,” he said, but she shook her head, the dark red of her lipstick outlining her wistful smile.
“Don’t be. I don’t really have anyone I can air this out with, and to be honest, it’s kind of nice. In a weird, spill-my-guts kind of way.”
Her pulse beat a strong, steady pattern against Alex’s thumb, and he let his grasp linger for a long, sweet second before letting go like he damn well knew he needed to. “I’m glad, I think. But you haven’t answered the question.”
Zoe paused, but she didn’t dodge the topic. “Let’s just say my father is rather disappointed in my career move.”
“He said that?” Shock pulled Alex’s head back to look at her full on. Cap had practically made a full-time job of bragging about her accomplishments, from college to culinary school to the fancy restaurant in DC. He’d been pretty tight-lipped about her coming back to Fairview, but Alex hadn’t thought anything of it.
Until right this second, anyway.
“Pretty much, although he’s so tight with what he really feels, part of me is just guessing. I mean, I get it. I gave up a sure thing—a successful thing—in order to scrape my way through a very unglamorous uphill battle of a job. He says he doesn’t like me working at Hope House because it’s in a dangerous part of town, but come on. Where else is a soup kitchen going to be?”
“The neighborhood’s a little tough,” Alex ventured slowly, not wanting to admit out loud that he’d specifically timed his departure from Hope House on Thursday to match up with hers for that very reason. While he hadn’t seen anything this week that qualified as an obvious danger, Alex had lived in Fairview long enough to be smart about certain sections of the city. Plus, he’d responded to enough calls in the warehouse district to know the neighborhood could dish up some bite to go with its bark.
But Zoe wasn’t having it. “I’m tough, too, and my father knows it because that’s how he raised me. I know he thinks I’m wasting my time and my talent, and he’s right that the pay and the stability at Hope House are a lot less solid than what I’d have on the restaurant circuit. But of all people, I expected him to get my being dedicated to my job. After all, he’s so dedicated to his that he chose it over his family.”
A curl of something Alex couldn’t quite name unwound low in his belly, launching his words out without thought. “Being a firefighter doesn’t quite work that way,” he said, and shit, he was veering into dangerous territory. But for eight years, he’d lived by the words Zoe’s father had said to him on his first day at Station Eight, and those words had quite literally saved Alex’s life.
“Really?” Zoe asked, half stubborn argument and half genuine question. “Then how does it work?”
“Being a firefighter isn’t something you choose. When you’re really meant for it, the job chooses you.” He took a sip of the beer that had mystically appeared at his elbow, making a mental note to double Sara’s tip, both for being so observant and for not interrupting his conversation with Zoe. “You can’t phone it in, and you can’t fake your way through it. You’re either a firefighter, right here.” Alex paused, just for a second to brush a palm over the center of his Henley. “Or you’re not. If you’re not, you eventually move on to something else. But if you are, then it’s not just your job. It’s who you are.”
After a minute of clear and quiet thought, Zoe said, “I don’t know. I guess I just thought…” Her words faltered, but the warm-whiskey fire in her eyes didn’t dim. “I thought he’d always have my back, and that we’d always be a family, but now he and I can’t even have a conversation without fighting, even though we never reallytalkabout a thing. Between my career implosion and my parents’ divorce, I feel like everything I thought I knew just got yanked out from under me. One minute I had things I could rely on, and the next, I just…didn’t.”
“Yeah.” Alex had his hand over hers before his brain could kill the move. “Sometimes life slaps you with a whole lot more than you bargained for.”
Zoe’s brows tucked into a gold-blondVof concern and curiosity. “Sounds like firsthand knowledge.”
Annnnnnd he’d officially pushed the boundaries of this conversation. Jesus, since when had spouting platitudes become part of his blueprint? He needed to button his goddamn yap before this little chat needed a tourniquet.
So what if Zoe was dead-on accurate.
“It’s a long story,” Alex drawled, digging deep for his most charming smile. “And anyway, we’re talking about you, remember? Do you feel any better? You know, in a weird, spill-your-guts kind of way.”
Her laugh loosened the screws on both the conversation and the tension pulling tight behind his sternum, and hell, with those little wisps of hair that had fallen loose to frame her face and the sudden burst of genuine ease in her smile, she really was beautiful.
“Yeah, actually. I do. Thanks for listening.”
Alex tipped his beer at her, although for the first time he could remember, his cocky default felt just the least bit ill-fitting. “Not a problem, Gorgeous. Just remember this next time you want to put me on trash duty in the kitchen, okay?”
The conversation turned to polite but pleasant enough chat about her new apartment (not terribly far from the firehouse), hockey play-offs (she was a Flyers fan, which had to piss her Pittsburgh-loving father off something fierce), and whether or not the hot wings at Bellyflop truly earned their “atomic” moniker. (They did, but Alex wasn’t above watching Zoe find out for herself. Sadly, she took Sara’s word for it.) Finally, after her drink was gone and the conversation coasted to a natural stop, he walked her to her car, forcing himself to zero in on the pavement in front of him rather than risk getting another eyeful of the barely there back of her shirt. The damn thing was cut so decadently low, chances were slim to none that she was wearing anything other than body lotion underneath it.
How a mere swath of cotton could turn even the most in-control guy into a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, Alex really had no clue. But holy hell, he wanted to slide that shirt off her shoulders to explore the hot, bare expanse of skin underneath. With his eyes. His hands.
His mouth.
Off limits, you jackass! No matter how seductively sweet she sounded when she begged you to take her to bed last night.
“Well,thatwas interesting.”
Alex hadn’t even made it back to his regular table in the middle of Bellyflop’s still semi-crowded bar area before Cole had lasered in on him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a two-foot bull’s-eye in the middle of his chest.
“What was interesting?” Alex asked, even though he heard exactly how lame the question sounded before he’d finished asking. But the last thing he needed was for Cole to make a big deal where there wasn’t one, so he sank a thumb into the belt loop of his jeans and leaned against the touch-screen jukebox on the far wall of the bar, pretending to peruse his options while he worked up the most bored expression he could muster.
Cole shot an obvious glance to the now empty spot at the bar where Alex had just spent the better part of ninety minutes listening to Zoe give her frustrations some air time. “Seriously, Teflon? You’re not really going to try and no-big-deal me on this. She’s Westin’s daughter, for Chrissake. And she’s a hell of a lot more grown up than the last time we saw her.”
