Page 50 of Reckless
Leave it to her father to go gruff on the pleasantries when there was an issue at hand. Not that she wasn’t the same way, she supposed. “Yes. No. Sort of.”
Zoe’s gut spiraled downward, and she grabbed the carafe of coffee the server had left on the table, pouring her father a full cup before topping off her own. His already serious expression sharpened around the corners of his eyes and mouth, but damn it, this needed to be said, and not just for Hope House. “Something happened this week at the shelter. I didn’t tell you when we had breakfast yesterday because I didn’t want you to worry. But we’ve been fighting about my job and yours ever since I came back to Fairview. You deserve to know the truth, starting with this.”
Her father listened, the flat line of his mouth growing thinner and thinner as she boiled down the events surrounding Rochelle and Kenny’s arrival at Hope House. She didn’t get any further than Damien’s appearance in the soup kitchen and the shoving match that ensued before her father slapped a palm onto the Formica tabletop, hard enough to send a slosh of coffee over the rim of his cup and into the saucer beneath it.
“God damn it, Zoe! I told you that place isn’t safe.”
Although she didn’t argue outright, Zoe still stood her ground. “I get it, Dad, and I know the shelter is in a high-crime area, but?—”
“But nothing,” he interrupted, his brown eyes going dark in a flash. “Even with a seasoned firefighter right there in the building, this guy still made his way inside.”
Her shoulder blades met the red leather banquette behind her with a shock-induced thump. “You know Alex is doing his community service at Hope House?”
For a split second, her father paused. “Of course I know Alex is doing his community service at Hope House. I’m his captain. All of his paperwork ends up on my desk.”
Oh,hell.Aside from the obvious reminder that he was Alex’s boss, her father had always been invested in his firefighters, both personally and professionally. Of course he’d be privy to Alex’s placement for community service.
Still, she frowned. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you didn’t bring it up.” Her father took a long draw from his coffee cup before placing it back in its saucer. “Anyway, I assumed the placement was going as expected. Unless he’s a problem?”
“Oh, uh.” Shit.Shit.She really needed to rock one boat at a time here. “No. I mean, he’d obviously rather be at Eight, fighting fires. But he’s okay in the kitchen, and he did play a big part in helping to handle the situation the other day.”
Her father’s expression returned to watchdog status, and he slashed a hand through his hair with renewed aggravation. “A dirtbag shoving his way through a soup kitchen and assaulting its occupants is more serious than a ‘situation,’ Zoe. I mean it. Working there is clearly dangerous, no matter how noble the cause. You have to be smarter about your safety.”
But rather than turning the tables and digging in with the same argument that had stalemated them since she’d come home to Fairview, Zoe said, “I know.”
Confusion narrowed her father’s stare beneath the bright glow of the diner’s overhead lights. “You know,” he repeated, half question, half caution, but damn it, Zoe was so tired of butting heads with him that even though she knew the truth would leave her vulnerable, she let the rest of it spill out anyway.
“I know. I know you had high expectations for me when I went to culinary school, and that running a soup kitchen wasn’t part of them. I know you’re disappointed in my choices.” She sucked in a breath. “And I know you’re disappointed in me.”
Her father’s eyes flared, but Zoe barreled on. If she didn’t get this all out now, she wasn’t going to. “You’re right. Thereareparts of my job that are more hazardous than I realized they’d be. But making a difference at Hope House is important to me regardless of the risks, and I think you understand what that’s like. I didn’t ask you to meet me here to pick another fight with you about either of our jobs. I did it because I need your help.”
For a minute, nothing broke the silence between them except the strains of the catchy pop song filtering down from the speakers in the ceiling and the muted clatter of kitchenware being prepped for the impending dinner service, and oh God, she’d miscalculated this risk. The rift between them was too big, too irreparable to bridge by asking him to back her up at the job he’d hated since she took it. Zoe scrambled for a quicknever mindto erase her impetuous request, but before she could fumble the words past her lips, her father spoke.
“You think I’m disappointed in you?”
The question screeched her thoughts to a halt, bringing forth a graceless, “Huh?”
Now it was her father’s turn not to budge. “Do you think I’m disappointed in you because you chose to work at Hope House?”
Zoe blinked. “Well, um. Yeah. You’ve made it pretty clear that you’re not a fan.”
“Of you being threatened by a maniac who was trying to beat his wife and child?” The muscle pulling into a hard line over his jaw suggested that his molars were just shy of their breaking point. “No. But I’m concerned for your well-being, not disappointed in what you do or who you are.”
After a full five seconds of shock, she finally managed, “But you’ve hated the idea of my working at Hope House since the second I resigned from Kismet.”
Her father tugged at the cuff of his plaid button-down shirt even though it was already perfectly straight. “That’s because your personal safety isn’t the only part of your well-being that I worry about.”
“What else is there?”
“When your mother and I got divorced, you took it harder than either of us expected you would,” her father said, his gaze softening over hers. “I know you weren’t entirely happy in Washington, DC. But you quit your job at Kismet pretty abruptly, and you’ve been angry with me over my decision to stay at the firehouse since well before that.” He broke off, and for the first time, Zoe saw a flicker of genuine worry hiding deep beneath his stoic expression. “It’s not exactly a secret that you’re stubborn, or that you come by it honestly. I’ve been worried that maybe you came back to run Hope House to prove a point, rather than to do the best thing for your career. And as stubborn as I am, too, I only want the best for you. I want you to be happy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?” she whispered, and her father’s wry smile tugged her heart in four different directions at once.
“You and I haven’t exactly been on the best of terms lately. Plus, I’m your old man. I might not think twice about fighting fires, but when it comes to airing out things like emotions…let’s just say I’m not a pro.”
“Me neither, I guess.” As much as Zoe hated the dissonance that had lingered between them, she couldn’t deny that half of it belonged to her.
