Page 51 of Reckless
“Even so, there’s something you need to know. Despite all the arguing we’ve done since you came back to Fairview, I’ve never been disappointed in you, Zoe. Worried, frustrated, maybe a little overprotective.” He paused just long enough to lift one shoulder in a self-deprecating shrug before his voice grew raw with honesty. “But you’re my daughter. I’ve never been anything less than proud to be your father.”
Tears pricked at Zoe’s eyes, but she held them back in favor of her answer. “I’m not angry with you,” she said, but her father’s arched brow had her scrambling to rephrase. “Okay, Iwasangry with you at first, and a small part of my motivation for taking the job at Hope House was to prove that you don’t have to put your life on the line in order to help people.”
Her father opened his mouth, clearly to protest, but she lifted a hand and continued. “That wasn’t the main reason I left DC to run a soup kitchen, though. I came back here to feed the people who need it most. To make a difference.”
After a minute, her father said, “I can relate to wanting to help people. But you’ve still got to be smart about it. Just because you’re tough doesn’t mean you’re indestructible.”
Zoe dropped her chin into a slow nod. “Clearly, even though Tina and I have some security measures in place, there are still dangers at Hope House that I didn’t bargain for. No matter how much I want to feed the people who live there, and make the soup kitchen as safe as possible while I’m at it, I can’t do either of those things alone.”
“The hard jobs are never solo endeavors,” her father agreed, wrapping his fingers around his coffee cup as he looked at her. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I guess that depends.”
“On?”
Zoe’s heart knocked against her rib cage, her breath trembling with uncertainty.
But still, she took the leap of faith.
“On whether or not you’ve got my back.AndHope House’s.”
18
Alex sat back against the passenger seat of Zoe’s Prius, watching the neon glow of Bellyflop’s overhead sign illuminate her pretty features as she put the car in Park and let loose with a deep-bellied laugh.
“Wait. You’re seriously telling me you’ve yippee’d your way out of an airplane twenty-nine times, skied three different black diamond trails, and gone white water rafting in class four rapids, but you’ve never eaten sushi? Not even once?”
Alex shuddered, but mostly just to mess with her. God, that no-holds-barred smile was a fucking stunner. “I might like adventure, but even I have a threshold. Eating raw fish is crazy.”
“It’s notalluncooked. Plus, you’ve never even tried it,” Zoe argued, albeit without heat. “For all you know, it could be the best thing you’ve ever tasted.”
He leaned across the console, cupping the back of her neck to pull her in close. “Doubt it, Gorgeous.”
“You are terrible.” The accusation coalesced into a breathy sigh as Alex parted her lips with a greedy stroke of his own. Sliding his tongue over hers, he captured her smile with his mouth, and damn. He’d rather taste her than anything that could be dished up in a kitchen.
“Guilty as charged,” he murmured. Zoe arched up to press her lips back to his, and for a fleeting second, Alex considered telling her to put the car back into gear and break every traffic law imaginable to get back to his place so he could savor more than just her mouth. But finally, his conscience—freaking buzzkill that it was—made him pull back against the well-cushioned seat.
“We should probably go inside.” He nodded toward the brightly lit sports bar across the parking lot, which already appeared to be more than reasonably populated for eight o’clock on a Saturday night. After the handful of texts he’d placed earlier that afternoon, he knew essentially everyone from the firehouse would be here, and a quick survey of the lot told him at least half of them were more punctual than he and Zoe. Not that he felt an ounce of guilt over making the two of them late.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Zoe said, smiling as she smoothed a hand over her bright pink top. “After all, I already talked to my dad about this. We might as well make it official.”
Alex went from cocky to cock-blocked in about six seconds flat. “I’m sorry…what?”
Zoe got out of the car, the heels on her shoes echoing out atap-tap-tapthat kept time with the sudden riot of his pulse. “I met my dad at Scarlett’s after I left Hope House today. I didn’t want him to hear about what happened this week from anyone else, and anyway, asking everyone at Station Eight for help means starting from the top down. Getting my father on board first just made sense.”
“You told him about Damien?” Shock pushed the question out of Alex’s mouth, and Zoe answered it with a no-nonsense nod.
“Yeah. He took it about as well as you’d expect. But in the end, we had a good talk. Although he’s still not thrilled with me working at Hope House, he did agree to help with the paperwork side of the grant proposal. He runs things meticulously at Station Eight, so that’ll go a really long way.”
Alex’s urge to bend down and kiss his ass—and his job—goodbye ebbed just a little. “So you two just talked about your plans to apply for the Collingsworth Grant?”
“Yeah. What else would we talk about?”
They made it a few more steps across the parking lot before his silence filled in the blanks, and Zoe’s head sprang upward. “Oh. Oh, God, no. I mean, my father has been cc’d on all your paperwork, so he knows you’re doing your community service at Hope House, and that you were there last week when the whole Damien thing went down. But I didn’t tell him…you know. About this.” She drew an imaginary circle between them with one hand before returning her arm to her side. “My dad and I have always taken theignorance is blissroute on my dating particulars, and anyway, what you and I do in our personal time is nobody’s business but ours.”
“Right.” Alex gave himself a swift mental kick to dislodge his unease. “Yeah, right. Of course.”
The captain ran a tight house from process to paperwork, so his knowledge of Alex’s placement pretty much fell into theduhcategory even though they hadn’t shared any face time in weeks. And considering how heavily the plan Alex had helped Zoe strategize earlier today relied on the guys at Eight pitching in, asking her father’s help in trying to land the Collingsworth Grant made sense. Even if the mention of their father-daughter get-together had just pushed Alex’s panic button six ways to Sunday.
