Page 71 of Reckless
“Captain—”
“Dad, I?—”
Their words crashed together, arriving simultaneously, but Westin silenced them both in an instant.
“Don’t.” He flashed a stare full of warning at Zoe, which only threw Alex’s protective instincts onto the huge pile of emotions hurtling through his gut.
But Zoe didn’t stop. “This isn’t what you think.”
“Believe me,” Westin grated, his eyes drilling Alex chock-full of holes. “You don’t want to know what I think.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and her forefinger, taking a step toward her father. “Okay, look. Let’s just talk about this like adults, please.”
“I just came out of my office to find my only daughter spontaneously lip-locked with one of my firefighters. That’s not going to happen,” he grated, the deep breath that followed visibly lifting his chest beneath the dark blue shirt of his uniform.
“This isn’t some spontaneous thing,” Zoe argued, and oh shit, Westin’s face flushed dark red with anger.
“Really. And just how long has it beennotspontaneous?”
Zoe bit her lip, clearly realizing the catch-22 of her words. “I?—”
“A month,” Alex said, quietly straightening.
A muscle in Westin’s jaw twitched once. Twice. “I’ll deal with you later, Zoe. Donovan, get in my office.Now.”
Alex hesitated. He didn’t mind taking the brunt of her father’s anger, and yeah, considering the way he’d stumbled upon them, the man had every reason to be righteously indignant. But Zoe was an equal part of the equation. She didn’t deserve to be brushed off and not heard. “Captain, with all due respect, Zoe?—”
Westin took a swift step forward, jamming Alex’s words to a sloppy stop. “Don’t—do not—talk to me about respect when you’ve been sneaking around with my daughter for a goddamn month while I went to bat for you with the chief. Now get in my office, before I haul your ass out the door.”
Alex exhaled, the full measure of his dread replacing the air in his lungs. “Yes, sir.”
He turned to look at Zoe, to somehow grab one last burst of calm at the sight of her before he walked into Westin’s office for what might be the last time, but she threw her hands in the air, decimating the very notion of the word.
“Do you really want to talk about respect?” Her hands lowered, only to lock into place over her hips as her eyes glittered with built-up frustration and anger, and hell, she was fraying at the seams. “I’m twenty-seven years old. I get that I’m your daughter and that you want to look out for me, but damn it, I’m righthere. I’m not a little girl anymore, and I don’t need protecting. You said you had my back, and that you believed in me. For once, can’t you just trust me?”
“No. I can’t.” The words sliced from Westin’s mouth with all the sharpness of a six-inch switchblade, cutting Alex to the bone as he added, “In fact, I don’t trust either one of you to be honest with me right now. Now go, Zoe. For your own good.”
Zoe’s shoulders folded inward, a fresh round of tears tracking over her face. But before Alex could launch the reply swirling up from the part of him shrieking to leap to her defense, the electronic signal for an all-call pierced through the firehouse speakers.
“Squad Eight, Engine Eight, Ambulance Eight. Structure fire, reported entrapment. One-nine-seven Windsor Avenue. Requesting immediate response.”
“We’re not done here, Donovan. This changes nothing,” Westin said, leveling him with one last frown before sprinting down the hallway.
But Alex had a feeling that was as far from the truth as any man could get.
* * *
“Look sharp,everyone, because this shit is not a drill.” Crews’s voice cut through the crush of engine noise, blaring sirens, and controlled chaos flying around in the back step of Engine Eight, signaling a neon-coloredshut up and listenthrough the headphones each of them wore. “Dispatch has multiple nine-one-one callers reporting active fire in a block of row homes on Windsor.”
Cole took Alex’s inward groan and gave it a voice. “Those row homes are three stories up and six units across. Not to mention they’re goddamn ancient.”
Translation: fire fucking loved them. Firefighters? Not so much.
“Affirmative on both. There’s reported entrapment in at least one unit, but no details on location or how many people, which means we’re going to have to keep our eyes wide the hell open. Looks like we’ll be first on scene, so be ready to run some lines and drench this place while squad hits the roof for a vent. Cap’s behind us, and he’s going to call the ball. Copy?”
“Copy,” came the string of responses, but Alex barely heard them as he tugged his headphones off and hung them on the hook above his seat.
“You good?” Cole asked, turning sideways to get geared up. The move let him not only peg Alex with a critical stare, but it effectively blocked Jones from hearing any strains of the conversation from his spot on the other end of the step. “And don’t even think about fracturing the truth just because we’re on the way to a fire and you want me to keep my head straight.”
