Page 11 of Reckless
“That’s not the right sink for washing your hands.” The words arrived barely one notch above the end of the breakfast din, and Alex shook himself back to the dining room with a frown. But the one-two punch of being at Hope House andnotbeing at Station Eight took a quick backseat to the stoop-shouldered old man standing on the other side of the counter, peering at Alex through a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses.
“It’s not, huh?” With all the arbitrary rules holding this place together like mortar, it figured there would be some sort of secret code for washing your hands.
“No.” The man clutched his coffee mug between both palms, shaking his nearly bald head as if Alex had made some grave infraction. “You gotta use the small one for your hands. See? Over there.” He nodded to the separate stainless steel sink a few paces away, next to the door to the kitchen. “Miss Zoe gets mad when people use the wrong one.”
“I’m sure she does.” Alex lifted one corner of his mouth in the rough measure of a smile, although there was damn little happiness behind the gesture. A hundred bucks said Zoe had never toed the wild side in her life.
“She has a good reason,” the man added, and okay. Alex had nothing but time. He’d bite.
“And what’s that?”
The man’s face brightened, his gaze skimming the tidy workspace behind the counter. “The big sink is for consumables. You know, filling the coffeepot or rinsing off vegetables. Haven’t you read the book?”
Alex thought of the two solid inches of do-this, do-that collated and clipped into Zoe’s kitchen manual, and he covered his grimace with a shake of his head. “Guess I missed that part.”
“It’s on page one-eighty-six, under the section for the Fairview City Health Code.”
Well, that explained a lot. “No wonder the boss loves it.”
“It always seemed like kind of a stupid rule to me, too,” the old man said, as if he’d periscoped his way into Alex’s thoughts. “But then Miss Zoe explained that there are two sinks to keep the germs from people’s hands away from anything we might eat or drink. That way no one who eats here gets sick. She even let me borrow the manual so I could read it for myself.”
“Huh,” Alex said, realization finding his brain in a slow trickle. Come to think of it, keeping the sinks separate to avoid cross contamination wasn’t the dumbest idea on the planet. “I’ll have to remember that from now on. Thanks for the heads up…”
“Hector.” The man brushed a palm over the front of his threadbare button down shirt before extending it, and Alex’s smile took a trip into genuine territory as he reached over the counter to shake the guy’s hand.
“Good to meet you, Hector. I’m Alex.”
Hector loaded his expression with curiosity that made his eyes go even wider behind the extra thick lenses of his bifocals. “You’re new here.”
“I’m working in the kitchen, but it’s just temporary,” Alex said, and hell if the affirmation wasn’t the best thing he’d tasted all day. “Four weeks from now I’ll be back at my real job. I’m a firefighter.”
“Oh, I see.” Hector swung a glance to the end of the counter where the two service volunteers were dishing up oatmeal and cold cereal, but it only lasted a second before rebounding back to the spot where Alex stood. “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to be able to give an old man a refill, would you? I promise not to tell Miss Zoe about you using the wrong sink.” He lifted his coffee mug just a few inches, but the expression on the guy’s face was so hopeful that even though Alex was supposed to be on kitchen patrol rather than the front lines, he didn’t even think twice.
“You drive a hard bargain, Hector. But you saved my bacon with that sink there, so I’ve got your back.” He turned to grab the carafe off the burner at the coffee station a few paces away. But rather than zeroing in on the java and getting down to business, he nearly smacked into Zoe instead.
“Whoa!” Alex pulled up about an inch before contact, shock spurting through him at not just her presence, but her proximity. Usually, he was one hundred percent solid on his surroundings, front, back, up and down. Hell, keeping your head on a swivel was pretty much lesson number one at the academy, and God knew it applied in more places than burning buildings.
Of course, Zoe didn’t even flinch, and didn’t that just throw him even more off kilter. “What are you doing?” she asked, her arms sliding into what looked like a well-practiced knot over the combo of her apron and her billowy white shirt.
Alex pulled in a deep breath, resetting his pulse to slow and steady. “I’m getting Hector another cup of coffee.” He shifted to step around her and finish his trip to the coffee station so he could refill Hector’s mug and get on with his yawn-worthy day, but Zoe didn’t budge from his path.
“Not so fast.”
Alex opened his mouth for a verbal push back—she couldn’t seriously pick on him for trying toservesomeone in a soup kitchen—when her hand brushed over his forearm, promptly scrambling his circuitry.
“Hector, I know you know the rules, even if Alex doesn’t,” Zoe said, her voice gentling even though her palm still curved firmly over his skin. God, her fingers were the oddest combination of softness and strength, and the heat of them kept his brewing protest just out of reach of his mouth.
Hector nodded, his expression flavored with apology. “No refills, no exceptions. I know, Miss Zoe. You can’t blame an old man for trying.”
“Hmm.” One gold-blond eyebrow kicked up, but there was no heat in the gesture to make it stick. “Still, no dice. You’re welcome to grab the very first cup of coffee at lunch, though. Okay?” She let go of Alex’s arm, and the sudden coolness replacing her fingers jolted him right back into awareness as Hector thanked her and shuffled away.
“Do you have to be so tight with the rules?” Alex murmured, twisting the words from the side of his mouth so only Zoe could hear them.
She returned the favor with a smile as dry as a desert afternoon. “Do you have to hate them so much that you didn’t even bother to read them? Or were you just breaking that one on purpose?”
Okay. He had no choice but to go touché on that one. Still… “So I didn’t know about the no refills thing. But would one extra cup of coffee have killed you?”
Zoe paused, her ponytail swinging in a blond arc over her shoulders as she dropped her chin by just a fraction. “Why don’t you finish up with these dishes and grab the rule book for some extra reading. Clearly, you need to review the food service guidelines again before you’ll be ready to work in the dining room.”
