Page 21 of Reckless
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He pressed himself forward, tapping an address into her GPS app with a few easy flicks of his wrists.
“Do you ever do anythingwitha plan?” She dropped a surreptitious glance at her phone’s display before putting the car in gear and starting to drive. At least they were only a handful of minutes from their destination. Being in the dark was threatening to send her over the edge.
“Sure. I planned this.”
“But not the bet that got you into it.”
“No,” Alex said, although not before his hesitation told Zoe she’d hit home. “But some of the best things happen when you don’t have a road map for them. And anyway, I didn’t need much foresight for this bet, since I know I’m not going to lose.”
Zoe’s laughter popped out despite her efforts to cage it. “You do remember the stipulations of this bet, right? I have to actually enjoy myself in order for you to win.”
“Mmm hmm.” He stretched all the way out against the backrest of the passenger seat, the long frame of his body completely relaxed beneath his workout gear. “I remember.”
“You seem awfully sure of yourself.” God, his body language practically radiated self-assurance from every leanly sculpted, magazine-perfect muscle.
“You say that like there’s another way to be.” He shifted against the passenger seat, angling both his body and his gaze toward her, and even though Zoe kept her eyes fixed firmly to the road, she felt the weight of his bright blue stare like an unmistakable touch.
Whoa.
She readjusted her grip on the steering wheel along with her mutinous libido. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with confidence. After all, I never would’ve made it through five minutes of culinary school without at least a little ego. But when you cross the borders of arrogance, it tends to get you burned, both in the kitchen and out.”
Alex let out a sound of surprise. “I never thought of chefs as a ballsy bunch.”
“Oh, God. They’re even worse than firefighters.” She clamped down on her bottom lip just a fraction too late as a wash of heat crept over her cheeks. “No offense.”
“Zoe, please,” Alex said, and if he took even the slightest insult from her blip in decorum, it sure didn’t ring through in his voice. “You’ll have to work up a hell of a lot more than that to offend me, and it’s not as if you’re wrong about most firefighters being pretty cocky. I just didn’t realize chefs were that bad, too.”
She guided the Prius through a couple of back-to-back turns, bringing them closer to the portion of Fairview that boasted a lot of restaurants and commercial storefronts, before she answered. “They’re notbad,per se. Most of the chefs I trained under were unbelievably talented. But they also had a metric ton of hubris, and none of them were afraid to sling it around. All that posturing and tenacity just made it a little tough to concentrate on what’s important.”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen how you run your kitchen. You seem pretty tenacious to me,” he said, and she caught his grin out of the corner of her eye as he added, “No offense.”
God, she supposed she’d earned that one. “None taken,” Zoe said. “But there’s a big difference between being confident and taking cocky risks that make you reckless.”
“That may be true,” Alex said at the same moment her GPS signaled the final turnoff on the navigation screen. “But you might want to trade in a little of one for the other, at least for today. We’re here.”
Confusion filtered through Zoe’s brain. She leaned forward, her seat belt digging into her shoulder as she squinted through the windshield at the row of nondescript buildings beyond.
Quick-Clean Dry Cleaners…Milton’s Auto Body…Miss Marie’s Bakery and Sweet Shop…
“But there’s nothing?—”
Zoe’s gaze hooked on the red and white sign over the door of the last building in the row, her breath jamming to a hard stop in her lungs.
No way. No. Way. He was out of his freakingmind.
Alex pinned her with the full measure of his stop-traffic smile. “Maybe a little bit,” he said, and only then did Zoe realize she must’ve spoken the words out loud. “But a bet’s a bet. Which means that if you want to win, you’re gonna have to be crazy right along with me.”
8
Alex sat back against the passenger seat of Zoe’s Prius, watching her expression morph from disbelief to discomfort in about two seconds flat.
“Rock climbing?” She sent a pointed stare at the sign readingFairview Vertical Climbbefore turning her liquid copper gaze back to his. “You promised my feet would stay on the ground.”
He should’ve figured Zoe would be tough enough to push back a little. After all, climbing certainly couldn’t be anywhere near her straight and narrow repertoire. “I promised we wouldn’t go skydiving,” he corrected, giving her a minute to replay their conversation from the other day in her memory before continuing. “I never said anything about your feet.”
She exhaled, crossing her arms over the front of her oversized dark gray hoodie. “Okay, but this isn’t going to work. I’ve never been rock climbing before.”
“Lucky for you, I have.” Hooking his fingers beneath the car’s interior door handle, he made quick work of getting out and retrieving his gear from the backseat. Although Zoe didn’t rush to make her feet keep time with his on the pavement, she didn’t leave his ass in the dust by running the other way either, so for right now, he’d call it a win.
