Page 9 of Reckless
And the captain’s daughter is hands down, one hundred percent off limits. No questions. All the time.
Especially since barely four days ago, Captain Westin had gone to bat to save the career Alex desperately needed, and Alex had sworn above all not to let the man down.
O’Keefe narrowed his eyes in obvious thought, leaning back against his bar stool. “So, flirting your way to less time is a no-go, clearly. But Zoe is still Westin’s daughter, and even though she hasn’t been around much lately, it’s not as if she doesn’t know all of us from being around the station. You can’t get her to throw you a mercy bone for being in-house?”
Alex fought the urge to let loose a rude snort, but just barely. “Despite her heritage, I’m pretty sure Zoe is unfamiliar with the concept of mercy. She’s as serious as a sledgehammer, especially when it comes to getting things done at Hope House.” Hell if Alex didn’t have the screaming muscles and throbbing feet to prove it. Running a kitchen wasn’t supposed to be literal, for Chrissake.
“Okay,” Cole said, ever the calm, cool strategist. “If you can’t catch a break in the soup kitchen with Zoe, how about trying to switch to a different placement?”
Unease took a tour through Alex’s gut as he did a mental revisit of the phone call he’d placed on his fifteen-minute lunch break. “Already ahead of you, brother. But apparently these placements are one and done. You either take what they give you, or you don’t take a thing.”
The rep from the fire chief’s office had been summer-sunrise clear. The only way Alex was getting out of being placed at Hope House was if the director booted him, and if that happened, there would be no parting gifts at the door. As bitter as the community-service pill was on his tongue, his only available option was to grit out his time in the soup kitchen with his head down and his eyes forward.
No matter how curvy Zoe’s hips looked beneath that freaking apron.
Alex shook his head in an effort to dislodge the mental picture—and all the heat that went with it—from his frontal lobe. Aside from the fact that,hello, she was his captain’s freaking daughter, she was essentially his boss for the next four weeks. Okay, so it was more theory than technical fact. After all, the FFD still signed his paychecks—or at least they would when he got his job back. But Zoe was one hundred percent in charge of Hope House’s soup kitchen, and by default, his fate lay smack in the center of her iron fist. Thinking about her curves, or anything other than punching the clock and getting this ridiculous sentence done as fast humanly possible, was a crap idea of the highest order.
Especially since the last time he’d seen her at the annual barbecue, Alex had damn near obliterated one of the few rules he lived by and kissed Zoe Westin senseless.
“Damn,” O’Keefe said, re-marshaling Alex back to the crowd noise and clinking glassware at Bellyflop’s bar. “That sucks, man. At least maybe the department will let Cole do his community service there with you.”
Alex’s thoughts screeched to a stop like an old record being yanked from a turntable, his thoughts of Zoe disappearing in a hard snap. “What community service?” He divided his stare between O’Keefe’s foot-in-mouth wince and Cole’s well-shitgrimace, his knuckles turning white over the amber bottle in his grasp. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Cole said, although Alex knew better than to take the qualifier at face value. The guy was levelheaded even in his sleep, and all the unspoken communication flying between him and O’Keefe turned the words into fertilizer anyway.
“Uh-huh. Start talking.”
Cole shifted against his bar stool, his palm taking a slow trip over the back of his neck. “Cap gave me the news when we were on shift yesterday. I was assigned fifteen hours of community service for following you into the warehouse fire against McManus’s orders.”
“Are you shitting me?” Alex asked, the question spiked with both anger and disbelief. “It was my decision to blow off what he said and go in.”
“Yeah, but it was my decision to follow you, even after I’d heard him tell you to stand down. You may have led the way, but I didn’t think twice about following, and McManus was definitely bent enough to make a point.”
Cole’s matter-of-fact response glued the rest of Alex’s diatribe to his throat. Captain McManushadgone all piss and vinegar, to the tune of Alex getting screwed with four whole weeks in Hell’s Kitchen. But he’d never thought for a second that Cole would get caught in the crossfire of the guy’s posturing.
“I can’t believe McManus stooped low enough to drag you into this,” Alex said, a shot of unease weaving through the free-flowing aggravation in his chest. “The complaint’s not going in your file, is it?”
Another dose of silent eye contact between Brennan, O’Keefe, and Cole was all the answer Alex needed, and damn it, this situation was just turning into more of a train wreck every time he turned around. He and Cole had just been doing theirjobs,for Chrissake. And while Alex didn’t really care if his own personnel file had a few dents and dings, Cole had never made it a secret that he wanted a coveted spot on Fairview’s rescue squad.
Damn it.Damn it!
“Look, Donovan, while I might not agree with your methods, above all else, we have each other’s backs. McManus made a bad call. Someone could’ve been trapped in that warehouse, and anyway, I heard what he called you, and I know he knows the score.” Cole paused, his expression going territorial and tight. “The douchebag deserved to get knocked on his ass.”
Alex stuffed the echo of McManus’s sneer to the dark hallways in the way back of his brain, because really, he was torqued up hard enough already. “Okay, but this is still on me. You don’t deserve any of the fallout.”
Cole lifted one plaid-shirted shoulder, his shrug as unvarnished as the rest of his expression. “I made a choice, fallout and all. But seriously, I’m not worried about the fifteen hours. You shouldn’t be either.”
The conversation drifted to hockey scores and burger orders, and for the most part, Alex went along for the ride. But the news of Cole’s sanction just crystallized the certainty that had built all day long in his gut, layer by layer. This latest kick in the teeth was all the more reason for him to keep his head down and get this ridiculous community service over with.
The faster, the better.
* * *
Zoe punchedin the security code for the interior door connecting Hope House’s soup kitchen to the shelter, waiting for the familiar beep and buzz combo to signal her authorized entry before heading down the hallway. Breakfast service was on the downswing, and with her two regular volunteers holding things steady on the service line and Alex on dish duty in the kitchen, she could finally grab a much-needed meeting with Tina. Although Zoe tried to hook up with her second in command daily, yesterday’s session had fallen prey to the time she’d spent training Alex—a task made monumentally difficult by the fact that he’d spoken maybe nine words to her in as many hours. He’d been equally tight-lipped this morning, doing the barest of minimums to get through breakfast prep, and although his lack of effort hacked her off to no end, Zoe probably shouldn’t be surprised.
After all, Alex wasn’t the first firefighter who didn’t take her job at this soup kitchen seriously.
She pulled in a stabilizing breath, blanking both the pang in her chest and her thoughts of her father before poking her head past the lavender and yellow door frame of her friend-slash-coworker’s office. “Hey, Tina. Do you have a sec?”
