Page 5 of Burning for Alexander
But when I’d come out of the bathroom, I’d spotted the guy tonsil-deep with another man in a dark alcove.
“What the fuck?” I’d almost blurted. But I’d quickly taken the rejection as a sign. Wrong man, wrong night. Hell, wrong city, maybe.
Regardless, it had left me with a decidedly bad taste in mymouth for the sexy stranger who was now the subject of my next incident investigation.
When I’d spotted him here in Legacy, leaning casually behind the bar with that same damn smile but muscles significantly more defined and hair cut into a deliberately messy style, my chest had gone tight. Attraction had slammed into me, raw and inconvenient—and strangely stronger than before—only to be doused in an instant by his blank look. No recognition. No flicker of familiarity. Just a polite, distracted brush-off, like I was any other stranger wandering in for pizza.
The burn of it hadn’t faded. That whiplash from wanting him to wanting tostranglehim was still with me every time I saw his face.
I felt the familiar curl of tension in my gut as I pulled into the large lot behind the restaurant, the unwelcome combination of disliking someone you also wanted to fuck. Thankfully, I’d brought reinforcements. Someone to help me remember I was a professional and this was a job.
Kinsey had been quiet on the short drive, taking the opportunity to review the necessary steps involved in an origin and cause investigation. My lieutenant was driven to move up to captain as soon as possible, and I wanted to make sure I was giving her ample opportunity to get the relevant experience she needed.
When we stepped out of my vehicle and began walking around to the front, she finally spoke up. “I’ve been meaning to ask, what brought you to Legacy?”
I thought about what to say.I needed a gay-friendly place to live that wasn’t on the East Coast, where my shitty past didn’t want to let me go, or on the West Coast, where the man I’d once loved happened to live.No, I’d gone to the state that he’d dreamed about. Pure coincidence, really.Definitely not appropriate to discuss with a member of mycrew.This is far enough away from my past that I can breathe.Also not something I wanted to share.
“I was looking for a nice place to live that had an opening for chief.” I shrugged. “Saw this listing in the forums online and reached out.”
She kept talking. “Your chief back in Philly wasn’t close to retirement or anything? What about another station nearby?”
I side-eyed her. “You ask a lot of questions.”
One of the things I’d learned about Kinsey Pope early on was that she wasn’t easily intimidated by me or anyone else. My accusation didn’t stop her.
“No offense, but you don’t seem like the type to settle down in small-town Montana,” she said.
“What type do I seem like?” I asked, glancing around the large outdoor seating area that already had a smattering of customers, even though it was still early and the weather carried a spring chill.
Kinsey shrugged. “Dunno. The city type, I guess.”
I couldn’t help but bark out a laugh. “What in the hell makes you say that? I grew up in Point Marion, Pennsylvania. Tiny place not far from the West Virginia border.” I dug deep and found my country drawl. “Weren’t nothin’ but a country boy once upon a holler.”
We entered the restaurant to the sound of her chuckle. She turned back to me with a grin. “Just returning to your small-town roots, then, huh?”
I flashed her a grin. “I figure there’s gotta be possum around here somewhere. That’s all I need to feel right at home.”
It was bullshit, of course. I’d spent the first twelve years of my life there, but my teenage years had been spent at a foster care group home outside Philly.
“Well, well,” Alex Marian said, glancing up from the reservationscomputer at the host stand. “If it isn’t Captain Compliance. Welcome back. Today’s special is a gourmet pizza just for you called the Flaming Overreaction, a molten-hot pie piled high with fiery Calabrian chiles, roasted red peppers, spicy soppressata, and a drizzle of chili-infused honey. Just the right amount of heat to set off your taste buds—without, you know, calling in the fire marshal.” He finished his little spiel with a wink.
Something about that wink set a torch to my cardiac rhythm, but I refused to take the bait. “Lieutenant Pope and I are here to ask you a few questions for the origin and cause investigation into yesterday’s incident.”
Alex’s teasing grin dropped. “You’re joking.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t joke about fire safety.”
He glanced at Kinsey and back to me. “He’s not joking, is he?”
Kinsey folded her arms in front of her chest, trying to look serious. “Fire safety isn’t a joke, Alex. You know that.”
“Yes,” he snapped before turning to me. “In fact, I do know that. I’ve cleared brush lines and fire breaks bigger than your goddamned rule book, run irrigation at 2:00 a.m. to keep a wildfire from jumping the road, and spent more than one harvest season praying the hills wouldn’t go up like matchsticks. I’ve done the hot work permit dance, babysat barrel toasters with an extinguisher in hand, learned the difference between a Class B and a Class K before I knew my fucking alphabet, and evacuated a tasting room full of wine-drunk bachelorettes without losing a single pair of Louboutins to the stampede. So believe me when I say this isn’t my first flaming rodeo.”
His fiery response didn’t help my jacked-up heart rate, but I refused to let him see any reaction. I tried to look as bored and professionally distant as possible. “Sounds like what you’re saying is you have a history of attracting fires.”
His eyes widened comically. Before he could open his mouthto excoriate me with vitriol, an attractive woman stepped around him, shoving him backward until he was looking at the back of her long, dark waves.
“Hi, you must be Chief Kincaid,” she said, offering a killer smile and her slender hand for a shake. “I’m Ella Marian, Alex’s sister. I can assure you he’s been involved in many… flaming rodeos, but he was only responsible for one of them.”
