Fire Me Up (28 page)

Lonnie's laugh slunk through her bones. “Oh, honey, as I was just explainin' to Mr. Holt here, we're far from square. See, this fifteen grand is what your daddy
borrowed
from me. But it ain't what he owes. The way I do business, there's interest on cash borrowed.”

Teagan's gut sank like a stone, but she didn't stand down. “You're a gun-running loan shark, Lonnie. The way you do business is illegal.”

Lonnie's stare went from predatory to murderous, and he sharpened his gaze over her like a double row of razor wire. “Watch your mouth, cherry, or I'll watch it for you.”

Adrian shifted forward at the threat, only a half step ahead of Trigger, but Lonnie was faster on the draw than either of them. The square-nosed black handgun he whipped from the small of his back sent fear careening through Teagan's chest, sucking all the oxygen from the room as everyone froze.

“Your boyfriend here is a bit uppity,” Lonnie said, one hand on the gun and his gaze split between her and Adrian, but oh God, she couldn't rip her eyes from the weapon in his grip.

“Don't,” Teagan whispered, the word a plea rather than a demand, and Adrian let out a barely audible breath in response.

Lonnie relaxed by a hair, lowering the gun to his side but still keeping a tight hold on the thing as he clucked his tongue at Teagan. “I always knew this guy was gonna be a problem. So here's how it is. Your old man owes me more than this, and I want it now.”

“We came up with the fifteen thousand,” Adrian ground out, and oh God, the sound of his voice was heaven and terror at the same time. “What more do you want?”

“Five grand interest, or I'm in the books at the Double Shot tomorrow.”

“
What?
” Teagan barked, realization settling in like a dread-soaked delayed reaction. “You were never going to let my father go with a payoff, were you?”

“You got me, Mizz O'Malley.” Lonnie held up his hands in mock surrender, his cowboy boots clacking hard against the floorboards as he stepped behind the desk. “But at the end of the day, I'm a businessman just like your daddy. Opportunities like the one at the Double Shot don't grow like apples. I let y'all be for a few weeks so you'd come up with some cash for me—although I gotta say, I never had you pegged for all of it. The fifteen grand is nice, but now I want my real due, and I'm gonna take it.”

Icy cold tendrils of panic speared through Teagan's veins. “You can't use the Double Shot to launder your gun money.”

Lonnie nodded toward Trigger, who started shoving the piles of cash back in the bag lying open on the desk. “Oh, but I can. The problem with gun money is that it doesn't clean itself, and this pool hall is startin' to raise suspicion. I knew the minute I laid eyes on you that I could play you and your daddy off each other to get what I really wanted. The devotion's just touchin'.”

He placed his free hand over his T-shirt, flashing a condescending smile before his expression morphed back to dark and deadly. “But it is gonna be your downfall. Now you, Mr. Holt, are my problem. You're a wild card. Truth be told, I didn't think you'd stick around after I sent my associate to the bar. I'm not quite sure what to do with you now.”

Sweat bloomed over Teagan's forehead, even as her hands balled into fists. She opened her mouth to tell Lonnie to leave him alone, to let Adrian walk and she'd find a way to get the five thousand—to get
anything
—but Adrian's voice stopped her dead.

“Why don't you hire me?”

Lonnie's stringy head snapped back in shock, and even Trigger's normally blank eyes went wide from his post beside his brother as the uncut shock of Adrian's words reverberated in Teagan's skull.

“No!” she shouted, finally setting her eyes fully on him, and Adrian's gray-green stare pierced right through her with finality and remorse.

“Even trade, Lonnie. You leave the O'Malleys alone, and in exchange, I'll come work for you. Nine months in Rikers gets a man a very unique set of skills, not to mention contacts. You want in on some big-time New York gunrunning? I can get you there. But you need to walk away from the Double Shot. Now.”

Tears stabbed at Teagan's eyelids, born of both sadness and pure anger. Adrian's strange behavior, his pulling back to become more detached, his insistence that he make the exchange in her place made sudden, flawless sense.

He'd planned to trade his freedom for hers all along, only she'd been too blind to see it.

Lonnie shook his head, slinging the bag over his shoulder without loosening his grip on the gun. “Damn, son! You
are
full of surprises after all. But here's the thing. As tempting as your offer is, I don't trust you.”

He tossed a look from Trigger to the spot where she stood, pointing the weapon at Adrian at the same time Trigger closed in on her to lock his arms around her body.

“
Wait
.” The word fired from Adrian's mouth just as Lonnie hit the Glock's safety with a
click
, and Teagan fought twin urges to fight and vomit.

“You don't want to shoot me, Lonnie. And you don't want to hurt her.” Adrian lifted his hands, his voice oddly loud and slow as he stepped all the way back toward the wall. “You're a businessman, remember? The Double Shot is nothing compared to what I can get you in the city. Why don't you put that gun down, tell your brother to let the girl go, and we'll talk about it?”

The silence wreaked havoc on Teagan's eardrums, a strange thud making its way into her consciousness past the terror in her throat. But then Lonnie nodded at Trigger, who loosened his anaconda hold on her shoulders and shoved her toward the door.

“Go before I don't let you,” Lonnie hissed, putting his gun on the desk. Teagan scrabbled for purchase on the grime-slicked floor, turning to protest as Trigger yanked the door open to push her into the hallway, but a jumble of testosterone-fueled shouts and the slam of heavy footsteps cut her off.

“Bealetown PD!” came the bellow from the main room, and Lonnie swung with a savage glare.

“You fucking set me
up?
” he spat, face contorting as he turned toward Teagan.

But before Lonnie could face her fully, Adrian snarled from across the room, “No, asshole,
I
set you up. You fucked with my woman, and now you're going to pay the price.”

At the same moment Detective Winston burst through the open door, Lonnie snatched his gun from the desktop and shot Adrian in the chest.

The ear-shredding blast of the gunshot shock-waved through Teagan all the way to her marrow, and she screamed as Detective Winston followed it with three remorseless rapid-fire taps of his .45. Lonnie jerked back, each of the bullets slamming into his chest in a perfect cluster, but the only thing Teagan saw with clarity was Adrian's huge form lying lifeless on the floor.

“
No!
”

Gut-scrambling terror clawed at the back of her throat as she rocketed forward to hit her knees, yanking Adrian's coat from his chest. Oh God, oh
God,
the bullet hole in his T-shirt was center mass, and Teagan let loose an unholy scream.

“Adrian! Don't you dare leave me! I need you here, you big, giant pain in the ass. You can't
leave!
”

Voices flew over her head, snippets of movement and sound filtering past the sharp-edged ringing in her ears, but nothing registered. A set of hands fell gently on her shoulders, but Teagan reared back in blind rage.

“I'm a paramedic, and if you touch me while I treat this man, I will
end
you.”

The grasp disappeared, and her hands flew over the expanse of Adrian's chest, desperate to assess his injuries. The skin beneath her fingers was utterly rigid, and damn it, she needed to see what she was dealing with. With a swift yank, Teagan laid waste to Adrian's T-shirt, blinking in absolute confusion at what lay in front of her.

What. The.
Hell?

“Kevlar?” she breathed, shock and relief and pure pissed-off anger crashing together in her veins. “You're wearing fucking
Kevlar?
”

Her fingers skimmed the reinforced center plate directly over Adrian's heart, the sharp-edged fragments of the spent bullet biting her fingers from its craterlike resting place. She cut a direct path to Adrian's carotid, which thumped a fast yet strong rhythm against her fingertips. When she dropped her cheek to his face, his breath fanned out over her cheek.

He was perfectly, wonderfully, stunningly alive.

“Adrian? Can you hear me? It's Teagan.” Not wanting to aggravate any injuries he might've sustained from the impact, she opted to run a hand down his face rather than go for the standard firm shake to rouse him. Her training kicked her body into motion, and she cradled Adrian's head between her palms to stabilize him in case he'd hit it on the way down.

“We've got a rig incoming in three,” said a voice from her side. “This one's DOA, and the scene is secure. Is he stable?”

Stunned, she jerked back to look at Detective Winston, who was standing over Lonnie's lifeless body as his partner and two other detectives led a zip-tied Trigger out the door.

“Yes. You planned this all along?” Teagan breathed, the pieces coming together through her thick fog of emotions.

He nodded. “We set it up last week. My vice unit has been tracking this asshole for months, but we needed an informant, someone who would turn on Lonnie. You made it a little tough on us by not budging on the drop-off, although Adrian told us you wouldn't,” the detective said, holstering his gun to step in and kneel next to her. “But he'll be okay. A nine to the chest plate hurts like a bitch. Good news is, he'll come around in a minute.”

As if on cue, Adrian groaned, blinking his eyes open as he fought to get up. “Red?”

All of Teagan's moxie self-destructed at the sound of his voice. “Hey, hey. Take it easy,” Teagan said, not letting go of her clasp on his head even though tears rolled down her face. “I'm right here. Everything's fine, but you've got to be still, okay?”

“Lonnie?” he wheezed, his gaze widening in concern.

“It's done, and you're going to be fine. Even though you scared the hell out of me.”

“I'm . . . sorry. For being an ass this week. I couldn't . . . tell you.” Adrian winced, but Teagan brushed her fingers over his lips.

“Paramedics are going to be here in a minute. Just sit tight.”

Adrian looked up at her, grabbing her fingers with a dark smile, and Teagan had never seen anything so beautiful or perfect in her life.

“Did you . . . just shush me?” he asked.

“Only because I love you.” She dipped her lips to his forehead as two paramedics appeared in the doorway, closing in fast. “But do me a favor, would you?”

Adrian's eyes locked onto hers, bright green and wide open. “Anything, Red.”

“Let's make this our last trip to the hospital, yeah? I'd like to keep you around for a while.”

Adrian pushed up the sleeves of his chef's jacket, running a hand over the rows of buttons with a smile that tasted as bitter as it did sweet. Gripping the handle on the skillet in front of him, he coaxed the contents over the low flame. It had been two weeks since he'd taken Carly's advice and set up the meeting with Jackson's friend at the Bealetown PD. Detective Winston, along with everyone else on Bealetown's vice squad, had jumped at the chance to let Adrian wear a wire and work his way into the pay-off in order to nail Lonnie for the laundry list of crimes he'd committed. Shutting Teagan out and going cloak-and-dagger in order to make the informant meetings and get a plan together had been a tall freaking order, but Adrian had known she'd never have gone along with the plan if he'd told her about it. The whole thing had nearly been blown to bits when Teagan had caught him talking to Detectives Allen and Winston on the day of the street fair. Thankfully, Winston had been quick with the cover story about checking on Adrian's parole. God, he'd hated every second of lying to her, but he would do it again in a second if it meant keeping her safe.

Even if she
had
let him have it once he'd recovered from his bruised sternum.

Adrian moved the skillet off the burner in front of him with his now cast-free left hand, his heart kicking up a notch at the sound of the door opening over his shoulder.

“What are you doing here?”

Adrian took a minute to drink in Teagan's surprise, and damn, even in her careworn navy blue paramedic uniform, she was totally exquisite. A few wisps of red hair fanned down from her ponytail, and she looked exactly the same as the day they'd met.

“I'm making scrambled eggs. Even money says you skipped lunch at the station, and you need to eat before tonight's shift.”

“But you're not supposed to be here. It's your first night back at La Dolce Vita,” she said, but he cut her off with a shake of his head.

“It's my first night back at work,” he corrected, moving to plate the eggs with a smile that felt tailor-made for his face. “And as of this morning, there's been a change to my work release status.”

Teagan's bag hit the floor at her side with a heavy thump, her eyes going perfectly round. “I'm sorry?”

“Well, it's kind of a funny story. See, when Detective Winston's boss called Big Ed and let him in on how I'd helped them catch the nastiest criminal in the Blue Ridge, they worked out a deal. Detective Winston is overseeing the rest of my parole. The paperwork came through today.”

Although Big Ed had fought it at first, once he'd discovered the truth of what had gone down with Lonnie, he'd had no choice but to go with Lieutenant Miller's suggestion-slash-order to back off for the remainder of Adrian's parole. And since the lieutenant had a few good friends at the NYPD, he assured Big Ed there would be plenty of people keeping an eye on how he treated his parolees in the future as well.

Adrian had received a formal apology along with the paperwork.

“I don't understand,” Teagan said, bringing Adrian back to the kitchen with a shake of her head. “I mean, I'm glad about the deal, but what about La Dolce Vita?”

“I resigned last week. Bellamy's going to take over as Carly's sous-chef.”

It had rattled his chest harder than Lonnie's nine millimeter to offer Carly his resignation, especially since both she and Bellamy had cried as he'd handed it over. But Adrian would never be far from his family at La Dolce Vita, and it was time for him to face his life with no regrets.

Teagan reclaimed her voice after a moment of clear surprise. “So you're going to work here?”

“Your father puts on a tough interview. But when I proposed handling the kitchen here with Brennan as my bar manager and Jesse as my sous-chef so he could focus on being the GM as his health allowed, he was pretty interested. Of course, he did say all final hires have to go through his second-in-command.”

She laughed, and no doubt about it, he was home. “But you're a chef. Don't you belong in a fancy kitchen?”

Adrian took a step toward her, then another until he was close enough to breathe in the sweet rosemary scent he loved more than anything. “Don't you get it? I don't belong in a place. Not even a kitchen.” He moved his hand to the slim space between them, the center of his palm spreading over her heart. “I belong here, with you. I love you, Teagan. I want you without regrets, forever.”

“Oh.” Her eyes filled with tears, but her sassy smile refused to let them fall. “Well, I suppose you must be serious if you're actually using my name.”

Adrian laughed, cupping her face. “How about we make it even and you use mine back?”

“You want me to marry you?” she gasped, and yeah. Now the tears fell.

But Adrian caught each one. “Yes, Red. I want you to marry me.”

“Okay,” Teagan said, her mouth perfect on his as she pressed up to kiss him. “But let's eat first. If you want me forever, you're gonna need all the strength you can get.”