Reckless (18 page)

“Oh.” Realization wrapped around Zoe's single syllable, her beer bottle finding the counter with a muffled
clunk
. “That's why you take so many risks.”

He nodded. “Once I graduated, I was determined to experience every single thing I possibly could, the wilder, the better. I enrolled at the fire academy about fifteen minutes after graduation.”

“Not a whole lot of places with more opportunity for an adrenaline high,” she admitted, and Alex didn't even bother biting back the ironic laugh welling up from his chest.

“Or with so many rules.” He may not have been short on the balls to do active fire drills or haul himself a hundred feet in the air on nothing more than a ladder and a Hail Mary. But scraping up the patience to follow the regs while he did it had damn near killed him. Figuratively and literally. “Even though I nailed both the physical stuff and the written exams, I still didn't want to fit in or fall in line, and my attitude made that wildly clear. I found plenty of trouble at the academy, and I nearly got tossed out twice. Even though I was at the top of my class, by the time I graduated, none of the captains in Fairview wanted to take a flyer on me. Except for one.”

Zoe leaned against the counter, a tiny smile of irony playing on her lips. “My father.”

“Your father,” he agreed. “I graduated from the academy in a pretty good-sized class, and Eight is one of the bigger houses in the city. Although having two candidates is pretty unusual, your father agreed to take me and Cole together.”

“I remember that,” Zoe said, her eyes sparking as she took an obvious tour down memory lane. “It was the same year the Perfect Church caught on fire. God, that place has been around forever.”

Alex's shoulders went tight at her mention of the Fairview landmark that had given Church Street its name, and the fire that had ironically saved his life. “That was the first big fire call I ever went on.”

“Really?” She pulled back in surprise, and even though his defenses took one last potshot at his gut, Alex still kept talking.

“Yeah. I'd only been in-house for about three weeks. After a year of training for the real deal, I was completely jacked up. The church is so close to the firehouse, we could practically smell the smoke from the engine bay.” In fact, with her apartment only a handful of streets away, he'd put even money on being able to see the church's spires from her east-facing window. “We were obviously first on scene. The electrical was ancient, and the old wiring sparked a fire inside the walls and part of the roof. The place was pretty heavily involved even though we got there in minutes.”

Zoe tipped her beer to her lips before nodding. “I remember the damage being really extensive. With all the wood in the original construction, it's not too surprising that the fire spread quickly.”

“I'd never imagined anything like it,” Alex admitted. “Even with what I know now, that fire moved unbelievably fast. Your father was cool as could be, though. Handing out orders like Halloween candy.”

“That sounds like him,” she said, her smile small and wistful. “I cracked my head on a coffee table once when I was eight and ended up needing fifteen stitches. My mother damn near lost her mind. My dad took one look and said, ‘Guess we're going to the emergency room, kiddo.'”

Alex nodded, and Christ, he could still hear Westin's calm, clear voice telling everyone what to do, as if the fire had gone down yesterday. “Of course, I didn't want any part of playing it safe. Your father paired me up with Oz for search and rescue.”

“Jeez. That's a hell of a first run.”

“Tell me about it.” Dennis Osborne was about as old school and salty as firefighters came. He'd been Station Eight's squad lieutenant since before Alex had even arrived in-house, and the guy had been a firefighter for nearly as long as Westin himself. “Oz definitely lives by the whole my-way-or-the-highway mantra. Needless to say, he pretty much told me to stay on his hip and not to so much as burp unless he said so.”

“And knowing you, I'm sure that didn't go over well.” Her gently raised brows told Alex she knew exactly how the next part of the story played out, and he didn't disappoint her by watering down the truth.

“Oh, it was a pissing contest from the word go. Between the gables and the church spires, squad had their hands full venting the roof, so we had to split up water lines and search and rescue until another engine could respond. I knew Oz and I would cover more ground if we broke off for search and rescue, but he wasn't having it. I was so antsy to get my hands dirty that I told him to go screw.”

Zoe's eyes went round and wide as she pulled back against the counter to pin him with a stare full of shock. “You broke ranks in the middle of that huge fire? On your first fire call?”

God, the stupidity of it still rang in his ears, even if the feelings that had motivated his actions still ran bone deep. “I thought that if someone was trapped in there, splitting up to find them was smarter.” He hadn't realized at the time how fast fire could spread, or that Westin was so adamant about his men pairing up for damn good reasons. “But I got turned around in one of the storage rooms in the back of the church and couldn't find my exit path. I ended up making it out before the fire flashed over, but just barely.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Alex, you could've been killed.”

He washed down the bitter tang of irony with a long sip of his beer. Funny how scraping elbows with death had ended up saving his life. “Yeah, well, after Oz went up one side of me and down the other—in front of the entire house, which was a real treat—a part of me was wishing for it. And all that time, your father didn't say a single word.”

Alex broke off, his stomach doing somersaults. But he'd come this far, and telling Zoe the rest even though he hadn't admitted it to anyone in ages just felt right, like somehow, weirdly, she was meant to know. “Finally, after the paramedics on scene checked me out and gave me a little oxygen for my trouble, we went back to the station and your father pulled me into his office. I thought he'd yell, or write me up, or even boot me. But instead he just looked at me and said, ‘Do you know why I took you on, Donovan?'”

Zoe's expression outlined her surprise, but she didn't interrupt, so Alex kept going. “Of course, I told him I didn't. But then he said something I won't ever forget, even if I live to be a hundred.”

Alex took a breath, the deep swirl of long-hidden emotions pulling him back, until he heard Westin's voice, soft yet dead serious in his ears.

“Alex.” Zoe's voice brought him back to the present, and only then did he realize he'd actually spoken the words from his memory out loud.

“The risk of putting my life on the line never scared me, Zoe. Living out loud is the only way I know how to be. But the part of becoming a firefighter that scared the shit out of me was trusting that if I belonged to a family, that family would always be there, and they'd always have my back. Your father was the only person willing to prove that to me. And I owe him everything for it.”

“Being with me doesn't betray that,” Zoe said, closing the space between them to fold her arms around his shoulders, and Christ. How could something so off-limits feel so purely right? “Look, I don't know what will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next year, and there are parts of this that scare me, too. But I'm not going to lie to you. Right now, in this moment, I want to be with you.”

Alex wrapped his hands around her denim-clad hips, want rebuilding all the way through him to cancel out his hesitation. “I want to be with you, too. As far as I'm concerned, you're either moving forward or you're moving back. And back isn't an option for me. Not now. Not ever. But I can't lose what I have at Eight, Zoe. I belong there. It's the only family I've got.”

She pressed up to kiss him, and Christ, despite all the old memories churning through him, Alex didn't think twice about kissing her back.

“Okay,” Zoe said. “So let's just move forward, one minute at a time.”

Chapter Seventeen

Zoe looked down at the color-coded and tightly ordered page in the day planner spread over her desk, and damn, she'd never been so happy to see a workweek hit the past tense. In the plus column, Damien had been booked up to his eye teeth on assault charges, Rochelle and Kenny had boarded a bus to Michigan, and—miraculously—Zoe's father hadn't caught wind of the commotion that had rattled through Hope House like a five o'clock freight train. On the negative side, things in the soup kitchen had slid right back to business as usual, with too few ingredients for meal prep, too many tasks for the man power at hand, and monthly budgets that were tighter than a snare drum on game day.

And somewhere smack in the middle was her personal life, which had gone from zero to oh-my-God in the span of the same week, and as much as it scared the hell out of her, Zoe couldn't deny one simple fact.

Between their last five days in the kitchen and their corresponding nights in the bedroom, reckless, impulsive, all-in Alex Donovan totally bent her spoon.

Zoe pushed up from her over-the-hill chair, bypassing the stack of notes on her desk for the greener pastures of the kitchen. Yes, she and Alex had found a comfortable groove of balancing work and play this week, and more yes, the seamlessness of both felt down-to-her-marrow delicious. But no matter how enticingly good their last week together had been, Alex wouldn't stay in her kitchen forever. In a measly two weeks, he'd return to a job chock full of frightening risks—a job where he belonged—and that job still scared the hell out of her. Keeping things casual and temporary was the only way to avoid complications for both of them. Plus, she had way bigger things on her plate right now than blowing her supremely hot sex life out of proportion with Serious Thoughts.

Like keeping the soup kitchen she loved afloat despite stormy waters.

After a quick round trip to the walk-in, Zoe unloaded an armful of carrots and celery to the stainless steel worktable in the center of the kitchen, letting the familiar motions do their best to calm her. Her knife roll joined the vegetables, along with a cutting board and oversized bowls, until finally, she released a slow exhale. As challenging as it was going to be to get Hope House right side up and running smoothly once and for all, Zoe was going to dig in and get the job done.

Or die trying.

“Hey,” came a sexy rumble from over her shoulder, and Lord, the tool belt slung over Alex's faded blue jeans was enough to make her want to break something on principle alone. “Tina was looking for you about an hour ago. Did you find her?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said, reluctantly shelving her Mr. Fix-It fantasy. At least for now. “She wanted to go over some ideas for tightening up security. We hooked up just after breakfast.”

While Tina had finally stopped clucking over Zoe like a mother hen on overdrive, she'd been adamant that Hope House needed better security measures in case of another code-red emergency.

Zoe agreed wholeheartedly. Even if after three extended sessions of brainstorming ways to make the leap from should-happen to would-happen, their budget didn't.

“Added security might not be the worst plan ever.” Alex leaned in the door frame between the kitchen and the empty dining room, running a nonchalant hand over his chin, but Zoe called his bluff before he could cap the whole thing off with that perfectly easygoing shrug of his.

“You don't have to sweet talk your way into convincing me, Alex. I know this is a rough neighborhood, and as tough as I am, I also didn't just fall off the turnip truck. Hope House could clearly use better safety measures to keep everyone protected.”

Relief washed over his features, and Zoe nearly laughed. “Thank God. I know psychos like Damien are the exception, not the rule, but seriously. The thought of what could've gone down the other day still gives me the goddamn shakes.”

“Yeah, well, unfortunately, making big changes to things like security isn't as easy as bribing your volunteer to come in on a Saturday to install new weather stripping on the windows. Which, by the way, was very nice of you to agree to.”

Alex dropped his gaze to the tool belt around his waist, and now his easygoing shrug did make an appearance. “Ah. It was a fair trade. You made me dinner last night, remember? Anyway, I already knew how to do the windows, and the whole project only took me a couple of hours. No sweat.”

Zoe had her suspicions that his morning hadn't been the piece of cake he was claiming, especially since he'd managed to do the repairs
and
help her get the dining room ready for breakfast service, but she trapped the observation between her teeth. “Well. The fact still remains that Tina and I are going to hit a dead end for security upgrades pretty fast unless we win the lottery. Or we stumble across about ten volunteers the size of linebackers.” Or both, but really, she didn't want to get greedy.

“That's a tall order,” Alex admitted, unhooking his tool belt to swap it for one of the aprons hanging on the far side of the kitchen. “I'm guessing security services aren't cheap.”

“Definitely not.” Zoe's breath pulled tight in her lungs. She'd wracked her brains trying to think of ways to ensure tighter security without hiring an outside company, but the truth was, half the time she couldn't even get Hope House's kitchen properly staffed for meal service. Every potential solution she'd come up with to steer the place into smoother, safer waters required either more money or more man power, and in some cases both. All except for one.

God, this idea was crazy. Check that—it was downright insane.

And it was also her only hope.

“I've been thinking about what you said the other day.” Zoe reached for one of the bunches of celery she'd laid on the counter, desperate for the food to comfort her like it always did.

But Alex's laugh did the job instead. “For the love of all that's holy, please tell me you've decided that curly fries should count as a vegetable. They're freaking
potatoes.
”

“First of all, they're tubers, and fried ones at that,” she said over a laugh of her own. “No dice on nutritional value. Secondly . . .” She looked up to meet the playful glint in his eyes, the last remaining twinge of tension in her chest taking a hike. “That's not what I've been thinking about.”

Alex gave his hands a quick scrub before sliding in next to her at the worktable. “All right, Gorgeous. I'll bite. What's on your mind?”

Now or never, now or never, now . . .
“The Collingsworth Grant.”

“Are you serious?” Alex pulled back to look at her, his blond brows climbing high over his forehead, but hell, it was too late to stuff the words back in now. Plus, she really was out of options, and asking for his help just felt right. Even if the idea itself still felt crazy.

“Yes,” Zoe said. “Don't get me wrong. My chances of actually winning the grant are still pretty much microscopic, and it's going to take every last ounce of my time and resources just to go through the application process. Hope House is my kitchen, and ultimately I'm responsible for making smart decisions to feed and take care of the people who live here, but . . .” She trailed off for only a second before delivering the rest with quiet resolve. “I've been swimming upstream for three months, trying to play it safe and do everything in this soup kitchen alone. I need to take a risk in order to make a difference, and I was hoping maybe you could help me.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Really?” She clamped down on her bottom lip as her blush took a tour from her temples to her throat, but Alex just reached for the peeler sitting in front of them on the worktable.

“Yeah, really.” Grabbing a couple of carrots from the tidy pile by the cutting board, he set his sights on the vegetable in his palm even though Zoe felt his attention still firmly on the topic at hand. “What, did you think I was going to say no? I am kind of a captive audience, being your volunteer and all.”

Zoe paused, but screw it. He'd had her back all week at Hope House, and if she was going to trust him with something as important as her kitchen, half measures weren't going to cut it. “I thought you might, yeah. The deadline is less than three weeks away, and it's going to take a lot more than unloading inventory and prepping meal service to make this work. Applying for this grant is going to be a huge undertaking.”

“Applying for this grant is a great idea,” he corrected. “Anyway, I told you. While I'm here, I've got your back. Hard work or not, I meant it.”

“Does anything rattle you?” The question slipped right past her brain-to-mouth filter, but if Alex minded her sudden burst of candor, his expression didn't give him away.

“I'm a little upset about the curly fries thing. I don't think you're giving them a fair shake, honestly—
oof !
” He held up his hands, fielding off her nudge to his rib cage with a laugh. “Okay, okay. Of course I get rattled. I am human, you know.”

The image of him standing in her bathroom five hours ago wearing nothing but a towel and a good-morning-to-
you
smile flashed through her brain, and oh yeah. Zoe knew exactly how human he was.

“Right.” She slid a bunch of celery to the cutting board on the counter, praying like hell that her face didn't betray the sexed-up slide show she'd just pushed from her mind's eye. “But you dive into everything without so much as blinking. I get why you're audacious.” The story of his parents' horrible accident sent a quick jab at her breastbone, but it didn't stop her from asking, “But how do you take all those risks without being scared?”

“Are you kidding? Half the time, I'm scared as hell.” He didn't break stride with the peeler in his hand, even though his movements were slow and unpracticed. “But I can't let fear cloud my judgment. You want to know what happens if I don't take those risks, even the ones that shake me up?”

“What?” Zoe's pulse sped up at the look of sheer honesty on Alex's face, and it double-timed when he put down the peeler in favor of stepping in close to hook a finger under her chin.

“Nothing. And while sometimes that nothing isn't a huge deal, other times, letting nothing happen is more dangerous than taking the risk.”

She closed her eyes, letting go of the breath holding tight to her lungs. “Hope House needs help, and I know my best chance of making a difference right now is to take a leap of faith. But throwing all my time and energy into trying to get the Collingsworth Grant is a huge risk, especially now that this place needs man power and resources for stability more than ever. I'm just afraid to put so much on the line.”

“Do you know why I dared you to go rock climbing with me?”

Zoe blinked, and talk about a question with origins in left freaking field. “What?”

“I know it's a weird question. Just go with me here.”

“Okay,” she said, her answer automatic. “Why did you dare me to go rock climbing with you?”

“For the same reason I brought up the Collingsworth Grant in the first place. I don't want you to be reckless on principle, Zoe. Hell, I treat adrenaline like it's the biggest food group in the pyramid, but even I'm not impulsive for shits and grins alone. There's a difference between recklessness and bravery. I'm just asking you to take a risk and show it to me.”

Possibility prickled through her, enticing and sweet. Still . . . “The people who live here depend on me to feed them, and to help keep them safe. What if I risk it and fail?”

Alex met her eyes for a split second, his gaze piercing all the way through her before he dropped a soft kiss over her mouth. “Isn't the more important question, what if you don't?”

Her stunned silence filled the sliver of space between them, but Alex refused to pull up or scale back. “Look, I understand that the risk scares you, and that you've got your reasons for being cautious. But after spending the last two weeks in this kitchen, I also know that Hope House is a whole lot more than your job. You want this grant? Be bold and go get it. For the next few weeks, I've got you.”

Zoe pressed her kitchen clogs into the tile to stand up as tall as her frame would allow. Alex was right. The prospect of channeling the efforts she knew Hope House needed into a long shot that damn well might fail
did
scare the hell out of her.

But not doing all that she possibly could—even if it included a giant risk and some even bigger trust—scared her even more.

“Well. With backup like that, how can I refuse?”

Alex grinned, giving his blond brows a cocky waggle and brushing her lips with one last quick kiss before turning back toward the vegetables on the cutting board. “Speaking of backup, we're going to need all the help we can get while you work on this proposal. As awesome as I am, I'm only one man.”

“So modest.” Zoe laughed, her muscles flexing and releasing in a familiar cadence as she started chopping the celery in front of her. “But, as it turns out, you're also not wrong. I can barely get through meal service with the staff I've got in place right now, and that's with me working a minimum of fifty hours a week in the kitchen. If I'm going to give this grant proposal enough attention for Hope House to be a contender, we absolutely need more hands in here. I can talk to Tina, see if we can't shake a few more trees with the city.” Not that they didn't already do that on a fairly regular basis, but at least it might garner something more than the next-to-nothing she currently had.

“You know,” Alex said slowly, his expression as unreadable as his voice. “There is a way you can get a lot of people in here to help on the fly, and I guarantee it's something you've never done before.”