Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (29 page)

The truth of those words shivered through her vitals. Kinsey might be standing in her physical home, but this man was the home of her heart. Her internal compass was pointing true Luke.

“I can’t take him away from his family, Dad. I couldn’t possibly be enough.” She thought she had no more tears to shed, but it seemed the supply was endless. “You should see him with them. They are everything to him.”

Strong paternal hands cupped her face and swiped at her leaking emotion. “And so are you. You’re his one person and he is yours. That’s the bottom line. And when I said you were like your mom, I didn’t mean that you were stubborn like her, though you are, or that you’re competitive like her, though you’re that, too. I meant that you’re practical.”

Her father gave her that look he used on his company back in the day. “You’re a smart girl, Kinsey, the smartest of my children, though I wish you’d spend
your talents on something more worthy than helping those crooks lie to the public. This problem with Luke? Use your big Taylor brain and work it out.”

Wisdom dispensed with typical no-nonsense flair, Retired Colonel Jackson Taylor IV headed out to the patio so he could read his Patton biography and sip his Syrah and plan which meat would get the spice treatment on tomorrow’s grill.

Kinsey plunked down at the kitchen table, her thoughts racing to keep up with her hammering heart. She reached for logic, her tried-and-true friend, but the bitch was on sabbatical. Maybe that was for the best. What the hell had logic ever done for her?

She had always believed that it’s not about how much you want your dreams, but how much suffering you’ll endure to achieve them. Something
always
had to give. Relationships invariably came last, or that was the perceived wisdom, wasn’t it? There was no such thing as a silver-plattered life filled with rainbows and puppies—or firemen and kittens.

Her father was right. She and David hadn’t worked hard at their relationship. There had been something missing, some deficit that they didn’t even question because they were so focused on the outside instead of the in. Their lives together had been comfortable. Safe. But they were lives, not a life. Living in the same house, moving on different paths.

Kinsey had put food on her table. She had been responsible for her own orgasms because no way in hell could she rely on a man for completion. But there was more to consider outside that list. There was passion. There was living. There was getting someone.

There was that spark of recognition when you realized someone got you.

Was she ready to resign herself to a life of if-only? Suffering through late, lonely dinners in tower-high restaurants, eyes misting over about the one who got away? Relying on a handsome waiter to serve up joyless orgasms along with the Glenfiddich eighteen-year-old? If she was willing to put in time for the job, then why wasn’t she willing to put herself out there for the personal?

This man of hers—nothing had come easy for him, and still, he had been prepared to make it harder on himself. Take on a new challenge.

Kinsey.

Uproot his life and move to a place where he knew no one but the woman he loved.

Kinsey.

Six months ago, she had done that for David, for the wrong man, and now she was back where she started, running scared, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the right man’s love for her. Because it was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

All this time, she had known it was huge that Luke was prepared to move to San Francisco for her, like a googolplex was huge or a sequoia was huge, but the true enormity of his gift had escaped her. Not the part where he left his family behind, but the part where he thought she was worthy of that choice.

Luke thought she was worth
everything
. He came here with respect for her choices, generosity in his heart. He loved his family, his foster kids, his job, his city, his country. And he still had room in that big heart for her.

The question was not whether this man was worthy of her. That point had been proven, over and over. The question was whether she was worthy of that heart-stopping sacrifice and soul-deep love—and did she have the balls to take what he offered so lovingly?

 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

L
uke stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his hips. Last night had been a doozy, with five runs between ten and four. Pretty unusual for a Sunday, but after years on the job, Luke had learned there was nothing typical about a CFD shift.

Out in the locker room, he could hear the standard insult-o-rama winding down. He smiled. On a call earlier this week, Wyatt had accompanied a blue-haired old lady from her nursing home to the emergency room. But en route she seemed to perk up real quick, judging by her constant ass grabbing. Now his brother was griping about the bruises (
this one’s shaped like fuckin’ Florida
).

Luke walked out to the locker room. “Christ on a crutch, Wy, put your ass away and—” His voice cut out because shit had gotten real quiet.

As he took stock, his gaze locked with the golden-umber one of the woman who was still embedded in his skin, a hook so deep he relished the sweet pain of it.

“Hi, Luke.”

Unlike that first time she had strutted into his firehouse, this version of Kinsey was not quite so put together. She wore fraying-hemmed sweatpants, a hoodie with the faded letters of
UCAL
across her chest,
and flip-flops—one pink, one orange. Her matted hair would make a nice home for a family of robins. She carried with her a wild-eyed excitement, the kind you got from too much coffee or not enough sleep.

She looked beautiful.

Gage walked into the locker room with a cheery, “Hey, Kinsey.” His reward was an elbow jab from Alex, who treated Kinsey to a skin-flaying glare. Hell hath no fury like the sister of a Dempsey scorned.

“Hi, guys,” Kinsey said, unfazed by Alex’s frosty reception. “Any chance I could have a word with Luke?”

His family made no move to leave, loyalty shining off them like love. Even the rest of his crew, who didn’t know the full story but recognized trouble when they saw it, stayed put. This woman was trouble all right. Had been the moment she waltzed in here and made him feel again for the first time in years.

“It’s okay,” Luke finally said to the attack dogs. “If she gets difficult, I’ll whistle for help.”

Everyone trudged out reluctantly, casting baleful looks over their shoulders as they went.

Kinsey looked around. “I think we’ve been here before.”

“Are you saying nothing has changed?”

She bit down on that fleshy lower lip he wanted to suck on. His little ball buster was nervous. “Actually, I’d say a lot has changed since I walked in here close to two months ago.” She paused. “But not much has changed since you came to see me in San Francisco.”

What in the Sam Hill did that mean?

“Did you forget something?” He waved a hand over her. “Your power suit? Your heels?” The molten brand she used to stamp her ownership of his ass?

“Yeah, I forgot something.” She stepped in and his heart constricted painfully. How someone so slight could possess so much of his space he would never understand. “I forgot how lucky I am to be loved by you.”

Stark vulnerability was etched on her face, and he so wanted to say,
Thank you, Jesus
, for sending her back to him. But twice now, she had twisted a knife into his chest, and it would take more than Kinsey Taylor’s glossy eyes to bring him home.

“Two weeks ago, you left without a word that you were fired. One week ago, you insisted you didn’t love me. Excuse me if I’m a little reluctant to take this at face value, sweetheart.”

That vulnerability was displaced by open-eyed shock. It killed him to hurt her, but there would be no half measures for him. If they were doing this, he needed to know it was real.

“Luke, I love you.”

His heart went berserk. Dumbass heart. Punching it down, he plastered on his most bored expression. “Uh-huh.”

Kinsey’s lush, supple mouth worked in that cute way she got when she was about to go absofuckinglutely nuts. “Luke . . . I . . . what are you saying here?”

“Oh, I think you know, PR princess. This is what you do, right? You sell ideas, opinions, people, or at the very least you put a good spin on them.” He leaned against his locker and folded his arms, projecting a hundred times more casual than he felt. “You need to convince me this is the real deal.”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible for those beautiful eyes to get bigger, but they did. And then they ignited with fury.

Did he mention that outrage looked so damn fine on her? Good thing, too, because he was about to spike her mad even further.

“Use your words, Kinsey.”

For a moment, he thought he’d gone too far. That the line he had crossed was in his rearview mirror and fading into the distance. She was breathing heavily, her perfect, cuppable breasts rising and falling with her distress.

“Do you see what I look like, Luke? Is this making any impression on you? When I realized my mistake, I didn’t even bother to change out of this outfit because I had to get to the airport to make the red-eye. I didn’t even bring socks!” With a shaky hand, she pointed at her mismatched flip-flops. The varnish on the nail of one big toe was chipped, a lovely detail that cheered him immensely.

“I had to take these off and walk through security in my bare feet. God knows how many diseases I picked up! I look like I’ve been yanked through a hedge backward. I look like a bedraggled, nationless refugee, and you’re asking me to make a case for loving you?”

“And you’d better make it good.”

She looked like she wanted to make it good all right. Maybe a slap upside his head or a fist to his groin with a terminating twist of his nuts.

She looked like she wanted to walk right out the door.

U
ntil this moment, Kinsey hadn’t realized just how deeply she had cut Luke. Somehow, she had expected that the mere fact of her presence, the message it sent,
would be enough for him to understand why she was here. How she couldn’t draw a full breath without him. But apparently, working with egocentric politicians for so long had given her some arrogance of her own, and Luke was refusing to play his part in the big finale.

He was right to be wary. He had been betrayed by one woman, rejected by another. Entering a burning building only to risk having his heart incinerated again was a tall order.

In the past six weeks, she had turned Luke Almeida into Chicago’s Sexiest Fireman, his sister into America’s Favorite Firefighter, and had recovered from a cheating ex who was about to have octuplet walruses with a nurse. Meet the queen of tall orders.

Deep breath. Squared shoulders. Fists on hips.

Let’s fucking do this.

“You didn’t give me a chance to finish, Mr. Almeida. A few moments ago, before you rudely interrupted me”—she shot him her best stink eye—“I was saying how lucky I was to have you love me. Well, it’s not just me. Every person who knows you is blessed to have a man like you giving us everything you have. Because that’s who you are. You leave every piece of your heart and soul out on the field of battle.”

Moving in close, she tipped back her head to take a long, hard look at this man she loved.

“Fire.” She coasted a hand over his shoulder and that raw strip of scar tissue. She had yet to hear the story behind it, but she intended to find out.

“Country.” She traced the edge of his sculpted chest muscles over his Semper Fidelis tattoo.

“Family.” She stroked her fingertips over the inked
cuffs of his biceps,
Sean
on one side,
Logan
on the other.

Finally, on tiptoes in her flip-flops, she brushed his lips. A gentle press she knew that, despite his stubbornness, he was itching to return.

Only sheer willpower prevented her from throwing her arms around him instead of placing her hands on his chest for emphasis. “Now, I wouldn’t want to be accused of using my feminine wiles as a weapon here, Luke. You need cold, hard facts. You need an intellectual argument, because an emotional or sexual appeal won’t be enough.”

Those had-to-be-fake blue eyes heated to midnight. She suspected he was starting to enjoy the emotional (and sexual) appeal, but she wanted to give him more. She wanted to give him everything.

“I’ve never been as brave as you. I chose one man because I thought he fit into this glossy-magazine-cover life I’d envisioned. He hurt me, so I shut down, determined not to let anyone get that close again. And then I met another man. We butted heads, we danced around each other, we challenged, and we fought. It was messy and infuriating. I mean, you really pissed me off sometimes.”

A gentle lift at one corner of his mouth registered his pleasure with that conclusion. God, he was so annoying.

“But I’d never felt more alive. Through it all, during these moments with the most exasperating man I’ve ever met, I realized that I’d only been living in black and white. Burying myself in my work. Using it to avoid passion and fire and love.”

“Know what that’s like,” he murmured.

“Stop.” She held up a hand. “You don’t need to make it easy on me, Almeida. Yes, you’re some sort of emotional savant who figured out what you needed to fill this gap in your life, but I’m not as smart as you. I thought I would lose everything I’d gained by accepting all this love you had for me. That it was some sort of capitulation—”

“Sweetheart.”

“I know.” And she did. At last. “It took me awhile to realize that love doesn’t make me weak. That together we are so much stronger than we are apart. That I don’t want to end up alone in fine restaurants, sipping top-shelf whiskey and relying on the waiter for orgasms.”

He frowned. “Wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Losing the plot here, Taylor.
She hadn’t slept a wink on the flight, too keyed up about seeing him. “Sorry, I’m explaining this badly. I have a question for you. Just one.” She curved her hands around his towel-wrapped hips. A trickle of moisture vied for her attention as it traveled an eager trek down his chest, but she stayed the course.

“Would you still move to be with me?”

“To the ends of the earth.”

Still. Still, this man would do anything for her. She was his first and last thought. He was the hero she needed.

“You make me strong, Luke. I feel invincible with you, like I can do anything. And I think I do that for you, too.”

He leaned his forehead against hers as if he could draw from their collective strength. Her heated blood rushed to where they connected.

“Yes,” he said above a whisper. “Yes, you do.”

Her teary smile was filled with relief. “But you also need something else to be strong. Your family. They mean everything to you and leaving them would kill you.”

“Aw, baby, is that why you shut me down in California?”

“That, and fear that I wouldn’t be enough for you. You have so much, Luke. What can I offer you? What do you give the man who has everything?”

One thick finger traced the pulse at the base of her throat and blazed an erotic trail over her collarbone. “You give him the one thing he can’t do without. This ball of fire inside you. Your heart, Kinsey.”

That ball of fire combusted, shooting sparks of joy through every nerve ending.

“It’s yours, Luke. I know I can trust you with it. I know you’re the one man who can hold it safe. I also know that the best place to do that is here. In Chicago.”

Bafflement rumpled his brow. “What about your job?”

“I don’t have one now, but I’m really, really good at what I do. There are tons of opportunities for a woman with my particular skill set.”

Sexy lip twitch.

“My
professional
skill set, perv.”

For the first time since she was sixteen, she was unemployed and not entirely sure what her next step was careerwise. But she knew this much. “Going forward, I’d like to work on causes and campaigns I actually care about.”

“So rehabilitating the rep of a hit-first meathead is not your cause of choice?”

“As much as I enjoyed making you sweat for that calendar, my days of wrangling kittens and recalcitrant firemen are over.”

Swallowing her fear, she let him see every ounce of the vulnerability she had spent her life hiding. From her brothers, from her bosses, from any man who had knocked at the door of her heart only to find it padlocked. Because Luke Almeida was waiting for her with the key.

“As long as I know you have my back, as long as you know I have yours, then we can do anything.” And wasn’t that the truth of it?

Finally, finally he took her face between his big, caring, made-to-love her hands. “You fuckin’ slay me, Kinsey.” Then he kissed her to the depths of her soul, a kiss so transcendent her brain spun at the possibilities. In far-off galaxies, worlds were created with this kiss. In this one, her new life began.

Against his perfect mouth, she whispered through trembling lips, “I thought I’d screwed up.”

“Well, you did. But you came to your senses in the nick of time.” Those eyes, like fierce blue suns, dragged her in deep. “You sure about this, baby? About us?”

“Maybe I’m not as good at this PR business as I thought. Haven’t I convinced you, Luke?”

“You have. But it sounds like I’m getting the better end of this deal. I get to stay put in my hometown, I get to continue my campaign of chronic interference in the lives of my family, and I get the girl.” He broke out into a huge grin. “I even get to be a lieutenant.”