Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (7 page)

Except Brady “No Manners” Smith, apparently.

Yet less than forty minutes after Brady had issued
his demand, Gage was knocking on the door to Smith & Jones because it seemed he had a thing for churlish, bossy chefs. Or he just really wanted to get laid.

The door opened outward and Gage stepped back. Brady’s arm stretched up, pushing his biceps agreeably—so frickin’ agreeably—against the hems of his heather gray tee. USMC was scrawled across the front under the eagle, globe, and anchor insignia, and you know what Gage’s first thought was on seeing that: Luke and Wyatt will like him because he was a fellow Marine.

Boy, you are so fucked.

“Hey,” he managed to scratch out.

Brady held open the door for Gage to walk in, which he did, inhaling as he went. Something spicy tickled his nostrils and bucked his dick. Welcome to the world of a healthy gay male loose in the city.

Close to two in the afternoon and the restaurant was eerily quiet. Fully set tables, lights down low, the feel of Brady’s hot gaze on his back—all mixed into a heady brew that Gage wanted to knock back like a shot of Jäger. The strip of condoms in his wallet burned against his groin. How would this go down? How would Brady go down? Easily, Gage imagined, infusing that single word with bone-deep belief.

He had already walked in a few steps when he realized that Brady hadn’t budged from the door. Gage smiled. He was used to being admired. From the moment he had figured himself out, he’d made use of all his assets like the attention-loving whore he was. A psychologist might say it had something to do with his cracked-up childhood, bounced from home to home, always searching for the one family
that didn’t balk at the crazy-eyed little queer with the mom who spent more time in drug rehab than out.

“Why you here?”

Gage turned to let Brady see his interest. Were they really going to play games?

The look on Brady’s face stopped the wiseass comment on the tip of his tongue. Whereas before the impassive chef had looked sexy-stoic, now he looked genuinely puzzled. Disbelief clouded around them like a third person in the room.

Why
was
Gage here?

I want to kiss you with a fierceness I can’t even fathom. I want to feel your shaved head on my stomach after you’ve milked me dry with your incredulous mouth. I want something I haven’t had and I can’t even name.

He gave a negligent shrug, forcing the lie into his shoulders. “It’s not every day a guy gets the chance to play chef with a professional.” So Gage was still uncertain whether that terminating bark last week had been for him or the mayor. But Brady knew exactly who Gage was when he had called today.

He had been waiting for Gage to connect.

Closing the gap between them, Brady halted about two feet out. The full length of his right arm was taken up by a tattoo of the Scoville heat scale, which determined pepper heat levels. Pretty hard core. From bell peppers at his wrist to habaneros at the hem of his shirtsleeve, that arm made Gage’s mouth water as if he had bitten into one of those throat-burning buggers himself. If his fingers could sneak beneath the sleeve’s hem, what would Gage find there? How high did the Scoville heat scale go?

Brady’s upper body seemed to bevel forward slightly and there was that hint of spice again, shot through with something else. A slight sweetness that seemed to increase in intensity with each passing second.

The big chef was going to touch him.
Please, for the love of Scoville, do it.

He didn’t.

So Gage took matters into his own hands. Just a whisper of a touch, he rested his finger on Brady’s chest over the globe of the USMC insignia.
A world of pleasure awaits you, Chef.
That massive chest expanded on an inhale, so space filling that it seemed to strain for more than just Gage’s hand.

“My brothers were in the Marines. Iraq and Afghanistan. What about you?”

As if bitten, Brady stepped back out of Gage’s greedy grasp radius, sending his heart into a plummet. Thoughts did the rounds on his face, the most expressive Gage had seen during their brief acquaintance.

“It was a long time ago.” Brady crossed his arms over his chest, covering up the tee’s logo. Got it. Brady’s time in the service was out of bounds. It was also the first time Gage had noticed an accent, the vowels long, lazy, and lilting. Southern, he guessed.

Gage nodded when really a million questions competed to find voice.
What happened to you? Is that why your face is fucked up? Should we do it on a table here or in the kitchen? Any concerns
about health codes?

“I’m makin’ enchiladas,” Brady said, low and rough. “You like ’em hot?”

“Hotter the better.”

“Sure you can handle that much heat? You seem kind of . . . fragile.”

Fragile?
Gage was six feet two of unapologetic, hard muscle. He could bench-press three hundred pounds, run five miles in under forty-five minutes, save cats from fucking trees, and Mr. My-Body’s-an-Etch-a-Sketch thought he might be fragile?

“Peppers are my specialty. If it’s spicy, I’m in.”

“I use guajillos.” Brady pointed about halfway up the scale on his arm. “They burn the skin. Can be real damagin’ if you’re not used to it. If you’re too—”

“I’m not fragile, Brady.”

Brady’s eyes darkened, and Gage realized that he had used the chef’s name face-to-face for the first time. It sounded too familiar, too sweet for Gage’s lascivious plans. Gage would never have considered himself the sharpest tool in the shed, but it should have hit him quicker that they were talking about something other than peppers. Was Brady warning him off?

“Maybe not fragile,” Brady said, a thoughtful air to his harsh demeanor. “More like . . . golden.”

Jesus, that sounded worse than fragile. Gage opened his mouth to protest, but Brady was already bypassing him on his way to the kitchen.

“Let’s see what you got, Golden.”

 CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he day after the calendar shoot, Kinsey sat at her desk and tried to analyze what in the world had prompted yesterday’s outrageous behavior. As a creature of logic, she was determined to get to the root of it.

She couldn’t blame alcohol, though on that note, she should stash a bottle of Grey Goose in her desk for emergencies.

She couldn’t blame her time of the month, not that she would ever use
that
as an excuse.

One other possibility came to mind. PR professionals were more than a little familiar with the concept of herd mentality, the idea that crowds can start acting as one and influencing people around them. The bandwagon effect. Being part of that female host at Engine 6—the lascivious catcalls, the rampant estrogen, the sheer objectification—had flipped a switch and conjured up Kinsey’s cavewoman side.

That had to be it. Not Luke Almeida’s cut body. Not his catty ex-wife. Not even how forlorn he looked when he opened up about his failed marriage. Those were all reasons that might sway a woman with a loosening grip on her self-control, but not Kinsey. She had merely been caught up in the moment, like
a dizzy girl at a raunchy bachelorette party in a strip club.

So what if the man was hot enough to melt butter? It would be outrageously inappropriate to get involved with Firefighter Almeida while she had some say in whether he could return to active duty. That’s probably why he’d kissed her in the first place.

Wait one second, Taylor.
Never mind his motives or the clear ethical conflict, it was just wrong to get involved with him. Period. This was a man who was on far too intimate terms with his id. Apart from the potentially earth-shattering sex, she could see no benefits whatsoever to getting up close and personal with an instinctive beast like Luke Almeida.

Apart from the sex.

Which, judging by that kiss, would be earth shattering.

But she would never know because since David, men—and sex—were off the menu. Only the job mattered. Speaking of which . . .

The pounding of what sounded like a herd of rampaging rhinoceroses shook the foundations of city hall. Kinsey wondered only what had taken so long.

She rearranged her facial muscles, preparing to go neutral in
three . . .

“Kinsey!” came the mayor’s bellow.

Josie, bless her, made a token effort to do the “Let me check if she’s free” thing in the outer suite, but Kinsey could have been in a meeting with POTUS and Eli Cooper wouldn’t care a whit.

Two . . .

Her door exploded open with a splintering crash as it hit the wall.

One.

Neutral be damned. Kinsey smiled up into the scowling face of her boss.

“Explain.” He slammed the door behind him, though if privacy was his aim, chalk that one up to an epic fail. Without a doubt, Josie was already broadcasting news of the mayor’s meltdown on the city hall grapevine. The cubicles were alive with the pings of IMs.

“I assume we’re talking about the Summer Learning Program,” Kinsey said, all innocence. “The speech to the press sounded great on WGN. You really sold it.”

With one hand, he raked his dark, wavy, overly produced hair furiously. In his other, he held an iPad, the older model he used as a backup. Oh, that wasn’t good.

“ ‘
Yet again, our esteemed mayor is seen to be siding with the delinquents at the Chicago Fire Department
,’ ” he read from the iPad, or more specifically, this morning’s op-ed from the
Tribune
. Sam Cochrane claimed his staff had editorial independence, but all those opinions came out sounding suspiciously like the blowhard himself.

“ ‘
First we have the city employees at Engine 6 brawling with their brothers in arms at CPD and making the mistake of getting caught on film. Now we’re paying them to strip on city property and reenact
Magic Mike
for a chorus of administrative workers. During this spectacle, city
hall practically shut down, emergency calls to Engine 6 were put on hold
and’”
— he held up a dramatic hand of wait-for-it—“ ‘
everyone got paid
.’ ”

Fury molded Eli’s features to the ferocity of one of the Harold Washington Library gargoyles overlooking State Street. “This is a PR-fucking-disaster. You’re supposed to be fixing it, not making them into Chippendales. What in the hell were you thinking?”

Moving a finger to her lips, Kinsey tried for contrite, but that had never looked good on her. Honesty suited her much better. “I’m thinking that maybe I know how to do my job better than you do.”

She rounded her desk and removed the iPad from his hand. “Other one cracked?”

“Yep,” he ground out.

That was the third tablet the mayor had gone through in her close to four months on the job. Technology was far too fragile for a man with this much passion, or faced with this many blows from the press.

“Believe it or not, I have a strategy here.” Her gaze fell to the iPad and a smile tugged at her lips. The editorial couldn’t have been more perfect if she had dictated it personally.

Step one in the plan: complete.

A couple of incendiary images from the shoot had somehow made it into Jillian Malone’s email box. Kinsey had selected the photos to be leaked to the veteran reporter herself, including a nice one of a sheened Gage Simpson, but the paper had used a scorching shot of Luke unsnapping his bunker pants, his eyes directed at some point over the photog’s shoulder. At Kinsey, in fact, about ten seconds before he had set her panties ablaze.

“Explain to me how this helps me get reelected in February,” Eli said, sounding slightly appeased, or
at the very least hopeful that her claim to be good at what she did carried weight. The guy might be a chauvinistic dolt when it came to female firefighters, but she could hear a grudging respect in his tone.

Her personal phone rang and she spotted the caller ID from three feet away. “Just a second, I need to take this.” Those respect levels in the room hitched higher, keeping pace with the mayor’s arched eyebrow. Ignoring the boss to take an important call? Power play at its finest. After a minute of pleasantries, she finished with her demand. “Ten o’clock news, Marisa, not the six. Those pictures aren’t really fit for dinnertime now, are they?”

She hung up and turned back to the mayor.

“That was the anchor at NBC local,” she said, the surge of euphoria in her veins threatening to give her an orgasm on the spot. “The story will air at ten.”

Step two: complete.

Skepticism pinched his mouth. “You mean the story about the city’s stripper firemen?”

“I mean the story about the brave men of CFD showing off their fine physiques, all so unfortunate, underprivileged foster kids can get new footballs.” Her heart skipped a few beats remembering Luke’s request for the calendar’s proceeds.

“You’re controlling the message?” Eli asked, a glitter of approval in his eyes before going dim again. “I think you’re forgetting I need Cochrane’s money and endorsement. If we make him look stupid, that doesn’t exactly help me.”

“It’s a fine line, but as soon as the charity connection emerges, he’ll have no choice but to retract his fangs. We feed Malone tidbits about our rehab plans
and then it’s up to them how to spin it.
I
think the public will see it as a fun summer distraction. Like the Taste of Chicago.”

She hoped. Screwing up the mayor’s reelection bid would be catastrophic, and she’d have zero chance of getting off the fluff beat. But her gut told her this was going to work. It had to.

Eli’s lips firmed as he thought it over. “Okay, I’m letting you run with this, but the minute I see evidence that it’s not having the desired effect—which is to make CFD look like they are all part of the cozy city family—then I’m pulling you off it and it’s public shaming all around. Though I can’t imagine Almeida was too happy with getting half naked to make his problems go away.”

The mayor sounded pleased that Luke’s forced cooperation was putting him through the wringer. Weirdly, Kinsey’s stomach lurched in defense of the sexy firefighter.

“In my experience,” she said archly, “the half-naked solution works for fifty percent of the male species. Dropping trousers, the ultimate problem solver.”

“And the other fifty percent?”

“The full monty works for them.”

His laugh was warm. “Funny how you women always sound so above it all. It’s always the men who can’t keep it in their pants, yet I hear it was a firehouse filled with our dickless staff at this hootenanny.”

“Oh, that must have made things difficult over here—did your penis people have problems figuring out how to turn on the photocopier up on five? Or was the Starbucks run a touch too much for their testosterone levels to handle?”

That drew a sardonic grin. “The city is not paying its female employees to ogle naked men.”

“No, just to do Starbucks runs.”

“You have the wrong impression of me, Kinsey.”

“Don’t think I do. But it’s okay, I still like you.”

She smiled.

He did not.

“Just to be clear,” she said, a touch testy she had to defend her strategy here. “Twenty-three staff,
both male and female
, elected to take vacation time so they could support CFD’s charitable efforts during the calendar shoot. This was not done on city time and no one got paid to be there. The rest of the crowd were members of the community we serve.”

Eli looked unimpressed. “You’re sure this isn’t going to blow up in our faces?”

She mentally crossed her fingers behind her back. “Trust me, I’ve got this.” Step three would be the cherry on top, but she’d keep that to herself for the moment.

“Think it’s time you met M Squared and share your expertise. Keep the message on target,” Eli said. “Set it up.”

“Of course.” Kinsey schooled her expression to blank. Meeting M Squared, Eli’s election campaign manager, made her stomach roil like a bag of scrappy kittens, but damned if she’d show any weakness. Back to the take-charge professional who was
hell yeah
good at her job.

But as she watched the mayor’s tight ass journey out of her office, and pondered on how beautifully shaped it was and how it filled out his pinstripe pants so very well, her mind inevitably slid to how it was
not nearly as enticing as the one belonging to a certain stripper fireman.

Where Luke Almeida was concerned, it seemed that rational, cool, and collected Kinsey Taylor had left the building.

L
uke was heading west on Foster to St. Carmen’s Group Home when he almost crashed his truck.

It couldn’t be . . .

No way in hell would she have . . .

He blinked. Refocused.

It was . . . and she had.

Above the Metra track, kitty-corner to the Chase bank, a humongous billboard showcased in glorious, gleaming, sharp-edged color a shirtless Luke Almeida.

Going on the assumption that he might have been hallucinating, Luke circled the block praying for a different result. Back on Foster, he parked the car at a hydrant. He had no intention of staying longer than it took for his brain matter to erupt in a volcanic mass down his spine.

Yep, that was him up there. Twenty feet tall, chest shining (how did that happen?), his fingers in a suggestive hover over the snaps of his bunker gear. He wore what someone with a better vocabulary than him might call a smoldering look. At thigh level, a line of text asked the provocative “Did Someone Call the Fire Department?” and then a link to a website capped it off. Thankfully, this shot was before the kittens were introduced. Those kittens had been damn cute, though, especially that little calico one with the
big eyes—
shit.
He bit back a snarl, not liking the direction of that train of thought.

She
was behind the camera. Several feet behind it, but that’s who he had been looking at. Smoldering at. The woman better have her catcher’s mitt ready because he was about to pitch hell.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his old calls. There it was, with an area code he didn’t recognize. Gage had said she was from San Francisco, and while he waited for her to pick up, he imagined her on a pristine California beach, soaking up the rays. Her honey-blond hair would cascade down her bare back, bisected by wispy strings that scarcely held her bikini together (a white one, perhaps, or red . . . Yeah, definitely red). It would take the work of a moment to pull on the tail of the bow and watch as it unraveled to reveal—

“Hello,” she said in that husky tone that sent shivers barreling down his spine.

“Hey,” he said back, softer on his lips than it sounded in his brain. Hell to the negative. Time to get his head out of his lately famous ass and stomp down with his size-twelve boot. “You’ve gone too far, Miss Taylor. I was driving down the street and what should I see but me in some ridiculous pose on a billboard. I don’t remember giving you permission to do that. The calendar, yes, but billboards?”

His rant was met with a pause, likely because she needed a moment to craft some claptrap to soothe his temper.