Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (9 page)

“No one,” she murmured into his chest, and then something that sounded like “dead to me.”

“Her fiancé,” Gage said as he pulled out the stockpot he used for from-scratch popcorn. “Her ex-fiancé.”

Alex was opening and closing cupboards, and making a lot of noise while she was at it. “Who she hauled ass across the country to be with—”

“Shush,” Kinsey said, curving her gaze around his shoulder. Her breasts brushed tantalizingly against his chest. “Don’t tell him.”

“—and who decided to dump her because apparently she didn’t square up to his ideal of womanhood,” Alex finished, sounding mighty ticked off on Kinsey’s behalf.

Stupid fucking David was right. The chump clearly had eyesight problems, because Luke’s ideal of womanhood was here in his arms. Strong, sexy, and take no shit.

Hold up there now.
Had Luke not just resolved to pursue only pliant, easy, nurturing women who liked puppies and kids? For the long term anyway.

As for the short term . . .

He tightened his grip, pulled her flush. “What a loser.”

“I know, I am!” she said passionately. “I gave up a great job, friends, and my family to move here for a guy, only to get screwed over. Never again. We clear, Mr. July?”

He could feel a smile shaping his lips, but she sounded so serious he kept it on lockdown. “Crystal, Miss Taylor.”

She laughed, a heartily unapologetic sound that warmed him from the inside out. He liked a woman who was unafraid to let go like that. He wondered idly if she liked
him.

Or puppies.

Or kids.

No more hard liquor for you, Almeida.

Every part of her anatomy registered with him on some cellular level. Slim waist, rounded hips, legs a mile past eternity. Breasts made for his mouth to suck deep and long. And don’t forget the devilish glint in her eyes, the one that said she could take him on—and would relish the challenge of making him work for it.

God, he wanted her.

He turned to Alex and Gage. “All right, kiddos, can I trust you not to burn down the house I was raised in?”

Alex gave the Dempsey stare-down. “We’re trained professionals, Luke. If we
were
to do something that
might
burn down the house, we could handle it.”

Not comforting in the slightest.

“I think I need to close my eyes,” Kinsey said faintly. “Can you call me a cab?”

No way in hell was he putting her in a taxi in this state, and with the current ratio of Jack to plasma in his bloodstream, driving Kinsey himself was out. She would sleep in his room next door, and Luke would take the sofa.

He pushed a honey-blond strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re not going anywhere. I’ll take care of you, sweetheart.”

The scent of her filled his nostrils, curled into his
chest, and settled there, both strangely arousing and pleasingly familiar. Circling his palm around her waist, he let a few seconds pass to get her used to the idea of how he would possess her space. There was something about a strong, fine woman like Kinsey surrendering to his will that got him harder than mahogany.

Blinking those big golden eyes up at him, she held her plump bottom lip between her teeth and dragged. Slowly.

“Thanks, Luke. You’re sweet.”

And sweet he would stay until she sobered up. Savage could wait for another day.

 CHAPTER NINE

W
aking up in a strange bed was so 2003—or it would have been, if Kinsey had ever been the sort of woman who got trashed, got laid, and got her morning-after exercise with a brisk walk of shame. But that kind of behavior had always been foreign to her. She had met David at an Alpha Delta Phi fraternity party her freshman week at Berkeley, and they had quickly become exclusive and serious. As a third-year med student, he shouldn’t have looked at her twice, but her California freshness and nonthreatening communications major had appealed to him. His goal-driven manner had appealed to her.

Now it appeared she was making up for her goody-two-shoes college days with a dive into girl gone wild in Chicago.

Cautiously, because tiny jackhammers were drilling into her skull, she scoped out her surroundings: Luke Almeida’s lair. More gender-neutral than she would have expected—not that she had spared it a single thought at all—with eggshell blue walls and quality balsam wood furniture from Ethan Allen or some other high-end home furnishing purveyor. The ex-wife’s taste, no doubt. The hunter green bedding clashed with the decor, the most obvious hint that
Luke had made a token effort to put his marriage in the past.

She raised the sheets. Breathed out her relief. Her skinny jeans bagged at the knees, but they were still on her body. Ditto for her top, though it might have lost a swatch of sparkle around the neck, but overall as it should be, covering up the girls.

New snatches of early morning horror flickered with the pulse of those jackhammers in her brain. Last night with Luke, there had been flirting and groping and oh God, whining—all on her side. Quickly, she shot up to a sitting position, and immediately regretted it when her head and stomach joined forces in rebellion. There had been something else. Something shameful. She had—

“It lives.”

With her stomach in a pitch and roll of regret, Kinsey creakily turned her head to find Luke at the door. Wearing battered jeans and a muscle-molding CFD tee, he looked so fine her mouth watered. Or perhaps that was nausea.

Covering her eyes with her forearm didn’t help. Neither did laying her head back down on the pillow. Gently. The man-on-fire hotness was already imprinted on her retinas.

“I’m sorry I put you out,” she mumbled, partially into the pillow.

“You didn’t.” He placed a coffee cup on the nightstand, the sound like a cymbals crash in her ears. “I added a splash of half-and-half. Can grab sweetener if you need it.”

The aroma hit her nostrils, snaking through to activate caffeine-deprived neurons. Leaning up on one
elbow, she took a sip, closing her eyes as the liquid gold did its holy work. “Mmm, this is perfect, thanks. What time is it?”

“A little after seven.”

She glanced up, suddenly all too aware that she was in Luke Almeida’s bed, drinking coffee he had made for her, and suspecting she wasn’t quite as put together as she would have liked. And there were the memories. The horrible memories.

Oh. Shit.

“I puked on your shoes last night.”

“Never liked that pair anyway.”

“I am so, so sorry.” But that wasn’t all. Fresh horror thumped her skull as her fuzzy memory began to clear. “You held my hair while I threw up. Multiple times.”

“I’ve graduated with honors in hair holding. Used to do it for Alex back in her teens. Gage, too, when his hair was longer.” He gifted her a superior yet wicked grin she felt all the way down to her panties. Which thankfully were still on. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not so good. I haven’t drunk that much since . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to go there.

“Since your ex dumped you after you hauled ass across the country to be with him?”

Ah, that was the confession part she vaguely remembered from the night before. Though, if memory served, it was that snitch Alex who had blabbed the salient details. As for her last bout of drunkenness, on finding out David had decided to up and plan his life without Kinsey, she’d bought a bottle of Skinnygirl Island Coconut vodka and holed up in a hotel room at the Peninsula on Michigan Avenue. Avoiding the
minibar was supposed to save both money and the ignominy of housekeeping finding her passed out in a sea of tiny bottles. Instead of, as it happened, in the company of one large bottle.

Several hours and one mother of a hangover later, she had rented her temp apartment so she could get on with her temp job and her temp life. In the months since, she had been living in a misery cocoon, and last night was the first time she’d let loose in forever. To be honest, she missed her family. Alex and Gage had embraced her in their cozy Dempsey circle, and hell if she didn’t like it there a bit too much.

“Sounds like I got chatty
and
barfy last night.”

He nodded, unexpected understanding in his eyes. “We’re all entitled to let our hair down every now and then.”

“Go a little crazy?”

“Go a little crazy.”

“Did you go a little crazy . . . ?”

“When I found out my wife was cheating on me? Oh yeah. You can still see the fist-shaped dents in the living room walls. Sort of artistic, if you catch it in the right light.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “So what happened with your ex?”

She inhaled a bolstering breath. Took a sip of coffee. Inhaled again. “In January, he moved here to become head of cardiac surgery at Northwestern Medicine. A month later, I took a pay cut and a demotion to move here to be with him. In April, he dropped me three weeks before our planned May wedding in Napa.”

“Ouch.”

She waved the hand not holding her coffee cup.
It shook a little, which she preferred to credit to her delicate physical condition. “He met someone else. A nurse.” A nurturer by nature, Kinsey’s polar opposite.

“How come you stuck around in Chicago?”

Countering with “Out of spite” would be pathetic despite the germ of truth in there. Really, she had refused to give her ex the satisfaction of watching her slink back home with her tail between her legs, and the stiff-upper-lip attitude kept her family’s concern at manageable levels. “I like Chicago. I have feelers out for opportunities back on the West Coast, but until something better pops up, this city suits me.”

Luke studied her for a moment as if he didn’t really understand that line of reasoning. Sometimes she barely understood it herself. After a taut moment, he gestured to a chair where sweats hung over the arm.

“I grabbed some clothes for you from Alex. There are clean towels in the bathroom. Breakfast’s up in ten.”

“Oh, okay, thanks.” Breakfast might be a problem given her wayward internal organs, but she’d hate to be a bad guest on top of everything else. Hopefully, he wasn’t too fond of his current footwear.

After a quick shower, she donned Alex’s sweats and CFD hoodie. The clothes swam on her because Kinsey didn’t have the dynamite proportions of a female gladiator, but she was grateful to be out of her evening-cum-sleepwear. Mr. Thoughtful had left out a spare toothbrush, so she brushed her teeth, then tore a comb she found in one of the vanity’s drawers through her damp hair. With her lukewarm mug, she headed downstairs toward the sound of a radio and the smell of bacon, the one thing she missed about going vegetarian.

Picture hooks—but no pictures—hung on the wall abutting the stairs. Banished memories of Luke’s marriage, she assumed, waiting for new ones to take their place. She wasn’t sure when exactly their relationship had ended, but the stasis of his house decor implied he was in some sort of holding pattern. She wondered how long it would take to get over her own relationship fail. Or, if a certain streak of walking, breathing temptation might be willing to indulge in a spot of naked sex therapy.

Bad brain.
She needed to remember that Luke was a job. An assignment. And he’d made it clear that she was the enemy.

Time to do a little reconnaissance across enemy lines.

Taking advantage of his position with his back to her while he stood at the stove in the fifties-style kitchen, she let her gaze drink him in. Those broad shoulders. Tightly woven back muscles. Slim hips. Her breasts tingled in memory of how wonderful it felt to cradle him in her body’s embrace. How hard he was for her that day in the locker room at Engine 6. How good—

“You’re not my favorite person right now, Kinsey,” he said without turning around.

Le sigh.
Luke Almeida, creator—and destroyer—of fantasies. Needing a moment to rally her defenses, she walked over to the coffeemaker and heated up her cup.

“Not enjoying the attention?”

“I let you spread your wings with the calendar, and the way you countered the
Trib
with the local TV news piece was nicely played. But billboards? Now
we have badge bunnies lining up outside the firehouse to have their picture taken. Not to mention the increased demand for ring cutting.”

Badge bunnies? Alarm pop-popped in her chest. “Ring cutting?”

“We get a couple of women a month coming in to get their wedding rings removed rather than go to the ER. The day before last we had five, yesterday close to fifteen.” He glowered. Sexily, of course. “They seem to think it’s as good as a divorce. Snip the ring and they’re free to roam. And they’d like to roam right into my arms.”

When she came up with this idea to make Luke and his crew minor celebrities while raising the profile of CFD and cash for charity, she couldn’t have suspected how much female attention it would garner. Of course, Luke was gorgeous with multiple exclamation points, and women would have to be blind not to see that.

He placed a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs on the table—with attitude. “Have some grease. It’s good for your hangover.”

“I don’t eat meat.”

“Of course you don’t, Cali girl.” He folded his arms and blew out a frustrated sigh. “You like to win, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Not as much as you do, but that’s okay. I’ll let you lead me around by the dick in public if it makes you feel better. As long as we both know that in private, it’s different.”

Heat bloomed between her thighs. In private was exactly what she would like more of, but his implication that she had some diabolical agenda here rubbed
her the wrong way. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Busting your balls for my own amusement?”

“Your career. Your boss. Your amusement.” He shrugged those immense shoulders. “I don’t care what your reasons are. I only care about mine.”

“Which is to keep your job at Engine 6.”

“Wrong. To protect my family at Engine 6.”

The oddity of that struck her anew. “You said that before. As if the city or the mayor is out to get you.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but clammed up as Wyatt strode in, looking as tired and worn as Kinsey felt. Wordlessly, he divided a glance between Luke and Kinsey before pronouncing with brows drawn tight that the situation was below his interest. Mr. Coffee was his aim. Kinsey moved out of his way.

“Did you come home last night after the bar closed?” Luke asked him, concern bracketing his mouth.

“Not one of the juniors, Luke. No need to keep tabs.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you told me where you were one of these nights.”

Wyatt sniffed, doctored his coffee with cream and three packets of raw sugar, and turned his squinty gaze on Kinsey. “Unless you enjoy constant cossetting, Miss Taylor, I would suggest you get out now before it’s too late.”

No clue how to respond to that, so she went with a soft “Call me Kinsey.”

“A couple of the kids from St. Carmen’s are stopping by,” Wyatt said as he headed out the back door. “I’ll be in the garage working on the Camaro.”

For a few extra-charged beats, Luke’s troubled stare followed his brother.

“Everything okay?” Kinsey asked.

“No, he’s . . .” Luke appeared to course correct, perhaps remembering that he was talking to someone unworthy of his confidence. “Have a cinnamon roll. They’re from Ann Sather’s. A Chicago institution.”

On any other day, she’d be all over that like white on rice, but her stomach roiled at the prospect of an iced pastry on top of all she had subjected it to last night. “Best not. I’ll stick with coffee.” She took a seat at the kitchen table. When he sat and pulled her plate of eggs and bacon toward him, she felt a satisfactory glow in her chest at the domesticity of it all.

“So you and Wyatt live here and Gage and Alex are next door?”

He nodded. “I used to live here with my ex, but after we split, Wyatt moved in. Beck’s with his girl, Darcy, a few blocks over. We all grew up off and on in the house next door and when this place came up for sale, we pitched in to get it.”

“Your mother isn’t around anymore?”

“No, she passed away a couple of years before Sean and Logan. Breast cancer.”

Same as Kinsey’s mom. Mentioning it would look like she was trolling for sympathy or trying to curry favor, two things she never did.

He squinted at her. “You ever heard of the Sullivan rule?”

“You mean the one that prohibits family members from serving together in the same military platoon or company?”

“Right, but it also applies to firehouses. Technically, the Dempseys should be split and assigned to different houses in case there’s some catastrophe and we all bite the bullet on the same day. It’s meant to
offer some measure of comfort to those left behind that they’ll be limited to one coffin in the ground instead of five.”