Reckless (14 page)

One light brown brow lifted, and damn it. What was it about Zoe Westin that threw Alex so roundly out of whack?

“Look,” Cole said, taking a step back like the peacekeeper he was. “I'm not trying to jump in your shit, and I don't make a habit of telling people what to do. Least of all, you. But I wouldn't be doing my job as your best friend or your fellow firefighter if I didn't point out that you're heading toward dangerous waters. I know you like to tempt fate, and I also get why. But one of these days, if you're not careful, karma is going to knock you clean on your ass.”

“My tempting fate has nothing to do with Zoe, and that's exactly how it's going to stay.” As much as Alex wanted to find a way around the words, he also knew he couldn't. “Look, I'm not stupid, man. I know the score. But I'm also not going to turn a blind eye if she needs a good vent. Really. What's going on between me and Zoe is nothing personal.”

“You sure about that?” Cole asked, and this time there was leeway in his voice.

Alex took it without thinking twice. “After everything the old man did for me? Absolutely.”

He belonged at the firehouse, and the firehouse alone. No matter how much a wicked little part of him still wanted her—and wanted her badly—Alex knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that his karma couldn't have anything to do with Zoe Westin.

Chapter Thirteen

Zoe slung the thick strap of her messenger bag over one shoulder, the keys to Hope House's back door jingling against her palm as she made her way to the entrance and put them to work first on the dead bolt, then on the bottom lock. She had to admit, getting breakfast together was a whole lot easier with Alex on the schedule, and even though he'd probably put in the bare minimum because she'd lost their bet, it was still more help than she had on most days.

Zoe's normally confident stride faltered into a stutter-step as she crossed the back threshold to the kitchen. Okay, so she'd let loose with way more personal information than she'd meant to two nights ago at Bellyflop, and Alex had shocked the hell out of her not just by being a good listener, but by actually seeming to get how she felt even though he'd offered up a different viewpoint. But he was still a firefighter, one of her father's to boot, and that meant Alex took risks for a living in addition to taking them for fun. She simply couldn't put herself on the line by getting involved with a guy like him. No matter how good she'd felt when he'd put his hand over hers and listened like he knew exactly how she felt.

No matter how badly she wanted his hands in other places, too.

“Good morning,” came the rumble of a very smooth, very male voice, and Zoe let out a graceless yelp and flail combo while cranking her fists in a knee-jerk defensive maneuver.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on there, slugger.” Alex stepped directly into her line of vision, holding up both hands in surrender. “It's just me, your kitchen jockey.”

A moderately unladylike curse chased the shock from Zoe's veins. “Jeez, Alex! What are you doing here so early?” It was barely six
A.M.
, for God's sake.

“I'm broadening my horizons,” he said, the obvious gleam in his bright blue eyes heating her cheeks along with a couple of places due south despite the unease she knew his words should trigger.

“That sounds dangerous.” She released her death grip on her keys, slipping them into her bag before covering the handful of steps toward her office. Alex's boots kept time with her Danskos on the kitchen tiles, but he waited until she'd stowed her belongings and started moving toward the kitchen proper before coming out with an answer.

“It is, but I promise you'll like this kind of danger.”

“The last time you said that, I lost a bet,” Zoe reminded him, snagging a clean apron from one of the hooks by the dishwasher, realizing only belatedly that it matched the one molded over Alex's FFD T-shirt.

“Yeah, about that. Since you need the help, and I've got nothing but time for three more weeks, I was thinking we could call it a draw and you could teach me how to cook, after all.”

“I'm sorry. What?” She froze into place, one hundred percent certain she'd mis-heard him, but Alex gestured to the copy of the weekly menu posted on the wall outside the pantry, and holy shit, he was serious.

“Today's breakfast is bacon and scrambled eggs with vegetables, right? That sounds pretty good, and I figure it wouldn't hurt me to know how to make a decent hot breakfast. If you're still willing to teach me, that is.”

Zoe closed her mouth. Opened it again. Closed it once more before forcing herself to say, “I am, but what's the catch?”

Alex laughed, long and loud, and she heard the less-than-polite implication only after the question had popped out.

“You know what, I'm sorry. That was—”

“Honest,” he supplied, flipping a dish towel over one shoulder. “And also well deserved, because as it just so happens, I'm not entirely without motive. I came early to help in the kitchen, but I also wanted to ask you about something.”

She moved toward the small sink at the back of the prep space, giving her hands a good scrub down before waiting for Alex to do the same. “Okay. I'll play. What's got your attention so much that you're willing to make breakfast for it?”

“Have you ever heard of the Collingsworth Grant?”

Just when Zoe thought he couldn't say anything that would shock her. “I run a nonprofit, Alex. Of course I've heard of the Collingsworth Grant. A better question might be how on earth you've heard of it, though.”

“Let's just say I have a black belt in Google-fu and I don't sleep very much by habit. What do you know about the Collingsworths?”

Zoe shrugged. Albeit a bit strange, it wasn't the worst topic they could've chosen for discussion. “They're the richest and most influential family in Fairview. Marcus and Emily Collingsworth both do a ton of philanthropic work at Fairview Medical Center, along with a handful of select local charities.” The grant was a whopper—or twenty-five thousand whoppers, if you wanted to get technical about things—and the application process was about as rigorous as the bar exam with Navy SEAL training sprinkled on top. “What does their grant have to do with anything?”

Alex followed her past the door of the walk-in, his breath coming out in wispy white puffs around his face as he said, “Hope House could use that money about a thousand different ways, right? So why don't you get a little ballsy and apply?”

“Because I'd never get it.” She didn't skip a beat, reaching for the carton of green peppers on the metal-wire shelving in front of her, but of course she should've known Alex would take the word
never
as a personal challenge rather than a concrete impossibility.

“What makes you so sure?” He slid the box of peppers from her grasp, balancing it solidly over one forearm, and Zoe added two containers of mushrooms to the pile as she picked the most obvious answer out of the ten she could've offered.

“Most nonprofits have to be up and running for years before an organization will seriously consider them for a grant.”

“Great. So you'd be a pioneer,” Alex said, his half smile loaded with full confidence, but she just huffed out a laugh and continued.

“Even then, for every available endowment, there are usually dozens of applicants. In cases like the Collingsworth Grant, it's probably more like a hundred, each one equally deserving and in need.” Zoe pulled a tray of eggs off an adjacent shelf, bracing it between both palms as she bumped her hip against the push-bar on the walk-in to pop it open. She'd done a boatload of research on available grants about six seconds after she'd seen the soup kitchen's proposed budget. Finding one she actually had a Hail Mary of getting right out of the gate? Definitely more fantasy than reality. She had no track record, no time to take from the kitchen to apply.

No prayer of getting the grant, no matter how much Hope House might need it.

Alex tipped his head, watching for a minute as she assembled the handful of necessary utensils to get them started on breakfast prep. “I'm still not seeing a good reason not to at least give it a shot. The deadline for the Collingsworth Grant isn't for almost a month.”

“It would take three of me to get that application done in time, and I can barely run this place as it is. Look, I get where you're coming from.” Zoe paused, meeting his stare with a soft smile that said she meant it. “But realistically, my chances of getting a grant like that for Hope House are negligible. I've got to put what little energy and resources I have into less risky endeavors. Spending all that time on an application for a grant I won't get just isn't a shot worth taking—not when I could be using that time to do things I know will make a difference, for sure.”

Alex paused, and for a second, Zoe thought he might actually argue. “Okay,” he finally said, dropping his eyes to the stainless steel countertop on the worktable in front of them. “So what's first for breakfast?”

She let out the breath she'd been unknowingly holding, angling her body to face the prep table. “Well, the bacon's pretty self-explanatory, but if you want to get started on the veggies, I'll get the egg mixture together and we can meet in the middle.” She pressed a vegetable brush into his hand, and he promptly looked at the thing as if it had sprouted wings and asked to be cleared for takeoff.

“You say ‘get started on the veggies' like I have a clue what that entails,” he said, holding up the brush in one hand and a cardboard container of mushrooms with the other. “I take it I should scrub these first?”

Zoe nodded, cradling an egg in each palm and popping the shells apart with a gentle slide of her fingers. “Yes, but not with water. Just give them a gentle dry brush to loosen any dirt on the undersides. Easy.”

“Looks like you got the fun job.” Alex flicked a glance at the oversized bowl propped beneath Zoe's wrist, and she couldn't resist the curiosity tickling at the back of her mind.

“You forget, being in the kitchen is all varying degrees of fun for me. You, on the other hand, seem to have had a change of heart.” The quiet stretched out between them, made no less comfortable by the steady hum of the walk-in and the soft
crack
and
pop
of eggs going into Zoe's bowl, and finally Alex lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant half shrug.

“I'm not going to lie. The only place I want to be is the firehouse. But I don't get to pick that right now, and I
do
see that this place matters to you. I'm stuck here anyway. Seems kind of stupid not to help.”

She creased her brow in thought, reaching for the last two eggs in the row. “You were pretty anti-cooking last week.”

His shoulders hitched, the increase in tension so slight that Zoe would've missed it if she hadn't looked up at just that second. “You were pretty anti-rock climbing, and you still did it.”

She opened her mouth, the fact that he hadn't answered the question burning on her tongue. But the look that crossed his features, there for barely a blink before it was gone, made her capture the words back at the last second.

He hadn't balked at learning how to cook because he thought it was stupid. He'd pushed back for the same reason she'd wanted to resist rock climbing.

The kitchen was outside the perimeter of Alex Donovan's wide, vast comfort zone. And for some unexplained reason, even though he was willing to brave learning how to cook, he didn't want her to know it.

Zoe moved without thinking. “What do you say we get these vegetables diced together? Then we can get to the good part and you can scramble some eggs.” She pulled her padded knife roll from the utility drawer beneath the prep table, sliding both of her multipurpose chef's knives from their reinforced resting spots. Placing one on the counter in front of Alex, she paused to give him a tiny smile before reaching for one of the green peppers in the carton in front of them.

“Are you sure you don't want to just give me the grunt work? I know you've got a limited amount of food, and I don't want to screw up breakfast.” His words arrived on nothing more than honesty, which was exactly how Zoe answered them.

“You won't.” She held up the pepper, admiring its smooth, jewel-green skin beneath her fingers for just a second before placing it on the cutting board between them. “This part is a lot like coring lettuce. All you have to do is remove the parts that aren't edible, and then cut the rest into pieces. Like this.” Purposely slowing her movements, she went through the process, removing first the stem, then the ribs and seeds before treating the pepper to a neat, efficient dice. Then she nudged the box in his direction, turning most of her attention to assembling the first batch of egg mixture.

Alex fumbled the pepper he'd unearthed across the cutting board, chasing it with a swift grab and a low swear. “You make it look easy.”

Zoe laughed, although without heat or disdain. “Well, for me, it kind of is, but I've had a little practice, remember? Try cutting off the bottom, too. The flat surface makes it easier to remove the seeds and get to slicing, see?”

She guided him through the motions one more time before turning the cutting board back over. Although his effort lacked finesse, all extended elbows and tight, hunched shoulders, the motions were functional enough, and Alex muddled through without destroying the bell pepper. For the most part. “Okay. That's not so bad.” A smile lifted the corner of his mouth, pure mischief, and he slid the fruits—or in this case, the vegetables—of his labor into the bowl waiting on the counter. “What's next, Gorgeous? I could do this all day.”

Whether it was his sexy smile or the
really
sexy confidence that fueled the gesture, Zoe couldn't be sure. But rather than giving in to the blush begging to take over her cheeks, she looked Alex right in the baby blues with some confidence of her own.

“Good, because I just got started with you, pretty boy. The rest of these peppers aren't going to dice themselves, and we're going to have a dining room full of hungry people in an hour. So are you going to get to work on your meal prep, or are you just going to talk about it?”

Alex's jaw unhinged, but the shock quickly fell prey to his deep-bellied laughter. “Far be it for me to turn down a challenge.” He reached into the carton for another pepper, but just when Zoe was about to let herself enjoy an internal
gotcha!
he tacked on, “So you think I'm pretty, do you?”

He delivered the words with just enough suggestion to catch her unaware, and the blush she'd held at bay roared over her face without remorse.

“It's a figure of speech, Alex. The same as you calling me ‘Gorgeous.'” Her blade flew over the mushrooms on her cutting board with a quick-fire
tat-tat-tat,
but despite her flashy knife skills, Alex refused to be distracted.

“That's not a no,” he drawled, and all at once, whatever it was that had made her toe the line with him in the first place came charging back to dare her right over the edge. Even though Zoe knew he was a firefighter—one with unflagging loyalties to both the job and her father—something dark and forbidden and utterly magnetic made her put down her chef's knife and move right into Alex's personal space.