Reckless (26 page)

“Promise?” she asked, and even though the question was a shaky whisper, Alex answered it with clear, complete confidence.

“I promise.”

Zoe nodded, but before she could back the gesture up with anything further, her cell phone let loose with a loud buzz from her back pocket. “Oh, hang on. Let me see . . .”

Her words screeched to a halt just as her heartbeat catapulted to Mach 2 in her chest.

“Zoe?” Worry colored Alex's expression, his boots echoing on the linoleum as he closed what little space stood between them. “What's the matter? Who is it?”

Excitement collided with the hard prickle of fear in her veins, but finally, somewhere amid the ocean of adrenaline coursing through her, she found her voice.

“It's Sharon Gleeson. She's the director of the committee that awards the Collingsworth Grant.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

A mile-wide smile tore over Alex's face, even though Zoe's had gone completely blank and just as pale.

“This is awesome,” he said, not even bothering to keep his enthusiasm in check. But come on—what better place for her to get her kick-ass good news than here at the firehouse, where they could all help her celebrate in style?

“Go on, Gorgeous. Pick it up.” He encouraged her with a wave, guiding her to the end of the hallway in a few hurried steps. The location wasn't ideal for privacy, but the only other thing down this way was Cap's office, and he knew better than to slip in there without permission. At least the out-of-the-way corner was better than nothing.

Finally, Zoe nodded, her hands noticeably shaking as she tapped the icon on her phone to take the call. “Zoe Westin.”

Although it damn near killed him, Alex moved a handful of paces to give her a little breathing room. Not that it seemed to matter. Zoe's face remained totally unreadable, other than the marked seriousness creasing her honey-colored brows and pressing her bow-shaped mouth into a flat line. But this was Zoe, cautious to a fault. Of course she wouldn't get excited until she hung up. Damn, he couldn't wait to see the sheer happiness break over her face.

“Right. Yes, I see,” she murmured. The woman on the other end of the phone must be giving all sorts of details, because that was all Zoe said. She nodded a few times, her blond hair tumbling forward to shield her eyes from Alex's view.

“Of course. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your letting me know tonight.” Finally, she lowered the phone from her ear, and not a second too soon as far as the adrenaline in Alex's veins was concerned.

“Well?” He looked at Zoe's face, the sight of the tears brimming in her eyes sending a pang to his gut even though they were surely the happy kind.

One breached her eyelid, then another. “I, um . . . I didn't get the grant.”

What. The. Ever-loving. Fuck?

“Are you kidding me?” Alex blurted, disbelief ricocheting through him only to be followed by a hard spurt of anger. “You worked your ass off for that grant. Nobody deserves that money more than you.”

Zoe shook her head, clearly in a fog, and Alex's heart nearly imploded. “They had a record number of applications, and she said ours was very impressive. It just . . . wasn't enough for them to consider Hope House for the final round.”

He moved toward her, thumbing the tears from the apples of both cheeks even as they killed him. “Okay. It's okay.”

“It's not okay,” she choked out, collapsing into his touch. “Everything I had was riding on this, Alex. I don't . . . I can't . . .”

“You
can
,” he interrupted, sticking the words with all his mettle. “Look, this is a setback, but we'll get around it. We'll figure something out.”

Her face broadcasted her doubt loud and crystal clear, but she let him pull her close. As soon as he wrapped his arms around her, the tension holding her together unraveled. Every sob tore a hole in his chest, but he rode out the pain of each one, right there with her. Finally, Zoe quieted, and he cupped her face to place a soft kiss on her mouth like a promise.

“We'll find a way,” he said, and she looked up at him, her lashes still spiky with tears.

“Can you just not let me go right now? Please?” She arched into the connection, clutching the sleeves of his T-shirt as she pressed her lips to his. Need deepened the kiss in less than a breath, making Zoe's chest quake against his as he held her tight, and Alex didn't even think about denying her. He parted her lips, pouring every shred of feeling he could muster into the kiss, sweeping her tongue and diving in deeper until—

“Just what in the hell do you think you're doing to my daughter?”

Dread skidded through Alex's limbs at the same time Zoe jumped, both of them turning toward the adjacent doorway to face her father.

Holy shit, Alex had never seen the man look so irrevocably furious.

“Captain—”

“Dad, I—”

Their words crashed together, arriving simultaneously, but Westin silenced them both in an instant.

“Don't.” He flashed a stare full of warning at Zoe, which only threw Alex's protective instincts onto the huge pile of emotions hurtling through his gut.

But Zoe didn't stop. “This isn't what you think.”

“Believe me,” Westin grated, his eyes drilling Alex chock-full of holes. “You don't want to know what I think.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and her forefinger, taking a step toward her father. “Okay, look. Let's just talk about this like adults, please.”

“I just came out of my office to find my only daughter spontaneously lip-locked with one of my firefighters. That's not going to happen,” he grated, the deep breath that followed visibly lifting his chest beneath the dark blue shirt of his uniform.

“This isn't some spontaneous thing,” Zoe argued, and oh shit, Westin's face flushed dark red with anger.

“Really. And just how long has it been
not
spontaneous?”

Zoe bit her lip, clearly realizing the catch-22 of her words. “I—”

“A month,” Alex said, quietly straightening.

A muscle in Westin's jaw twitched once. Twice. “I'll deal with you later, Zoe. Donovan, get in my office.
Now
.”

Alex hesitated. He didn't mind taking the brunt of her father's anger, and yeah, considering the way he'd stumbled upon them, the man had every reason to be righteously indignant. But Zoe was an equal part of the equation. She didn't deserve to be brushed off and not heard. “Captain, with all due respect, Zoe—”

Westin took a swift step forward, jamming Alex's words to a sloppy stop. “Don't—
do not
—talk to me about respect. You've been sneaking around with my daughter for a goddamn month while I went to bat for you with the chief! Now get in my office, before I haul your ass out the door.”

Alex exhaled, the full measure of his dread replacing the air in his lungs. “Yes, sir.”

He turned to look at Zoe, to somehow grab one last burst of calm at the sight of her before he walked into Westin's office for what might be the last time, but she threw her hands in the air, decimating the very notion of the word.

“Do you really want to talk about respect?” Her hands lowered, only to lock into place over her hips as her eyes glittered with built-up frustration and anger, and hell, she was fraying at the seams. “I'm twenty-seven years old. I get that I'm your daughter and that you want to look out for me, but damn it, I'm right
here
. I'm not a little girl anymore, and I don't need protecting. You said you had my back, and that you believed in me. For once, can't you just trust me?”

“No. I can't.” The words sliced from Westin's mouth with all the sharp and nasty of a six-inch switchblade, cutting Alex to the bone as he added, “In fact, I don't trust either one of you. Now walk out of this fire station, Zoe. For your own good.”

Zoe's shoulders folded inward, a fresh round of tears tracking over her weary face. But before Alex could launch the reply swirling up from the part of him shrieking to leap to her defense, the electronic signal for an all-call pierced through the firehouse speakers.

“
Squad Eight, Engine Eight, Ambulance Eight. Structure fire, reported entrapment. One-nine-seven Windsor Avenue. Requesting immediate response.
”

“We're not done here, Donovan. This changes nothing,” Westin said, leveling him with one last frown before sprinting down the hallway.

But Alex had a feeling that was as far from the truth as any man could get.

 

 

“Look sharp, boys, because this shit is not a drill.” Crews's voice cut through the crush of engine noise, blaring sirens, and controlled chaos flying around in the back step of Engine Eight, signaling a neon-colored
shut up and listen
through the headphones each of them wore. “Dispatch has multiple nine-one-one callers reporting active fire in a block of row homes on Windsor.”

Cole took Alex's inward groan and gave it a voice. “Those row homes are three stories up and six units across. Not to mention they're goddamn ancient.”

Translation: fire fucking loved them. Firefighters? Not so much.

“Affirmative on both. There's reported entrapment in at least one unit, but no details on location or how many people, which means we're going to have to keep our eyes wide the hell open. Looks like we'll be first on scene, so be ready to run some lines and get this place wet while squad hits the roof for a vent. Cap's behind us, and he's going to call the ball. Copy?”

“Copy,” came the string of responses, but Alex barely heard them as he tugged his headphones off and hung them on the hook above his seat.

“You good?” Cole asked, turning sideways to get geared up. The move let him not only peg Alex with a critical stare, but it effectively blocked Jones from hearing any strains of the conversation from his spot on the other end of the step. “And don't even think about fracturing the truth just because we're on the way to a fire and you want me to keep my head straight.”

Well, shit. So much for that. Might as well come out with it, because once they got back to the house after this call, everybody and their mother was going to hear the sonic boom coming from the captain's office. “Westin caught me kissing Zoe.”

Cole's expression triple-timed into
son of a bitch
territory. “When?”

“About twelve minutes ago.”

“You're freaking kidding me,” Cole said, and Alex plastered his expression with as much
I wish
as he could work up. Cole pulled on his hood, then his gloves, waiting for Alex to do the same before asking the inevitable. “Did he lose his shit?”

“Scale of one to ten?” Alex's stomach twisted, his unease multiplying at the scent of bitter-black smoke filtering in through the window. Cole nodded, and Alex let himself linger on the acidic aftertaste of the confrontation for one last second before mashing his dread all the way down to the bottom of his rib cage.

“It was about a forty.”

Engine Eight jolted to a stop with an overloud groan of the brakes, and Alex forced himself to switch gears and focus. Popping the door handle at his hip, he jumped down to the pavement, scanning from left to right, then back again as he methodically took in the scene from the middle of the narrow street.

Stretches of white clapboard-covered row homes lined the asphalt on either side, most of them six units long with barely a ten-foot break in between buildings. Steady rolls of smoke funneled from the windows of the three attached units in front of them, although between the quickly growing haze and the limited visibility from the tight confines of the street, pinpointing actual flames was essentially a million to one. But with the walls and attics these homes always shared, it was a solid bet that if the flames had reached the roofline of one of them, they'd all be on fire in a matter of minutes, not hours.
If
they weren't all burning already.

Talk about getting tossed out of the frying pan. But after five solid weeks of not fighting fires, Alex was so ready to shake the rust off, it was damn near painful. The radio on his shoulder crackled to life, and he stood between Cole and Jones, his adrenaline taking a potshot at his pulse as he waited for the directive to put his pent-up energy to good use.

“Osborne, you and Andersen get up on that roof for a vent and get the rest of squad inside for search and rescue. Two residents made their way out of the far right unit on their own, but let's not waste any time in case any others are occupied.” Westin clipped out orders from his spot on the street between the engine and the ambo, dividing up the remaining members of the rescue squad for search and rescue before turning his attention to Engine. “Everett, you're on the nozzle. Donovan, put Jones on your hip and back him up. I want water in this building starting yesterday. Go.”

Alex sucked in a breath, turning toward Jones as everyone fell into action with precise yet urgent movements. “You catch any fires like this while I was gone?” he asked, and the recruit shook his head.

“Not in a row home, no.”

Alex's shoulders burned with exertion as they readied the heavy lengths of hose from the engine, and damn, he needed to keep himself on the level. “It's the same deal you learned in the tower at the academy,” he said to Jones, slowing the tempo of his inhale-exhale so his freaking pulse might get the memo. “Nozzle man goes up with the officer to start running water. But these places have tight, pain in the ass stairwells, kind of like a high-rise. Because of that, the nozzle man usually has a hell of a time advancing the line, so someone always backs him up to keep it from getting tangled or caught on corners. Today that someone is me and you. You got it?”

Jones nodded, his brows bent in concentration beneath the brim of his helmet. “I think so.”

“Don't think so, rookie.
Know
so, because there's no dress rehearsal and we're up.”

Cole cut a path across the swath of grass serving as the row home's collective front yard, and Alex fell into step behind him with Jones at his six. He had to give the kid credit—he'd been a quick study in finding the right distance at which to follow along, and Alex wasn't about to sneeze at the extra assistance with the hose, since his muscles were already halfway to Jell-O and the damn thing felt like it weighed a metric ton. But someone could still be trapped inside one of these houses, so Alex didn't give a shit if the line weighed six metric tons and he had to haul it solo. He had a job to do, and after a month of not going on a single fire call, he was damn well going to get to doing it.