Beautiful Burn (The Maddox Brothers #4) (9 page)

I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “A spy? No. If you’ll notice,” I said, reaching over to point at the paper on his desk, “that’s not on my résumé. It’s also none of your business.”

Wick grinned, his crooked, yellowing teeth making me never want to pick up another cigarette again.

“Do you smoke?” he asked.

“Yes?” I said, sitting up and feeling a bit creeped out that he’d mentioned the very thing I was thinking about.

“You’re hired. Nine hundred a week. You’ll start tomorrow. Let’s go have a smoke in the back.”

“Oh. Uh … okay, then.”

I followed Wick out of his office, down a hallway lined with boxes, and then out a back door. My boots crunched in the snow, and I looked up, letting the flakes fall and melt on my face.

Wick pulled a cigarette from a soft pack in his shirt pocket and a lighter from the back pocket of his Wranglers and hunched over. He cupped his hand around the flame and puffed, then held out his lighter for me to do the same. I leaned in, took a drag, and then startled when two men came around the corner.

“Wick!” Tyler said, slowing mid-step the moment he recognized me.

“Tyler! Zeke! You’re late! Where the hell is the other one?”

“Colorado Springs. Again,” Zeke said. He pulled two cigarettes from his pack and handed one to Tyler. I recoiled. Menthols were disgusting. That must have been Zeke’s preference. Tyler smoked from a black pack.

“Hi, Ellie,” Zeke said.

“You know her?” Wick said, pleasantly surprised.

“Yeah,” Zeke said with a smirk. “We met at a party.”

“She’s my new assistant,” Wick said.

“Assistant?” Tyler asked. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “We’ll figure it out as we go, I guess.”

Wick nodded, seeming proud, and then a deep line formed between his brows. “Make sure you don’t get her into any trouble, Maddox.”

Tyler spoke with his cigarette between his lips, squinting his eyes from the smoke. “You’ve got it backward, Wick.”

Wick pointed at him. “If you get kicked out of my bar again, I’m not letting you back in this time. I mean it.”

“You always say that.”

“And I’m not going to let you be friends with my new assistant, either,” Wick said.

Tyler frowned. “Now you’re fighting dirty.”

“I’m right here,” I said. “And I can hang out with whoever the hell I want.” I stabbed my cigarette in the sand of the butt canister and patted Wick on the shoulder. “Thanks for the job. I’ll see you in the morning. Nine?” I asked, hopeful.

“Sure. Don’t be late. I’m a fucking bastard in the morning.”

“He is,” Zeke said with a single wave goodbye.

I walked around the smaller building to the front, relieved to see that José was early. I slid into the back and let my head fall back against the cushion.

“Did you get the job, Miss Ellison?”

“I got the job.”

“Congratulations,” José said, smiling at me from the rearview mirror.

“Don’t congratulate me yet.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“This,” Jojo said, placing her hand on top of a five-foot-tall metal cabinet, “is our backup database. The hard copies—when we have them—go here. On the back desk by the wall is the scanner and printer—I’ll show you how to work those later—and in the corner is the most important part of your job … the Keurig.”

Littered with torn and empty sweetener packages and used coffee pods, the table was water-stained and wobbly when touched. The trashcan beside it, however, was empty. I shook my head.

“No,” Jojo said. “He doesn’t know how to throw anything away. Dawn cleans in the evenings, but Dad drinks about six cups a day, so try to make her job easier. She’s good, but she’s not a magician. And, since this is the first room anyone coming to see Wick will walk through, it would be a nice change for it not to look like a landfill.”

“Noted,” I said, pushing some of the pods and paper into the trash can.

Jojo gestured to Wick’s door. “It’s closed when he’s in a good mood, open when he’s not.”

I raised an eyebrow at the closed door.

Jojo lifted her hand, holding her fingers next to her mouth. She whispered, “So you can hear him better when he yells.”

“Also noted.”

She pulled out the chair, and I sat automatically. Jojo didn’t know it was second nature for me to sit in a chair pulled out for me, but I felt the blood rise under my cheeks when I realized what I’d done.

She tapped the space bar on the keyboard. “Create your own username and password here, but make sure to keep it written down somewhere so if you’re gone I can access this if I need to.” She waited while I tapped in my normal
ESquared
username and
DoubleE5150!
password. Despite my father’s constant warnings, that login had been created in middle school, and I had since used them for everything. If Jojo had paid attention, she could have signed into my social media or even my online banking if she wanted.

Jojo educated me on the program I would use for Wick’s calendar and reminders. It seemed simple enough. By the end of my first hour, I could check my email and Wick’s, and had access to his contacts and what to say when his various friends and frenemies called.

Wick opened his door, and I waited patiently for him to yell, but instead he dug inside his front pocket for his soft pack of cigarettes and jerked his head toward the back door.

“Is your brain full yet, Ellie?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good. Let’s have a smoke.”

“Dad…” Jojo said, unhappy. “She’s being paid by the hour. We didn’t hire her to be your new smoke buddy.”

“He already has a couple of those,” I said.

Jojo smirked. “Oh. You’ve met Tyler and Zeke, huh?”

“You know them?” I asked.

“Zeke is a big teddy bear. He looks mean, but he’s the kind of guy that opens doors and brings you flowers. Tyler is a bastard.”

Wick looked insulted. “Now, Jojo, don’t go around telling people that. He’s not a bad guy.”

Jojo narrowed her eyes at him, and then her gaze turned back to me. “He takes Tyler’s side every time. This is a sore subject with us.” She looked back to her dad. “So I’m not going to gratify his ignorant opinion of Maddox with a reply, but he
is
a bastard. If you know him, you’ve already slept with him, so I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

Wick and Jojo both watched me, waiting for an answer.

“So?” Jojo asked, flattening both her palms on my desk. “Have you?”

“Slept with Tyler?” I said, swallowing. I crossed my arms, fidgeted, and made weird noises with my throat while I tried to find a way to change the subject. Normally I wouldn’t mind finding an abrasive, too-truthful answer for such an inappropriate question, but sobriety was a confusing time for me. “Have
you
?”

Wick turned to his daughter and put a cigarette in his mouth, holding it between his chapped lips.

Now Jojo was fidgeting and shifting uncomfortably. She stood upright. “I don’t think this is a suitable conversation for the workplace.”

“Damn it, Jojo! Now I’m going to have to shoot my favorite smoking buddy, because we all know I can’t kick his ass!”

Jojo rolled her eyes and turned on her heels, walking around the corner toward her desk.

Wick waited for me to put on my coat and then led me to the back alley. A small steel storage building behind the magazine’s main steel building created a cubby between the drive and us. A concrete pad provided parking spots for Wick and Jojo, but beyond that was a pasture full of snow and the intermittent rock poking through before a landscape full of Blue Spruce and Aspen trees.

“That fire station up the road … is that the hotshot station?”

“And the city’s second station. But some of the guys who work there are seasonal hotshots—like Tyler and Zeke. During fire season they live out at the Alpine barracks.”

“What is a seasonal hotshot?”

“During fire season, they eat, sleep, and travel around the country fighting fires. Three to six months of the year.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering if Tyler was already gone.

Wick sparked the white paper and tobacco and took a puff, then handed me the lighter so I could do the same with one of my father’s stale leftovers. The pack had three somewhat mashed cigarettes left, and I had just thirty-four dollars of the money Finley had left for me. Prices weren’t something I had paid attention to, but I was sure I couldn’t afford cigarettes before my first paycheck.

“Does nine hundred a week mean you pay me every week, or were you just talking wages?” I asked, rubbing my head. I could feel a headache coming on.

“Every week. Just like my bar staff.”

“So … on Friday?”

“Friday.”

Seconds after Wick answered, I heard boots crunching against snow. Zeke and Tyler rounded the corner, already smoking and carrying on conversation. They both looked happy but unsurprised to see me, and then both took a turn shaking Wick’s hand.

“Taylor!” Wick said. He noticed his street clothes the same time I did. “You must be off today.”

I frowned, wondering if Wick was trying to be funny or he’d just gotten Tyler’s name wrong.

“I heard you finally found someone to put up with your shit, Wick,” Tyler said.

Wick had told Zeke and Tyler the day before I was hired. Now he acted as if he’d found out from someone else.

Zeke took a drag of his cigarette, and then playfully pulled at the sleeve of my puffy navy-blue coat. “Confused?”

I arched an eyebrow, unsure if it was a trick question.

Their laughter was cut off by the sound of Zeke’s pager. He pulled the clip from his belt and held it up, squinting. “That’s me.”

He patted Tyler on the shoulder as he nodded to Wick. “Maybe I’ll see you guys this afternoon. It’s just a meeting.”

I waved to him, and then crossed my arms as the air between the three of us who remained quickly turned awkward. Tyler and Wick traded smug grins, clearly sharing a silent joke at my expense. I glared at them, relieved when Jojo poked her head out through the back door.

“Annie is on the phone for you.”

“I’m on a break,” Wick growled.

“You should probably take it. It’s the refrigerator again.”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Wick said, tossing his cigarette and missing the canister.

The back door slammed behind him, and I picked up his still-lit butt and buried the end in the sand.

“Good thing you picked that up,” Tyler said.

“I’ve heard that one already,” I said, taking a drag.

Tyler pulled his cap low over his eyes, and then shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. Before I could ask him how he managed to get the day off, he grinned.

“How is it? Working for Wick?” he asked.

“Not as bad as I thought it would be.”

“That’s unexpected.”

I took another drag, watching him put out a cigarette and light another. “Do you come here every day?”

“During fire season, yes. In off season, if I’m here.”

“When are you not here?”

“When I’m traveling.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” he asked. I could see that familiar desire in his eyes, even behind the shadow cast by his ball cap. The dimple in his left cheek deepened, and he leaned a millimeter in my direction.

Even that nominal response made the old me wish for a bottle of bourbon and a dark room. I swallowed. The old me was just two days away, and she wasn’t buried deep enough to withstand the way Tyler was looking at me. I wanted to hide underneath his body and replace the pain with his fingers digging into my hips and to watch him tense while he thrust himself deep inside me, forgetting everything else but Tyler’s rough hands on my bare skin, letting the sweet escape of intoxication carry me through.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I snapped.

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve seen me naked.”

“Have I?”

I rolled my eyes, bending down to put out my cigarette.

“Hey,” he said, reaching out. He scanned my face, almost as if he was trying to remember. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

I shrugged him off. “I better get back in there. I sort of need this job now.”

“Does uh … does Zeke have a thing for you?”

“
Zeke
?” I said, my voice going up an octave. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. No, definitely not.”

“Do you have a thing for him?”

My expression twisted. “Why in the fuck are you asking me that?”

“Have you met my brother?”

I stood, completely confused. “You sound completely crazy right now.”

“Just making sure before I make a pass at you.”

“Make a
pass
at me? Are we in junior high?”

His eyebrows pulled in. He was really concentrating now, looking as confused as I felt. “I went to middle school.”

“I don’t think you left.”

He breathed out a laugh. “What are you doing later?”

“Not you.”

He choked on the drag he’d just inhaled, and then smoke and laughter tumbled from his mouth. “Easy, sweetheart. You’re going to hurt my feelings.”

“Listen, I’m having a hard time going back inside, which tells me one thing: you need to go away, and stay away. I’m trying to be good here, and you’re … not. Good … for me … at all.”

He touched his chest with his palm. “I’m good,” he said, feigning insult.

His confidence made my thighs tingle. “No. You’re bad. And I’m bad. And you need to go back to the station or headquarters or whatever you call it so I can keep my job.”

“I’m going to Turk’s later. You should meet me there.”

I shook my head, backing away. “Nope. Definitely not.”

He took a step forward, amused by my retreat. He knew the effect he had on me, and he was enjoying it. “Am I making you nervous?”

My back touched the door. I sighed, looking up at the clouded sky. “I’m going to get fired.” I reached for his face and planted a hard kiss on his mouth.

Tyler didn’t flinch, gripping my coat and pulling me toward him. His lips were vaguely familiar, commanding and purposeful. He slipped his tongue inside, and I hummed, closing my eyes and letting him take me somewhere else—anywhere else—but the surreal, clusterfuck scenario I was currently in.

I pushed him away, breathless. “Is your truck around?”