Reckless (25 page)

“Ah, don't mess with him,” Cole argued. Zoe's heart melted a little bit—Cole always was kind of the peacekeeper, but it was nice to see that his even keel extended to their rookie, who usually got the lion's share of ribbing and crappy station chores by virtue of his newbie status. Of course, then Cole added, “Let him hand over dinner first,” and yeah. So much for his sweeter side.

“Did someone say dinner?” O'Keefe appeared at the end of the hallway with Rachel at his side. “Oooh, look. It's my very favorite chef.”

Zoe's laugh bubbled up from her chest as she made her way into the common room. “Aren't I the only chef you know?”

“Details, sweetheart. Details,” O'Keefe said with an exaggerated wave. “So what's on the menu, Chef?”

“Well, I couldn't help but notice how you guys all hovered around the soup kitchen like vultures last week when I made macaroni and cheese, so . . .”

“Stop.” Rachel's eyes flashed with oh-yes goodness. “Did you use that super-secret recipe you were telling me and Ava about? With the spicy chorizo and bell peppers?”

She kept her smile as coy as possible, but holy crap, it was a ten-foot-tall order. “Possibly.”

“Brennan is going to be bent out of shape that he missed out,” O'Keefe said, his tone implying that he'd be more than happy to describe the meal to his buddy in borderline-bragging detail.

But Zoe had his number. “I thought you might say that,” she flipped back, sending a playful wink in the paramedic's direction. “Which is exactly why I dropped off a tray for him and Ava just before coming out here.”

Rachel's laughter met O'Keefe's groan head-on, and she hip-checked her partner with a gentle bump. “Serves you right.”

“Okay, okay!” O'Keefe returned the gesture with an enthusiastic nudge. “Anyway, you have great timing, Zoe. We all just got back from a pretty hairy fire call.”

Just like that, her heart stuttered hard against her rib cage, her throat turning instantly dry. “Is everything okay?” She swung her gaze around the common area as subtly as possible, but caught no sign of either Alex or her father.

Crews stepped in beside her to take the grocery bags from her fingers, the bitter-burnt scent of smoke still clinging to his uniform. “Some brainiac didn't want to miss a single second of the baseball game on TV. So he fired up his humongous gas grill inside his garage to keep him closer to the house.”

“Really?” That didn't sound
so
bad.

“Yup.” O'Keefe shook his head, unfolding his frame in one of the chairs surrounding the long communal dining table. “We got there just in time to keep the damn propane tank from blowing a crater into Oak Street. Too bad for the guy his garage didn't fare quite so well.”

“Oh,” Zoe managed weakly, and God, she wasn't cut out for this. “Did anyone get hurt?”

“Nah. Just a few scrapes and a hell of a lot of property damage,” Cole said, his smile small but reassuring. He leaned in, his voice flawlessly nonchalant even though she was certain he knew the score. “Alex is in the engine bay, rechecking all the equipment.”

She ran her clammy palms over the front of her jeans, but at least now she could breathe. Mostly. “Thanks.”

Zoe knew she should take a few minutes to get the mac and cheese in the oven and start preparing the green beans she'd brought as a side before rushing out to the engine bay. After all, she and Alex hadn't told her father about their relationship yet, and dropping everything to make a beeline for the guy would probably raise every eyebrow in the room.

But the knee-jerk urge to lay eyes on him won out. Zoe headed for the double doors on the opposite side of the common room, her hand hitting the handle on the door leading to the dormitories on one side and the engine bay on the other at the same time its counterpart swung on its hinges.

“Oh! Hi, Lieutenant Osborne.” Zoe smiled at the veteran firefighter who had been at Station Eight since she'd worn knee socks and pigtails, and whoa, time had added some hard edges to his face.

Oz ran a hand over his graying stubble before recognition settled over his stare. “Hey, little girl. Look at you, all grown up now.”

“That's me,” she agreed, taking in his gaunt frame with a pinch of concern. “How's it going?”

“It's going,” he said, tough as ever. “What brings you out here to visit a bunch of graceless firemen?”

Zoe slipped her smile back over her face. “I brought dinner.”

“Hell, girl.” Oz's return smile brightened his face just enough to remind her of how he'd looked last time she'd seen him, and maybe he'd just had a couple of long shifts. “You sure know how to take care of us, now don't you?”

“I do my best. I threw in a bunch of brownies for dessert, so make sure you save room.”

“Will do. Good to see you.”

He continued toward the common room with a wave, leaving Zoe to complete her trip to the engine bay. Rescue squad's vehicle stood directly in front of her, nose out and doors wide, with Station Eight's blue and white ambulance directly adjacent and equally ready to go. Her feet shushed over the concrete floor, anticipation thrumming through her veins as she rounded the ambo's back bumper to make her way to Engine Eight. Alex stood about ten feet away in front of one of the large storage compartments, his blond brows creased in concentration even though his movements were completely fluid, and oh God, Zoe was so in love with him it hurt.

Her feet moved faster, completely of their own accord. “Hey,” she said, the word arriving about two seconds before she threw her arms around him, and Alex grunted in surprise.

“Hey.” He pulled back just far enough to swing a gaze around the engine bay. But Zoe pressed up to slide a kiss over his mouth.

“Between the engine and the ambulance, we're pretty well hidden, and anyway, no one else is in here. I checked.”

The hard ridge of his shoulders relaxed under her touch. “Well, in that case, c'mere, Gorgeous.” Alex threaded his fingers through her hair, his kiss making up in ferocity what it lacked in slowness.

After a few seconds that heated Zoe from head to toe—with layovers in all the best places—he pulled back. “So did you come all the way out here just to give me a hard-on while I work? Because I've got to tell you, mission complete.”

“Thank God for bunker pants,” she said, her body tingling at the sight of the turnout gear slung over his frame before she tamped it down for the sake of propriety. “Actually, I came out here to bring everyone dinner. I figured you guys wouldn't turn down a home-cooked meal.” She tipped her head toward the doors leading back to the firehouse, and Alex raked her with a slow gaze before hauling her close for one last kiss.

“When you come in here wearing those jeans
and
bearing food, you make it really freaking hard for me to keep my hands off you. We need to tell your father what's going on, otherwise I'm liable to lose the cool for which I'm so popularly known around here.”

Zoe wanted to roll her eyes, but her laugh tumbled out instead. “I know, but we need to tell him in private, and between your shifts and my schedule at Hope House, this week was kind of crazy.”

“We're all here right now,” Alex said, and oh hell, he was serious.

“Alex, think about it. You're on shift with my dad for the next fourteen hours. Telling him now would be insane.” Not that she didn't want to come clean. But she also didn't want her highly overprotective father to smother her boyfriend in his sleep.

The realization seemed to hit Alex after another moment. He tugged a hand through his hair, hard enough to leave the blond locks tousled. “You're right. I just hate not saying anything. I feel like I'm lying to him, and that bugs the crap out of me.”

“How about Sunday?” she asked. “It's only two days from now, and we can meet for breakfast, first thing.”

“Sounds perfect.” He stepped back, shifting his focus. “I take it you haven't heard anything from the Collingsworth Foundation today.”

Zoe's gut squeezed. “No.” She shook her head, pulling her screamingly silent cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans as proof. “I know the foundation offices don't close for another half hour, but it's looking like we won't hear anything about the next round of decisions until at least Monday.”

“That might be a good sign.” Alex leaned back against the engine, running a thumb beneath the suspenders keeping his dark gray bunker pants in place.

Zoe hedged, not wanting to jinx her chances with an out-loud admission of what she'd been thinking for the last two hours. No news was good news, and all that. “Maybe,” she allowed. “I'll be honest, though. I wish they'd just call. The waiting is making me crazy.”

“Let me guess.” He leveled her with a smile so charming, it made his bright blue eyes crinkle at the edges. “You made seven pounds of lasagna today, didn't you?”

“Mac and cheese,” she admitted, huffing out a laugh. “But I'm nervous as hell. Plus . . .” She trailed off, but they'd never been anything but honest with each other, so there was no point in holding back. “You're back on shift, and that scares me.”

Alex's relaxed demeanor didn't even budge by a fraction. “I was on shift Tuesday, too. A-okay, as promised.” He gestured to himself with one hand as he reached for her with the other, and she melted into his side with a sigh.

“I know, and I know that your job is as important to you as mine is to me. But the guys were telling me about the fire call you went on just now, and how it could've been so much worse, and . . . I guess the worry is just going to take some getting used to for me, that's all.”

He straightened, kissing the crown of her head before turning to shut the storage compartment on the engine with a metallic
bang
. “I know something that might make that a little easier. Come on.”

She followed him through the engine bay and back inside the firehouse. But rather than moving toward the happy sounds of pre-dinner chatter coming out of the common room, Alex turned down a different, more secluded hallway, one lined on either side with photograph after photograph.

Nostalgia rippled outward from the center of Zoe's chest. “The hall of pictures. God, some of these have been here since I was a kid.”

“Yup,” Alex said, his gaze extending down the line of the sunlit hallway. “Pretty much any and every big deal that's gone down in Station Eight over the last two decades is up here on these walls. You name it, and chances are, we've got the photographic evidence.”

“Mmm.” She ran her fingers along the edges of the plain black frames, leaning in closer to scan the images with care. Some depicted firefighters doing drills, others were shots of active fires. Commendation letters were peppered into the mix, along with a healthy handful of photographs of Station Eight's firefighters in more casual settings like Fairview's legendary softball tournament.

Zoe stopped in front of one of the frames about halfway down the wall. “Oh, that's a great picture of you and Brennan and Cole. Although . . .” She squinted in confusion before arching a brow at him. “Why are your hands bright purple?”

“Because Brennan is a dick,” Alex said with way more affection than ire. “He put Kool-Aid powder in my gloves one shift as a practical joke.”

Her laugh escaped in a quick burst. “I'm sure you were just minding your own business and did nothing to earn that.”

“I'm a saint. Anything he tells you about me waking him up by testing our chain saw ten feet away from his bunk is pure myth.”

“Uh-huh.” Reminding herself to congratulate Brennan on his creativity the next time she saw him, she continued down the row. She took in picture after picture, each one an obvious testament to the paramedics' and firefighters' skill and camaraderie.

“I remember this fire,” she said, pausing in front of a series of eight-by-ten photos of a two-story house, engulfed in smoke and flames. “I was home from college on a break when it happened. The house wasn't too far from where my parents used to live.”

Alex leaned in, tapping the glass with one finger. “I remember it, too. There's Oz and Andersen, up on the roof.” He traced a line down to the ground level, pointing to two firefighters running water lines into the smoke-filled house. “And that's me and Cole. Ah, and Brennan's right there, too.”

“How can you tell who's who?” she asked. She was lucky she could make out how many figures there were in all the flashing lights and chaos.

“Partly by what we're doing. We've all got really specific things we're responsible for on a fire call. It keeps us organized, focused.” He moved his gaze from the photo to Zoe's face, his expression completely pared down in its honesty. “But mostly, I know who's who in all of these pictures because we always have each other's backs. I know where my fellow firefighters are, just like they know where I am on any given call, and none of us do the job halfway. We go into every fire as a team, and that's how we come out.”

Understanding dawned, bright and sweet. “Is that why you wanted me to see this? So I'd know how much backup you have?”

“It's part of it, yes. You already know this job is dangerous, and that goes with the territory. But I wanted to show you that there
are
precautions, and I don't do it alone. You've seen how dedicated these guys are outside the house. I'm here to tell you, they're ten times as intense when things go pear-shaped. Fighting fires might be risky, but I've got the best team on the planet with me. I'll be all right.”