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RECKLESS
Rescue Squad #1
Kimberly Kincaid
Releasing on January 26, 2016
Zebra
Someone’s Bound To
Get Burned…
Get Burned…
Zoe Westin may be a fire captain’s daughter, but feeding
the people in her hometown of Fairview is her number one priority. Running a
soup kitchen is also the perfect way to prove to her dad that helping people
doesn’t always mean risking life and limb. But when she's saddled with a
gorgeous firefighter doing community service after yet another daredevil stunt,
the kitchen has never been so hot.
the people in her hometown of Fairview is her number one priority. Running a
soup kitchen is also the perfect way to prove to her dad that helping people
doesn’t always mean risking life and limb. But when she's saddled with a
gorgeous firefighter doing community service after yet another daredevil stunt,
the kitchen has never been so hot.
Alex Donovan thrives on adrenaline, and stirring a pot of
soup doesn’t exactly qualify. He’s not an expert at following the rules either,
not even when they come from the stubborn, sexy daughter of the man who's not
only his boss, but his mentor. Determined to show Zoe that not every risk ends
in catastrophe, Alex challenges her both in the kitchen and out. One reckless
step leads to another, but will falling for each other be a risk worth taking,
or will it just get them burned?
EXCERPT:
soup doesn’t exactly qualify. He’s not an expert at following the rules either,
not even when they come from the stubborn, sexy daughter of the man who's not
only his boss, but his mentor. Determined to show Zoe that not every risk ends
in catastrophe, Alex challenges her both in the kitchen and out. One reckless
step leads to another, but will falling for each other be a risk worth taking,
or will it just get them burned?
EXCERPT:
Zoe paused, her
ponytail swinging in a blond arc over her shoulders as she dropped her chin by
just a fraction. “Why don’t you finish up with these dishes and grab the rule
book for some extra reading. Clearly, you need to review the food service
guidelines again before you’ll be ready to work in the dining room.”
The heel of her shiny black and
silver clogs gave a squeak as she turned back toward the kitchen, but she’d
barely gotten past the swinging door before Alex had caught up with her.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Somewhere, way in the back room of his brain, he knew picking at her probably
wasn’t the brightest idea he’d ever sprouted. But he’d never been too partial
to holding back, and anyway, he couldn’t deny his irritation at the extra
assignment or his ripping curiosity at how fast she’d been to swerve around the
subject.
Zoe had been unapologetic about
standing her ground since the minute he’d laid eyes on her yesterday, to the
point that she’d marched him around the kitchen like a lieutenant doing stair
drills with a squad full of rookies. No way would she scale back over something
like a refill rule. Unless he’d hit a nerve.
“No, I didn’t.” She crossed the
kitchen tiles, propping the dry goods pantry door open with one denim-wrapped
hip before sliding a wooden doorstop into place. Alex followed her into the
warm, tightly packed space, the residual sounds from the kitchen receding into
a distant thrum of background noise as they moved farther into the galley-style
storage room.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“A day and a half ’s worth of
zipping your lips and walking around here like you don’t care about anything,
and you want to break your code of silence over a cup of coffee?”
Zoe’s hands moved just a fraction
too quickly as she searched the open-air metal shelves in front of her, and
just like that, Alex left propriety in the dust.
“Obviously,” he pointed out, taking
another step toward her until he was close enough to feel the vibration of her
surprise. Her movements slid to a halt, her fingers halfway over a carton of
vegetable stock, and he didn’t waste any time taking advantage of the hitch.
“So humor me. Are you really so bound and determined to go by the book that you
can’t give a poor old man a second cup of coffee? I thought the whole point of
a soup kitchen was to feed people when they’re hungry, not turn them away
because of some stupid rule.”
In a hot instant, Zoe knocked the
surprise directly back to his court. “You really don’t get it, do you?” She
turned to face him, her chin tipped defiantly so she could meet his gaze
despite the seven-inch height differential between them. “It’s not that I don’t
want Hector to have a second cup of coffee. Hell, Alex, I want to give him
enough refills to float him to China. But I can’t.”
Something Alex couldn’t label with a
name flickered in her caramel-colored stare, replaced by her standard-issue
seriousness before he could even be one hundred percent positive he’d seen a
change. “Why not? You’re the director.”
“Exactly,” she said, the softness of
her voice refusing to match the sternness of her expression. “I’m the director.
It’s my job to feed as many people as possible so no one goes without. And if
Hector gets two cups of coffee, someone else gets none, so yeah. I have to be that
tight with the rules.”
His gut sank in sudden
understanding. “Your funding is really that thin?” he asked. The flicker in her
eyes made a repeat performance, and Alex was unprepared for the vulnerability
in Zoe’s answer.
“I treat feeding people the way you
treat being a firefighter. Do you really think I’d pull up on doing it for one
second unless I didn’t have a choice?”
Oh hell. He
opened his mouth, but before he could form an answer, her eyebrows tugged into
a deep furrow.
“Wait . . . what’s that smell?”
Alex blinked, trying to process the
question despite all the whaaaaaat running
rampant in his melon. “Don’t look at me,” he said, holding up his hands in mock
surrender. “I took a shower this morning.”
“Not you.” Zoe frowned, pressing up
to her toes to scan the pantry’s top shelf. Rocking back on his heels, Alex
mimicked her movements on the other side of the narrow storage space, and come
to think of it, now that they were all the way inside, the pantry did seem to
be giving off kind of a funky odor.
With their argument seemingly
forgotten, Zoe turned toward the deepest stretch of the corridor-like room,
where she’d had him unload all those endless cartons of who knows what
yesterday. “You double checked the contents of these boxes before you put them
on the shelves, right?”
He swallowed hard, his throat
tightening into a knot full of very bad things. “You said to unload them and
put them in the pantry, not open them up.”
“I said to unload them per the
guidelines, which means they should’ve been checked. Did you not read any
of the book?”
“Not to move a bunch of boxes,” Alex
argued. “And anyway, that thing is a doorstop.”
“That thing is important!” Zoe’s
eyes flashed with the color and intensity of double-batch bourbon as she
started shushing boxes over the metal wire shelves, popping them open and
muttering something unintelligible under her breath. A few seconds later, she
jerked back from the ominously stained cardboard carton in her grasp, turning
to throw a hard cough into the crook of her elbow.
“Ugh.” The pungent smell of
something rotten hit Alex right in the gag reflex, and he squeezed his eyes
shut against their involuntary watering. “What is that?”
“That appears
to be one of the boxes that should have
been sorted with the
meat delivery and put in the walk-in for today’s lunch and dinner service,” Zoe
bit out, her lips flattening into a hard seal as she swung her gaze from the
soggy box to his face.
“But it was on the kitchen counter
with all the other stuff during yesterday’s dry goods delivery.” It had to have
been, otherwise he never would’ve shoved the thing back here with all the
others like she’d told him to.
“The individual boxes aren’t always
marked with what’s inside, which is exactly why whoever unloads them is supposed
to do an inventory of each one to make sure the items go to the right place,
especially on days when we have multiple food deliveries. The procedures are
very clearly outlined in the manual.”
All of a sudden, the very bad things
in the pit of his belly grew into something even worse. “I guess I must have
missed this one. I’m sorry.” Alex took a few steps toward the kitchen for a
trash bag to just suck it up and take care of the mess when the harsh burst of
Zoe’s exhale stopped him dead in his Red Wings.
“Sorry’s not going to cut it,” she
said, meeting him toe to toe on the dark brown pantry tiles. He could admit to
screwing up—hell, he just had, and
he’d offered a genuine apology to boot. What else could she possibly want?
“Look, I get that you’re mad, Zoe,
but it was a mistake. I didn’t knowingly put that box back here.”
“You also didn’t knowingly
do your job like you were supposed to. It’s one thing for you
to put out minimal effort while you do your community service.” A muscle ticked
in her jawline, punctuating the absolute certainty of her words as she added,
“But I don’t have room in my kitchen for blatant screw ups, and I certainly
can’t babysit you every second of the day. Sorry, Alex. But you’ve got to go.”
Alex took a step back, and Zoe had
to give him this. The shock on his ridiculously handsome face actually looked
genuine. “What do you mean, I’ve got to go?”
“It’s pretty self-explanatory, don’t
you think? You just cost me money and resources I can’t afford to lose. I have
no way to feed everyone for the rest of the day, and there’s nine kinds of a
mess back here where this stuff leaked through the cardboard. Not only is it a
clean-up job I don’t have time for, but I could probably wallpaper my office
with the health code violations I’d rack up if an inspector walked through that
door right now. Add all of that together, and it looks like a pink slip to me.”
Excerpt #4
“See?” Alex leaned a sculpted
shoulder against the door frame, his cocky smile back in place and even
brighter than before. “One hundred percent clean and sanitized, just like I
promised.”
“Hmm.” She ran her fingers over the
edge of the shelf in front of her, a ripple of shock working its way through
her chest at the freshly scented air and the smooth, scrubbed surfaces.
Ruler-straight rows of cartons and canned goods stood organized and ready to
go, and as she dropped her gaze, even the buffed brown floor tiles seemed to
gleam under her feet. “Well, it certainly looks up to code.”
“Wow, Zoe. Don’t oversell it.”
Alex’s grin remained perfectly intact as he pushed off the door frame,
gesturing grandly through the light shining down from overhead. “Come on. Don’t
even try to tell me that the best you’ve got is ‘it looks up to code.’”
“It’s pretty clean,” she said, and damn
it, that smile of his was infectious. Zoe knew better than to
buy into his boyish charm—after all, sweet talk was Alex’s bread and butter,
and he was clearly only trying to save his own skin.
Trouble was, he’d saved hers in the
process. Her standards might be sky high, but she’d been so lean on man power
lately that even before this morning’s rotten food debacle, the pantry had
needed some TLC.
And Alex had given it a complete
overhaul, all the way down to the baseboards.
“This pantry is a masterpiece,” he
corrected, delivering her back to the snug confines of the shelf-lined space.
“I bet you’d get perfect marks if the city health inspector walked through that
door right this minute. In fact . . .” He broke off, sauntering to the center
of the freshly scoured room. “I’d even go so far as to say you could serve a
four-course meal, right on this very spot.”
Zoe bit back the involuntary laugh
tempting the edges of her lips, her curiosity bypassing her caution filter as
it made a beeline for her mouth. “Okay, I have to ask. How did you get it so
clean in here?”
“Well, the main ingredient was elbow
grease, but I wasn’t without help. You remember Tom O’Keefe, right?” Alex
asked, and she did a quick Station Eight roll call in her head.
“Sure.” The paramedic had been with
the FFD for the last few years. She didn’t know him quite as well as she did
Alex and Cole and the other guys, but her father had always spoken highly of
him, and in the handful of times she’d seen the guy at softball tournaments and
department barbecues, O’Keefe had always seemed to live up to the praise. “But
what on earth does he have to do with my pantry?”
Alex laughed in a low,
butterscotch-smooth rumble, and the sound took another chip out of Zoe’s doubt.
“As luck would have it, O’Keefe is really good at sanitizing small spaces. I
guess you could call it a product of his occupation, with all those health and
safety guidelines on the ambo. Anyway, I told him I needed a deep clean on the
fly, so he walked me through a couple of tricks over the phone. And before you
ask”—he paused to lift both hands in concession—“yes, I double-checked his
advice against the food safety section of your kitchen doorstop, and yes again.
Both the methods and the chemicals I used are all legit.”
“Oh,” Zoe said, the word a lame
replacement for the already answered question she’d had preloaded on the tip of
her tongue. But the last thing she’d expected was for Alex to come through, let
alone hit a grand slam on the last-ditch curveball she’d lobbed in his direction.
“You didn’t think you could rely on
me to get this cleaned up right, did you?” The question arrived without
gloating or accusation, his smile turning wistful as he pushed his hands into
the pockets of his broken-in jeans. Zoe tugged at the hem of her apron,
smoothing the fabric even though it was already perfectly in place, but screw
it. She’d never been a fan of dancing around the truth, and it wasn’t as if
Alex didn’t already know the answer, anyway.
“To be honest, no. I really didn’t.”
One brow arched up toward his
sun-bleached hairline. “I don’t believe in wasting time on anything other than
honesty,” he said. “As for the rest, I’m glad I surprised you.”
She pulled in a deep breath to
counter the bump in her pulse. Alex might be charming as hell right now, with
that aw-shucks expression beneath the sprinkling of rugged stubble on his face,
but he’d only helped her to help himself. Plus, she had bigger fish to
fry—namely, that she had no fish,
or protein of any kind for the rest of the day’s meal service.
“Well, a deal’s a deal. While I
don’t expect you to repeat your mistakes, or make any new ones because you’re
unprepared, this gets you off the hook for this morning’s mess.” Zoe shifted
her weight over the floor tiles, her ponytail brushing over one shoulder as she
tipped her head at the pantry door. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve still got to
go figure out how to get through the rest of today’s meal service without the
food we lost.”
Rather than taking a step back to
let her pass, Alex straightened, keeping himself planted directly in her path.
“No, you don’t.”
“I’m sorry?” She’d been scraping
like mad for the last hour to come up with replacement options for the ruined
ingredients, to little avail. Did he seriously think her job was so easy that
she could work up lunch and dinner for a hundred hungry residents on a wing and
a Hail Mary?
“You don’t have to worry about
coming up with plan B. Not for lunch, anyway. I’ve got it covered.” Alex turned
and jerked his chin at the pantry door in a clear request for her to follow,
and the shock of his words had her so dumbfounded that she was powerless to do
anything other than oblige.
“Okay.” She extended the word with
the tone of a question as they crossed back into the brightly lit kitchen,
coming to a stop by the stainless steel prep table acting as a makeshift island
in the center of the room. “Meal service starts in an hour and a half, and we
have nothing to prepare. Do you have access to some sort of magic food genie I
don’t know about?”
“Something like that, yeah.” Alex
pulled an iPhone out of the back pocket of his jeans, tapping the screen to
life. After a handful of easy moves, he extended the phone in her direction,
waiting silently as she took in the Web page he’d opened.
Zoe’s jaw unhinged. “You ordered
pizza?”
“Look, I’m not even going to pretend
I know how to make anything other than a mess in the kitchen, but you needed
the food. I go skydiving with one of the guys who owns the pizza place over on
Atlantic Boulevard, and he owed me a favor, so—”
“Wait.” She held up one palm in a
wordless stop right there, although the
free-for-all of questions flying around in
her brain made practicing what she preached a complete
and total no-go. She’d known he was slick, but . . . “You got
twenty pizzas by cashing in a favor?”
“I got a deal
on twenty pizzas by cashing in a favor,” Alex amended,
propping one hip against the prep table and gesturing toward the swinging door.
“But yeah. They’ll be here at eleven forty-five.”
Zoe handed his phone back over,
unsure whether she should cry with relief or tread with extreme caution. “You
know, if you’re not careful, I might actually start to think there’s a decent
guy underneath all that attitude.”
Heat laddered up the back of her
neck as she heard the implication of the words, but rather than take offense or
trot out said attitude for a test run, Alex just laughed.
“Well. We can’t have that, now can
we?”
Zoe’s smile appeared before she
could stop it. “Is there anyone in Fairview you can’t fast talk into giving you
what you want?”
“You mean besides you?” His blue
eyes glinted teasingly, but it lasted for only a second before he said,
“Listen, just because I don’t want to be here doesn’t mean I’m out to torpedo
your kitchen, either. This community service thing might not be what either of
us wants, but you gave me a second chance. And while I realize delivery pizza
isn’t the meal you had in mind, I owed you one, and it really is the best I’ve
got.”
An odd sensation twisted in her
chest, welling up in a soft, involuntary laugh. “Was that supposed to be
endearing?”
“That all depends,” Alex said, one
corner of his mouth lifting into a dark and forbidden version of his
all-American smile. “Did it work?”
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Kimberly Kincaid writes contemporary romance
that splits the difference between sexy and sweet. When she's not sitting
crosslegged in an ancient desk chair known as “The Pleather Bomber,” she can be
found practicing obscene amounts of yoga, whipping up anything from enchiladas
to éclairs in her kitchen, or curled up with her nose in a book. Kimberly is a
2011 RWA Golden Heart® finalist who lives (and writes!) by the mantra that food
is love. She resides in northern Virginia with her wildly patient husband and
their three daughters.
that splits the difference between sexy and sweet. When she's not sitting
crosslegged in an ancient desk chair known as “The Pleather Bomber,” she can be
found practicing obscene amounts of yoga, whipping up anything from enchiladas
to éclairs in her kitchen, or curled up with her nose in a book. Kimberly is a
2011 RWA Golden Heart® finalist who lives (and writes!) by the mantra that food
is love. She resides in northern Virginia with her wildly patient husband and
their three daughters.
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