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RECKLESS

Rescue Squad #1

Kimberly Kincaid

Releasing on January 26, 2016

Zebra

Someone’s Bound To
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.

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:

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.

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