Fire Me Up

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Yeah. It is,” he said, but the response he’d always counted as automatic somehow felt like a handful of stones in his mouth, hard and heavy and in the wrong place. “I know I have to lie low, but being in the kitchen is worth the risk.”

  “For now.” Teagan lowered her beer to the polished mahogany bar with a thunk, tiny lines of worry bracketing her frown. “If things with Lonnie change—”

  “Then I’ll deal with it.” Adrian knotted his arms over his chest despite the residual ache it sent through his still-pissed shoulder. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  He went for the full-throttle subject change. “Well, no offense, but you kind of suck at unwinding.”

  Her laughter sizzled through his veins, and shit. Maybe switching the topic and trying to get her to relax was a bad idea after all. “Point taken. I guess taking care of other people is my version of being in the kitchen. It might sound hokey, but it’s where I belong.”

  “That makes sense,” he allowed. “But you didn’t answer the question.”

  “What question?” Teagan’s red-gold brows drew downward, and even though Adrian knew he risked her snapping back or shutting down, he asked, “Who takes care of you?”

  She paused, tracing the edge of her half-empty beer bottle with one long finger. “Who cooks for you?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, pulling back in confusion, but of course, Teagan didn’t budge.

  “Humor me. Who cooks for you?”

  “I’m a chef. I cook for myself.”

  “Do you?” Her tone lifted in accusation. “I mean, do you really? Or are you just putting together what you eat?”

  A hard pang shot through Adrian’s gut as he realized she wasn’t just talking about the quick omelet he’d thrown on his plate for breakfast this morning. What she meant was deeper than that, past all the ingredients and the recipes and the dishes.

  Teagan was talking about taking care of himself through cooking. And damn it, even though he’d made thousands of meals since landing in Pine Mountain last year, Adrian couldn’t remember the last time he’d cooked purely for himself, for the out-and-out love of being around the food rather than the hard-driven desire to be in motion.

  “I do enough to get by,” he said, although his mouth burned with the aftertaste of the lie. Christ, how did this woman manage to turn the tables on him and turn him on so much all at the same freaking time?

  Teagan slipped from her seat at the bar, closing the space between them until only a sliver remained. As if she’d crawled into his mind for the guided tour, she whispered, “Yeah, well, I’m not so great at taking care of myself, either. Guess we’re a perfect match.”

  For just a second, the hard lines of her don’t touch veneer disappeared under the low lights in the bar. Teagan looked up, her infuriatingly red lips only inches away from his mouth. She locked her gaze onto his with that rare openness that speared all the way through him, and in that moment, Adrian had never been so tempted to give in to impulse in his entire life.

  But the kitchen where he belonged in the long run wasn’t here, and in less than five weeks, he wouldn’t be here either.

  “Right,” Adrian said, angling his body away from her and toward the door. “It’s kind of late. We should get going.”

  Teagan’s eyes widened with surprise, and Adrian cursed himself with renewed vigor. But better to piss her off by being brusque than tangle them both in the alternative. Getting involved with Teagan, even in the short term, was a bad idea, and not just because they would be sharing space for the next month or so.

  She deserved more than a felon with an expiration date, and he simply couldn’t deliver.

  “Oh.” A flash of hurt backlit her expression, peppering Adrian’s chest with holes before she slammed over it with one fluid step back toward the bar. “Yeah, you’re right. We should definitely go.”

  But as she turned on her heel and walked away without so much as a hitch in her stride, Adrian’s only thought was that he wanted her back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Teagan stared at the screen of her laptop, shifting her weight in the ancient desk chair in the Double Shot’s office for the ninetieth time this hour. Her back muscles gripped her spine with unforgiving tension, throbbing out a dare to surrender with every move, and she popped the lid off the bottle of ibuprofen at her elbow. This morning’s dose had gotten her through a two-hour planning session with her father and the manager at the Cold Creek Brewery, as well as grueling kitchen prep and a liquor delivery. But they were coming up on the dinner shift, and even though Mondays were usually slow, she needed all the strength she could muster if she was going to run the kitchen with Adrian.

  Adrian, who had seen right through every wall she’d ever cemented around herself in self-preservation. Adrian, who she’d essentially flung herself at last night in an attack of needy weakness.

  Adrian, who’d all but run from the building the second she got close to him.

  “Hey, boss. You got a second?” Brennan’s voice tipped Teagan out of her reverie, and she bolted upright despite the screeching from her back at the movement.

  “Absolutely,” she said, pasting a smile over the grimace welling up on her face. “Is everything okay downstairs?”

  A shot of panic clipped through Teagan’s veins, but Brennan cut it off with a quick nod of his dark head.

  “Oh yeah, everything’s fine. Gigantor’s actually pretty tight with the management stuff. You were right when you said he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Good.” Although Brennan had never really been the type to buck authority and go territorial over the bar, Teagan had to admit a sense of relief at how seamlessly he and Adrian had fallen into rhythm. She’d even been able to put all the bar inventory in Brennan’s now-capable hands, as well as the scheduling for the waitstaff. “So, what’s up?”

  “Nothing major. I just, ah . . . I know you’re planning on doing most of the cooking for the street fair outside, right?”

  She nodded. “The fire code limits how many people we can have inside the building at any given time, and we have room on the south side of the lot to set up some tents and tables to go with the entertainment. Hosting as much of the event as possible outside the actual building accommodates more people in the long run, so yes. That’s probably what we’ll do, once I figure out the insane regulations for the equipment.” She’d tried to wade through the fire code, but the damn thing read more like secret code.

  “Right.” Brennan skated a palm over the back of his neck. “I can help you with the setup. You know, making sure all the cooking stations are up to code per the fire regs.”

  “That’s a ton of research. And let’s just say this thing isn’t exactly user-friendly.” Teagan gestured to the three inches of fire code manual sitting on her father’s desk like the world’s thickest doorstop. She’d already come to terms with the fact that she’d have to call in the mother of all favors with the guys at the station in order to make the logistics happen. Even then, she’d have to pray they had the time to go with their inclination, which she knew full well they likely didn’t. “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the offer, but even if you were lucky, it would take at least a week to learn all the ins and outs of the fire code for an event like this.”

  “It’s a week you don’t have to spare,” Brennan countered. “And anyway, I, ah . . . already know it.”

  Surprise sent her shoulder blades against the back of her desk chair with a squeak. “You understand the technicalities in the Pennsylvania state fire code well enough to manage the permits for the entire street fair?”

  “Yeah. I . . . yeah.”

  “Jeez, Brennan.” Her shock grew roots and spread out. “Do you want to tell me how you gained all this knowledge?”

  “No,” he said, quickly tacking on, “but it’s legit, Teagan, I swear. I wouldn’t bullshit you about this. I know the fire code, and I can do all the paperwork for the pe
rmits and get everything set up the right way. I just . . . don’t want to talk about the rest.”

  She measured the information for a long minute before meeting Brennan’s nearly black stare with absolute surety. “Okay.”

  He took a step back toward the doorframe, staring as if he’d heard incorrectly. “Okay?”

  “Look, I’m not going to lie and tell you I’m not curious as hell about how you know all this stuff. But I’ve got laundry in my closet that I don’t like to put on the line, either. If you don’t want to spill, I can respect that, and if you change your mind, I’m here. Until then, it would make my life exponentially easier to have you handle the permits and the setup for the street fair. You’re part of the Double Shot, like me and my dad and Jesse. If you say you’ve got this, I trust you.”

  “Thanks.” The rigid line of his mouth softened just a shade, and he took the stack of permits she extended across the cluttered desk. “So, what about Adrian?”

  Teagan scooped in a breath to counter her accelerating heartbeat, and ugh, she really needed to forget about last night. “What about him?”

  “How does he fit into all of this?”

  It was time to forget everything but the facts, once and for all. “Adrian just needs to keep working, Brennan. He’s not staying permanently. But it’s not anything to worry about, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Please.” Brennan’s mouth flattened back into a hard line. “If I thought I had to worry about him, we’d be having a very different conversation. I don’t care how big the guy is.” He paused to let Teagan eke out a thanks-for-having-my-back smile before continuing. “I guess what I’m asking is, even though he’s temporary, do you trust him, too?”

  “Yes.” The word fired out of her mouth automatically, and even though it took her by no small amount of surprise, Teagan couldn’t deny its truth. “He’s only here for a little while until he goes back to the restaurant at the resort, but I still trust him.”

  “Good,” Brennan said, his boots shuffling over the thinning carpet as he turned toward the door. “Because he just handed the kitchen over to Jesse and Caleb. It seems you have the night off, boss.”

  “Excuse me, Superman, but are you out of your freaking mind?”

  Adrian looked up from where he and Jesse stood at the grill station just in time to get an eyeful of very pissed-off female. Okay, so he’d known full well that covering Teagan’s shift for the night would infuriate her to no end, but still.

  Did she have to look so damned pretty when she was mad?

  “Not last time I checked,” he said, tipping his head at Jesse in a wordless approximation of you got this? The guy gave a wide-eyed nod, and Adrian moved toward the entryway to the kitchen, bracing for impact.

  Teagan didn’t waste any time delivering. “I’m not taking the night off.” She jammed her hands into the faded denim wrapped low on her hips, but Adrian was prepared for her ire.

  “Monday’s the slowest night of the week. Traditionally, whoever’s in charge of the kitchen gets the night off.”

  “Guess that means you’re off tonight, then. I’m not in charge of the kitchen.”

  “I took tonight off, too.”

  Well, that got her. “You what?” Teagan asked, her lips parting in surprise.

  “I looked at the numbers from the last four Monday nights, and we should be able to stay out of the weeds with Brennan and Jesse and Caleb. If not”—He held up one hand to stave off the argument she was clearly locking into place in her mind—“then Brennan will call me, and as a last resort, I’ll call you. But you need a night off.”

  “What about everyone else?” She shifted her weight from one brown leather boot to the other, but her eyes said she was still far from giving in. Too bad for her, Adrian had her pegged, lock, stock, and stubborn-to-the-core barrel.

  “Brennan goes tomorrow. The night after that will be Jesse’s turn. But Mondays are slowest, so tonight is yours.”

  “Even if we’re slow on dinner service, there’s still too much to do with the street fair. I can’t afford to take a night off.”

  Adrian stepped toward her, dropping his voice so the kitchen noises around them made their conversation private. “And you can’t take care of anything if you collapse. This stuff will all be here tomorrow, and you’ll be that much better equipped to handle it if you’ve had some decent sleep. But you’ve been here pretty much nonstop for over a week, and last night, your back was snarled up like rush-hour traffic in midtown. You’re riding on fumes, and the rest of us are, too.” He popped his chin at Brennan and Jesse as they slid trays of clean pint glasses from the dishwasher in the alcove. “You think they’ll take a break if you don’t?”

  Teagan’s slender shoulders hitched, her exhale of realization brushing over him in a warm rush that said he’d hit home. “Fine. You made your point. But you’re the one with a broken arm. Why don’t you go tonight, and I’ll go tomorrow?”

  The image of her face, streaked through with both need and hurt as he walked away from her last night, slapped into him without remorse, and Adrian didn’t think twice as he said, “Because I don’t trust you to take care of yourself, Red. So we’re both off tonight, and I’m going to do it for you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Adrian unlocked the door to his apartment, ushering Teagan inside the tiny, bare-bones foyer that matched the rest of the place before pulling the door shut behind them. He’d known when he came up with this idea that he was playing with fire, but her words from last night reverberated through him, pushing past his well-placed defenses in a way that was impossible to ignore.

  He hadn’t cooked for himself in far too long. And while he might not be ready to put his shit-kickers on that path yet, he could sure as hell cook for her. Even if it was just for tonight.

  “You don’t have to babysit me, you know,” Teagan said, yanking him from his thoughts with her infuriatingly sexy frown. “Contrary to popular belief, I can manage a night off.”

  “Eating a frozen dinner while doing enough Internet research on street fairs to make your eyes bleed doesn’t count as a night off.” Adrian turned and took the five meager steps needed to reach his kitchen, forcing himself to focus on the food rather than the ripe curve of Teagan’s pout. “So if it’s all the same to you, why don’t I cook some dinner so you can actually relax?”

  Her frown intensified. “You’re not supposed to cook.”

  “No, I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy, remember? But you’ve got medical training. I’m sure you’ll keep me in line.”

  For a second, Adrian just watched her from his spot at the kitchen counter. Jesus, she was a work of art, all deep, sinful hips and sexy curves. She stared back at him, amber eyes unflinching, before she finally gave a nod.

  “Suit yourself. But you try and pick up anything heavier than a glass of water and we’re going to have a go.”

  Relief spread out in his chest, leaving a dark chuckle in its wake. “Fair enough. I’ll even give you the best seat in the house.” He canted his head toward the other side of the counter, where the small breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the rest of his paltry living space.

  “This looks like the only seat in the house,” she flipped back, hooking her fingers under the polished wood of the bar stool while swinging one impossibly long leg over the seat. “Do you have some kind of moral objection to furniture?”

  “I’m not really ever here to use much of anything.” Adrian grabbed the bag of potatoes he’d picked up earlier this morning at Joe’s Grocery and one-handed the thing open. His place might not be all decked out, but he had the necessities. Most of them were in the kitchen cabinets.

  Of course, Teagan didn’t let up. “Well, yeah, but come on. No pictures on the walls, no curtains over the blinds. You don’t even have a couch.”

  “I don’t need a couch.” He flipped the kitchen faucet with a shrug, testing the running water with the back of his free hand. “Having too much stuff just makes it harder whe
n you move, anyway.”

  “If a couch is too much of a commitment, you could start small, you know,” she said with a brassy smile that could stop crime. Christ above, he was never going to get used to the heat coming off of this woman.

  “Small, huh?” He pulled back on the urge to clear his throat even though his voice sounded like forty-grit sandpaper. “Like just a throw pillow?”

  “No offense, but you don’t strike me as the throw pillow type. I’m thinking more along the lines of a house plant.”

  Adrian barked out a laugh. “Better make it a cactus unless you want me to kill the thing.”

  “Tough and prickly. Now that does seem more your speed.” Teagan propped her elbows on the time-scuffed breakfast bar, her gaze flickering over the kitchen before landing on him with a hint of curiosity. “So, um, what are you cooking?”

  She nodded down at the potato in his hand. It glistened under the steady stream of water from the sink, and Adrian cupped the vegetable in his palm, moving the fingers of his unhurt hand over the hard flesh in sure, even strokes to remove the residual dirt.

  “Gnocchi. Have you ever had it before?” He finished with the potato in his grasp, admiring the imperfect texture and the heaviness of it before trading it for another one. Damn, the ten days he’d gone without food in his hands felt more like ten years.

  And the time he’d gone without actually listening to the food as he cooked felt like pure eternity.

  “No.” Teagan fastened her steady stare over his hands, but the waver in her voice gave her away. “My mother did a lot of French cuisine, really old-school classical dishes. We had coq au vin up to our eye teeth, but Italian food, not so much. Is it complicated?”

  “Are you kidding? Four ingredients, that’s it.” He finished with the potatoes and put them in a stockpot, barely covering them with water from the tap. “Gnocchi is a cross between pasta and potato dumplings. Total comfort food. My nonna used to make it all the time.”