Naked, livid, and all but exhausted with frustration, Ryan told himself he would get back at his brother for this.
But Heath wasn’t done humiliating him in front of everyone. He stood next to the bed with a thoughtful expression, hit one of his colleagues on the shoulder, and declared, with unbridled mischief glittering in his eyes, “We need to use a bolt cutter on these handcuffs.”
“Well, then do it,” Ryan snapped. He felt he’d spent enough time playing the helpless centerfold for a bunch of guffawing firemen.
Heath’s pal Ted snorted with laughter. “Who’s getting the honor of cutting your brother free, Lieutenant? I think it would be the perfect test for our newbie.”
Heath almost choked on his own laughter, before nodding with the fattest grin Ryan had ever seen on his brother’s face.
“Esposito!” he yelled back into the living room, where the rest of the squad was waiting. “Grab the bolt cutter! Show us if you can save my baby brother from his delicate predicament in here!”
The cackling laughter of the entire squad warned Ryan that he wouldn’t like what was coming.
And when the newbie was standing next to his bed, studying him from under her long lashes and clicking her tongue, he knew what Heath found so damn hilarious.
The budding firefighter was a woman, and she was staring at his manhood as if she were scanning the salad selection in her local grocery store. Then she looked up at Heath and asked in an amused tone, “Lieutenant, no offense, but does this happen to your brother on a regular basis?”
Chapter 2
Jordan Esposito might have been a noob who’d only been with the Boston Fire Department for two weeks, but she was pretty sure a naked man chained to his bed with handcuffs wasn’t an everyday occurrence in this line of work. Nor did she believe her colleagues would routinely pull out their phones to film the poor victim in his exposed and angry helplessness.
The first thing she’d learned at the academy was to always show respect for the victims of any predicament, to internalize that these people were helpless and dependent on emergency services. Nobody had taught her to laugh at the victim, stand next to his bed with a phone camera, and ask him smugly how his date had gone.
Even if Jordan hadn’t been told this victim was the lieutenant’s younger brother, she’d have realized quickly that this was a rather extraordinary emergency. After all, one of her colleagues was rummaging through the man’s fridge, while another was using the bathroom. Then the victim yelled, “Tell your men to keep their paws off my dinner, Heath, and fucking put away your damn phone already!” Another indication that this was different from what she’d seen so far.
The emergencies and operations they’d been called to up until now had been anything but spectacular: a small fire in a garden shed, a runaway cat, a damaged electrical substation, and an eighty-year-old woman who’d run her car into a church fence.
The naked man was a first.
Jordan hadn’t imagined that freeing men from such predicaments would be part of her job. She also realized that all the boys were curious about how their female new recruit would handle the situation.
If they thought Jordan would act all girly, blush, or balk at the sight, she’d prove them wrong.
It took more than a naked man chained to his own bed to disconcert her—she’d grown up with three older brothers, after all. After surviving that, there wasn’t a lot that could shock her. Certainly not her chuckling colleagues behind her, nor this man before her, who didn’t even seem embarrassed that she was seeing more of him than probably even his urologist had seen.
“Darling, if you don’t mind, I’d really be glad to get away from this bed as quickly as possible.”
The last guy who’d called her “darling” had been expecting to be allowed to grab her breasts. A minute later, he’d been holding a bag of frozen peas against his crotch. Jordan didn’t want to risk a disciplinary inquiry in her first month on the job, however, so she merely looked him in the eye with a lazy smile. “Really?” she said dryly. “And here I thought people who let themselves be cuffed to their beds would be eager to spend as much time as possible in said beds, darling.”
Laughter erupted behind her while the blond in front of her made a face. He had light brown eyes and a prominent chin. And was not the least bit intimidated or embarrassed. He offered her a teasing smile. “Yeah, that was the original plan,” he admitted quietly. “But it seems someone shuffled the cards and dealt me an even better hand. There’s an empty space in this bed, and I’ve always had a thing for women in uniform.”
Even though Jordan wasn’t easily fazed, her jaw dropped at the cockiness of the lieutenant’s naked brother. It left her speechless. She had experienced her share of come-ons in the least appropriate situations—only a few months ago, her deceitful ex, Gary, had asked her out when they ran into each other at a funeral—but this was hard to top.
She considered spraying the cuffed man with the fire hose to cool him down, but the lieutenant cleared his throat and addressed his younger brother with exaggerated friendliness. “It seems you’re a bit suicidal, little man. If I were you, I wouldn’t mess with Esposito. So please desist from any further innuendoes. I don’t want to be forced to explain to Mom why one of her sons is no longer able to give her grandsons, okay?”
Heath Fitzpatrick’s younger brother seemed to be one of those guys who was incredibly handsome but who unfortunately also carried the bigmouthed asshole gene, a combination that had also been prominent in Gary. In any case, the blond in front of her merely grinned and winked at her. With his broad shoulders and sculpted abs, he obviously couldn’t imagine that there might be a woman alive who was immune to his charms.
He appeared to have completely forgotten the fact that he’d been chained to the bed by just such a woman, and was still fettered to it.
Jordan was not inclined to let her lieutenant come to her defense. She had always preferred to fight her own battles. “One would think that a man who has just been turned down in no uncertain terms,” she replied, “wouldn’t talk so big. Unfortunately, unwarranted self-confidence seems a common affliction in men.”
Her lieutenant chuckled and nodded. “Dear little brother, there you have it. Our new recruit sees right through you.”
As she’d already noticed when she stepped into his bedroom, nothing was little on this little brother, and now he gave her a penetrating glance from those light-brown eyes that made her regret swearing off braggadocious men … but only for a brief moment. He sighed. “A little more sensitivity, please,” he begged. “I can’t take another rejection tonight.” His eyes roamed over her bulky firefighting uniform, and the corners of his mouth quirked upward in an appreciative smile. This could mean only two things: Either her superior’s brother had a weird fetish—which might explain both the handcuffs and the absolute lack of shame—or the poor man hadn’t had sex in such a long time that he’d gladly sleep with a woman wearing a fireman’s helmet and walking in her unwieldy uniform with the grace of a hippo.
“Ryan, could you please stop hitting on members of my squad?” Heath said. “Your pathetic attempts at flirting embarrass me as your brother. We Fitzpatricks have a reputation to uphold.”
Jordan wanted to make a retching sound to express her feelings about this insufferable male peacock display, but since she couldn’t disrespect her superior, she kept quiet and instead lifted her eyebrows at the supposed victim, who still didn’t bat an eyelash at the fact that she had been studying his nakedness for several minutes now.
With his languorous smile, he actually looked rather content with himself and the world.
She let her gaze travel to his crotch once more, made an unimpressed face, and asked calmly her lieutenant, “So do you still need me, sir?”
“Good question,” Heath Fitzpatrick replied thoughtfully. “I’m wondering whether we shouldn’t leave my brother to stew in his own juice for a few hours more, Esposito. Maybe that would make him a little less love-c
razed, you know?”
“I think that would take more than a few hours, though,” she said, eliciting a grin from her superior, who stepped next to her and patted her on the shoulder with a good-natured nod.
“Esposito, I like you better each day,” he said. “You’re not only going to be a good firefighter, I’ve also got the feeling you’re a perfect match for my squad.”
Jordan inhaled contentedly. After all, it hadn’t been easy to get hired by a fire station after the academy. There had only been three female recruits in her class at the academy in the beginning, and Jordan had been the only one to make it through. The physical requirements were tough and demanding, but the psychological pressure from outside was the real obstacle—much worse, for example, than her instructor, who made no bones about his misgivings toward female firefighters.
She had brushed off the sneers of the male recruits, the bruises, and the antiquated macho talk of her instructor, but her own family’s concern she couldn’t brush off like that. It had gotten to her.
She was very happy with her decision to become a firefighter and couldn’t wait to start her training, but to this day, her parents still hadn’t reconciled the fact that their only daughter had gone to the academy.
Jordan’s parents hadn’t said anything for or against any of her brothers’ job choices, but when Jordan had finished college and announced that she didn’t want to be an accountant and was going to become a firefighter instead, drama had ensued.
Ever since, her dad had been irritable around her, unable to understand why his daughter wanted to pursue a career that “involves physical labor and dangerous situations” and that often “brings you home at night covered in soot.” Those had been his exact words only a week ago, delivered with an extremely grumpy frown. Maybe Jordan would have given her father’s objections a little more consideration if he hadn’t expressed them right there on the gun range, where he was practicing for his firearms test.
Had her dad not been a cop for the last thirty years, and had he not proudly attended the police-school graduations of his three sons, who’d all become cops like him, she might have understood his concern. But as it was …
Anyone who knew her also knew that she’d rather slit her wrists with a bread knife than dress in a business suit and work as an accountant. She’d only attended college for her parents’ sake anyway. She’d wanted to go to the academy right out of high school.
Where had her dad even gotten the idea that his daughter would want to have a boring, white-collar desk job? He’d taken her and her brothers camping, fishing, and even hunting from a very young age. It was purely his fault that she’d become a sucker for adventure and adrenaline. She was athletic, alert, and definitely not a girly girl. Was she supposed to just forget the first twenty-five years of her life and squeeze herself into the mold of a role model that had never appealed to her?
Jordan was quicker and defter in gutting a deer than any of her brothers, she’d played basketball in high school, and she’d been notorious for being able to take apart her own car—and put it back together after repairing stuff, too.
Despite her mother’s attempts at getting little Jordan to like Barbies, tea parties, and ballet lessons, her daughter had emulated her older brothers, preferring to build tree houses and learn skateboard tricks.
And now her family was surprised that she didn’t want to spend her days in a stuffy office doing other people’s taxes?
While her brothers had been small boys when they’d decided they wanted to be cops like their dad, Jordan didn’t think about firefighting until she was a teenager. Admittedly, the initial spark was connected to an extremely handsome fireman who’d carried her out of the school lab after an experiment in chemistry had gone boom and singed her lashes. It had been easy to impress a hormone-fueled sixteen-year old, but once the idea had taken root, she grew increasingly certain that firefighting really was her dream job.
And since Jordan was a headstrong woman, neither her parents nor her brothers had been able to shake her conviction.
Her family did eventually resign themselves to the fact that she would begin training, until, barely ten months ago, her parents had gotten that phone call that changed everything. Since that day, grief and worry had overshadowed the entire family. It was inconceivable to her parents and her brothers that Jordan still wanted to become a firefighter after all that had happened.
“Am I the only one wondering what was supposed to happen on this date? Huh, Fitzpatrick?”
Jordan’s coworker Sam had a booming voice, which now rang in her ears and tore her from her frustrating thoughts. She was honestly glad to be distracted by Sam, who came into the bedroom, filling it to capacity. To be quite honest, Jordan was having a hard time not staring at her superior’s brother, who still didn’t seem ashamed to be lying before them all in his birthday suit, merely flipping the older man the bird with his free hand. In fact, it had been months since Jordan had last seen a naked man.
Okay, that wasn’t entirely true, since just a few days ago she’d walked in on one of her colleagues stepping from the shower at the station. But balding Glen was in quite a different league than the blond on the bed, who didn’t have a paunch and also still had all his hair. And Glen had quickly wrapped a towel around his hips, which was not the case with the fine specimen before her.
“Shut up, Sam,” the victim said calmly and then turned to Jordan again. “So what’s the deal? Do you have to cut off the hand, or can you open the cuff?”
Sam interrupted again with a giggle, bellowing through the entire apartment: “Oh, but it’s the right hand, Ryan? … Oh, my, no more luck with the ladies! I imagine they’ll amputate your right hand …”
Several men behind Jordan giggled like a bunch of girls. It was so incongruous to their persona as a squad of tough firefighters.
She rolled her eyes as she thought of her mom’s call last night. Mom had worried that her daughter might become vulgar in the all-male work environment. If she knew that one of the first things she’d received at work had been a list of her coworkers’ food allergies, or if she saw how anal these guys were about the cleanliness of the station’s communal showers, or if she could hear them giggling right now, she’d probably stop worrying. At least about that.
“That’s so funny, you bunch of clowns,” Ryan Fitzpatrick said acidly and turned toward his brother as best he was able. “Could you please tell them to free me now, before I catch the flu or something?”
“It’s the middle of summer, the only thing you’re in danger of is sexual frustration,” his brother pointed out politely.
Sam was less polite. He broke into another burst of cackling laughter. “Well, he’d still have his left hand—”
“That isn’t funny,” Ryan Fitzpatrick cut him off, exasperated. “Heath, come on, goddammit!”
Heath cleared his throat loudly. “So where did you put the keys to those cuffs, little brother?” he asked in an exaggeratedly concerned voice.
“They’re somewhere in the front yard,” his brother hissed, shaking his head, and then snorted. “Women!”
Jordan echoed his disdainful snort, but she directed it at him. She leaned across his prone body, ignored his appraising glances, and took a closer look at the handcuff that chained him to the bed frame. She immediately saw that it wasn’t some cheap thing from a sex shop, but the real deal. Sturdy steel and not retractable without its key. Her brothers carried the same things on their beats. A bolt cutter really would be necessary.
She leaned back nonchalantly, shrugged one shoulder, and turned to her lieutenant. “Since your brother was stupid enough to allow himself to be tied up with police handcuffs, we’re going to need a bolt cutter.”
Heath Fitzpatrick crossed his arms in front of his chest and shook his head. “No offense, Ryan,” he said with a groan, “but how stupid can you be? Did it have to be your police cuffs? Couldn’t you just use the plush-covered ones all the perverts use?”
“Do you
really think she asked me?” Ryan shot back. “If I’d known I’d be getting a fire brigade in here instead of sex, I’d have asked her to please use one of the cheap, breakable sets meant for playing! Duh.”
Sam hit his boss on the shoulder with a grin. “You have to understand the boy, Fitzpatrick. He wasn’t thinking with his head …” He winked at Jordan, before adding, “For the sake of our noob, I won’t name the part he was thinking with.”
Jordan knew her role as new recruit involved keeping quiet and not opening her big mouth to put anyone in their place. But she couldn’t resist. “You can call it a penis, Sam. I’ve heard the term before. Besides, it’s a little late for that kind of consideration—the victim’s naked and has been parading his penis for at least ten minutes now.”
“Hey!” Ryan Fitzpatrick chimed in. “I’m not parading anything here! I can’t help it if it sticks out a mile, darling!”
She narrowed her eyes. “Darling? I have a name, just like anyone else in here, Naked Man, and it certainly isn’t darling!”
The younger Fitzpatrick, who should have been meek or at least grateful, merely shrugged in an arrogant fashion. “I’ve made it a habit never to call a woman by her last name if I plan on sleeping with her. But if you told me your first name …”
She turned on her heel and glared at the insolent bastard’s brother. “Lieutenant, if you care at all about your brother’s life—”
“Not particularly.” Heath Fitzpatrick rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately, he’s possessed this suicidal sense of humor since he was weaned. Just ignore his babbling. I assume my baby brother hasn’t taken his tranquilizers today.”
Jordan’s answer was another snort. Then, more formally, she asked, “Do I have your permission to get the bolt cutter, Lieutenant?”
Heath smirked. “Permission granted, Esposito.”
All Tied Up (The Boston Five Series #4) Page 2