All Tied Up (The Boston Five Series #4)

by Poppy J. Anderson

  “What?”

  He laughed huskily and ran his thumb across her cheek. “This is our first date.”

  She shook her head, still dumbfounded. “Our first date? So?”

  “I read up on dates,” he replied quietly. “Sex on a first date is taboo, absolutely forbidden if you’re looking for a serious relationship.”

  “Are we looking for a serious relationship?” Jordan asked shyly, hardly daring to meet his eyes as her stomach churned and rolled.

  His light-brown eyes shimmered warmly. “I certainly am. Otherwise I wouldn’t take so much care to do everything the right way with you.”

  His words warmed her heart, and Jordan knew one thing for sure: She would not go home to her empty apartment tonight. She wanted to stay with Ryan, even if it meant just lying in bed and talking.

  “Can I still stay with you tonight?” she asked softly.

  Ryan smiled broadly. “Of course—but we’re keeping our clothes on.”

  Jordan almost choked on her own laughter. “Don’t you think our situation allows extraordinary measures?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She lifted a hand. “Well, to me, this is not our first date.”

  “Why not?”

  Jordan rolled her eyes. “Because we’ve slept together probably more than the Clintons.”

  “That’s true.” Determined, Ryan stood and lifted her in his arms.

  “Ryan, don’t! I’m far too heavy,” she protested as he carried her out of his living room, through the kitchen, and into his bedroom.

  He ignored her protest and laid her down on his bed.

  From there, Jordan watched him take off his clothes. “I’m warning you,” he grumbled. “From now on, neither of us is going to throw the other out of their apartment after we have sex. And there will be cuddling. And in the morning, we’re always going to have breakfast together.”

  Lost in the sight of him naked and transported by the meaning behind his words, Jordan laid her head on her arm and whispered, “If you’re joking with me, Ryan Fitzpatrick, then woe betide you.”

  He rubbed his chest thoughtfully. “You should know me well enough by now to know I would never joke about cuddles and breakfast.”

  She started to laugh, but he cut her off by lying down on top of her and capturing her mouth with his.

  Jordan lost herself in this kiss, and everything beyond Ryan’s taste, scent, and the sensations she felt when she pressed herself against his naked body became meaningless. Only when his big hands stroked down her naked back, and his mouth left a trail of kisses down her naked chest and stomach, did her ecstatic brain register that he’d already managed to undress her.

  Although they’d slept together more than once over the last few weeks, it seemed to Jordan that Ryan wanted to really explore her body for the first time. He took his sweet, sweet time, kissed her until she had no breath left, and used his mouth to arouse her so expertly that she dug her fingers into the sheets.

  She yearned to return the favor, but he didn’t let her sit up. Instead, he slid upwards, covering her body with his, looked into her eyes, and finally entered her.

  Jordan came almost immediately.

  Moaning, she clung to him, her lips searched his, and she arched her back as he started to move inside her, before proving his incredible stamina.

  Instead of biting his shoulder or scratching at his back when she came, Jordan moaned his name, feeling that she would burst with happiness any moment. Then he moaned her name, too, and fell heavily on top of her, only to prove right away that he’d been serious about the cuddling part.

  Chapter 12

  “Esposito and I will search the top floor. Sam and Marty, take the ground floor, and Jesse and Collum, go down to the basement. Remember, the neighbors may have said the house is uninhabited, but we know homeless people often find shelter in abandoned houses. As soon as we can be sure there’s nobody inside, get out as quickly as possible. And watch your step in there—it really is a ruin and you never know when something might collapse.”

  Jordan listened closely to Heath’s warnings while her eyes traveled over the dilapidated single-family home whose windows were emitting black smoke. Under normal circumstances, they would have extinguished the fire or let the house, uninhabited and abandoned years ago, burn in a controlled fashion, since it was located at the end of the street and there was no danger of the fire spreading to neighboring buildings. But their infrared had indicated there might be someone still in the building. So the first squad would enter to look for victims and get them out before the rickety affair collapsed in on itself.

  Even though Jordan had been drilled and prepared for operations like this one, she felt nervous when her lieutenant ordered them to switch on their breathing gear.

  “You’re staying right behind me, Jordan,” Heath ordered in a severe tone. “And don’t forget to be in constant awareness of your position so you don’t get lost inside all that smoke.”

  She nodded and took a deep breath as Heath knocked on her helmet and issued a few more orders to the rest of his crew.

  Tense and alert, she followed him through the hopelessly overgrown front yard and stepped aside as Marty and Sam used a crowbar to break open the door, which was nailed shut. She followed Heath into the house, hardly able to see anything through the thick smoke.

  “Attention, this is the fire department! Is anyone in here?”

  There was no answer to Heath’s call. Jordan forced herself to breathe slowly so as not to panic, but she could hear her own breath thud in her ear.

  “Come on, Esposito! Upstairs.” She heard Heath’s order and climbed the stairs carefully behind him.

  On the top floor, the smoke seemed even thicker. She could barely see her own hand in front of her eyes.

  Emulating Heath, who fought his way through one room, then the other, Jordan called into the rooms, asking if anyone was there, listening for any sort of reaction, which didn’t come. The top floor consisted of a bathroom and three rooms, which were all rather tiny. Their search should have been quick, but the smoke made it hard—and the smoke was growing thicker by the second. Jordan had no idea how long they had been in the building when Heath suddenly stopped in the center of the room and turned toward her, indicating they had to abort the search.

  “The fire’s jumped to the outer walls,” he called out, pointing toward the hallway and moving that way. “Let’s get out of here! It could collapse any moment!”

  She hastened to follow him out into the hallway, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Incredulous, she looked more closely and discerned an old bed in the far corner of the room. An arm stuck out from under the bed, twitching.

  “Heath!”

  “Jordan!” her superior barked. He had already disappeared into the smoke, but she could see his returning form as a hazy silhouette. “Come on, let’s go!”

  “I see someone!” she called as Heath appeared again in the doorway. “There!” She pointed to the lifeless body, half-hidden under the bed frame, and hastened over to the corner of the room.

  While she began pushing aside pieces of rickety furniture for better access to the victim, she heard Heath alerting the rest of the firemen and requesting an ambulance.

  Jordan kneeled down and examined the man, who was quite obviously a homeless man. Although he wasn’t moving, she felt a pulse at his throat, proving he was still alive, though he’d lost consciousness.

  “He’s alive,” she told Heath through her oxygen mask before taking it off to hold over the victim’s mouth and nose. She’d barely removed her mask when she started to cough uncontrollably, and the smoke burned her throat.

  “Put your mask back on!” Heath leaned down and indicated that they’d carry the man downstairs together.

  She put her mask don and rose quickly, working with Heath to drag the man out from the death trap that was the old bed. Pulling an unconscious person from the ground was no easy feat under normal circumstance
s, but in this aggravated situation, they struggled, using all their strength to drag the man up from the floor. Heath took the guy’s right arm and Jordan put his left arm over her shoulder, and they pulled. Jordan felt her knees might buckle any moment.

  Very slowly, they worked their way out of the room and down the hallway. They had to switch positions to be able to descend the stairs. Jordan went first, making slow progress, the lifeless man hung heavily between them, and Heath came after.

  The crackling sounds of the burning wood frightened Jordan, and she felt the searing heat all around her. She didn’t dare look back over her shoulder. Heath was right—the house was going to collapse sooner or later. And the creaks and cracks weren’t a good sign.

  When she reached the last landing, Jordan could see bright daylight beckoning from outside the front door. But then the railing began to vibrate ominously. She glanced up over her head, where the ceiling beams seemed to be shivering loose behind the cloud of black smoke. And beyond that, a burning beam broke free of the ceiling.

  “Heath!” She didn’t think it through, simply dragged both men down the stairs, as if a superhuman strength propelled her.

  They teetered and lost their balance, tumbling forward down the stairs and landing in the front foyer. The force of the impact knocked the oxygen mask from Jordan’s face, and she coughed and gasped as she lifted her head to check whether her lieutenant and the victim were okay. She hardly noticed that her back felt as if she’d been rolled over by a bus as she saw the blazing broken beam destroy the part of the stairway Heath had been standing on just a second before.

  “Jordan?” She heard Heath’s voice and tried to sit up, but the weight of the unconscious man held her back. “Are you okay?”

  Her answer was another choked cough.

  “We need to get out of here, Jordan. Can you get up?”

  She opened her mouth again but was wracked by another coughing fit. Hands grabbed her, pulling her up. She coughed and leaned heavily against one of the men from the technical squad, who helped her get out of the house.

  Her eyes burned like hell as she watched several of the other guys escort Heath and the homeless man out, and she felt like fainting with relief.

  In no time, she was sitting next to Heath on a stretcher from the second ambulance, being forced to use another oxygen mask, which she shared with her boss, who had also been ordered to have himself examined at the hospital.

  Both of them had protested that they were fine, but Owen, the unit’s paramedic, had insisted, droning on about the regulations they had to comply with.

  Jordan thought it was unnecessary to be taken to the ER for an examination, because all she’d done was breathe in smoke and bruise her back. The important thing was that the young man they’d dragged out of the house had regained consciousness in the ambulance. He’d suffered smoke inhalation and a few first-degree burns.

  And, even more importantly, her lieutenant hadn’t been killed by a falling, burning ceiling beam.

  Heath also seemed to be thinking of the ceiling beam that had broken loose right above his head, because he returned the oxygen mask to Jordan and said in a hoarse voice, “My wife will want to thank you for saving my life.”

  Her cheeks reddened. “Come on, Heath,” she murmured. “I didn’t save—”

  “Yes, you did,” he interrupted firmly and then poked her gently in the arm. “I’m really grateful, Jordan. Without you, that could have ended badly for me.”

  She swallowed. “No need to thank me.”

  “You’re very talented, and you have a natural sense for these volatile situations. It’s good to have you on my crew.”

  She felt a lump in her throat as she looked into his face. “Thank you.”

  He leaned his head close to hers and whispered, “And I don’t even care that your cooking skills are nonexistent—apart from following directions for my mom’s chicken teriyaki.”

  “Thanks.” She laughed, but, a second later, the laugh morphed into a cough.

  His laughter sounded more like a series of gasps as well. “Still, it might not be a bad idea to ask my mom for a few more of her recipes next time you come to Sunday dinner,” he suggested good-naturedly. “I’m pretty sure she’d love to help you out.”

  Surprised, Jordan put the mask over her face, took a deep breath of the oxygen mixture, and then asked huskily, “Next time? What makes you think Ryan’s going to bring me again?”

  Heath grinned and shrugged one shoulder, before taking the mask from her and inhaling a few times. “My baby brother is head over heels for you. He’s in love, and I can tell you from twenty-nine years of experience that this has never happened before.”

  She was ashamed of the blush that spread over her cheeks. “Oh.”

  She wanted to grill him further on the subject, but Owen returned, took the breathing apparatus from them, and announced he’d take them to the ER now.

  ***

  Ryan hated nothing more than this annoying paperwork.

  He’d become a cop because he wanted to catch criminals—nobody had told him he’d spend hours and hours writing reports and filling out forms. If he’d known that before, maybe he would have thought twice about this profession. But then again … maybe not.

  He shook his head and stared at his computer screen with a dry smile. All the Fitzpatricks suffered from “Helper Syndrome.” That was the only reasonable explanation for the fact that he and his siblings were all working in the fields they’d selected as early as childhood. Not even the lure of more money than his meager pay could have kept him from attending the police academy.

  He leaned back with a sigh, loosened the knot of his tie, and opened the topmost button of his shirt.

  It was a warm summer day, and he would have preferred to spend it outside rather than his office with no air conditioning. He thought wistfully of the time he’d been on the beat and spent each day out on the streets. Okay, so he hadn’t liked wearing the uniform, because it made him feel like a traffic cop, but he’d enjoyed the fact that it was never boring. There was always something happening.

  “Hey, Ryan.” His partner Dickie pushed his immense girth as close to Ryan’s desk as he could and took a large bite out of his pink frosted donut.

  While the older man, whose shirt seemed perilously close to bursting at the seams, devoured his donut, Ryan looked at him and wondered why he, of all people, had been assigned a partner who looked like a walking cliché. He was stuffing himself with donuts at all times and unable to pass the athletic aptitude test on the level of an eighty-year-old retiree.

  “Hey, Dickie. What’s up?” Ryan quickly moved his stack of files to the other side of the desk, afraid his partner’s greasy donut filling would drip on them.

  “Gregory from the attorney’s office called. Your friend the district attorney wants you to escort his chief witness to court tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Ryan frowned and put a few documents aside for copying later. He wasn’t at all excited about this new assignment. “Why me? I’ve done my part in this case; it’s closed. I already testified.”

  His partner shrugged in a careless manner and licked his fingers noisily. “How would I know what he’s thinking? Gregory mentioned you seem to have a special connection with the witness, and the attorney seems concerned the guy might bail at the last minute.”

  “Wonderful,” Ryan muttered grumpily. He hadn’t planned on coming in until noon tomorrow. He didn’t want to play babysitter to some skittish witness early in the morning.

  Scowling, he went back to sorting his papers and hardly registered that Dickie had retreated back to his own desk, where he sat panting. His partner was close to retiring, so he took it easy, sitting and munching his way through each and every cake the department got for each officer’s birthday—which was quite often. He’d probably last seen the inside of the gym back when cops still used slingshots for service weapons.

  Ryan had been working with Dickie since he’d been transferr
ed to the fraud unit two years ago, and he’d learned to appreciate the older man’s calm and patient manner. He’d actually learned a lot from the detective, who hadn’t been the subject of a single disciplinary complaint throughout his entire career. Still, Ryan wasn’t too devastated by the prospect of his partner disappearing into retirement. Though he was a bit apprehensive as to who would replace him. Some cops spent more time with their partners than their wives, so it was vital that they got along, that the chemistry was right.

  With a shrug, Ryan postponed the issue and carried his papers to the copying machine. Then he got a cup of coffee and evaded the attempts at flirting by the chief’s new secretary, who’d been trying to catch his eye for the last two weeks.

  Just when he’d settled back behind his desk, the phone rang. He made a face, set down the steaming coffee, and took the call. “Fitzpatrick.”

  “Hey, Ryan,” Kayleigh’s voice came cheerfully from the receiver. “Are you busy?”

  “Always,” he said casually, holding the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder as he checked his emails. “What exactly did I do to deserve this call?”

  “Aidan’s birthday is in two weeks, and I just decided to throw a surprise party for him. Because I honestly have no clue what else to give him.”

  Ryan pulled a face. “Spoken like a loving girlfriend!”

  “Hey,” she protested immediately, “you know what Aidan’s like! It’s hard work to get him to say if there’s something he wants for his birthday …”

  “Of course there’s something he wants,” Ryan informed her patronizingly. “Aidan would love to wear the pants in your relationship at least once. Or maybe he just wishes he didn’t have to spank you every single time you have sex.”

  “This is not the subject I wanted to discuss with you,” his sister stated in a dignified manner. “And just so you know, Aidan and I see eye to eye. Nobody wears the pants.”

  Ryan laughed. “Oh, riiiight!”

  “Are you trying to rile me up today?”

  “Not just today, sis.” Ryan clicked his way through all the junk email and then deleted all the spam. “You should put a little more effort into Aidan’s present, because you need to make sure you keep the man. Who knows if you’ll ever find such a docile fool again? Who else would put up with a harpy like you?”