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it out of proportion because he was pissed I knocked him down.”
    Zoe took it back; brass didn’t even begin to cover this. “You knocked him down ?”
    â€œNot intentionally,” he argued. “The situation got heated and I just shoved past him to get to the scene. There could’ve been squatters in that warehouse. It’s my job to get them out, period.”
    â€œYou didn’t find anyone, though, did you.” No way she wouldn’t have heard about a rescue like that in this part of town, especially one where her father’s house had responded, and the tight silence filling the dining room hammered her suspicion home.
    Of course, Alex wouldn’t stand down in the face of a little thing like common freaking sense. “Making absolutely sure the building was empty was a risk I was willing to take.”
    â€œBut you were clearly told it was an unnecessary risk. Captain McManus must’ve felt sure no one was in there if he told you not to go inside, plus, there was obvious danger. The place was on fire.” A sudden burst of realization had her chin snapping up. “Did you go on this little recon mission all by your lonesome?”
    â€œOf course not.” He turned to look at her, his hard, blue stare narrowed in confusion. “You know the drill. Everything in pairs. Cole went with me.”
    â€œSo not only did you go all commando against another captain’s orders, but you risked Cole’s ass, too.” The words flew past her lips, brazen and unchecked, but come on. There could’ve been forty-seven kinds of danger in that warehouse, and Alex had not only barged right into the middle of it against a fire captain’s better judgment, but he’d rolled out the red carpet for another man to take the same impetuous gamble.
    And Zoe knew all too well how much a risk like that could cost.
    â€œLet me make something perfectly clear, Zoe.” Alex set the last chair over the floorboards with an impetuous clunk , crossing the room until he was close enough to make her heartbeat hijack her lungs. “I’m in this soup kitchen because I have to be, not because I want to. No amount of rehabilitative community service, including judgment from you, is going to change who I am or how I do my job. So do yourself a favor. Don’t try.”
    With that, he turned and walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen, not even sparing her a backward glance.

Chapter Three
    Alex sat back against his bar stool, his mood in the shitter despite the cold beer in his hand and the warm smile of the waitress who’d brought it. But the ten hours he’d spent hitting the bricks in Hope House’s kitchen today had done their level best to kill both his stamina and his patience.
    The grunt work, however, couldn’t even hold a flamethrower to his new boss.
    Alex tilted his bottle to his lips, swallowing a long, smooth sip of pale ale to cover his frown. Yeah, he’d cop to the fact that he hadn’t come out of the gate with a stellar first impression, but it wasn’t as if he’d meant to drift off to dreamland while he’d waited for Zoe in the dining room. With the circadian rhythms that went hand in hand with Alex’s job, five minutes in the dark meant one of two things—either he was falling asleep or getting laid. He had to admit, when he’d first seen Zoe standing there in Hope House’s dining room, with those blazing brown eyes and jeans that showcased more curves than a Grand Prix racetrack, the option behind door number two had seemed awfully freaking appealing.
    Until he’d realized who she was. But how the hell was he supposed to know his captain’s only daughter had ditched out on her fancy career as an up-and-coming chef to direct a small-time soup kitchen in Fairview’s projects? Or that she seemed to have been living on a steady diet of no-risks, all-rules since he’d last seen her five