Read Online Reckless by Kimberly Kincaid - Free Book Online

say?”
    â€œA 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.
    â€œObviously,” 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.”
    â€œExactly,” 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWait . . . 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.”
    â€œNot 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.”
    â€œI said to unload them per the guidelines, which means they should’ve been checked. Did you not read any of the book?”
    â€œNot to move a bunch of boxes,” Alex argued. “And anyway, that thing is a doorstop.”
    â€œThat 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