Fire Me Up (20 page)

Adrian's brain flashed back over the last few weeks he'd spent at the restaurant, coupled with the last four nights he'd spent with Teagan in his bed, and yeah.
Mutual
about covered it. “As long as we're cool,” he said, stepping in toward the counter.

But Jesse straightened up and stood his ground. “You tell me.”

The unspoken question and everything that went with it hung heavy in the air between them, but Adrian didn't even hesitate.

“I might not be able to stick around forever, but I've still got her back, Jesse. Just like you.”

“Good.” Palming the whisk, Jesse dropped it, and his gaze, back to the bowl in front of him. “I tried making that new sauce we talked about for the Cajun chicken sandwiches. I'm not sure how it turned out, though.”

Relief, and something deeper Adrian couldn't quite pin down, stole its way down his spine, and he reached for a tasting spoon.

“Let's find out.”

The next few hours blurred by in a combination of dinner orders and on-the-fly menu planning for the street fair. Although they were still short-staffed on the line, both Teagan and Jesse had gotten the hang of running the kitchen better than Adrian had hoped, to the point that they worked efficiently together, even in a jam. By the time the dinner rush downshifted into a manageable trickle, Adrian was more than ready to start doling out breaks. He elbowed his way through the swinging door leading out to the bar, where Brennan stood in the small alcove by the sink, unloading a rack of clean pint glasses.

“Looks pretty quiet out here,” Adrian diagnosed, tossing a clean bar towel over the shoulder of his light gray T-shirt, and Brennan nodded, his dark eyes giving the smattering of customers a careful once-over.

“Not so bad. In fact, it's been kind of slow all night.” His frown mirrored the jab of disappointment tugging at Adrian's gut, but neither of them gave it a voice. Saying that business was slower than usual wouldn't bring in customers, no matter how badly the Double Shot needed the cash flow. “You closing down the kitchen?”

Adrian jerked his chin in the affirmative. “Yup. Go ahead and grab fifteen. I can cover the wood.”

Brennan moved toward the pass-through, and Adrian origamied himself into the abandoned spot by the sink to finish putting away the pint glasses. While it took a distant second to being around food, picking up slack behind the bar had never bothered Adrian. Having a place, a purpose at the Double Shot sent his muscles into relaxation mode, and he turned toward the bar to check the status of everyone's orders.

“You Adrian Holt?” The guy at the end of the bar flashed him with a head-to-toe that had Adrian's hackles locked and loaded, but he dialed his expression down to its most bored setting.

Adrian swiped at the mahogany with a damp bar towel, purposely waiting a beat, then two before responding with, “Who's asking?”

“I'm a business associate of Lonnie Armstrong's.” The man's weathered face cracked into an oily smile, and Adrian's breath log-jammed in his windpipe.

“In that case, we're closed,” he managed, roughing up his delivery as much as possible. How the hell did this guy know his name?

“He said to give you a message,” the guy persisted. “Wants you to know he's got his eye on y'all. Especially you and that leggy redhead. Said he's real excited about getting . . .
paid
.” His smile hardened and turned lecherous around the edges, and it took all of Adrian's restraint not to vault the bar and turn the guy into paste.

“Door's that way,” Adrian bit out, infusing each word with the anger brewing hot in his belly.

But the man laughed, not budging a millimeter. “Now, now. What would your parole officer say about those bad manners of yours, I wonder?”

Adrian's breath and blood completely seized under his skin, the adrenaline replacing both just begging to take a swing while the scissor-sharp dread that followed bolted him into place.

After a beat, the minion pushed off from the bar with a dirty smirk. “You and the cherry have got two weeks, Mr. Holt. Looking forward to helping Lonnie collect.”

Even after the guy had slithered his way out the front door, Adrian's pulse still slammed through him like a wrecking ball at warp speed. Damn it, Pine Mountain was a small town where everyone knew everyone. How had he underestimated how easy it would be for Lonnie to figure out who he was? Hell, the arrest and conviction had been a matter of public record. Even Lonnie could do the math on the parole hearing and know Adrian wasn't in the clear.

And if Big Ed caught even a sniff of Adrian's setting foot in the Double Shot, he'd be back in a jumpsuit faster than any of them could say
prison orange
.

Desperate for something—anything—to put his hands on that would resemble the food that always calmed him, Adrian took an abrupt step toward the bar.

And ended up looking smack into the face of Carly's husband.

“Holy shit, Holt. What're you doing here?”

Jackson Carter's brows shot toward the edge of his dark blond crew cut, his eyes doing the round-and-wide routine as he froze to his spot at the bar, and really, Adrian couldn't have cooked up a worse nightmare if he'd been paid for the job. Thankfully, Shane, who stood right next to his buddy, swooped in to mop up some of the tension.

“I think what Jackson's trying to say is it's a surprise to see you behind the bar.” Shane leaned a forearm against the glossy mahogany, dividing his gaze between Jackson and Adrian with equal face time. While he and Jackson had gotten over their active dislike for each other almost a year ago, Adrian had never gone all Kumbaya for the guy. The whole avoiding-Carly-like-an-active-strain-of-the-plague thing wasn't helping right now, either.

Could anything else possibly bite him on the ass tonight?

“Yeah.” Adrian nodded, snapping the lid off a bottle of Corona for the guy two down who'd lifted his empty in a wordless request for another. “Gotta fill the time somehow, you know.” He tried his level best to make his voice nice and easy, but damn it, pulling back on the hard edges was pretty much impossible.

Of course, Jackson matched him, tone for tone. “Thought the whole point of a leave of absence was to take it easy.”

Adrian locked his molars with a
clack
and pulled in a deep lungful of air. While he could—and did—fault Carly for tossing him out of the kitchen when he needed to be there most, it was kind of hard to take issue with her husband for siding with her. But the last thing Adrian needed right now was to tangle with Jackson over this. Even if the guy was skirting the edges of asshattery.

“Arm's just fine. Clearly,” Adrian said, serving up the Corona and clanking the empty bottle he'd traded it for into the recycling bin behind the bar with an easy toss.

“You might want to tell Carly that. Seeing as how she's been worried sick about you and you haven't returned her calls.”

This time, Adrian had to wrestle for his inhale. He was all for trying to defuse a bad state of affairs, but there were two sides to this coin, and he was already on edge.

“She wasn't too worried to kick me out of the kitchen,” he pointed out. “And she can't have it both ways, Carter.”

“You guys—” Shane started, but Jackson cut him off with a frost-encrusted glare.

“Oh,
bullshit,
” Jackson hissed. “She lied to your parole officer yesterday, Adrian. Which, oh, by the way, is illegal in both Pennsylvania and New York.”

Adrian's head snapped back in shock. “She what?”

Shane cranked his eyes shut in an expression chock-full of
hold on, here we go,
but it didn't stop Jackson.

“Oh, come on. Don't tell me you're surprised she bailed you out. The guy has been hounding her nonstop ever since you got into this mess. There were only so many times Carly could say she hadn't heard from you before he threatened to come down here and yank you back upstate for real. What'd you think she'd do?”

Adrian forced his jaw to work, but it took all the effort he could scratch together. “She lied and told him she'd seen me so he'd back off.”

Hell, he should've known there was something behind the fact that Big Ed hadn't followed up after his last nasty message. Even the guy's ulterior motives had ulterior motives, for God's sake.

Jackson's knuckles went white over the bar top. “Of course she did, Einstein. But it's not just her reputation on the line this time. Your parole officer made it crystal clear that if her reports aren't on the straight and narrow and he finds out about it, he won't just sanction her. He'll have her brought up on charges.”

Jesus. Adrian had always known Big Ed was a card-carrying member of Jackasses-R-Us, but he'd never thought the guy would use Carly so blatantly to get to him. Mad at her or not, Adrian had to put an end to Big Ed's threats once and for all.

And the only way to do it was to keep his nose, and the rest of him, one hundred and ten percent spic and span.

“I'll call Big Ed first thing in the morning. He
will
leave her alone,” Adrian vowed, and Jackson pressed his palms against the bar, leaning in to peg Adrian with a stare like a box full of razor blades.

“That's mighty big of you, since it's your mess in the first place. And while you're in a chatty mood, do me a favor. You might be mad at Carly right now, but she's got reasons for putting you on a leave of absence, ones that don't have jack shit to do with your arm. So get your head out of your ass, stop dodging her calls, and talk to her. She really cares about you. Even if you don't fucking deserve it.”

Before Adrian could react or move or even think, Jackson was gone.

Shane let out a slow breath, dropping his voice but not his guard. “Listen, Adrian. I get that this is complicated. But it's rough for him to see Carly upset. And I gotta be honest. I'm feeling it on my end too,” he said, but Adrian shook his head to bring the conversation to a halt.

“I hear you. Both of you.” He sent a look in Jackson's wake, his gut jangling like a hundred metal spoons set loose in a drawer. “I'll take care of Big Ed.”

“Good,” Shane said, stepping back from his spot at the bar. “Because if he comes after Carly, Jackson's coming after you.”

Adrian swung toward the alcove, yanking out a tray of clean barware. But pint glasses and pitchers of Budweiser weren't going to cut it. He needed to sort this out, to loosen the vise grip splintering his rib cage, to
think
.

He needed the real deal, and he needed it right fucking now.

Cutting a path toward the swinging door, Adrian shouldered his way back into the brightly lit kitchen, his palms going slick as the feelings he'd done his best to knock back for the last two weeks ricocheted around in his head. Catching one of the waitresses on his way toward the pantry, he made sure the bar was covered until Brennan made it back from his break. But damn it, Adrian knew his churning emotions were scrawled all over his face, and he needed to get them in check, especially before he laid eyes on Teagan.

He was too close to losing control.

He burst into the pantry, stabbing his unhurt hand through his hair with an angry tug before riffling through a bunch of ingredients he barely saw. Yes, he'd been pissed that Carly would boot him from La Dolce Vita when she knew he belonged in the kitchen first and foremost, and yes again, that anger had morphed into a deeper ache he'd tried not to tag with a name. But his life wasn't supposed to turn out like this, with his best friend on the ropes and the impulsive feelings he'd sworn he'd never let himself have again boiling over hotter than ever. It was supposed to be nose to grindstone, ducks in a goddamn row just like the last few years. Fuck it all, he was
supposed
to ride out the rest of his parole keeping busy in the kitchen, with his hands on the food and everything else guarded tight.

He couldn't risk his livelihood. Not again. He needed the kitchen now more than ever.

“Adrian?”

The hushed half whisper hit him only a second before the scent of sweet, heady rosemary filled his senses, and Adrian wobbled from the impact of both.

“I'm looking for something. Give me a second.” Gravel clung to the rough demand, but of course, that just made Teagan step closer.

“No.”

Her soft-soled boots shushed over the tiles, one endlessly long denim-covered leg in front of the other, and God above, he wasn't going to make it with her standing just a breath away.

“I just . . . I need to . . .” But in the thick of the moment, Adrian couldn't think of a single dish he could put together that would make everything okay.

Instead of peppering him with a bunch of pushy questions, Teagan simply wrapped her fingers around his. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not here.” Her eyes flashed, whiskey warm and wide-open, and she turned toward the door. “Come on.”

In that moment, Adrian knew he was well and truly in the most bottomless trouble, because for the first time in his entire existence, he didn't want his hands on food to make things right.

He wanted them on Teagan instead.

Teagan unlocked the door to her tiny cottage, stepping into the foyer in silence. She hadn't spoken since grabbing Jesse at the Double Shot and asking him to take care of the waning crowd at the bar with Brennan, which he'd agreed to without question. Teagan trusted them to call her if anything went south, and right now, no matter how deep her dedication to the place ran, she needed to be here.

With Adrian. In her kitchen.

“Come on in,” she said, flipping on the lights and putting her keys in the chipped ceramic bowl on the side table by the door. Despite Adrian's lack of furniture, his place was closer to the bar, so they'd spent their nights together there. She led the way down the hall, pausing as he took in the framed photos on her walls with quiet austerity. He stopped between one of her with the guys at the station and her favorite, a shot Brennan had snapped last year of her with her father behind the bar. His eyes didn't leave the photographs as he finally spoke.

“Why did you bring me here?” Adrian asked, and although she should've known he'd get right to it, her heart kicked against her ribs anyway.

“Because something is clearly bothering you.” Teagan lifted a hand to squelch the protest brewing on the hard edges of his mouth, continuing before he could start. “We don't have to talk about it. But for the last two weeks, you've been there when I needed you. Right now I want to return the favor.”

“You don't owe me anything, Red.”

“Good,” Teagan said, tipping her head toward the rear of her cottage and shifting her feet back into motion. “Because I've got about seven ingredients in the fridge, total, so this might turn out to be a disaster.”

Adrian jerked to a halt on the threshold of her kitchen, realization sliding over his face. “You don't have to do this.”

“It's just a meal, Adrian. Plus, you're a chef, remember? You won't steer me wrong.”

The echo of his words from when he'd cajoled her into making gnocchi seemed to ground him a little, and she stepped in close, brushing a kiss over his stubbled jaw. “I want to do this. Let me take care of you a little. Please.”

His shoulders unwound beneath her hands, and he bent down, leaning his forehead against hers with his eyes shut tight. “Yeah. Okay.”

Teagan led the rest of the way into her kitchen, praying there wasn't a thick layer of dust on the appliances from their severe lack of use. Her stomach knotted over, sending a last-ditch appeal to her brain, but she took a deep inhale and palmed the handle of the fridge with a steady grip. Something about Adrian's expression sent a deep spear of knowledge through her, one that made cooking for him a foregone conclusion. Even if what they had was temporary, she could do this.

She needed it as much as he did.

Adrian pulled out one of the two ladder-backed farmhouse chairs at her breakfast table, turning it to face the spot where she stood. Rather than jangling her nerves, his quiet presence bolstered her, her thoughts sliding into place and cementing her resolve.

“I know it's not homemade pasta, but I've always been partial to a good grilled cheese sandwich.” She bent down low to grab a skillet from one of the whitewashed cabinets, letting the motion soothe her.

“Yeah. Sounds good.” Adrian followed her movements with his eyes, his green-gray stare like the sky before a thunderstorm. She assembled the handful of necessary ingredients, pausing at the crisper drawer in the fridge for a long second. But Teagan couldn't deny that spending the last two weeks immersed in real food at the Double Shot had prompted her to look past the freezer section at Joe's, and what the hell. She'd already taken a huge risk in deciding to cook in the first place. Putting her own spin on a grilled cheese sandwich seemed pretty tame in comparison.

The rich, mellow scent of butter melting evenly over the black-bottomed skillet accompanied her movements as she pulled two slices of bread from the bag on her butcher block counter. Adrian watched her without judgment, and although her motions were probably painstakingly slow to his eyes, she managed to assemble the sandwich with decent competence.

“Poblanos, huh?” Adrian's gaze dropped to the cutting board, where she'd carefully sliced the mild chili pepper that had been hiding in her crisper, and she bit her lip with a nod.

“I don't have a tomato, so, you know . . .”

“So you stepped outside the box,” he finished.

Teagan slipped a smile over her lips. “Maybe.”

“Nice.”

She placed the sandwich in the skillet, taking in the volume of the
hiss
and adjusting the flame on the burner accordingly. When both sides had turned golden-brown, just firm to the touch, she nudged the sandwich to a plate and brought it over to the table.

Adrian looked up at her, his eyes going dark. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” Her cheeks heated as she sat down across from him, but her built-in moxie refused to let her pull up her gaze. Adrian turned his attention to the plate, the silence between them surprisingly comfortable as he ate. The tension threading his shoulders into a tight knot around his neck eased with each bite, smoothing the muscles beneath his black Harley-Davidson T-shirt into long, strong lines. The perpetual stubble shadowing his face outlined the angle of his jaw with sexy precision, the obvious unease he'd carried into the room with him turning into something calmer, but no less intense as he finished the meal she'd prepared.

Holy hell, Teagan wanted everything about him.

“I'm glad you ate.” She forced herself to pick up the now-empty plate, but Adrian reached out, stopping her before she could take a step toward the sink.

“Lonnie sent someone to the bar tonight.”

“What?” Teagan dropped the plate back to the pine tabletop with a graceless clunk, fear catapulting through her veins. “Oh my God, we have to tell Brennan. He and Jesse—”

“I told Jesse before we left, and he called your father to make sure he was safe. But it doesn't matter. The guy didn't come in to start any trouble. Not tonight, anyway.”

Anger tangled with the fear in Teagan's belly, pushing hard at her seams. “I don't understand. Why would Lonnie send someone, then?”

“For me.”

Oh God.
“But Lonnie doesn't know who you are.”

Adrian exhaled, his jaw tightening as if his words were strung with shards of glass. “He does now. And my parole officer threatened Carly. It's not going to take much for Big Ed to put two and two together if any of this goes south.”

“It won't,” Teagan said, the promise welling all the way up from her toes. “We're going to pay Lonnie back the fifteen thousand and make him go away, just like you said. I'm not going to let that knuckle-dragging bag of filth touch my father, and I'm sure as hell not going to let him touch you, either.”

Adrian hesitated. “You don't know what you're up against, Red. If you don't come up with that money—”

“No.” She leaned forward, her fingers impulsive on Adrian's mouth. “I will come up with the money. I said I would take care of this, and I meant it. I don't care what it takes.”

For a second, Adrian moved nothing but his eyes, and oh God, they were so full of churning emotions that Teagan felt more of his stare than she saw. But then he reached up, clasping his strong, calloused hand around her fingers and said, “Did you just
shush
me so you could say your piece?”

Powerless against the instinctive, unbidden smile springing to her lips, she simply nodded. “I guess I did.”

“Mmm.” Adrian pulled her in close, surrounding her with the spicy, forbidden scent of cinnamon. “I suppose I had that coming.”

“I know what's on the line for you, Adrian.” Her chest constricted over all the emotions flying around her rib cage, but she forced herself to give them a voice. Money or no money, he could still lose everything by staying to help her at the Double Shot, especially if Lonnie knew he was on parole. “I meant what I said about paying Lonnie back. But if you need to leave now, I understand.”

Every muscle in his body went rigid under her hands, and he pulled back to look at her. “I can't . . . I mean, I don't . . .” Adrian broke off with a low oath, and Teagan parked herself in the chair across from him.

“It's okay,” she said, although she'd never felt further from the word in her life. “I can take care of the restaurant.”

“It's not about the restaurant.” Adrian looked down at the plate in front of him, pulling in a breath before returning his gaze to her face. “Five years ago, I lost everything I had on an impulsive mistake. I can't do that again.”

Teagan's head snapped up. “When you went to jail.”

He nodded, his voice sinking to match the quiet of her cozy kitchen. “It started before that, but yes. About a year after I finished culinary school, my
nonna
had a stroke. One minute, we were standing in the kitchen making amaretti, the next, she'd collapsed in front of the oven.”

The memory of her father getting dizzy behind the bar only a few weeks ago echoed through Teagan's mind, and it tore at her heart to think of Adrian going through something so much worse. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered.

“I am, too,” he said, raw honesty filling the words. “She was conscious when I called nine-one-one, but kind of altered. She just kept saying I'd find where I belonged, and that I needed to live my life, really
live
it, with no regrets. I think she knew something was really wrong, and I didn't want her to get worked up, so I swore to her that I would.”

“I'm sure she felt comforted that you were there with her, Adrian.”

His stare glittered, darkening under the soft kitchen light cutting through the night shadows. “By the time the paramedics got there, she'd lost consciousness. She never woke up after that, and she died twenty minutes later. Best I can tell, that promise was the last thing she ever heard.”

Tears shot to Teagan's eyes, and even though she fought them with every tool in the shed, she knew it was a losing battle.

Adrian drew a rough inhale, but continued, as if the story had been shaken up and uncorked and needed a place to go. “After that, I threw myself into work. The kitchen was where I belonged, and I'd sworn to my
nonna
that I'd be there a hundred percent, with no regrets. Carly and I had been close in culinary school, and she got a gig as a sous-chef at this place in the city. The owner brought me on as a line cook, mostly for grunt work, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be around the food. I wanted to be where I belonged.”

“But something happened.” Teagan's reply was a statement, and Adrian confirmed the words with a tight nod.

“Working in a professional kitchen, especially one in a cutthroat city like New York, doesn't bring a whole lot of sanity. The work's exhausting, the schedule's worse, and days off are about as foreign as little green men. Carly was married to her first husband by then, and it had only been a few months since my
nonna
had passed. I was cool being in the kitchen, but in the odd hours I wasn't . . .”

“You were lonely,” Teagan finished, knowing all too well how those odd hours felt. How many nights had she curled up after finishing a tour at the station or a shift at the Double Shot, pretending the ache in her chest was heartburn and not heartache?

“Yeah.” Adrian shifted, his chair scraping against the hardwood floor. “I started seeing another line cook, and for a while, everything was great. Carly got promoted and made me her sous-chef, and even though I fell for Becca pretty fast, I thought I'd found someone who really got me outside of the kitchen. It was impulsive, but I loved her. For that little scrap of time, I thought everything was great.”

“You thought,” Teagan repeated, her heart starting to patter with foreboding.

“Becca was married.”

Teagan jerked back in shock, her shoulders clapping against the wooden backrest of her chair. “Married?”

“To a cop,” Adrian added, tugging a hand through his hair. “She told me they were separated and getting divorced, but she conveniently forgot to tell
him
that. He found out we'd been having an affair, and they had a huge argument.”

Teagan could barely eke out a nod over the surprise thrumming through her, but he continued to pour the story out.

“Becca came to the restaurant, shaken and crying. She said her husband had hit her, and I just snapped. I tore out of the restaurant in the middle of a shift without thinking, and I didn't stop until I'd found the guy and beaten the hell out of him.”

“It sounds like he deserved it,” Teagan managed, but Adrian cut the sentiment short.

“He might've, if he'd actually laid a finger on her.”

Anger bloomed, fresh and hot in Teagan's veins. “She
lied
to you?”

“Of course, I didn't find out until after I'd already been peeled off her husband by three very pissed-off cops, one of whom just happened to be all buddy-buddy with the guy and all of whom decided my shoulder would look nicer outside the socket than in.”

“Oh God, your scar tissue.” She'd assumed his previous injury had been accidental. But now the whole thing made perfect sense.

Perfect, heartbreaking, horrible sense.

Adrian nodded. “Becca changed her story to save face with her husband, tried to make it look like I was unhinged and just attacked the guy, and with the other cops' statements, the DA bought it without a second thought. Becca and her husband reconciled, and they both testified that I'd assaulted him without provocation.”