Down Deep

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Gamble flipped another bar stool over, the ink on his left arm dancing with the flex and release of his ridiculously well-defined biceps. “Why not? We’ve got a little time to kill while we finish up in here, right?”

  “We do,” Kennedy said slowly, moving another stool to its proper place. They’d reached the end of the bar, where one last stool remained in front of four shots of tequila. Gamble’s eyes met hers, glinting briefly, and God, she wasn’t the only one with a story. But since she knew he wasn’t about to get all loose-lipped, and he was right about them having some time to kill while she finished closing the bar down, she figured what the hell. Her background wasn’t exactly top secret information, and it was less awkward than shooting the shit about something mundane, like the weather.

  “I guess I ended up here the way most people end up where they work. I applied for the job and got it.”

  Bypassing the shots of tequila and the last bar stool—at least, for now—Kennedy moved back to the pass-through at the other end of the bar with Gamble right behind her.

  “Did you always want to manage a bar and grill?” he asked, mirroring her movements as she began restocking clean wine glasses in the racks behind the bar.

  “Not always. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Wonder Woman.”

  He rumbled out a laugh. “Not a bad pick, but something tells me there’s not a lot of availability for a position like that.”

  Kennedy bit back the urge to tell him there had probably been an equal likelihood of her honestly working her way out of North Point as there had been of her becoming a superhero. “Exactly. And while office jobs work out great for a lot of people, they’re not really my jam, so I decided the restaurant industry was a good way to go.”

  “Yeah, I’m not a nine-to-fiver, either,” Gamble said. “Not that I don’t respect those kinds of jobs. I just wouldn’t last more than two minutes doing one.”

  Curiosity flickered in her mind, and she put it to words. “So, what did you want to be when you were a kid?”

  “Race car driver,” he said, taking the last wine glass from the tray in front of them and putting it carefully in place. “But I decided it’d be safer to run into burning buildings instead, so here I am.”

  Kennedy laughed. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “The Crooked Angel is a cool place to land a full-time gig.” Gamble followed her to the kitchen cart she’d brought from the back of the house earlier, hefting up one of the last remaining trays of glassware while she grabbed the other.

  “The owner is a decent guy, but he’s got a lot of restaurants and bars all over the U.S., so he’s not too hands-on. He made it pretty clear from the get that he wanted a manager who would be in charge of all the operations.”

  It had worked out great, actually, since that was exactly what she’d been starving for. She’d never needed help. A micromanaging, breathe-down-her-neck kind of supervisor? Even less.

  “Miles is a good boss, but I’ll admit, we don’t talk much other than through occasional calls and emails. I think the last time I actually saw him was seven, maybe eight months ago. He doesn’t even live in Remington. He sticks mostly to New York and Napa.”

  The edges of Gamble’s mouth tugged downward in the slightest suggestion of a frown. “And you’re cool with just running the place on your own like that?”

  “Of course, I’m cool with it.” Kennedy shrugged. “Working here was a huge step up from the jobs I’d had before he offered me the spot, and I knew how things would be when he hired me. Miles has never been a Big Brother type. He likes the money he makes on his investments, and I like running the place without the hassle of someone watching every move over my shoulder or the high-dollar price tag attached to owning it.”

  The fact that her boss not only paid her well enough to live in an apartment in one of the nicest parts of downtown Remington, but also to take a nice chunk out of her student loans and send her mother some money every month was a perk Kennedy kept to herself. She’d set aside money for her brother in the beginning, too, but, God, she hadn’t seen Xander face-to-face in nearly eight months now. Not that it had been for lack of effort on her part.

  A pang unfolded in her gut, growing stronger as she realized Gamble was staring at her, unmoving. “Anyway.” She lowered her tray of glassware to the counter in front of her, forcing her movements to remain steady even though she had to work for it. “I like being able to make decisions on my own and take care of everything the way I see fit, so it all works out.”

  “I get that,” Gamble replied, and didn’t that just make the Top Ten list of things she hadn’t expected him to say.

  “You do?”

  “Sure.” He lifted a massive shoulder and let it drop. “I’m an engine lieutenant for the same reason, really. I like being in control of as much as I can.”

  They fell into a comfortable rhythm of putting away the rest of the glassware, then completing a few more small tasks behind the bar. The accompanying silence might’ve felt awkward if Kennedy had been there with anyone else. But Gamble had always struck her as the sort of guy who watched and listened five times as much as he spoke, and she found herself relaxing despite her endlessly long night and her rattled nerves from tossing Hipster Dude out of the bar.

  She collected the empty trays and stacked them on the kitchen cart, nodding in thanks as Gamble helped her maneuver the thing past the swinging door leading to the back of the house.

  “I just have to grab a case of cocktail napkins from the dry storage room in the back, but once those are restocked, the rest can wait until tomorrow,” she said. In truth, she’d planned to do half a dozen other things in addition to that before heading out, but he’d stuck around when he’d certainly had no obligation to, and it was well past one a.m. now. God knew he probably wanted to be at home in bed like any normal person. She could always come back in the morning to catch up.

  “Okay.” Gamble followed her to the dry storage pantry, which was little more than a glorified walk-in closet at the back of the kitchen. Having created their inventory system from the shelves up, Kennedy knew the layout by heart, and her boots thumped softly against the dark gray kitchen tiles as she made a beeline for the cocktail napkins. There was no sense in taking the time to hit the light switch—the door was propped open, as it normally was during prep and breakdown times, and enough light filtered in from the kitchen for her to find what she was looking for. She scanned the shelves, her gaze quickly landing on the oversized boxes of cocktail napkins stacked neatly toward the back of the L-shaped space.

  “Gotcha,” she murmured, pressing up on her toes to liberate one of the cases from the shelf overhead. But Kennedy hadn’t even gotten her arms halfway through the upward reach before her shoulder muscles clamped down, locking her into place mid-move.

  “Ah, ow.” She swore through her teeth, dropping both arms and rolling her shoulders in an effort to find some relief from the shooting pain. Gamble had had the good sense to give her two strides’ worth of personal space, but now he closed half of it, eyes narrowed in concern.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” Kennedy said, and he tagged her with such a look of bullshit that she had no choice but to backtrack before he verbalized it. “My shoulders are a little sore, that’s all. It’s just been a long night.” Or year. Maybe two.

  Gamble tilted his head, his disbelief turning to a look of deeper thought. “On either side of your spine, right? Here?”

  He reached back and touched the group of muscles bracketing his massive shoulders, and damn, how had she never noticed exactly how much graceful power he seemed to have hidden beneath all that bulk?

  “Yeah. It’s no big deal, though.”

  She turned to suck it up, grab the napkins, and go, but Gamble surprised her with, “There are a couple of pressure points you can work that will relieve some of the tension. They’re not hard to find.”

  “How do you know that?” Kennedy asked. It seemed like such a strange thing to
have in his wheelhouse.

  “I get the same sort of pain every now and then, mostly if I work back-to-back shifts. Quinn showed me a few tricks when she was studying for her last paramedic certification.” He paused. “Plus, I have some training in that area, too.”

  Right. Keeping her surprise under wraps was a total no-go. “On pressure points?” It wasn’t exactly Firefighting 101, and it sure as hell wasn’t common knowledge.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t elaborate, nor did he look like anything she could say would make him do so, so she put a pin in that little tidbit, reserving it for later. “I’ll be fine. I usually just take some ibuprofen to knock the edge off the ache.”

  One dark brow went up. “Does it work?”

  “Not really,” Kennedy admitted. “But it’s better than nothing, I guess.”

  “I’ve got something that’s better than both ibuprofen and nothing.” Gamble’s gaze flicked over her shoulders, and he paused. “I’m going to have to touch you. As long as that’s okay.”

  She huffed out a laugh, thinking of Hipster Dude. “I’m not going to throw a punch at you, if that’s what you mean.”

  The reply, like a lot of things she said, had come out with no small amount of tartness attached, but he didn’t give in to her sarcasm or her smile.

  “It’s not. What I meant was, is it okay if I touch you?”

  “Oh.” An odd sensation moved through her, gone before it really registered. “I guess. Yeah, sure.”

  “Turn around.”

  Kennedy paused. She wasn’t in the habit of being bossed around; hell, she wasn’t even really in the habit of accepting help, mostly because she never needed it. But her shoulders really did hurt like a sonofabitch, and anyway, this would only take a couple of seconds. How hard could it be?

  She turned to face the shelving unit, pulling her hair over one shoulder. Gamble stepped in behind her, his hands finding the middle of her back a second later. His touch was surprisingly soft, so unlike his work-hardened body and dark stare and gruff demeanor, and Kennedy relaxed against the contact without meaning to.

  “I usually do this with a tennis ball,” he said, his fingers traveling over either side of her spine as if he were trying to read her through the cotton of her shirt. “You just put it against a wall, press your back against it to keep it from falling, then roll it around a little to get it in the right place.”

  “Sounds easy enough.” He slid his fingers higher, resting them just above her shoulder blades, and ah, her muscles squeezed in a burst of pleasure/pain.

  “The trick is finding exactly the right spot and applying enough pressure to get everything to let go,” Gamble said. His hands kept moving, seeming to take stock of everything they touched, and with each pass of his fingers, Kennedy felt the tension in her body unwind. Her frazzled nerves, her fatigue, all of it fell away, and the pure goodness left in its wake made her mouth act independently from her brain.

  “For the record, I do have a college degree.”

  “Sorry?” His voice rumbled from behind her, and she turned her chin toward her shoulder to look at him—at least, as much as she could—as she answered.

  “Before, you said”—his fingers found a spot, deep in her musculature, that made her pause for an exhale—“that you didn’t think they taught hammerlocks like that at Remington University. But I do have a degree. In business management.”

  “Ah.” He rubbed slow circles over her shoulders, his hands wide and strong on her back until they zeroed in on a bundle of muscles at the juncture of her shoulder blade and spine. He applied just enough pressure to make the last of her tension release in a rush, and Kennedy swallowed the moan drifting up from her chest.

  “Good to know,” Gamble said. He’d shifted toward her, just enough to return the half-look she’d sent over her shoulder, and enough for her to catch the scent of him on her inhale. He smelled clean—not like soap or laundry detergent, and definitely not like cologne, but of something sexy and intoxicating all the same, and, suddenly, the pantry seemed to have all the square footage of a postage stamp.

  Kennedy’s heart slammed in her rib cage, her nipples going traitorously tight beneath her bra. This was impulsive at best, and insane at worst, but right now, she didn’t care.

  Right now, she wanted him.

  She lifted her chin to look up at Gamble through the shadows. At five foot ten, she didn’t usually feel small around people, but between the seven inches he had on her in height and the wide expanse of his well-muscled chest so close behind her, he came as close to eclipsing her as anyone ever had. His hands were still on her shoulders, and although it was the only place their bodies touched, she felt the heat of him everywhere.

  “Kennedy.” The glint in his already-dangerous stare told her he wanted exactly what she did. Kennedy nodded, just the briefest signal of consent, and in less than a breath, he moved. Skimming his hands to the tops of her arms, Gamble cupped her shoulders to turn her around. His fingers pressed against her bare skin below the cap sleeves of her top, and her sex clenched with greedy want.

  But then he froze, every part of him going still except for his heart, which she felt beating swiftly against her chest. “Do you smell that?”

  She blinked, trying—and failing—to make sense of the question. “I…what?”

  He took a step back, his entire body coiling as he sent a calculating gaze over the pantry, then the kitchen beyond. “Your cook turned off all the ovens and the flat-top grill before he left, right?”

  “Of course.” Marco had never once skipped such an important step in breaking down his station. “Why?”

  Gamble paused, but only long enough to grab her hand before he said, “Because your bar is on fire.”

  3

  Of all the things Gamble had been in the mood for when he’d followed Kennedy into the dry storage pantry, fielding a goddamn fire hadn’t been one of them. But he’d have to table his dirty thoughts and raging hard-on, at least for a little while, because if they didn’t make getting the fuck out of there a priority, he and Kennedy were definitely going to be sorry.

  The Crooked Angel might not be burning down around their ears—yet—but the smoke he’d nosed out would make that inevitable if whatever was causing it went left unattended.

  As if she’d been on a five-second delay, Kennedy’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? I don’t smell—” She sucked in a breath, and yep, there it was. “Shit!”

  Gamble’s heartbeat worked quickly in his chest, but he forced himself to focus. Unlike every other fire he’d ever been in the middle of, he wasn’t booted and suited. He might have a crap-load of experience knocking down fires, but without gear and with a civilian, tempting fate wasn’t really on his agenda.

  “We need to get out of here and call nine-one-one,” he told her, leading the way toward the pantry door. The sharp bite of smoke hit him harder as they crossed the threshold into the kitchen, and he took a lightning-fast visual tour of the space. A definite haze hung in the air, gray and thick in the fluorescent light trying to slant down from overhead, and his throat tightened involuntarily.

  “Whoa,” Kennedy managed, starting to cough, and Gamble snatched an apron hanging on a nearby hook.

  “Wrap this over your nose and mouth like a scarf and crouch down low. Got it?”

  She nodded and quickly complied. But before he could say or do anything else, the smoke detectors in the kitchen began to wail full-bore. Kennedy flinched but didn’t freeze, turning toward the side of the kitchen leading away from the front of the building.

  “The back door is this way,” she half-yelled, her voice carrying over the steady shriek of the smoke detectors. Gamble didn’t have eyes on any active flames in either direction, although that didn’t thrill him the way it might anyone else. He knew from experience that the only thing more dangerous than fire you could see was fire you couldn’t. Still, with no obvious hazard keeping them from the closest exit, that was definitely the direc
tion they needed to head, so he ducked down lower and followed Kennedy deeper into the kitchen.

  A dozen more steps had him pulling up short, though. The smoke had changed in both intensity and color, turning just thick enough to make the hair on the back of Gamble’s neck stand at attention and his gut to crank down in warning.

  “Kennedy, wait,” he barked, just as they reached the heavy, industrial door marked Deliveries Only, Do Not Block.

  Too late.

  She shoved the door open, immediately jerking her hand back from the door handle with a sharp cry. But the door swung wide to reveal a wall of flames in the alley, orange and angry and close enough to make Gamble’s heart slam urgently in his chest. Kennedy sucked in a startled gasp at the sight of the rapidly burning fire and stumbled back as a wall of smoke and heat surged toward them. Before his neurons had finished firing off the command to his body to move, Gamble hooked an arm around her waist, spinning her in a rough one-eighty toward the kitchen, then making sure the door fell shut behind them with a bang. His conscience warred with his survival instincts over whether or not to stop to see if she was alright—Christ knew she had to have burned her hand on the metal door handle, and she was coughing loudly enough for him to clearly hear her over the blare of the fire alarm. But whatever was burning back there was doing it insanely fucking fast, and now that he knew which way not to go, he needed another escape route. Now.

  He pulled up the mental schematic of the bar that he’d memorized after his second visit, ages ago. “Side door by the game room,” he told Kennedy. “Go.”

  She gave up a broken nod, but turned to quickly retrace her steps back through the kitchen. The smoke made his eyes burn along with his lungs as he followed close behind, scanning their surroundings and their exit path for any hidden danger or signs of more fire, but thankfully, the rest of the kitchen looked clear. Kennedy paused, only long enough to shoot a glance at him over her shoulder when she reached the swinging door leading to the dining room, and he shifted to look through the glass and palm the wood to test its temperature.