All Tied Up (The Boston Five Series #4)

by Poppy J. Anderson

  She wanted to throttle him, but instead, she said with great deliberation, “You’re a policeman, Dad. Don’t tell me my job is dangerous!”

  He studied her for an instant and then took a deep breath. “Jordan, if Brad were here, he—”

  “Leave Brad out of this.” Her voice had probably never sounded this cutting before. “That isn’t fair, and you know it!”

  “Do you really want your mother to go through that again?”

  Jordan gasped for breath as her eyes wandered to her mom, who suddenly looked as if she wanted to cry. Logan stared at his plate, subdued and silent.

  The thought of Brad felt like a chokehold on her throat. She knew she would rant and cry like a baby if she continued to fight with her dad now. His arguments might be invalid, his resistance might serve to validate her decision to attend the academy, but when her father mentioned Brad, all she wanted to do was barricade herself in her apartment and pull the covers over her head.

  Apparently, he knew just as well as she did which buttons to press.

  She rose. “Leave Brad out of this, Dad,” she repeated hoarsely. “At least try to play fair. I’m leaving.”

  “Honey,” her mom pleaded unhappily, “please stay and let’s talk about this.”

  She shook her head roughly. “So you can attack me three on one? Or are you just waiting for Luke, so he can put me through the mill, too?”

  Her mother flinched and wrinkled her nose. “That’s not fair either, Jordan.”

  “Maybe it isn’t,” she conceded with a shrug, pushing her chair under the table. “I’m still leaving. And just for your information: My first shifts on the job were unbelievably great. Just a few days ago, my lieutenant told me I’m going to be a really good firefighter. Not that you’re interested.”

  As her family protested loudly, she dismissed them and took her leave. Once outside, she slipped into her denim jacket and got into her car, feeling the weight of an immense disappointment on her shoulders.

  Was she demanding too much? All she wanted was for her family to stand behind her.

  The Esposito clan might be a bunch of crazy people, prone to fighting like rabid dogs and refusing to speak to each other for days when they got angry, but so far, they’d always had each other’s backs. Jordan had always backed her brothers in whatever they chose to do, and realizing now that she was on her own when it came to her chosen profession hurt like hell.

  She couldn’t forgive her dad for mentioning Brad and thinking that would get her to change her mind.

  Behind the steering wheel of her compact car, Jordan headed for Charlestown, where she’d been living in a cozy old apartment for a few months now, and tried to stop thinking about the aborted family dinner. Instead, she wanted to focus on her next shift, which started early the next morning.

  As she waited for a light to turn green at an intersection, she noticed a rustic, authentic-looking pub. When she read the neon-green name and saw some laughing patrons leave the place, she knew this was her coworkers’ favorite haunt. In the last two weeks, she’d kept hearing stories about what happened at O’Reary’s.

  Without thinking, she made a left turn, parked right in front of the bar, got out, and smashed her door shut.

  On the one hand, all she wanted to do was go home, take a hot shower, and sleep for at least eight hours, so she’d be rested and alert in the morning. But, on the other hand, the urge for distraction was strong. Stronger, indeed. She also secretly hoped to run into some of her colleagues and maybe dispel their lingering suspicions and misgivings about a female firefighter. A casual chat and a beer might help break the remaining proverbial ice, Jordan thought hopefully as she stepped through the door of the pub, which was surprisingly packed, considering it was a Sunday night.

  The room stretched out before her, a long bar on her right, opposite dozens of wooden tables and chairs, all filled with drinking, chatting, laughing people. There were more patrons on bar stools or simply standing by the bar. To her left, a doorway led to a second room, which held more tables, most of them also occupied.

  The air was filled with a mixture of Guinness and Shepherd’s Pie, and laughter drifted up from all corners.

  The homey wooden furniture, which had seen better days, together with the easygoing atmosphere made it easy for Jordan to see why her colleagues spent a lot of their free time in here. It would be difficult not to feel at home in this place.

  At first glance, she didn’t see any familiar faces, but she squeezed her way through people to get to the bar, found an empty stool, and sat on it, before slipping off her jacket and ordering a pint of Guinness. Then her gaze fell on the opposite wall, which was filled with countless photographs.

  As soon as the huge glass of beer was set down before her, she raised it to her lips and took a large sip, relishing both the creamy foam and the bitter aftertaste. She studied a framed newspaper article, which showed her lieutenant holding a soot-covered cat in his arms, a broad grin on his face.

  “There are more articles about the fire department in the other room,” a voice said right behind her.

  Jordan started and almost spilled the delicious beer down her blouse. She managed to save both beer and clothing at the last second. She set the beer on the bar before looking over her shoulder at the troublemaker.

  Strangely, she wasn’t surprised to see Ryan Fitzpatrick, standing far too close and looking far too satisfied for a man who’d paraded his birthday suit in front of Boston’s fire department.

  Jordan didn’t want to send any ambiguous signals, so she twisted her mouth and made herself sound as enthusiastic as a disillusioned physics teacher. “Oh, it’s you. I barely recognized you with your clothes on.”

  “Funny you’d mention that,” he commented cheerfully, sitting down on the stool next to her without asking whether she minded. “I recognized you immediately—even without your uniform. So it must be karma that we meet again.”

  Jordan looked straight ahead and grabbed her beer. “If our meeting is down to karma,” she said gruffly, “I must have done some really bad things in my past life.”

  The guy next to her, whose image, naked and tied to the bed, had kept creeping up on her over the last few days, put his hand over his heart in a theatrical gesture. “Oh, God, please stop sweet-talking me. If you go on like that, I’ll run to the bank first thing tomorrow morning to set up a college fund for our kids.”

  She should have told him off in no uncertain terms, but it was hard not to answer his comment with a laugh. She threw him a brief glance. “I’m very sorry,” she replied cheerfully, “but my principles prevent me from having children with a man I had to cut loose with a bolt cutter. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere for procreation.”

  He pursed his lips as if to think it over. Those lips were far too pretty for a man. And then he ran a hand through his hair, which was the color of ripe wheat, while his light-brown eyes glittered with excitement. “That’s okay, we can discuss children another time. For now, it would be sufficient to decide whether we’re going to your place or mine.”

  With a sigh, Jordan asked herself if God would punish her for wasting this delicious beer on a cold shower for the overbearing man at her side. How could anyone be this arrogant and confident, especially after he’d been helplessly chained to his own bed when she’d first met him?

  She was genuinely curious, so she turned to face him, ignoring how Ryan Fitzpatrick was far too good-looking, sitting so casually on his stool in a faded pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. “Tell me one thing: Has that kind of pick-up line ever worked on anyone? Are there really women who fall for this stuff?”

  “Counterquestion.” He nodded at her and tapped his long fingers on the dull surface of the bar. “What line does a guy have to use to get into your pants?”

  Jordan couldn’t help feeling a little flattered that a man like Ryan Fitzpatrick was showing interest in her, even though that interest was purely sexual. She already knew what he lo
oked like naked, but even if she didn’t, she would have considered him a fine specimen, sitting there with a slight leer on his face. Shame on her, but she fancied men who were tall and strong and possessed a clear-cut face, a lazy smile, and eyes that promised a lot of fun. And when she pictured his steely abs, his broad chest, and his impressive … anatomy, she had to force herself not to respond to his come-on.

  After today’s aborted family dinner, she could use a little attention and distraction, yes, but she felt it would be much smarter to call her best friend and drown her sorrows in a large tub of ice cream rather than hopping into bed with her own boss’s younger brother.

  She gave him a long look, took a long draught of her beer, and set the glass down with a determined flourish. Then she rose from her stool and said, “I’m afraid you don’t have a line in your repertoire that would allow me to forget the way we met.”

  He was unfazed—she could see that in his smiling eyes. “I could tie you to the bed this time, which would make us even,” he suggested. “None of us would need to feel left out.”

  Instead of flipping him the bird, Jordan laughed out loud. “Not in a million years! I’m going to leave now, so you can go look for the next woman to tie you up. I’m not available for any of that.”

  “Too bad,” he concluded languorously, letting his gaze roam her body. Jordan felt a pleasurable shiver as his light-brown eyes followed the lines of her curves, just like the first time, when she’d been wearing her bulky uniform.

  She raised a hand. “Just a little pro tip: don’t bring out the cuffs until the second date. Some women might get intimidated by a guy begging them to chain him to his bed.”

  Ryan Fitzpatrick made a face. She had to give it to him; he didn’t take her banter the wrong way, but remained friendly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “The beer is on you.” Jordan gave him a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “To thank me for rescuing you from your strange predicament.”

  His gaze traveled to her lips. “If you ever want to play the Good Samaritan again, come by any time. You can save me from a lot of things.” He grinned and leaned back. “I’d even do without the handcuffs for once.”

  Jordan rolled her eyes and left him there by the bar.

  On the way to her place, she couldn’t help asking herself why she hadn’t just accepted his offer. But then she chided herself—she already had enough problems, enough on her mind. It wouldn’t help to sleep with her lieutenant’s brother.

  Chapter 5

  Ryan stepped into the fire station, a building he knew like the back of his hand. He raised a hand in greeting when he spied a few guys from the rescue squad sitting next to their truck playing a round of poker. Most of them he knew from the days when his dad had been chief here. Six years ago, Joseph Fitzpatrick had lost his life on a mission that had also left Heath injured and struggling with feelings of guilt.

  In the intervening years, Ryan hadn’t dropped by as often as he had, for example, during his high school days. First, he’d been busy with his training, and now he was a detective with the Boston PD, so he just didn’t have the time. And then there was this weird feeling that washed over him every time he walked past his dad’s former office and saw his successor sitting behind the massive desk. That was probably the real reason for his less frequent visits. But he didn’t want to think about any of that now, nor of the fact that he still missed his father every single day and regretted all the pointless arguments they’d had when he was a rebellious teenager. He took a deep breath to dispel the threatening gloom and instead smiled at everyone and everything.

  He also took the inevitable teasing in stride—all the handcuff jokes and winks—and walked on into the spacious rec room.

  He saw his brother reading the paper at the large table where a few of his men sat, but he also registered Jordan Esposito, who stood in the adjacent kitchen stirring a humongous pot on the stove.

  For a brief moment, he studied the tall woman, who was obviously in charge of lunch. She wore her dark hair in a ponytail and was dressed in the typical fireman’s garb—dark gray tee, work pants with suspenders, and heavy boots.

  So far, he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to tomboys, since they weren’t his “type.” He’d always been sure that he only liked women who spent hours in the bathroom, squeezed their bodies into skin-tight dresses, and put a lot of effort into their appearance. He’d always fancied women who smiled at him with red lips, their hair coiffed and falling down their backs in soft curls, their dresses leaving little to the imagination.

  Jordan Esposito, on the other hand, wasn’t wearing any makeup, was dressed in rough work clothes, and didn’t strike him as the type who spent her time in front of the mirror trying out new looks. And yet he could hardly take his eyes off her.

  Last night at O’Reary’s, he’d noticed how casually she was dressed and how she liked to just sit at the bar and have a beer, unlike the women he normally went out with. She hadn’t bothered to dress up to go to the pub. Instead, she’d sat on her stool, studied the photos on the wall, and appeared utterly self-contained. It was obvious she felt at home in her own skin.

  As he’d studied her exceedingly pretty features and her slightly exotic face last night, a question had formed in his head. He was dying to know what it would be like to sleep with Jordan Esposito. A woman who was also a firefighter, fierce and tough … She wouldn’t be shy or reserved in bed, either, would she? In Ryan’s experience, women who spent hours prepping in front of the mirror were a little too fixated on their appearance when it came to doing the dirty. He was more than a little fed up with having to turn off the lights because his playmates refused to let him see their imagined cellulitis, and he was also fed up with them hiding under the covers because they felt their stomachs weren’t flat enough or their breasts not perky enough.

  Ryan was, quite simply, a man of twenty-nine years who loved sex and who couldn’t care less if a woman had a perfect body. In fact, he knew not a single man who would pass up a tryst simply because the woman in question was slightly flabby or had love handles. So it got on his nerves when he had to keep reassuring a sex partner that she looked perfectly fine as she was and that he really didn’t think her hips were too wide or her booty too fat. He wasn’t good at that game, and it seemed pointless.

  He preferred to state openly and clearly what he wanted and how he wanted it, before he dropped his pants. The assumption that Jordan, who seemed pretty straightforward to him, might be similar when it came to sex had brought him here today. He had set his mind on sleeping with her, and he saw it an exciting challenge.

  Before Jordan Esposito had the chance to notice him, however, the men at the large table greeted him in a show of surprise at his unannounced visit.

  He couldn’t blame them.

  “Hey, Ryan! What are you doing here?”

  “Yeah, look at you, gracing our humble abode with your glamorous presence,” Marty’s voice boomed more loudly than the rest. Marty had been working here for over twenty years, and he’d even met his wife at a backyard party Ryan’s parents had thrown. “Oh, I know: You finally saw reason and decided to do an honest job instead of playing at cops and robbers in your fancy suit and tie!”

  Ryan countered the older man’s ribbing with an exaggerated yawn. “Well, Marty, already save a kitten from a tree today?”

  “Nope,” Sam said dryly from behind his paper. “We had a naked man tied to his bed for a change. These fellas seem to crop up more and more recently.”

  “Why don’t you think of a new line, Sam?” Ryan ran a hand through his hair and leaned his hip against an old armchair as he again checked out the new recruit, who’d finally noticed his presence and was eying him suspiciously.

  “I’m rather impressed you still have the balls to leave your house,” Sam replied. “By now, half of Boston knows what you look like naked. Or have you already had all the eligible women in the metro area, so it wasn’t actually news?”

  “Ah, don�
��t be jealous,” Ryan shot back with a good-natured smile. “If you wait six months, I’m sure there’ll be enough desperate women out in the streets on New Year’s Eve for even the likes of you to score, Sam.”

  Now he flipped Ryan the bird but laughed at the same time. Sam had been divorced for seven years, and after his marriage to a real witch, he was not inclined to tie the knot ever again. It was no secret that divorce rates of firefighters were among the highest of any profession. As were those of policemen, for that matter. Right now, three of Ryan’s coworkers were enmeshed in ugly divorce battles, so he knew it wasn’t just a tired old cliché. Fortunately, he’d decided he wouldn’t get married for fifteen years, at the earliest—if at all. He was afraid to tell that to his mom, but he was positive he didn’t want to end up in a marriage with a woman who’d keep nagging him about his time-consuming job.

  Ignoring Sam’s pestering and the curious looks the others were throwing him, he turned to his brother. Heath merely lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Since when do you come to check on me?”

  Ryan shrugged dismissively. “I was in the area and wanted to say hi to my brother. Anything wrong with that?”

  Heath was a firefighter, not a cop, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t put two and two together. He turned to look at his newest recruit, who was chopping vegetables with a frown, studiously ignoring the unannounced visitor.

  Ryan’s oldest brother folded his newspaper, leaned back in his chair, and gave him a stern glance, clicking his tongue reproachfully. “Do you want the long or the short version of why I think your plan is a stupid idea?”

  “What plan?” Ryan asked innocently, burying a hand in a pocket of his suit.

  Heath, who had taken to sporting a beard, and thus looked disconcertingly like their father, scowled at him and lowered his voice so only Ryan could hear him.

  “You’re not only going to burn your own fingers but you’re also going to make my life miserable if you get on the wrong side of my new recruit … which is bound to happen sooner or later.”