“I’m just headed out to relax with some co-workers.” The Dempseys own a bar, still somehow managing to run it while they work at CFD. “No more dating for a while.”
“You’re going to let one bad experience—”
“I was stood up.”
“—put you off? Have you called this other woman you met?”
“That’s not going to work out.”
“Gave you a fake number?”
“Something like that.”
She folds her arms. “Chicago women are usually nicer than New York chicks. More friendly. In fact there’s this really nice girl in my office—”
“Could we do this later? Or not at all?” I open the front door, then step back to kiss Chiara on the forehead. “I appreciate everything you do for me, sis. When I’m ready to get back out there I’ll let you know.”
She gives me that steely-sweet smile I know translates to “this isn’t finished.” “Enjoy the night and say hi to that hottie, Gage Simpson.”
“Speaking of—”
“Hotties?”
I scowl. “Gay guys. We have a new one at the firehouse. Probie started a couple of days ago.” Gage, who has all the gossip, mentioned that Abby and Torres were buddies.
“Well, if CFD isn’t a hotbed of diversity and change. Be nice to him, okay?”
“I’m nice to everyone.”
Dempseys’ Bar in Wicker Park is probably the nicest firefighter-owned drinking establishment I’ve ever walked into. Most service-run bars are dives with little concession to the public outside of the primary audience: firefighters and cops. This one has a different feel to it, friendlier. The beers are more expensive, too, though still cheaper than New York prices.
Chiara claims that half the clientele, men, women, and non-binary, are here for Gage Simpson. The guy is happily married with a couple of kids but it doesn’t stop him from flirting his ass off behind the bar. Tonight, though, no sign of my shift mate; instead I’m greeted with a different cock-eyed grin and a “Fuck, no!” when I push open the heavy oak door.
I take a seat at the bar and sniff my disapproval as the barman throws down a beer mat.
“Rossi, I can’t believe my fuckin’ eyes.” My A-shift counterpart, Lieutenant Luke Almeida, starts the Sam Adams pour from the tap.
“Had to get away from the old ball and chain.”
“Your sister’s a saint and you know it.”
“I do.”
Luke puts down the full pint glass and an elbow on the counter. “Heard your date didn’t pan out.”
“Et tu, Almeida?” We didn’t get a chance to talk it out at the firehouse after Abby’s puke-a-thon sidetracked the shift change. “She’s supposed to be a friend of your wife’s. Any word?”
“Kinsey insists she’s more a friend of a friend, and the latest is that she’s back with her ex. You got caught in the crossfire of rekindled love, friend.”
I shudder, and Luke laughs. “Dodged a bullet, then.”
“Yes, you did. Don’t worry, Kinsey’s drawing up a list of alternates.”
“Why does every woman hate to see a person alone?”
Luke grins. “They just want to put the world to rights, one heart at a time. How’s your girl?”
“Lena is fine. An insolent monkey, but fine.”
We chat some more about families. Luke has two kids, a boy and girl, and is trying for another, the outcome of which people are running a book on at the firehouse. Alongside that, the ever-expanding Dempsey clan gives him plenty of reasons to grumble and rejoice. He was the first person I clicked with at Engine 6 and was man enough to never feel threatened by the guy who got his wings in a different city. Firefighters are an insular bunch and it’s hard to feel part of it if you come from outside.
Someone appears at my elbow, the new guy, Jude Torres. A premonition slithers across my skin, because if Torres is here …
Don’t look.
“Lieutenant,” he says with a grin.
“Torres. Didn’t take you long to find your way here.”
He chuckles. “I was told it was a required stop on the journey.”
“Yeah, gotta swear fealty to the kings.” I raise an eyebrow at Luke, who tells me where I can stick my kings comment. Rude. The Dempseys are Chicago firefighting royalty, and I like to piss off Luke and his foster sibs about how all that kissing of the ring must get old.
“Can I buy you a drink, Lieutenant?”
“I’m good, but thanks for the offer.”
Having paid sufficient obeisance to the firehouse leadership, Torres grins, grabs his beers—three of them—and heads off to wherever the fuck I am not looking. But then I make the cardinal mistake of checking out the reflection in the mirror behind Luke and lo and behold, there she is. No sexy as fuck dress this time, thank God, but her hair is down like that first night we met, a glorious auburn waterfall. I grip my glass so I have something cold and slippery to replace the hot and hard I know I shouldn’t be feeling.
“What’s up?” Luke frowns at me.
I sniff, take a drag of my beer, and shrug. Perfectly nonchalant. I’m pretty proud.
Luke isn’t buying it. “You got something against my candidate?”
“Torres? Nah, he’s fine. Another chatterbox like your little one.” I mean Gage, the youngest Dempsey. “Fits right in.”
“All the newbies are here tonight. Torres and some kid from over at 70 and Sullivan’s girl. Wyatt said they were thick as thieves at the Quinn.” Wyatt Fox is Luke’s older brother, now a captain and an instructor at the academy. “What do you make of her?”
“Abby?” Fuck. All the new recruits go by their last name, so that sounds far too intimate. “Pretty nervous for her first day. She evened out, though.”
I’ve never seen someone throw themselves into drills with such gusto. So she screwed up her knot because she was nervous. Still, I had to admire her gumption at trying to finagle her way back on the truck after I expressly told her to remain behind. She’s probably cursing out the asshole LT to her friends this minute after spending the rest of the shift with a mop in her hand.
Better she thinks I’m a dick instead of about my dick.
“Heard her old man made waves at the academy,” Luke says. “Tried to get her failed out.”
I wonder if that’s true. It sounds like the kind of shit-stirring people spread to make trouble. Maybe Abby Sullivan herself, to establish she’s not a fox in the Engine 6 henhouse. The last thing I need is to get in between her and her father. It’s bad enough her sweet mouth is paying rent in my head.
“Her old man is probably worried,” I say. “I would be as well if it was my kid.”
Luke nods. No one knows better than him the pain of losing a family member in the line of duty. Fourteen years ago, his father and foster brother died in a high-rise fire. Sean Dempsey was a legend and the loss was felt deeply throughout the department, the house, and the family. I know it, too, from my time in New York. I enlisted long after 9/11, but the cloud of emptiness still hovered for years, and we’d had our share of loss since.
“But we have to let the kids find their way,” Luke says, all wise and shit. “Took me a while to get there. Hell, I didn’t want Alex or Gage signing up, and they let me hear their thoughts, that’s for sure. Gotta move with the times. So Old Man Sullivan can huff and puff all he wants. If his girl was good enough to get through the academy and she can put up with the shit thrown at her at the firehouse where her mother worked and died, then she deserves her place on our crew.”