Before he knew it couldn’t come soon enough. Put on leave after his recent brush with death and the brass at the Chicago Fire Department, Beck was itching to return to firehouse duty. Sitting around all day making an ass-shaped dent in his sofa was killing him slowly and, but for the fact he was pulling extra shifts at his family’s bar, Dempsey’s on Damen, he’d probably lose his mind. Along with the love of his foster siblings—three guys, one gal—who held no truck with his moodiness over the last month.
At least he was alive, for Christ’s sake. And so was the poor kid he’d managed to haul free before the roof of that South Side crack house caved in Old Testament style. So maybe he’d disobeyed his lieutenant’s orders—Beck’s MO had always been of the act-now-beg-forgiveness-later variety. But where usually the head honchos liked how the heroics looked for the papers, this time it had landed him in deep shit.
Now, with at least another month until his disciplinary hearing—because God forbid anyone at HQ make a decision over the holidays—Beck had plenty of time on his hands to brood and shine up a new rash of apologies.
“Hey, amigo,” Beck heard behind him. One of the red-suited troublemakers, a downtown professional type. With Puerto Rican skin darker than most of the pasty-faced Chicago Irish set who propped up the bar at Dempsey’s, Beck supposed he might look like someone’s amigo, but he sure as hell didn’t appreciate this stranger bandying the word about. Red Suit leaned forward and, in his eagerness for a drink, blindly elbowed a cute blonde out of the way.
So, not looking to get laid, then.
“Careful, now,” Beck said.
“What’s that, amigo?”
F’real, dude? “I said you need to be careful.” Beck enunciated each word, then turned to the blonde. “You okay?”
“Fine, thanks.” She shot a hostile look at Red Suit, who chose that moment to bare his teeth in an approximation of a grin that went thoroughly unreturned. Nice.
Beck directed his attention back to the loser. “What’ll it be?”
“Chivas, neat, twice over.” Red Suit glanced over his shoulder to where his rowdy friends stood, making a lot of noise. A spilled beer on a woman’s dress earlier had been the first hint these guys were trouble. Two more rounds until they were cut off, Beck estimated. “A bottle of Bud and a Goose Island. Whatever the holiday ale crap is.”
“Sure,” Beck said. “How about I add it to your tab and bring it along?” Red Suit blinked his acceptance, adjusted his padding, and loped off.
“Hey, Rivera, how’s life sitting around eating bonbons all day?”
Beck slowed while pouring the Chivas, then rearranged his expression and his bones to neutral for Frank Gilligan, a CPD detective with a mouth as big as his ego. He happened to be a friend, but more often a pain in Beck’s ass.
“Detective, the moment I met you I knew we’d get along.”
Gilligan smiled that crugly grin, the one he gifted drug dealers before he gifted them his fists in a pretty red bow. “I’m touched, Rivera. Really.”
“Yeah, because cops and firefighters have so much in common.” Beck worked the pause for a beat. “They both want to be firefighters.”
An oldie but a goodie, it pulled a guffaw from Gilligan, who enjoyed the semiserious rivalry between the city’s first responders. But the detective’s words had pinched a nerve all the same. Beck would be hard-pressed to think of a worse time to be sidelined than the holidays. Burst pipes, electrical fires, Christmas tree combustions, and hot girls in skimpy Santa outfits usually kept the team at Engine 6 busy, a state of affairs he was not alone in enjoying. Since their foster parents and brother, Logan, had died, the rest of the family preferred camping out at the firehouse over the holidays. Anything to feel useful and honor their loved ones’ memories.
Hard to feel useful kickin’ back on the sofa. Christ on a crutch, he wanted to hit something.
Raucous shouts whooped from the corner followed by a distinctly female complaint of “Hey, watch it, dickhead.” Beck sent up a brief acknowledgment to the Big Guy. Ask and you shall receive. In seconds, he was out from behind the bar and halfway toward the corner pocket of Santas.
“Beck,” Luke called after him in a voice edged with warning. Beck raised a hand to say he had this. Damn it, he needed this.
“Want help, Smokeater?” asked Gilligan.
Beck threw a smirk over his shoulder. “Watch and learn, Mr. Policeman.” As the saying went, God created firefighters so cops could have heroes, too.
His fists balled of their own volition, and Beck could almost feel the tape wrapped taut over his knuckles. Three-time winner of the Battle of the Badges, the charity boxing match between fire and police, he was as at home wearing gloves as not. But there was something eminently more satisfying about delivering a pounding bare-knuckled. Definitely more primal.
“Boys, we can do this the hard way or the easy way.”
Red Suit turned, wearing the gaze of a man not quite so wasted that Beck would have reservations about kicking ass.
Cue elfish smile. Hello, holiday nuclear.
“But I’ll warn you, amigo,” Beck said. “The hard way is my favorite.”
“It’s like the Justice League of hot bartenders.”