Текст книги "Playing with Fire "
Автор книги: Kate Meader
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For the first time since he had become the mayor of Chicago, Eli was contemplating something he had never, ever done:
Sleeping in.
Of course, this shocking turn of events was only made possible because he had found someone worth sleeping in with. She was here. Snoring softly. Drooling a touch. The incomparable Alexandra Dempsey.
Likely sensing that he was sleep-stalking her, she turned over, blissfully naked, and snuggled all those warm, womanly curves in close.
“You’re here,” she muttered in a rusty voice, eyes still shuttered.
“I am.”
One eye crept open cautiously. “But it’s—what time is it?”
“Just before seven.”
She bolted upright, breasts in an erotic sway, hair in that rumpus he adored. “It’s happened, then.”
“What?”
“Insert your preferred apocalypse here. Because that could be the only reason why Eli Cooper is not on his laptop or phone, scheming, planning, or shouting at somebody.”
He pulled her down into his arms and kissed her. “Yes, the apocalypse has happened. And it’s called Alexandra Dempsey.”
She thumped his shoulder. Ouch. His sexy firewoman could pack a punch. “So if the city falls apart, I’m to blame?”
“Politicians always pass the buck. You know that.”
She growled and burrowed further. “Did you call the vet?”
“Yep. He slept okay, vitals are good, even had something to eat. I’ll go pick him up at nine and bring him home.” To think how close he had come to losing the one constant in his life—well, the one after the woman in his bed. Finding your heart lying outside your chest and in the form of a curvy, thrill-seeking firefighter was disturbing, to say the least.
“So, nine you say,” she murmured, carnal slyness in her tone.
“I did, you minx. Turn over.”
“That’s more like it.” When she twisted away from him, her eyes widened in surprise, reflected in the full-length mirror he had moved opposite about ten minutes ago.
“No, that’s more like it,” he murmured against the delicate shell of her ear.
“You’ve been busy,” she said on a breathy sigh. “Rearranging the furniture.”
Those moss-green eyes darkened with desire. He moved back the sheet just enough to reveal her curvaceous nakedness but still retain the heat of the blanketed cocoon. His hand ghosted over her hip, danced along her ribs, before landing where it belonged on her full, soft breast.
“You’ve accused me of lacking substance”—he molded her warm flesh—“and of being vain”—he feathered his fingers down the curve of her belly—“and of spending hours looking at my own reflection. Figure I may as well play to this image you have of me.”
She cuddled her ass against his erection, the motion undulating her body and showing her breasts to their best advantage. Smiling that cat’s grin, she recited as fact, “You are incredibly shallow.”
His answer was to splay his hand over her sex and nudge her legs apart. She shifted her thigh up and back so she was completely exposed in the mirror. Her pink, succulent flesh pulsed under his fingertips, and he stroked, his satisfaction and hers increasing apace with her wetness.
She moved her arm back to curl a hand around his neck. The motion did incredible things to her already perfect tits. Unable to resist the temptation, he stroked his cock along the inviting cleft of her ass. The insanely pleasurable friction had him panting against her neck. Would it always be zero to fuck, yeah in two seconds with this woman?
With his fingers, he parted her while she sawed against his hand, seeking the best angle to get herself fully juiced.
“Baby, I need to get a condom.” He hated to break the connection, but if he didn’t suit up soon, there was only one way this could end: skin-to-skin nirvana.
“I trust you,” she whispered.
He stilled. “What?”
She held his gaze in the mirror, steady and resolute. “I’m on the Pill and I’ve always used condoms. I want you inside me and I want to feel everything. I want it raw, Eli.”
Sweet Jesus. That she would trust him with something so precious knocked his world off its axis.
“Honey, you sure?”
“I’m clean, Eli, and I know you’d never hurt me.”
Not physically. But there were other ways to hurt. If she ever found out about the lies he’d told to make her his, they would be finished. He would be finished. Liars and cheats only prevail in politics, not in real life.
“Please, Eli. I need to feel every inch of you.”
She ground her ass to his stiff cock and shifted to give him the access he needed. Fullness ruled his chest; everything in him was brimming over. Her acceptance with her heart and her body was a priceless gift, one he didn’t deserve. But he would take it anyway because he was black-hearted and selfish to the core.
And obsessed. Don’t forget obsessed.
He slipped inside her, the slickness of her arousal easing his hot entry. He buried his worry with a deeper thrust into her soft heat, letting the welcome he found there muffle the negative. It was his first time in years without protection. It would have felt good with, but without the barrier, it leapfrogged the good and transcended the great to become frightening in its intensity.
“Eli, that’s—oh, God,” she moaned. Her hooded gaze held him prisoner in the mirror and he tore his eyes from hers for fear of revealing too much. Instead he focused on where they joined, this banter between their bodies, this safer place. His naked cock gleamed, every pumping drive picking up more of her wetness.
“Touch your clit, Alexandra,” he urged in her ear while he hooked his arm under her knee. The move forced her thighs wider and exposed her sex to their jointly riveted gaze. Seeing his dark-fleshed cock pistoning her pink, pliant heat turned him into a raging beast.
“Look, baby. Look at how you wreck me,” he husked out as her fingers fondled her clit and drew her orgasm to the surface. In the wave of her scream, he went off, lashing hot, uncontrollable jets inside her.
Branding her as his. Only his.
“Star Wars or Star Trek?”
“I sincerely doubt that will come up during the debate.”
Alex sat on Eli’s comfy sofa with her feet in his lap, the fire warming the room and her toes while another snowpocalypse raged outside. Eli had taken his first day off in five years to tend to Shadow, who lay on his doggy bed in a postsurgical, druggy daze. The poor puppy’s right paw was bandaged; his eye was covered in a pirate’s patch; and his head had stitches to match the gash where the vet had knifed through to fix the liver damage. In other words, one hot doggy mess.
“I’m easing you in,” she said. “You’re the one who has to prove yourself in the debate next week. I’m only trying to help.”
“Trying to help me mess up, more like. You’re not even going to vote for me!”
She laughed, loving that indignation in his tone. Apparently creaming her panties over everything else he did wasn’t enough, he had to have her vote as well. “Okay. Convince this undecided voter that Cooper deserves four more years. Star Wars or Star Trek?”
“There’s a Millennium Falcon, still in its original packaging, in the attic.”
“Impressive.” Said in her most awesome Darth Vader voice. “But it’s a trick question. The answer is ‘Can’t these two great universes just get along?’ Also, if you hear any noises from the attic later, ignore it. Probably squirrels.”
His phone beeped on the kitchen counter for the fiftieth time and he ignored it as he had done all morning. It made her feel special to know that the world could be falling apart around them, but Eli’s focus right now was just her and Shadow. This happy little triumvirate of her imagination.
She eyed him shrewdly over her coffee cup and took a bite of a Bavarian Kreme donut. So long, T-ball, time for the bigs. “Cubs or White Sox?”
Brow in a sexy crumple, he switched on his patented soulful look, the one that induced a choir of orgasms across Chicagoland. “Both teams are excellent representatives of the sporting traditions of this great city—”
She threw her half-eaten donut at him. It glanced off his head and hit the floor. Shadow lifted his jaw, recognized that it was a losing proposition, and laid it down again.
“Panderer.”
“I can’t pick one. I’d alienate an entire demographic.”
“It’s the Cubs, right?” No self-respecting North Sider could have kept a White Sox fandom undercover.
“I plead the Fifth.” He squinted at her outfit. “Is that my tie?”
She pulled up his U of C sweatshirt to show how she had used his blue-and-silver striped tie to keep his black silk PJ bottoms from falling down. She was hippy, but not so pear-shaped she could keep those babies on without a little belted support.
“Why, did you need it?” she asked coyly.
“I was thinking of wearing it to the debate.” His gaze shifted to a dark hunger. “C’mere, honey. I need to try on my lucky tie.”
She crawled over and into his arms. Snuggling with Eli in this world away from it all, she allowed herself the luxury of happiness. Never had another person’s embrace felt so right.
Her contented gaze arced over the room. Bright and cozy, it was filled with books and art, mementoes and trophies commemorating Eli’s storied life. On a shelf opposite, his law school graduation photo sat beside a picture of his team in the Marines. Next to that was a portrait of his parents with a ten– or eleven-year-old Eli, not long before they died. This morning, she had found the award named for Eli’s father on the kitchen counter, just thrown there, and had taken the liberty of giving it a prominent place on the shelf.
He massaged the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in her curls. Eli was rather obsessed with her hair. Handfuls of sin, he called it.
“They’d be so proud of you, Eli.”
“That I lie for a living.”
She turned in his arms, met his veiled gaze. So guarded, not like this morning as he faced her in that mirror and pounded his essence into her, body and soul.
“Not everything is a lie.” Was it?
After a taut moment, he said, “You once told me that you always knew you wanted to be a firefighter. Every time Sean came home, smelling of smoke.”
She nodded, unsure where this was going but happy to give him time to make his point. “I had no idea what he did but there was something about it. About him. He made me feel safe and I knew that his job made others feel safe. People slept better at night, people made it another day because he was there for them.”
“He was a hero to you.”
“Before and after. He was an instructor at the Quinn and when I was a kid, I used to worry that when I signed up for CFD, he’d treat me like shit. Or worse, take it easy on me. But by the time I made it there, he was gone and he never got to see me in bunker gear.” Luke said he wouldn’t have let her join if he’d lived. It crushed her to think she might never have been good enough in her father’s eyes.
“Eli, heroes don’t all wear capes or fire helmets or badges. They also wear dog tags.” Sometimes she forgot how much this man had given already, between his service to his country and the loss of his parents. “Some of them even wear suits. In fact, I’m going to tell you something I swore I would take to my grave.”
She bit down on her lip, and pushed out quickly, “I voted for you in the last election. Partly because you’re hot enough to melt butter and I’m shallow like that. Partly because you had good ideas and I wanted to see things change. But mostly because of Sean and Logan.”
Something unnameable melted the ice in those eyes, but all he said was, “Alexandra.”
Emotion reigned in her chest. “Whenever I saw you on TV talking about your parents, I recognized someone who understood what I had been through. Losing people we loved in the line of duty. I had never met you and I never expected to, but we had this terrible, beautiful thing in common.” She took his hand and placed it over her breast, trying to tell him with her hammering heartbeat what words seemed inadequate to convey. “My heart stopped beating the day they died, and my family kick-started it again. I know you’re this amazing problem solver and that for the longest time, you’ve managed alone, but if you ever need to talk about it, any of it, I’m here.”
Even when they were no longer they.
Thoughts chased each other across his face before finally settling on a pain that seared her. How had it come to this, where the idea of hurting this man made her chest ache like fire?
“You think you can save me, Alexandra?”
She rubbed her nose against his. “I know I already did.”
He merely smiled at that, the heartbreakingly sexy grin that didn’t just short-circuit her brain but also jerked her heart around her chest like a pinball. Yesterday, she had helped to bring a new life into the world. Witnessing the child’s first breath, a warm puff against the frigid winter air, had filled Alex with a thundering sense of wonder. She felt it again now, the possibilities of life and love.
Eli Cooper might not have her vote this time around, but he had something far more valuable. Her heart.
The wily, manipulative bastard.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Alex walked into the firehouse, tripping like a schoolgirl through a field of daisies. Feeling that swoop in her stomach that could mean only one thing.
She was in love.
Desperately, hopelessly, draw-hearts-in-dusty-surfaces in love. And boy, did she know how to pick ’em.
Eli Cooper was not the kind of man a girl should fall in love with. Oh, she acknowledged he was exactly the type of hunk women the world over would give their left tit for a chance to kneel at his feet. Which she had, many times. And she didn’t have to surrender any body parts.
But he was bad news for her because he could not be tamed. Put a woman who believed fiercely in the power of love at loggerheads with a man who thinks love exposes him to potential betrayal and the math was always going to be fuzzy. He might have done a smash-and-grab of her heart, but he didn’t love her, maybe never could. Yet . . . She wanted to believe that beneath that jaded exterior there existed a heart that wanted to beat again. She felt these deep pockets of sadness in him, voids she knew she could fill if he’d let her.
At the Wall of the Fallen, she darted a quick glance up and down the corridor and assured herself she was alone. With fingertips to her lips, she transferred a kiss first to the framed photo of her oldest brother, Logan, and then to Sean.
Smiling to herself, she headed to the locker room, passing a couple of the A shift on their way out. They smirked, and one of them muttered something that sounded like, “Gets around.”
“What’s that?”
They exchanged smartass glances and kept walking. Weird. In the locker room, all eyes shot to hers: Derek, Murphy, and Wy.
“Good work, Dempsey,” Murphy said with a sneer. “The union’s endorsed your boyfriend, so I guess you’ll be getting some extraspecial attention tonight. Looks like you’ll need it after that newspaper article.”
“Shut it,” Wy said to Murphy before waylaying Alex with a strong hand cupping her elbow. “With me. Now.”
“What’s wrong? What newspaper article?” She let him steer her to the shower room.
“Been tryin’ to call you.”
Her phone was . . . shit, on Eli’s nightstand. This morning, she’d gone to grab it and he’d gone to grab her and now, no phone. “My battery’s dead. What’s up?”
Was he pissed about Local 2 coming down on Eli’s side? She wasn’t even sure how she felt about it, except that it was one more stepping-stone to victory for Eli and one step closer to when she’d be no use to him. So yeah, it sucked donkey balls.
“There’s somethin’ online about you,” Wy said. “About your dating.”
“My dating?”
He grimaced. “Online gossip shit. But I just wanted to warn you because it’s not nice.”
“Show me.”
He pulled up his phone to the Red Eye site, a division of the Chicago Tribune, Sam Cochrane’s paper. Uh-oh. She froze as he tapped a few links out. “No matter what happens, we’re behind you, Alex.”
She was a visual person so she went for the pics first. So many of them, some better quality than others, but all of them weaving a sordid tapestry with one damning conclusion.
Alex Dempsey went on a lot of dates. It seemed like every instance of her talking with a guy in a bar or breaking bread with a man had been captured and collaged. Hands shaking, she swiped through photos with captions like: A cozy pizza night—what are his favorite toppings? In that one, her date was caught ogling her breasts (they were spectacular!). Another memorialized that super awesome time she’d spilled a drink on her T-shirt. If you squinted, you might see some damp nipple action, which apparently was enough to earn the provocative caption: Find ’em hot, leave ’em wet—an old firefighter maxim.
She’d seen some of them before in the wake of her brief spell as a D-list celeb last summer. Haters gonna hate and all that. She shrugged off her embarrassment. The gutter rags had forgotten that she had sat through every one of those miserable dates, and as itchy as this made her feel, it would take more than a few boob jokes to derail her.
“So what? I had to expect I’d get a few hits since I’ve been dating Eli.”
“Dating. Eli.” Said with all the portent of doom those words inspired in a Dempsey.
“Doing this publicity thing,” she amended quickly.
“Maybe you should read it.”
She readjusted her focus and scrolled back up to the top. A chill stole across her skin at the headline.
America’s Favorite Firefighter Earns Her Title
Quickly she swiped down to the text.
Look who’s been seen out on the town with a variety of suitors over the last year. A regular on the Chicago singles scene and dating websites, Firefighter Alex Dempsey plays hard and dates harder. Whether she works hard, who knows, but CFD’s 24-on/48-off schedule gives her plenty of time to meet and flirt with customers at her family’s bar, Dempsey’s on Damen. Seems she’s found the perfect way to relax—with as many men as possible. Is she offering to clean their hoses or does she reserve those talents for Mr. Mayor?
“They can’t say that. It’s—oh, God, this is terrible.” She looked up to find Wy watching her, his mouth a forbidding seal. “Everyone here has seen it, haven’t they?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t dwell on her misfires on the dating battlefield overmuch. If she did, she wouldn’t have been out there on the front lines, week in, week out. But this . . . how the hell was she supposed to get any respect in CFD if she was the focus of such tawdriness?
Wy’s phone rang and Luke’s name popped up on the screen. “Yeah, I’m with her now.” He listened, frowned, hung up. “Let’s go.” Never a wasted word with their Wy.
“Where? I have to work.”
“Luke’s found coverage for you and Kinsey wants us to meet her at M Squared. When we’re through with that fucker Cochrane, he’s gonna wish he’d never heard the name Dempsey.”
The last place Alex expected to be spending a morning was in a conference room with views overlooking the icy Chicago River at M Squared, Madison Maitland’s PR firm on North Wacker. Practically everyone she cared about was here: Luke, Wy, Kinsey, who with Madison was assessing the article on her iPad.
Everyone, that is, except the one person she needed to see most.
Alex stood at a sideboard near a trio of cut crystal decanters—this entire setup had a real Mad Men vibe—because she was too hopped up to sit down. She so needed to talk to him, but without her phone, she didn’t know his number, and the last thing she wanted was to navigate the city hall switchboard. Or ask Madison to call him. Pride, and concern about how they would react, kept her from letting her family see who she truly needed at this moment.
“Any chance we can get this started?” Luke grated. He’d hugged her when she’d come in, a wall of muscle-seething anger, and even though she knew it wasn’t directed at her, she felt responsible all the same. Here she was, at the eye of the storm yet again.
Kinsey smiled thinly at Luke. “Babe, give us a sec. We’re getting there.”
The door crashed open and all eyes shot to the new arrival. Eli.
Thank God. Alex had never wanted to see anyone so badly, had never wanted so much to run to someone and have him hold her close, but maybe this wasn’t the best time for the lovers-in-the-meadow embrace.
Eli, however, had not received the memo.
He stalked toward her, his intent apparent: flay her alive with his gaze, comfort her with his touch.
She tried to motion with her eyes, No, not in front of my family.
The prick still came.
Those strong hands made to dominate and pleasure her rose to cup her jaw. “Are you okay?”
Yes, because you’re here.
No . . . because you’re here.
“I’ve been better.”
“I tried to call you but—”
“I didn’t have my phone,” she said before he could say it was left on his nightstand. Stable door? Locked.
He rubbed his thumb along her jaw, as if craving one last connection with her skin, then dropped his hands. “I was going to say it’s in my pocket,” he murmured, “but I’m getting the impression you’d prefer I threw it in the river than give it to you here.”
In unison, they turned to the conference table. Alex knew what she’d see there, but knowing it didn’t quite prepare her for the truth bomb that was about to explode.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Luke yelled, verbalizing succinctly the views captured in the room’s surprised expressions. “Alex, are you telling me that you . . . and him?”
“Luke, babe,” said Kinsey.
“Don’t ‘Luke babe’ me,” her brother snapped at his fiancée before turning to Alex, his lips curved in a sneer. “I thought this was some publicity stunt. Are you fucking mad getting involved with him? For real?”
Eli bristled, a whirl of raw energy beside her. “Talk to her like that again, Almeida, and you and I will have words.”
Luke stood, and but for the fact the large conference table separated them, Alex knew he would have lunged at Eli. “You’ve made her a target for every shit head with a cell phone. Are we really going to pretend that this is a good thing?”
“I will protect her.”
Luke scoffed. “Right. Well, mission accomplished, Cooper, you’ve got my union’s endorsement. How long before we see the statement distancing the mayor from the woman who’s bad news for his campaign?”
“Luke,” Alex cut in, her body moving in front of Eli’s as if she could protect him. As if the most powerful man in Chicago needed protecting. Of course he didn’t. But she wanted to shield him. His skin might be as thick as the ice pack out on the lake, but sometimes it felt as though no one was in his corner.
“This isn’t the time to discuss my sex life.”
Wyatt and Kinsey winced at her choice of phrase. Wincing didn’t quite accurately describe Luke’s expression.
“Really? Because it seems like everyone else wants to talk about it. I don’t care that you’ve dated half of Chicago, but have you forgotten what he did to Kinsey? The hoops he made me jump through to get my job back last summer?”
“Luke,” Kinsey said, her hand on his arm. “It all worked out. Let’s try to focus on the problem at hand.”
“He’s the problem! Cut him out and she’s okay.”
Alex had heard quite enough. “Luke, I know that since Dad died, you’ve always felt responsible for us. You’ve made sacrifices, and the idea of me being hurt on the job or in any other way makes that muscle in your jaw”—she pointed—“yeah, that one . . . It makes it twitch like the clappers. Yes, you kicked Kevin O’Shaughnessy’s ass when he called me ‘sturdy’ in the eighth grade and yes, you wiped my tears when Jimmy Carter stood me up at junior prom—”
“Jimmy Carter stood you up at junior prom?” Eli muttered behind her.
She elbowed him sharply and absorbed his “oomph.” So not the time.
“I’ll never forget every single thing you’ve done for me, Luke. I love you, but you have to let me handle this. And you have to accept my decisions.”
With an expression dueling between fury and love—a typical Dempsey mash-up—Luke sent a piercing glare over her shoulder at Eli. “You’re choosing him.”
“Yes.”
It shocked even her to hear it said with such conviction. One word, clear and unmistakable in its intent. Luke blinked once, twice, and apparently lost the use of his legs, because he collapsed into his seat. Behind her, Eli cupped her arms, squeezed, and pulled her back against his solid chest.
Something Alex couldn’t put her finger on clouded Madison’s eyes before she cleared her throat. “Now that the pissing match is on hold, gentlemen, let’s discuss what needs to happen.”
“The Red Eye is one of Cochrane’s papers,” Alex said. “Has he been following me?” She turned to Eli and spoke with her eyes what she couldn’t say in front of her family. Was Cochrane gathering evidence against me to use in a lawsuit?
His brow darkened in understanding. “I doubt it. All those images were easy enough to gather. Facebook, Instagram, whatever. People have been snapping you forever because of your fifteen minutes last summer, so it was all out there on the Web waiting for someone to put it together—”
“And make me look like a triple-skank ho.”
“This is a shot at me.” Fury re-formed Eli’s features to a statue, his granite jaw looking like it would shatter if she touched it. “Things have been strained between Sam and me lately, so this is the standard saber rattling while he figures out how much he can push me around. It was bound to happen eventually, but he’s broken the rules of engagement and involved a civilian. Not cool.”
Not cool. From the look on Eli’s face, things were about to get very hot for Sam Cochrane.
The sun was beating in Eli’s chest where his cold, black heart should be.
Alexandra Dempsey loved him.
She hadn’t said it aloud, but the moment she placed her body between his and her brother’s, absorbing every one of Luke’s blows like bullets, he suspected.
The moment she said yes, she chose him, he knew.
This incredible woman loved him.
He wanted to touch her, hold her, take her home, get her naked, and spend all day and night adoring every inch of her. Loving her the way she deserved.
Better get someone else on board, buddy. The way she deserved was with honesty and openness, not with a manipulative charlatan who had lied to her, just to get his own way.
And that was just the tip. Every day, Eli felt his arteries clogging with despair, his veins choking up with not just plain old politicking dishonesty, but with something deeper and soul-deadening: he was more like the old man than he’d thought. Now he wanted to taint Alexandra Dempsey with her family legacy of heroism and make her as dirty as his blackened soul.
However, this grasping opportunist also knew a good thing when he saw it. A month ago, he had almost died, and now the woman who had saved him in more ways than one was defending him to her whack-job family. He would take this gift he had intercepted and run with it to the end zone, because he couldn’t very well screw himself over now, could he? Better to use all that unhealthy self-loathing and line up a more suitable target.
“I want him buried.”
“My advice,” said Madison, “is to do nothing. It’s gutter rag gossip and our response needs to be proportionate. Getting into a public feud with Sam Cochrane right now is a bad idea, especially as we have bigger problems.” She flicked a glance over the room. “It might be better to talk about this in private.”
“Is it about Alexandra?”
A reluctant “Yes.”
“Have a seat, honey.” Ignoring the hairy-eyeballed glare from Luke, he led Alexandra to the conference table and sat down beside her, his arm resting on the back of her chair. He resisted the urge to twine his fingers in her hair. “If it’s about her, then just say it.”
“Eli, I really don’t think—”
“Spit it out, Madison.”
She crossed her arms, seeming more pissed than the average Mads. “Did you threaten a CPD detective with the sack if he didn’t end a date with Firefighter Dempsey?”
“No, I did not.”
“Thank God,” Madison said.
“I threatened him with demotion to traffic cop.”
Eli was rather pleased at how the air crackled with the energy of this new information. After a couple of electrified beats, Kinsey broke the stunned silence with a laugh, then caught the eye of a fuming Madison. “Sorry, but that’s . . .” She shook her head, still smiling. “Unexpected. Nicely done, Eli.”
He returned his former assistant press secretary’s smile. He’d always liked her, and firing her for disloyalty was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. It’s not easy being king.
“Who did the good detective blab to?”
“NBC,” Madison said. “My usual contact called to get a comment.”
“I’m happy to give one.”
She shot him a look that would have had a lesser man clutching his balls. “You will shut your mouth, Eli Cooper, until we work out a plan. Now the police union will be all over your ass, and just when we thought we had this sewn up. What the hell were you thinking?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t. It happened in a fury-fueled daze. The man made disrespectful comments to someone else about Alexandra. I overheard and told him it would be necessary to curtail his date or I would be forced to curtail his career.”
“Wait one second,” Luke cut in. “Who was the cop?”
“He talks like this all the time,” Alexandra said to Kinsey. “It’s like Shakespeare and Iron Man had a love child.”
“I need a name, Alex.” Luke again.
“Michael Martinez,” Alexandra muttered. “Gage set us up. They play hockey together.”
“Right wing,” Wyatt said. “A bit slow on the breakaway.”
Luke’s brow knitted furiously. “Martinez from the Fifth District? That guy’s an asshole! What the hell were you doing on a date with him?”
“Luke,” Kinsey said. “Not really the time.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing someone was around to put this guy straight. Jesus, Alex, you really know how to pick ’em.”
Alexandra stood and placed her hands on the table. “A minute ago, Eli was the anti-Christ, but now you’re okay with him because he acted like a caveman and protected your poor, clueless sister from a guy you don’t approve of? What the fuck, Luke? Do you suddenly recognize him as one of your Cro-Mag tribe?”
“ ‘Okay with him’ might be pushin’ it, but, Alex, sometimes you need someone to reel you in.”
“Why? Because you can’t be there twenty-four-seven—”
“After what happened last summer with Cochrane and that car, yes. You never think of the consequences. Kinsey lost her job and I almost lost her!”
