Текст книги "Playing with Fire "
Автор книги: Kate Meader
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
Alexandra blanched, and the room followed suit with the awkwardness of Luke’s declaration. For the first time, Eli saw how hard she had it. He’d thought it was limited to institutional misogyny, but she was getting it from every angle. The press, her coworkers, and even the brother who was like a father figure to her. He also saw why she had refused to confide in her family about the renewed threat of Cochrane. The threat Eli had invented to manipulate her into his campaign—and his bed.
She loved them all so much. The thought of putting them through any pain, setting a test of their loyalty to her, which he knew they would pass with flying colors, killed her. She was protecting everyone by bottling it up.
“I think we’re getting off topic here,” Eli said, reaching for Alexandra’s hand. “I’ll deal with any blowback about Martinez from CPD in due course.”
Luke’s eyes gravitated to Alexandra, who had retaken her seat and refused to meet her brother’s gaze. Evidently hurt by his sister’s reaction, he turned to Eli, his face as hard as the table between them. “If you had a chance to do it over with Martinez, would you play it differently?”
“No.”
Alexandra cursed under her breath.
Eli and Luke squared off, a silent conversation running between them.
You might not like me, Luke, but I am her choice. You need to respect that. Respect her.
You’re a fucking dick, Cooper.
I’ll stipulate to that, but it doesn’t change what’s happening here.
If you hurt her in any way . . .
Understood. Good talk.
“Now,” Eli said, turning back to Madison. Do nothing? No way in hell was he going to let this attack on his woman go unanswered. “I have an idea on how to hit Sam Cochrane where he’ll hurt.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As a girl, Alex had spent a lot of time sitting outside the principal’s office at St. Jude’s for any number of infractions, smoking in the bathrooms and setting off minor explosive devices, to name a few. But she’d never felt so full of dread as she did right this minute, waiting in the reception area of the penthouse office suite of the tallest building in Chicago (forget Willis, it would always be the Sears Tower to her).
That Luke harbored ill will over how close he came to losing Kinsey had sliced through her. But she didn’t blame him. Her poor choices had set in motion a chain of events that almost put the kibosh on his happy-ever-after. All this time she had been blaming Sam Cochrane, Eli, anyone but the real culprit—Alex Dempsey and her blazing temper.
She refused to be the one who took from everyone else any longer. Those self-help books and lifestyle sites were always saying that a woman should be the heroine of her own life. Well, screw that. She was going to be the hero, even if it meant doing the one thing she thought she would never be forced to do.
“Mr. Cochrane will see you now, Miss Dempsey,” the smooth assistant said before she stood and threw open the door, presenting Alex like a magician’s trick.
Sam Cochrane raised the gray-green eyes he had in common with his daughter, Darcy. His desk was huge, the largest she had ever seen. Ten megamoguls could have sat behind it, yet Cochrane still managed to infuse the space with his outsize presence. Alex stepped into the room, feeling like she was dragging through a waterlogged cornfield.
“Have a seat, Miss Dempsey. This is unexpected, to say the least.” He gestured at the chair before her, and she sat and sank into the butt-sucking leather, guaranteeing she was lower than him. Classic mogul move.
“Have you come for an apology?”
“I have, but not to get one. To give one.”
That startled him. Humility from a Dempsey, his curious expression said.
“I never apologized for what I did to your car last summer. I was provoked, but it was inexcusable.” She almost choked on the words, but they needed to be said.
A few moments ticked over before he spoke. “You know, Miss Dempsey, your father was a friend of mine. A business partner, but a friend first. We used to box together at that CFD gym where your brother trains.”
Beck trained at a dingy rat hole on the south side—it was where he’d met Darcy’s brother, Jack, and later, Darcy. The start of their teenage love affair. Alex hadn’t given much thought to why the son of a billionaire would be punching leather at that kind of place, but if it held some sort of nostalgia for Cochrane, then she guessed it made a weird sort of sense.
“You and Sean fell out. Why?”
He looked at her sharply, as if no one had dared have the temerity to ask that question. “He stole something from me.” He tapped the table with his knuckles. “But never mind that. I’m curious about why you’re here subjugating yourself after so many months. It’s not as if I can change anything about the story Red Eye ran on you yesterday. My staff has complete editorial independence, and then there’s that whole First Amendment thing.”
“I think you could change it if you wanted to. Run another story, print a retraction, but I don’t care about that. I don’t care what you say because my family will stand by me. They care about me, Mr. Cochrane.” Not like yours, she didn’t need to add.
He smiled thinly, understanding her implication. She could handle the reporters’ barbs, and though she hated that her dating was now a part of the public record, she would weather it with her family by her side. With Eli.
She loved him, but the jury was still out on how he felt about her. He probably liked her, maybe cared a little. But the big L? And even if his feelings could match the depth of hers for him, could the slick politician and the sharp-tongued firefighter make this work?
In an uncanny spot of mind reading, Sam Cochrane said, “You’ll just drag him down, Miss Dempsey. He could go all the way, but not with a woman like you at his side. And even if you thought it would work, do you really think the mayor of Chicago, a man who needs a twenty-four-hour security detail, will let you keep your dangerous job?”
His well-aimed barb struck home. In a million ways, she was not the woman for Eli Cooper, but damned if she’d let Sam Cochrane think he’d won any points here.
“Don’t worry about Eli and me. What you should worry about is that Eli won’t be your puppet any longer, so you’ve decided to try and punish him through me. Well, do your worst, Mr. Cochrane. Sue me, take me for everything I have. It won’t stop what’s important; the people who are in my life will still be in my life. Loving me, faults and all.”
“I don’t doubt it, Miss Dempsey. But I must take issue with one thing you just said.” His eyebrows rose in consternation and, Alex was startled to see, surprise.
“Sue you?”
Eli heard her before he saw her, but then that was so often the case with Alexandra. She was a potent presence in his life before the rest of his mangled senses could catch up.
“I don’t need an appointment,” she snapped at Kelly before the door was thrown open and she crashed into his office.
“What’s happened?” If one of the papers had said something else . . .
Those green eyes flashed her temper. “I talked to Cochrane.”
His heart sank like a bowling ball in his gut. Of course. Did he really think his sins wouldn’t come back to wallop him upside the head? The only question now was which sin Cochrane had chosen to divulge: the sin of the father or the sin of the son.
He stood and came around the other side of the desk. “Have a seat.”
“I’m through following orders from you. I was about to say I can’t believe you did it, but actually I can. Because it’s precisely the kind of behavior I’d expect from you.” Hurt clouded those green pools. “Why, Eli? Why did you pretend he was suing me? So you could use me for your stupid campaign? Milk me for all I was worth?”
Relief flooded his chest. This wasn’t good, but it was the lesser of two evils, for sure. How could he convince her that this scheme was seeded in a moment of madness? A nanosecond of fear that his chance to be with her would vanish into the ether if he didn’t do something fast? He cycled through a number of possibilities.
I’d already saved you from being sued. It was merely . . . a fudging of the timelines.
Too Clintonesque.
You owed me, so I made up that story before you bounced me out of the room.
Too victim blaming.
I wanted . . .
He wanted.
“I wanted you.”
She stared as if he were speaking another language. And in a way, the words were perfect nonsense because of their absolute simplicity. Plainspoken and so not Eli Cooper.
“I wanted to date you, Alexandra,” he clarified.
Those emerald eyes flew wild. “You wanted me for your campaign, you mean, and you knew I wouldn’t cooperate, so you used lies and blackmail.”
“No, Alexandra, listen to me. I wanted you. Just you. In a selfish, ruinous, soul-destroying way. From the minute I saw you in Smith & Jones seven months ago, I’ve wanted you with a ferocity I can’t even fathom. I saw a chance to bring you into my orbit and I took it.”
“Bullshit! If you wanted me, why didn’t you just ask me out on a date? Like a normal fucking person?”
He scoffed. “Are you kidding? You would have shot me out of the water.”
“You don’t know that!”
Anger flared at her refusal to take some responsibility here. “I know this. I used a trick, but you wanted the trick. It gave you the perfect psychological out. You could pretend you were spending time with me under duress, when really it was what you wanted all along. We needed the catalyst to start this thing between us. Convincing you was so easy. You caved—”
“Because I thought my family was under threat! I thought they’d be ruined.”
He shook his head. “You could have found a way, talked to Darcy, rallied the clan, but you didn’t. I held out my hand and invited you to climb aboard to pleasure and hell, and honey, you grabbed at it. You liked how I made you feel just as I liked how you made me feel. So I lied then, but I’m being honest now. How about being honest with yourself, Alexandra, and admit that you wanted me, too?”
So he’d bamboozled her and now he was talking about honesty. Demanding it from her. Twisted, maybe, but there was logic in what he was saying.
Unfortunately, the logic was going unappreciated. “You tricked me, you bastard.”
“Alexandra, asking you out on a date would have resulted in the slapdown of the century, and you know it. So I thought I’d encourage you to come on board by reminding you of all I’d done to save your ass, professionally and financially, and when you still weren’t convinced, I—”
“Lied?”
“Panicked.”
This admission of vulnerability didn’t have quite the impact he hoped for. She started to pace, hands on hips, fire in every step. “Let me get this straight, Counselor Jerkface. You wanted to date me, so you asked me to fake date you for a publicity stunt, because you didn’t think I’d say yes to a genuine request for a date. And your means of persuasion was to threaten to sue me?”
“Protect you from a threatened lawsuit.”
“Which you invented.” An uncanny awareness came over her face. “Have we . . . have we actually been dating this entire time? For real?”
“Would that bother you?”
“Yes! Usually both parties are in on the dating decision, Eli.”
“You’ve probably figured out by now that I usually get my way. Sometimes, it requires me to detour to X, Y, and Z on my travels from A to B, but the end point is inevitable. You weren’t going to make it easy, it’s just not in you. There’s never been a moment I haven’t wanted you. I thought as mayor I couldn’t date you but I was wrong, and if I’d done my research I’d have figured out that I could have had you sooner.”
That set her off again. “Could have had me? Your arrogance, Cooper. You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? That smooth patter, the legalese, the assurance that you’re always right, and hey, no one really got hurt because there was no actual threat. I’m hearing everything but the one thing I need.” She marched to the door, muttering what sounded like “pus for brains,” “scrotum cheese,” and other FCC-fineable nuggets.
Shit. Full-fledged panic flapped in his chest. In two long strides, he had sandwiched her against the door, his chest against her back, his mouth in her hair. “Honey, please.”
Breathing heavily, with fists clenched, she spoke to the wood rather than address him directly. “I thought my family was going to be ruined. I’ve been worried, you asshole!”
“It was never going to come to that.”
“Because this lawsuit never existed. But the problem is only one person had this crucial piece of information. Like only one person knew that we were dating.”
“That wasn’t cool. I get that,” he said against her ear. “I made a mistake, dug a deep, dark hole, and suddenly my dreams are coming true and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be spending time with this gorgeous woman. Now why the hell would I go against my self-interest and crush my dreams, honey?”
She tapped the door with her balled fists. “Stop. Oh, God. Please stop talking. I hate you so much right now.”
“That’s okay, because I’m crazy enough about you for both of us. But you’re right. I’ve hurt you and I’m sorry.”
Twisting to face him, she placed her hands on his chest, her fingertips digging in as if she might pluck out his heart at any moment. He was shocked to realize that he might be okay with that. It was hers to love or destroy.
“I’m furious with you.”
“You’ve every right to be. I’ve lied and cheated to make you mine, but I never promised to play fair. How I feel about you isn’t noble or pure, it just is. In this crazy, fucked-up life I lead, you are my one constant. And I need you, Alexandra. So fucking bad.”
“God, you . . .” Fury fired her beautiful features, stealing her speech, and the moment balanced on a razor-sharp edge. Losing her now after they’d come so far would be unbearable. He loved her so damn much.
Holy fuck. He loved this incredible woman.
Seconds ticked by, as long as hours, the only sounds the beat of their thunderous hearts, the shallow intake of her breaths, and his dumb brain praying that he hadn’t messed up this one perfect thing in his miserable life.
Then he heard a new sound, one that sent hope soaring in his chest: the click of the door she’d just locked.
“I despise you right now, Cooper.”
“Coming through loud and clear.”
She pushed him back to the desk, poking his chest. “I may punch you, bite you, crush your nuts between my thighs. It’s going to be the best hate sex I’ve ever had. And your survival is not my first concern.”
Jesus. All those months he’d wasted thinking they could never be together. What a fucking tragedy.
Her hands pulled at his belt, undid the buckle. He flipped their positions, lifted her on the desk, tore her parka off, and ripped her sweater over her head. It was frenzied and hot and life-affirming.
Thankfully there was nothing sharp or heavy in her grasp radius.
She jerked him forward by his tie. “Is there anything else I should know?”
The chance at redemption sat up between them. He could tell her everything. How his mayoral win four years ago was predicated on the lies of his father, on his own lies as he traded on Weston Cooper’s sterling reputation as a man of the people who was cut down for waging a war on organized crime. He could blurt the truth and watch her love for him wither and die. Feel his blood turn to ice in his veins. His heart shriveling to a husk.
None of those options appealed. He refused to give her up.
Instead he kissed her with his dirty, lying lips. “You know everything.”
“Lie. Better.” His woman was no fool, but she seemed prepared to overlook the rest. For the moment, anyway. She pulled his pants and boxers down and palmed his erection roughly. And he’d take it like her man because he deserved it. “Cubs or White Sox?”
“Taking that one to the grave, honey.”
On a sexy growl, she kissed him with a sharp nip of his lower lip. “No blow jobs for a while, Eli. You do not want my mouth near your cock right now.”
“Wait . . . on the desk?”
Disapproval pinched Kinsey’s mouth, which Alex found particularly amusing considering no one had so much as blinked about Eli lying his ass off over Sam Cochrane’s “lawsuit.” A guy could be a deceiving toe rag as long as it came from “a good place,” according to Darcy. But God forbid anyone get some action on an antique mahogany desk in the mayor’s office.
She had been so mad at him, she still was—which made for amazing sex—but on reflection, she knew he was right about her likely reaction if he’d asked her on a date. She had convinced herself that she was dating him to save her financial hide from that lawsuit. For her family’s well-being. But deep down, she knew that she had wanted him all along, and that the supposed threat from Cochrane gave her permission to indulge the taboo of becoming Eli Cooper’s woman.
It disturbed her that he knew that before she knew it herself.
From their corner table near the jukebox in Dempsey’s bar, Alex knocked back her Goose Island Winter Ale and skittered a look over the busy crowd of cops, firefighters, and badge bunnies. Lowering her voice, she said, “We did it with the greats of Chicago watching from the hallowed walls. Ditka, Jordan, both Daleys, and”—she gave a shifty look—“the 2005 World Series winning White Sox.”
Darcy did the dutiful fake spit move on the hardwood floor at the mention of the Great Enemy. Kinsey just arched an eyebrow. It was a Chicago thing, and Cali girl hadn’t completely acclimatized to their ways.
“I used to have meetings in that office.” She shuddered. “I might have even sat on that desk.”
Beck took a seat, set his beer down, and threw an arm around Darcy. “What’d I miss, princesa?”
Darcy smiled sweetly at her fiancé. “Your sister playing doctor with the mayor on his desk at city hall.”
Beck shot to a stand and grabbed his bottle. “Time to poke darts in my eyeballs.”
“Aw, Becky, don’t go,” Alex called after her brother with the girly nickname they had tortured him with as a kid. “I haven’t even told you about my fantasy to do the mayor in a fire truck!”
“I can’t hear you,” he sang back.
Ignoring the judgy expressions of the bar’s patrons, Alex sighed and turned back to the girls, who were laughing their heads off. “I used to make him buy me tampons at the drugstore even when I didn’t need them. Poor guy was seventeen years old before he found out a woman’s cycle wasn’t every two weeks.”
“Probably best you scared him off, as this conversation is now for lady ears only,” Darcy said around sips of her Cosmo. They’d been trying to get her into less chicky drinks, but it was slow going. “So you still think Eli doesn’t believe in the sappy ever after? Because this desperate, panicked lie of his does not sound like the action of a man who merely wants to get laid. Threatening the cop, sex in the mayor’s office, the scheme to get him to date you. All evidence points to the guy being nuts about you.”
Alex reached for her stock answer. “Step back, D. You’re looking at the temp piece of ass, not perma-partner material for a politico. I’m the kind of girl who yells in a crowded blue bar about her dream to do the mayor of Chicago in a fire truck. It’s all fun and games, but he’s gonna wise up real soon and figure out I am bad news.”
“He seems to be liking unfiltered Alex just fine,” Kinsey said with a perceptive squint over her dirty martini. “And he’d have to be an idiot not to know how you feel after your throwdown with Luke at M Squared.”
Alex groaned. “Oh, God, was it that obvious?”
“That you’re in love and scared to death?” Kinsey reached across and squeezed her hand. “All you’re missing is the big scarlet EC carved in your forehead pronouncing you Eli Cooper’s woman.”
They didn’t know the half of it. How he held her so tight while they waited for Shadow to get out of surgery, those sweet moments of bliss just talking, debating, and being on his sofa—every single second pulled her so deep she could barely breathe for wanting him. No need for soft, dateable Alex Dempsey 2.0 with Eli. She could finally be herself.
Darcy looked like a squirrel who’d just discovered a fuckload of nuts that none of the other squirrels knew about. Before she could go off on one of her happy tangents and design an Eli Forever tat, Alex cut her off at the pass.
“It’s just the way it’s all come about. The campaign, how he needed me for the union endorsement. I wish he’d asked me out on a date before it all happened so I’d know that he wants me for me and not all the blue-collar votes I’m bringing in.” Eli might claim to have been obsessed with her for months, and he might have employed a few underhanded tricks to woo her, but how could she separate it out from her contribution to his campaign? “Besides, I’m not sure he has it in him to give like that. That openness I need. There’s this part of himself he keeps closed off and it’s so opposite to how I do things.”
“Here’s something novel. You could ask him how he feels,” Kinsey said, all wise and shit. “Otherwise you’re waiting for the guillotine to drop on election night.”
Darcy rubbed her shoulder. “He loves you, babe. I know it.”
Alex wished she could share her friends’ confidence. Ten days to the election, and every hour felt like a countdown to D-Day, where D stood for Dumped. When the ballots returned in his favor, would her utility to him be exhausted? Would he be looking ahead to his next career challenge? Four more years as mayor of Chicago, and then he’d turn his focus to governor or senator or . . . the White House.
Fuck-a-duck. President Eli Cooper.
She didn’t need Sam Cochrane to tell her she was not the pearls-and-Anne-Klein-shoes type.
It was going to blow chunks when it was over. But she refused to have any regrets about her decision to get involved with Eli, or at minimum, she would have the right regrets. Mercifully, Alex’s phone rang just in time to forestall a bout of sucks-to-be-her. Another number she didn’t recognize.
Kinsey looked sympathetic. “More press?”
“Yeah. When I’m bored or drunk, I answer and pretend they’ve gotten the wrong number. Usually I’m a doddering old dear who thinks the caller is trying to sell jumbo-sized condoms. It confuses the hell out of them.” She let the call go to voice mail, but of course, they never left a message. Once someone had phoned to tell her Eli was at that moment in her bed and Alex needed to lay off her man. Actually, Eli was in a live interview on the news, and as talented as the guy was, bi-location wasn’t one of his skills.
The number rang again. “Oh, screw it. Ready for some fun?” She winked at the girls and hit the answer button. “Yeeeees,” she said in her best old-lady.
“Alex, I’m Callie Benson with the Springfield Recorder. We’re calling to get a comment on the rumors about Weston Cooper.”
She started. This was a new one. “What rumors?”
“That the U.S. Attorney’s Office was investigating him on criminal conspiracy charges before he died.”
Eli loved the city in the morning, even in winter, and nowhere was it more beautiful than along the river walk on Lower Wacker. They had done wonders with this area in the last few years, turning it from a dank, soulless strip of land that even drug dealers would have reservations about visiting into a bright, safe walkway with access to restaurants and the numerous starting points for the river and lake tours during the summer. On either side, gleaming glass monoliths stretched to the sky, a gauntlet to anyone willing to take them on.
And it was about time someone did just that.
Sam Cochrane had messed with him for the last time. It was one thing to allow the tycoon to throw his weight around like an overgrown child to ensure certain decisions fell his way. If he wanted to ruin Eli, drag his father’s name through the mud at the bottom of the Chicago River, then that was his prerogative. But no one messed with Eli Cooper’s woman.
From a bench on the south side of the river, Eli looked up at the tower of steel and glass, feeling the city come alive around him. Just past seven and commuters were pounding their feet along the bridges and streets above his head as they headed for offices and the daily grind. And on the north side of the river, a bevy of construction workers were preparing to mount the last five letters of that humongous sign announcing Sam Cochrane’s ownership of a piece of prime real estate overlooking Eli Cooper’s Chicago.
Eli dialed a number on his phone. When the recipient answered, he spoke a single word. “Now.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite on par with the stuff of Hollywood. As gratifyingly dramatic as that word sounded to his ears, it still took a few moments before the order went into effect. From his chilly vantage point, Eli watched as two City of Chicago employees served an injunction on the foreman to halt further construction on Sam Cochrane’s skyscraper.
He stood and turned toward the stairs that would take him to the street. No rest for the wicked, especially someone as wicked as Eli Cooper. Cochrane’s salvo had been returned.
It was on.
Three hours later, Eli strode into a city hall media room unusually packed to the rafters.
“Ladies and gentlemen, whatever could be of such interest to the fourth estate this frigid February morning?” A few chuckles greeted that. The vultures had been bored lately because his significant election lead in the home stretch left little to report on. He did so enjoy throwing them a few crumbs every now and again. “I’ll just open it up to questions. Mac.”
Mac Devlin waggled a pen between his thumb and forefinger. “People are questioning the city’s timing of this injunction, Mr. Mayor, coming so soon after a rather negative article about Alex Dempsey was published in one of Sam Cochrane’s papers. You didn’t seem overly concerned about that sign before.”
“I’m always concerned about anything that’s an eyesore in our beautiful city. I have an excellent relationship with Sam, and it’s no secret that he’s been very generous to my campaign and with his endorsement of my administration. I’d hoped we could come to an agreement. Seems that can’t happen, so it’ll be up to the courts to decide.”
“And in the meantime, the first three letters”—Mac held up his notepad and delivered an exaggerated squint—“that’s C-O-C, of Sam Cochrane’s last name are left, uh, dangling on the side of his building.”
“Signage interruptus,” someone offered, causing the vultures to chortle malevolently.
A brief smile lifted his lips. Madison had wagged her finger at him and said, “You couldn’t wait for the H and the R, could you?” And no, he could not. He wanted everyone to know what he thought of Sam, and if it was spelled out in letters of his own making, all the better.
“He’s welcome to remove those starting letters at any time—at his own expense of course—but if he never gets to finish that sign it will be as clear as a Chicago morning in spring who owns the building anyway. Pretty damn appropriate for such an expression of ostentatious manhood, I think.”
That sent the vultures into peals of laughter.
“Hey, Mr. Mayor, how many proposals today?” Kenny Fiedler again. He must be running a book on it.
“No idea, Kenny. Been otherwise occupied.” He was already moving toward the door, with a renewed spring in his step. “That’s all I’ve got for today, ladies and gentlemen. See you tonight at the debate.”
