Текст книги "Playing with Fire "
Автор книги: Kate Meader
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 20 страниц)
CHAPTER SIX
On the fifth floor of city hall, Eli stared at the snow falling sideways outside the window of the mayor’s office, feeling not quite so much the lord of all he surveyed as a bit of a heel. Another glance at the iPad on the desk had him flexing his hand in readiness. He was known around city hall for flinging whatever slabs of tech displeased him against the closest wall, and he’d hate to ruin his hard-won rep.
“I told you we’d get good mileage out of this,” Madison said from her perch on the edge of his antique mahogany desk.
“Exactly how is this good mileage?” He stared at the provocative headline again on the home page of the Windy City Dispatch:
Sexy Lexi for Mayor!
Yet again, America’s Favorite Firefighter was the toast of the town. The reporters loved her dry humor, her fresh take on politics, and her cavalier allusions to leaving the mayor to die in a smoke-filled corridor.
Madison was in full battle mode. “What we need now are a few public appearances to keep the good times rolling for the next month. A visit to Engine 6. Maybe a Bulls game with you and Dempsey sharing a hot dog—”
“How about a string of spaghetti while we gaze longingly into each other’s eyes?”
She looked affectionately bored. “Eli, Alex Dempsey understands the game. She works for the city. She works for you. And even though you refused to play the angle like I advised, you did save her life.”
“Hardly. I dragged her twenty feet down one flight of stairs. She’s a loose cannon, Mads. She’s not to be trusted.”
And he couldn’t trust himself around her. That whatever-the-hell-it-was in that supply closet just went to prove it. Kissing her was like falling into madness.
“Eli, I think you’re underestimating the power of what happened yesterday.”
“Nothing happened,” he snapped.
Mads narrowed her eyes to curious slits. “You disappeared fairly quickly after the press conference.”
“I had to take a leak. Or do I need to schedule that with you, too?”
“Okaaay, Oscar the Grouch. What I was talking about was the power of that exchange in the media room. The vultures weren’t laughing at you. They were enjoying the”—she carved a hand through the air—“sizzle.”
“The sizzle?”
“Eli, I’ll let you into a little secret. Politics.” She made a moue of distaste. “Not sexy.” At his acerbic look, she continued. “Oh, you’re sexy and you can usually make a statement about the city budget sound like a reading of Anaïs Nin, but there’s only so far your charisma can carry us. You need a foil, someone to reflect your sexy back at you. People aren’t just talking about Alex Dempsey, they’re talking about you and Alex Dempsey. They like how she stood up to you and they like how the two of you sizzle.”
The sizzle was the fucking problem. “I don’t want to sizzle. I want to win.”
She turned her own iPad around. “Up five points since the night of the fire. Two more than yesterday. That’s all due to Dempsey.”
Point taken. But the idea of trying to corral Alexandra was in a whole other suburb of Nutsville. “She won’t work with us. Why do you think she tried to sabotage that press conference in the first place?”
“What happened to the guy who could talk anyone into doing anything?”
“He’s been beaten down by corporate interests, union fights, and predatory women, including the one who got me drunk twelve years ago and took advantage of me. You were older and I was very impressionable.”
She smiled serenely. These days, they had nothing but fond memories of their misguided drunken attempt at marital bliss, kick-started in the Chapel of Love, two blocks off the Vegas Strip.
“We have information on Caroline Jenkins, information that could bury her.”
“Not going negative, Mads. I said it from the start.”
They had run this argument many times, but no matter how desperate things got, ruining the personal life of his closest opponent was not the answer. Madison knew it was a long shot, but felt duty-bound to remind him on occasion that he was a scum-sucking politician.
“If you won’t use our intel on Jenkins, then dating Alex Dempsey would answer all your problems.”
His pulse quickened. “Dating? I thought we were talking about a few public appearances.”
Madison stood and walked to the window, where she did her best thinking. He braced for the verbal PowerPoint.
“Dating the woman who, one, saved your life, and, two, represents the blue-collar vote that’s been slipping away from you over the last year fulfills two purposes. You show that you have respect for the female firefighters who can do the job as well as any man, and you get an in with the unions. Her last name is an advantage. Combining two great familial legacies of heroism on one ticket is genius.”
Discomfort nagged at his insides. “So, use a couple of dead firefighters to get votes.”
She faced him. “It’s not as if you don’t have your own legacy, Eli. You’re a war hero. Your father was a hero to this city in his fight against the mob. We’re merely amplifying that with your connection to the Dempseys. The polls close on election night, we wait a week or two, then you and Alex part ways.”
Apart from the fact that placing his father on the same heroic stratum as Sean Dempsey and Logan Keyes turned Eli’s stomach, he felt the need to express the obvious hitch in this stellar plan. “I can’t date a city employee.”
Madison grinned. “I checked. There are rules about fraternization between supervisors and subordinates within the same department, but not between you and one of your non—city hall minions. You could bang every schoolteacher and public librarian in Chicago and it would be completely aboveboard.”
Completely. Aboveboard.
Why the fuck was he only learning this now?
Since that night six months ago when they had first clashed at Smith & Jones, he had assumed Alexandra Dempsey was out of bounds. Pussy non grata. Yesterday, he had worried about crossing a line with her, only to find now his behavior wasn’t nearly as egregious as he’d originally thought. No longer taboo, but no less enticing for it.
Keeping the elation out of his voice took effort. “Even if I thought it was a good idea, there’s still the matter of securing Dempsey’s cooperation.”
“You’ll think of something.”
Eli drummed his fingers on his desk as he played out different scenarios. He could threaten the whole damn brood with separation at Engine 6. It had worked before to bring Luke Almeida to heel. Technically, they shouldn’t be allowed to work at the same house, but as they were foster rather than legal siblings, they managed to evade city regulations.
He could demand she play ball—she was a city employee, after all—but he’d rather not come down hard on her. Not when he wanted to do other things to her that involved the word come and hard.
He could finally have her.
No, he didn’t want to bang a teacher or a librarian . . . just one sexy, curvaceous firefighter. But more than that, he wanted to dominate her in a way that made him practically vibrate with need. He could still feel her hot mouth on his, her eager hands scrubbing his hair and claiming his chest. Where the hell had Alexandra Dempsey learned to kiss like that?
Probably with all those dates she was constantly going on. Probably with fuckwads like Michael Martinez. The thought of her with a man like that—with men like that—spiked his pulse to dangerous levels. Cool your jets, Cooper. If he thought about her with someone else, that iPad on his desk wouldn’t stand a chance.
Yesterday, he had told her this thing between them would pass. That he hoped it would. Eli dealt in realities. How to get a vote passed by the city council. Whom to slap down to “persuade” a decision to go his way. Craving a fantasy that was out of reach was a game he refused to play (except during long, steamy showers).
But now Alexandra Dempsey was no longer a fuzzy mirage. She was the woman who would win him the election—and who, until then, would warm up those cold, lonely nights on the campaign trail.
Now he just had to come up with an offer she couldn’t refuse.
“Shitmotherfuckerprickfaceasswipe,” Alex blurted.
If she were more like her brother Luke, she probably would have punched the locker door to punctuate that incredibly articulate outburst. Actually, she was just like Luke. Quick to anger, slow to forgive, but she was trying to be less of a raging hothead lately because it seemed to get her into nothing but trouble.
So, instead, she closed the door on the ketchup-covered T-shirt in her locker and drew a deep breath. As usual, someone was screwing with her. If it wasn’t her rookie status, it was the fact she was one of only 140 women, just 3.4 percent of the total, in the testosterone-soaked CFD. If it wasn’t her Dempsey-hood, it was her refusal to break down like a girly girl when faced with adversity. She deserved her spot on the crew. Her brothers supported her, but some of the other guys, not so much.
Murphy was the worst offender. She’d bet dollars to donuts the Jackson Pollack—inspired tee design was from him. He was always making cracks about her being on the rag if she looked at him crooked, like that could be the only possible reason his face offended her. He was sly about it, too, keeping his comments for when they were alone. A subtle invasion of her environment.
Complaining would make her look weak. Getting her brothers involved would draw accusations of whining. She didn’t want to rock the boat. Lately, all she had done was rock the boat. Feeling glum, she headed to the lounge, where she was greeted by hoots and slow, insolent claps.
“Oh, shut up,” she threw out to her crew. Getting razzed was not exactly unexpected. It wasn’t every day a firefighter saved the life of the most powerful man in Chicago.
Or was kissed stupid by him. Her lips tingled in deliciously forbidden memory.
“Nice job yesterday, Dempsey.” Derek Phelan, who was lower than her on the rookie pole but didn’t seem to feel the effects. The penis benefit.
Heat scalded her cheeks. “Say what?”
“The press conference. You handled yourself well.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Should have let him rot.” Murphy squinted piggy eyes over a newspaper from his usual ass-dented spot on the lounge’s sofa. “Guy wants to fuck with our pensions.”
Before she could shape her fightin’ words, Luke strode in. “Ladder drills in five, ladies. And I don’t believe you were cleared for work, Candidate Dempsey.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t stick around at home, Luke. It’s doing my head in.” And no way did she want to look like she needed extra recovery time because she was a woman.
He jerked his chin toward the corridor outside the lounge and headed out. When they were alone, he put on his most intimidating expression, though his Arctic blue eyes filled with his irrepressible love for her dampened the usual Dempsey staredown. “You scared the bejesus out of me, you know that?”
“I did my job.”
“Giving your air to a civilian is against every single precept we’ve taught you, Alex.”
She glared at him, annoyed that her judgment was being questioned. “I made a call. It was the right thing in the moment.”
Her brother looked unconvinced. None of them ever said it, but their overwhelming desire to protect her was etched in the grim lines of their mouths on every call. Especially Luke. She knew it came from a good place, and that sometimes she made dumb decisions (Survey says? Her love life), but she was good at this job. Damn good at it.
“You need to think, Alex. Less of this”—he clenched a fist over his heart, then touched a finger to her forehead—“and more of this. You only have to be stupid once to be dead permanently.”
“It worked out.”
“This time.” He folded his arms, step one in what she knew was the Luke Speech of Parental Doom. “Dad didn’t want you to go into CFD. When you applied, I should have put my foot down.”
“Goddamn it, Luke. I already heard this shit from Cooper. I don’t need my own brother telling me I can’t do this job. Go bubble wrap a rookie who needs it.”
Grunting, he changed the subject. “You read the gutter rags today?”
More crap about being saved by Captain Chicago, she supposed. Luke pulled out his phone and dialed up the front page of the Windy City Dispatch with its blaring headline: “Sexy Lexi for Mayor!”
Sexy and mayor? Boo yah! She’d take it.
“The press seems to think there’s somethin’ goin’ on between you and Cooper.”
“There’s nothing going on. He just pissed me off, like he always does.” So much so that the only relief was to rub her body against him like a cat in heat. Then fantasize later about taking him inside her, deep, to the root, until she’d come so hard her ears had popped. The finishing touch? She’d feed his sexed-out body to raccoons.
Alex Dempsey led a very vivid fantasy life.
Luke blew out a martyr’s sigh. “I’m the resident hothead in this family, so don’t even think about knocking me off my throne. Kinsey and I are closing on the new house next week and for once, everybody is operating on an even keel. Let’s try to get through a few months drama-free, okay?”
“Sure thing, boss. The next time I have a chance to save citizen number one, I’ll leave him to his own devices.”
Kathy, the firehouse’s admin, poked her head around the corner. “Alex, Captain Ventimiglia wants to see you in his office.”
“Thanks, Kath,” and then to her brother, “Am I going to be shouted at? Again?”
“Probably. I’ve prepared you well, young Padewan. Now go take your punishment.”
She headed toward the cap’s office, anticipating her almost daily walk by the Wall of the Fallen, where she usually liked to stop and send up a silent prayer. She had been fifteen when her adoptive mom, Mary, died from breast cancer. Two years later, Sean and Logan perished in a high-rise fire, but not before they saved three lives, including that of a ten-month-old baby. They went back in to grab an elderly man and never came out again.
Nine years ago, and it had almost destroyed the Dempseys.
But they had come back, strong, all of them now in CFD, doing it for their fallen. Fire is stronger than blood, Sean used to say, and defend the people you love to the dying embers. Sometimes it got her into trouble, but it was a mantra she lived by every day.
And speaking of trouble . . . As she took the corner, she pulled up short at an unexpected sight:
Mayor Eli Cooper.
Mountain tall, he stood immobile at the memory wall, his broad back bisected by those suspenders that were as much his trademark as his unrelenting stare and commanding voice. Who wore suspenders in this day and age other than firefighters and investment bankers? Perhaps the mayor was a firefighter wannabe. Perhaps he had spent his formative years playing with a plastic fire truck in his backyard, making wee-wah siren sounds.
The thought of Eli Cooper as a kid harboring hopes of growing up to haul hose made her smile, so when he turned, that’s what he saw. She was smiling and it threw him. Something sparked in those ice-shard eyes, something that threw her.
She wiped the grin off her face before it could do any more damage.
“Firefighter Dempsey, how are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Very well, thank you. No lasting effects from the incident?”
She swallowed. Lasting effects? No, Mr. Mayor, as virile as you undoubtedly are, your shoving your tongue down my throat in a city hall storeroom has not left me carrying your devil spawn.
“The fire?” he prompted when she didn’t respond.
Oh, that incident. “Nope. All good.” She cleared the awkwardness from her throat. “How’s the cut?”
Eli touched the line of stitches above his brow. “Starting to itch, which I guess means it’s healing.”
A hush descended now that they were all caught up. She felt her blood vessels flushing open, heat rushing from inside out. Their previous encounters had always been charged, but never awkward, and Alex wasn’t exactly sure how to act around this muted, distinctly less jerkish version of Mr. Mayor.
He turned back to the photo of a ruddy-faced Irishman in full CFD dress uniform, his lake-blue eyes sparkling, like he had a bawdy joke or long-winded tale on the tip of his tongue. Sean Dempsey, her adoptive father, the man she missed more each day instead of less.
“I was overseas on deployment when they died,” Eli said quietly. “I wanted to come home, but getting leave for a nonrelative’s funeral was too tough to swing.”
“I hadn’t realized you knew them.” Sean, Weston Cooper, and Sam Cochrane had once been business partners and owned Dempsey’s bar together a zillion years ago. Even so, Alex hadn’t reckoned on Eli actually knowing her father or brother well enough to attend their burial.
“Not Logan, unfortunately, but I’d met your father. He was always good to me, checking in after my parents died.” A slight shake of his head yanked him back to the present. “Captain Ventimiglia has kindly given us the use of his office. Come.”
Ah, there was that tone she knew and despised. Command issued in his typical dick-tatorial fashion, he strode toward the cap’s office leaving the sensitive area between her thighs to read far too much into that one clipped word: come.
Yes, sir, please sir, anything you say, sir.
Once inside and with the door shut behind them, he started, “About what happened yesterday—”
“In the tampon closet?”
He winced. She enjoyed that.
“It was incredibly inappropriate. In fact, you are more than welcome to register a complaint.”
“Are you implying you were in control, Mr. Mayor, and that you abused your position when you abducted me in broad daylight on city property and took advantage of me?”
“I think it’s clear I was not in control.”
They both thought on that for a moment. Neither of them had been in control, not when his mouth claimed hers, not when her hands dug into his bull-like shoulders, and especially not when she had ground her aching core against his hammerhead of an erection.
If wasn’t your boss . . . I would be the one to tame you.
“I appreciate your trying to do the right thing,” Alex said, willing the hot blast ascending her chest to quell. “But while you might technically be my boss, what happened in that tampon closet had nothing to do with you abusing your position and everything to do with us letting off a little steam. Close quarters and the fact we don’t much like each other will do that. Sure, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve been molested in a tampon closet—”
“Could you please stop calling it that?”
“I’d have a dollar.” She tried to smile away her discomfort. “That was the first, and it will most definitely be the last.”
He stared, perhaps wondering if she meant it would be the last time she allowed herself to be molested in a closet—tampon or otherwise—or if it was the last time she would allow him to do the molesting—closet or otherwise.
She wasn’t quite sure herself. What she did know was that she had enjoyed kissing Eli Cooper far too much, and that was not a good thing.
“You know why I’m here?”
“To make me aware of my rights to register a complaint.”
“Yes, but now that you’ve assured me you were in complete possession of your senses and that I didn’t abuse my position in any way, I’m here to make a proposition.”
“Another proposition, Mr. Mayor?”
“Have a seat, Alexandra,” he said, more softly than her jibe deserved.
Copping a squat allowed her a moment to collect her thoughts, and hell did they need collecting and parsing and assessing. On the desk sat a Starbucks cup with Mayor scrawled across it. Someone had Sharpie-amended the hot-contents warning so it read like a seduction attempt: Careful, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot.
Poor Mr. Mayor, not even safe from predatory baristas.
“You want me to help you win the election,” she said to get the ball rolling.
“Straight to the heart of the matter, as always.”
“But you think I’ll say no. You could make threats and bully me and throw your weight around, but you’d rather I came willingly.”
Came willingly. She really needed to plan these sentences out better in her head.
“I would never force you to do something you were uncomfortable with, Alexandra.”
The sizzle of sensual awareness aggravated her. Needing to get this back to the good times they had enjoyed before, the ones that equaled “I hate you in spades,” she stood and leaned against Venti’s desk.
“Seeing as you’re my boss”—yep, preach it. He was her boss. Her insanely attractive, built-like-a-tank, man-in-charge, don’t-forget-he’s-a-jackass boss—“you can order me to do anything.”
“Order?” Sexy pause. “Yes, I suppose I can.”
Oh-em-effing-gee, this got worse and worse. Every word out of her mouth sounded like an invitation for him to issue decadent, dirty, delicious demands. Over the desk, Dempsey. Now. I’m the fucking mayor.
She called on her indignation, buried as deep as the hole she’d like to crawl into. “Why should I help you? You’ve demeaned me, my job, women. And that’s just in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Merely a difference of opinion.”
“I’m not going to be propped up as your puppet. You already did that with Luke and that Men on Fire calendar—”
He scoffed. “Hardly my idea.”
True, it had been all Kinsey, but it had gone over like gangbusters, so Cooper scooped up the glory. “And then you used that whole shitstorm with Cochrane to make it look like you were the one doing everyone a favor by saving my job.” She made her voice go all high and breathy. “Ooh, Eli Cooper listens to the voters. Eli Cooper sides with the underdog.”
He looked unmoved. “Let’s get a couple of things straight, Dempsey. I could have fired your brother when he went ballistic in your bar, punched out a CPD detective, and dragged CFD’s reputation through the mud. I could have fired you when you lost your head over some name-calling and yet again dragged the fire department’s reputation through the mud. Your family owes me. Besides, it’ll just be a couple of dates.”
She swallowed around the Sahara-dry lump in her throat. “Did you say dates?”
“Deaf as well as belligerent, are you?”
“I’m not dating you!”
“Correct, you’re not. It’s called a publicity stunt. God knows why, but people like us together. They like that sassy mouth of yours. They like the soap opera quality of our history. There’s even a poll going on the names of our children. Sophie will be the first woman president of the United States, while Joshua will fight brush fires in California.”
“That’s . . . that’s ridiculous. There’ll be a woman president long before that.”
He rolled his massive shoulders and rubbed at his neck like he was trying to work out a knot of stress. “You’ve entered my gray, gray world, Alexandra, or rather you’ve crashed into it like a Pamplona bull. We have a way of getting things done in Chicago. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. In fact, I think after I’ve told you a little bedtime story, you might have a different perspective.”
That checked her. “It’s mighty cold out there, Mr. Mayor, but hell has not yet frozen over.”
“Wait until you’ve heard the story. There once was a green-eyed woman—”
“Was she a princess?”
“She certainly thought so.”
She suppressed a smile, already highly entertained. “Go on.”
He walked to the window, a pensive look on his face. She wondered what he had been like in court when he was in the state’s attorney’s office before his mayoral run. She’d lay odds he was magnificent, a real jury-charmer.
“This woman was loyal to a fault, quick tempered, and impetuous. Anyone who threatened her family had better watch out”—he raised a knowing eyebrow—“because she would go to the ends of the earth to protect them.”
Alex studied her nails. “I like her already.”
“She came up against an ogre and she let her temper get the better of her.”
“I bet she felt better afterward.”
“For a while. But then the ogre made threats to destroy her. The prince wanted to help.”
Prince? Oh, Cooper, methinks you oversell. “My recollection is that the evil humpbacked prince and the ogre had a mutually beneficial relationship that prevented him from standing up for the princess.”
His eyes whipped to hers and held her gaze unnervingly.
“Do you remember what I said to you when you came over to my house four hours after you cut up Cochrane’s car, Alexandra?”
She jolted at the switch from fairy tale to reality. With startling clarity, she remembered the day Eli summoned her for an ass-chewing. There had been shouting and sniping, but once Wyatt and Kinsey had left, the atmosphere had turned dangerously intimate. She had tried to ignore that moment, place it in her brain’s attic and refuse to examine it. Because when they were alone together, while she chattered inanely about his dog to fill the silence, he had said something she would never forget.
I will do my best to protect you, Alexandra.
He had meant her job, but also from the risk of being sued to hell and back by Sam Cochrane for criminal property damage. Later, after Kinsey unleashed the video of the incident into the world and saved Alex’s job at the expense of her own, Cochrane had dropped his threat on the advice of his lawyers. But Alex had always believed there was more to it.
She had always suspected that Eli had persuaded his major donor, the man who funded his first campaign and whose endorsement Eli needed for his reelection, not to sue the city—and by extension, Alex personally. The thought of being in Eli’s debt made her squirm, as did the notion that he had stood up to Cochrane on her behalf. What price had he paid for that? For her?
“I remember,” she said, suddenly unable to meet his stark gaze directly. “How’s Shadow?”
A brief spark lit up those forbidding eyes, showing his pleasure that she remembered. “Eating me out of house and home, as usual.” The light dimmed, replaced by black ice. “What do you think happened back in August, Alexandra? True, that video kept you employed, because it was more politically expedient for me to play it that way. But Sam could have taken you to the cleaners in court. Do you really think he decided not to sue you merely out of the goodness of his heart?”
She tilted her chin up, all bravado. “His lawyers said it was pointless. That the video showing how drunk he was tainted his chances of winning.”
“And you might recall that the CPD Breathalyzer test determined he was under the limit. The court of public opinion might have been on your side, Alexandra, but a court of law would have eaten you for breakfast. You destroyed a four-hundred-thousand-dollar car on purpose. Because a man called you a dyke and your brother a fag. On top of that, you rallied the city behind you, escaped with a rap on the wrist, and made Cochrane look like an idiot.”
She smiled because she had made him look like an idiot. A big, fat, ranty idiot.
“I persuaded him not to sue you, Alexandra. I kept you and your family and this city solvent. And now you owe me.”
In the ledger of who-owes-whom, Alex was fairly certain she would always come up trumps. “And I saved your life. I think that makes us even.” She walked toward the door with the chorus of “We Are the Champions” swelling in her head. She would have done a jig, but no one liked a sore winner. “Good luck with that campaign, Mr. Mayor.”
“Damn it, Alexandra, you don’t get it, do you?”
With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to find him staring at her with nostrils flared and mouth set in an unyielding line.
“It’s not over. Sam Cochrane is threatening to sue you.”
