“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—”