“No trouble this last year, though,” came Alexandra’s response.

Matt looked affronted.

“Because the Hawks sucked ass in the postseason,” she explained.

“Yeah, I got it,” Matt said.

Eli coughed to hide his laugh. No wonder she couldn’t keep a man. Now for the next move in Operation Date-a-Firefighter.

Honey, you must be starved. Have a bite to eat.

Oh, thanks, Mr. May—I mean, Eli. Cue shy grin. How thoughtful.

He circled his prey, bared his metaphorical fangs (in the form of a selection of tasty finger foods), and . . . discovered to his chagrin he had been outflanked by Bastian Fucking Durand. Damn puck chaser.

“You looked like you could do with a little something,” Durand was saying to Alexandra as he deposited a plateful of food into her hands.

Her mouth dropped open at the sight, either in surprise at his consideration or in full-on drool because she was hungry. “Probably should get my foot out of my mouth and fill it with something else, you mean?”

All three men stared at her.

“Uh, food, you guttersnipes.” She popped a meatball into her mouth and turned to Eli with an eyebrow arch at the plate in his hands. “Is that for me, Mr. Mayor?”

“No. It’s all mine and you can’t have any.”

She tried her best not to smile. Damn if he didn’t enjoy this woman a little too much.

“Think I’ll grab a beer.” Matt moved away, then seemed to remember his manners. “Can I get you something?”

“I’m fine.” Alexandra blew out a breath as Matt loped off. “Another one bites the dust,” she murmured to no one in particular.

“I’m Bastian,” Durand said, as if Eli wasn’t there and Durand’s identity wasn’t known by everyone in Chicago. “And you’re Sexy Lexi. I saw you on the news.”

“Yeah, well, it’s all been overblown,” she mumbled, then chowed down on another meatball.

“Nothing hotter than a woman with an ax,” Durand said with a lascivious wink.

Eli balled his fists, inched closer to his soon-to-be-fake date, and brushed his knuckles at the base of her spine. Her surprised intake of breath was immensely gratifying. “Why, do you have a car that needs refinishing?” he asked Durand.

Ignoring him, the Meathead from Montreal went on. “Always wanted to be a fireman. I even applied back in Canada but then I was drafted by the NHL.” He lifted one shoulder in that lazy French way. Saving lives or glory on the rink? So hard to decide, that shrug said.

“How’s your groin?” Alexandra asked.

“What?” Eli blurted at the same time Durand said, “Pardon?”

“Your groin pull. I heard that’s what put you on the bench. My brother Wy’s a big fan. He’s going to be stoked I met you.”

“My groin”—Durand paused for effect—“is getting strong-geh ev-very day.”

Alexandra laughed, a rather coquettish tinkle. Jesus H.

“Last summer,” Durand continued in that annoyingly French tone, “the team got a tour of the firehouse academy, the Quinn. They said it was built on the site of the Great Chicago Fire.”

“Where they think it originated.”

“Started by a woman.”

Both of them turned to Eli, who had felt a pressing need to interject at this point. Alexandra gifted him the stabby eyes of death. “Excuuuse me?”

“The legend goes that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was to blame. So we have a woman and her female livestock . . .”

Ever seen a cat arch its back and bristle? That’s what his sexy firefighter did right then. “Are you blaming a fire that destroyed two-thirds of the city on a woman? Because she was a woman? Or her cow? Because it was female?”

“I’m probably being too hard on the dumb bovine,” Eli explained in his most patronizing voice. “If the woman had tied up her cow properly, the city wouldn’t have burnt to the ground.”

Passion widened those melted shamrock eyes and sent her voice into a spike. “Burning to the ground was the best thing to ever happen to this city. Architects swarmed in, looking to rebuild, culminating in the World’s Fair. This city is beautiful because of Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.” She glared at him. “So you need to apologize.”

“To Mrs. O’Leary or the cow?”

“To the entirety of womankind, you ass.”

He grinned.

She sighed. “Why do I let you do this?”

“I don’t know. But I should have waited until I had you alone so I could take advantage of all that passion of yours.”

Blushing, she lowered her dark lashes tinged with copper so they spread like decorative fans on her cheeks. He loved getting her flustered. After fantasizing about her stretched out beneath him, or on her knees before him, or in every single lurid sexual position his filthy mind could conjure, getting Alexandra Dempsey flustered was his next favorite thing in the world.

“Anyway, it’s been pretty much debunked,” she went on, plucking an egg roll off the plate he had brought over. His chest warmed at this small victory. “The reporter who broke the story said he invented Mrs. O’Leary’s involvement. Anti-Irish sentiment.”

“Irish,” he mused. “But, of course, it’s all clear now, Firefighter Dempsey.”

She broke into a husky, good-time-girl laugh that warmed other parts of his anatomy. “You’re such a dick.”

Bastian Durand was staring at them. In fact, they’d attracted quite an audience, including assorted members of the press. He’d have liked to say his intention in sparking Alexandra’s emerald eyes and saucy mouth to life was purely political, to get those hacks gossiping, but it would have been a lie. His intentions were far more depraved than anything a politician could claim.

They held each other’s gaze, the moment exquisite and strung on a wire. This time, she didn’t duck or hide. This time, she accepted his appraisal as well she should. She was a frighteningly beautiful woman and she deserved his utmost attention.

“Did you always want to be a politician?” she asked with a wry twist to her mouth. “Because you haven’t got a diplomatic bone in your body.”

He wanted to laugh, because she was being a good sport when he didn’t deserve it for teasing her and because no one harbors childhood fantasies of being a politician. “I wanted to be a lawyer.”

Durand regarded him with undisguised disdain. So lawyers and politicians were lower on the glamour scale than firefighters and hockey players, it seemed.

“Like your father,” Alexandra said, her big eyes watching him carefully. “You wanted to follow in his footsteps.”

He nodded, relief coursing through his veins that she understood. They both recognized the importance of legacies.

“That’s how it was for me, as well,” she said. “Before I even knew what firefighting was, I had the itch for it. Dad would come home, smelling of smoke, and he’d . . .” A watercolor pink bloomed on her cheeks as she trailed off. “Well, I knew.”

Evidently embarrassed at her admission, she slid her gaze to the rink. The Hawks were on the wrong end of a 4—1 score line with a minute left on the clock.

“Kane, get your stick out of your ass and hit the puck!” She shook her head. “If they keep playing like that, Matt’s not going to have much to do come playoff season.”

Eli heard a cough behind him.

With an oh-well shrug, Alexandra turned her head. “Sorry, Matty. Even with your gimpy knee and Durand’s dodgy crotch, you could do better than that lot out there.”

 CHAPTER NINE

Stepping into the back room of DeLuca’s Ristorante in Wicker Park was like time traveling to medieval Tuscany. The scent of an indoor herb garden wafted lavender and thyme beneath Alex’s nostrils. Hanging lanterns strung through indoor-planted trees painted it with the brushstrokes of a fairy tale.