“And it’s my fantasy to have a sexy female firefighter give me the kiss of life.” He gave a sorry head shake and murmured, “And you couldn’t even get that right.”

“Got it right later,” she quipped, then blushed to the hairline of her crazy curls as she realized what she’d said.

He liked making her blush. Was she pinking up anywhere else right now? he wondered. Her breasts, her nipples, that heaven between her legs he dreamed of taking and holding him deep?

“It was a pretty hot kiss,” he ventured.

“I’ve had better.”

“No, you haven’t.” As he hadn’t, he was 100 percent sure the feeling was mutual.

There was no missing the flare of remembered pleasure in those stormy eyes before she lowered them and picked at the bread basket. Clearly seeking a change of topic, she said, “So, our dads were in business together back in the day. You said you’d met Sean.”

Feeling magnanimous, he allowed her to move on. “He used to come over to the house when I was a kid, long before he and Mary adopted you. I remember him as this mountain of a man, always laughing, a larger-than-life character. Later my father sold off his share in your bar to keep his financials aboveboard when he became state’s attorney. He planned to go into politics eventually.”

Her gaze softened. Not his intention, but a typical reaction. When your parents are murdered in your home while you hide away in an upstairs closet, it tended to unleash a woman’s maternal instinct.

“Please don’t.”

She blinked. “Please don’t what?”

“Give me that look, like I need a hug because of my tragic backstory. Poor little orphan Eli.”

“I don’t think you need a hug. I think you need a gag.” She took a sip of her wine. “You’ve certainly managed to parlay your tragic backstory into an advantage for your political career.”

Well played, Miss Dempsey. “A shockingly cynical viewpoint from one so young, but not wholly inaccurate.”

She smiled her pleasure at being right. Heart punch.

A sudden, long-buried memory rose to kick him in the gut. Sun streaming on cherry wood. Black earth falling with a soft thud. A man in a Chicago Fire Department dress uniform with eyes as relentlessly blue as the lake in summer.

His parents’ funeral was delayed because they needed to gather evidence and make sure nothing was missed before they were buried. For the case they would build later. But there would be no prosecution. Ronan Cutler, the mob boss behind the hit on his parents, was already dead in a raid on his estate two days after the murders, the triggerman with him.

The words of that uniformed man—Sean Dempsey—sliced through him now with a painful clarity.

Anything you need, son. We’re here for you.

A promise made to him the day of his parents’ funeral. A life credit he had never cashed in, and even though he had not availed himself of Sean Dempsey’s kindness, Eli knew it would have been given freely and without reservation.

Though he would have severed his left testicle before sharing that with anyone, Alexandra seemed to sense his discomfort as his memories claimed the quiet space between them. She reached for him and took his hand. He curled his fingers around her strong, elegant ones, and those words she spoke in that smoky hotel corridor came back in a gush.

I’ m here. I’m not leaving.

If anyone from the press were watching, it would be a lovely moment to capture.

A shockingly cynical viewpoint, Mr. Mayor.

He withdrew his hand, packed away the maudlin in his mind. She seemed to recognize the awkwardness and instead of her usual bull-in-a-china-shop proclivity, she stayed quiet for a blessed moment.

“Who did you live with after your parents died?”

“My grandparents on my mother’s side in Lake Forest. They were good people. Serious-minded, not given to great shows of emotion.”

“And they kept the house for you?”

It wasn’t the first time someone had mentioned it. Why would he want to stay there, sharing space with all those ghosts?

“I lived a blessed existence in that house until I was twelve and it was shattered.” He looked her in the eye. “I’m not living there now to exorcise any demons. It’s the site of my fondest memories, so I’d rather dwell on that than what came later.” So it was quiet except for Shadow and he barely spent any time there, but returning to the house at the end of the day, if only for a few hours, was his touchstone. He didn’t think it morbid, but others invariably did.

“We do what we must to hold on to them,” she murmured, her finger tracing the lip of her wineglass. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think of Dad and Logan. After they died, it was the ordinary, most mundane things that hurt the most. Seeing the dent in Sean’s favorite armchair. The half-empty bottle of almond creamer. Logan was the only one who drank it, and I kept it until it was stiff and stunk up the fridge.”

She looked up, her face open, no artifice in her expression. What must it be like to enjoy such freedom to say and do as you please? Some days, it was all Eli could do not to rattle and scream at the bounds of this cage he’d built to contain his emotions.

Under the twinkling lights, with her pandemonium of curls, she projected an aura of strength and goodness and beauty. He wanted to absorb it into his bones and blood. Possess it—and her with it.

He wanted to do very wicked things to this woman.

“The zabaglione here is an old family recipe and absolute perfection, Alexandra. Care to share?”

“You didn’t have to take me home,” she said from the backseat corner of the SUV as they drove through the North Side’s icy streets. “I’m sure you’re busy.”

“Not really. The babies I need to kiss and the MILFs I like to ogle are all tucked away in their beds.”

With Tom up front along with John, his driver, returning to the intimacy of before was a no-go. They both seemed to recognize it, so they let the drive go by in silence.

A damned uncomfortable silence on his end, though. The image he’d had of her as he put on her coat after dinner was on repeat in his brain like an irrepressible jack-in-the-box. She had a great ass, high, well rounded, and it looked amazing in jeans. His hand would look so fine shaping it, kneading it, maybe giving it a little slap. Moving his fingers to the cleft and stroking through to find lubricating moisture—

He shifted to accommodate his hard-on, an issue that had plagued him all evening. Filled his mind with budget numbers, precinct voting percentages. His problem with Cochrane, which always managed to put a damper on his mood. On reaching her house in Andersonville, he was tempted to let her go without comment so he wouldn’t be tempted otherwise.

Get ahold of yourself, Cooper. He could see the woman he currently had nothing but a business deal with and who happened to hold a very low opinion of him to her door without molesting her. Not a storeroom in sight.

“Thanks for dinner.” Without looking at him, she exited. He got out, too, and walked behind her, ignoring Tom’s threatening glare admonishing him not to even think about entering that house without a security scan being done first. She fiddled with her key and pushed her front door open. “All safe now.”

Was it? He remained in place.

Her brow puckered. “You can rest assured your medal from the Order of Chivalry is in the mail.”

“Must everything be framed as a battle, Alexandra? I was merely being polite and walking you to your door.”

She huffed her annoyance. “You wouldn’t do it for a man.”

“I might. If he was puny or was carrying Super Bowl tickets and looked like he might be mugged at any moment.” He placed a hand on the doorframe a few inches from her cheek. “Instead of taking everything I say and twisting it to suit your own ridiculous biases, how about accepting that tonight we ate some good food, actually conversed like human beings, and for once didn’t want to gouge strips out of each other?”