Alex liked to spend the mornings of her days off easing into the world with coffee and a cinnamon-raisin English muffin. Checking in with Matt and Savannah on Today. Thinking about whether she should go for a run. Deciding that she should not.

She did not like to spend that time reading about herself online. Neither did she like to spend it getting the third degree from her brothers and their better halves. She just knew she shouldn’t have opened the door when she heard that dull pounding. Nothing good ever followed a dull pounding.

“Where’s the fire?” she snapped.

Thunderous rage stormed across Luke’s brow. Before he could speak, Kinsey stepped out gingerly from behind him. “Please forgive him though he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

Oh, brother.

“What the hell were you doing at a Hawks game and an Italian restaurant with Eli fucking Cooper?”

“It’s freakin’ freezing. Would you like to come in or would you prefer to scream at me in the street like a fishwife?” She waved at Mrs. Gish, her nosy next-door neighbor with eyes currently on stalks, and strutted back to the kitchen, singing, “Oh, the weather outside can bite me.”

“I just made coffee,” she threw over her shoulder, “but it sounds like you might have had too much already.”

“Alex, I want an explanation.”

Kinsey walked over to the Mr. Coffee and helped herself. “He’s just worried. We both are.”

Her insides shriveled at being dishonest with her family, but none of them would take the threat of Sam Cochrane lying down. Kinsey would whip up some PR campaign and Luke would employ his usual MO—fists first, questions not necessary. They would back her to the hilt, physically, emotionally, and financially. She was tired of being the taker.

“It’s a publicity thing.” Best not to use the highly charged word dating. “I figure I’ll get a couple of decent meals out of it. Might even meet a higher quality man.”

Gage strolled in, wearing a tee with the excellent advice to “Save gas. Ride a firefighter.” He was splitting his time between here and Brady’s, so his entrances and exits were impossible to predict. Like last night.

“Hey, don’t say you started picking on our girl without me.” He winked at her and grabbed a coffee mug.

Luke was still rocking the death glare of doom. “Is he making you do this?”

“Nobody’s making anyone do anything.” Though the thought of Eli “making” her do things—to him, to herself—ignited a flame in her core at the raft of deliciously forbidden images that presented. “I’m just doing him a favor. After all, he saved my life.”

Kinsey scoffed. “You were fine in that stairwell. That wily bastard dragged you out of there for the photo op. He was saving his campaign, and now you’re playing right into his messed-up games.”

Alex’s phone rang and Darcy’s smiling face lit up the screen. Needing a break from the visual dissection of the interfering family members present, she answered. “Good timing, D, the inquisition is here.”

“Ooh, put me on speaker.”

Alex rolled her eyes and obeyed.

“To get you all caught up,” Gage said as he took a seat at the kitchen table, stirred his coffee, and grabbed one half of Alex’s buttered English muffin, “Luke’s jaw muscle tic is going loco, Kinsey thinks Eli’s playing some messed-up reindeer games, and Alex claims she owes him for saving her life.”

Darcy hummed. “Those pics of you laughing together at DeLuca’s looked very, uh, intimate, I have to say.”

“Exactly,” gritted out Luke. He held up his phone, the screen showing a picture of Eli’s head inclined toward her over their butter-and-sage gnocchi. Probably snapped while he was torturing her with his ridiculous views on cows or marriage or Canadians. Thank God no one had captured the moment she reached for his hand, comforting him as he silently recalled his parents. It was too private to be shared with the world.

“While your definition of romance, Luke, might be a bunch of scruffy-jawed, overpaid a-holes picking fights on an ice rink followed by you stuffing your face with ravioli, it’s certainly not mine. We took in a game and grabbed some dinner. End of story.”

“His poll numbers have been climbing since the fire,” Kinsey said.

“Not just his poll numbers,” Gage murmured with a pointed look at Alex.

Darcy chimed in. “It’s okay to admit you want to spend time with him, babe. No one’s going to hold it against you because you want him to hold it against you.”

Gage chuckled. Luke did not.

“No fucking way,” he snarled. “You’d better not be thinking about that, sis. I cut him some slack because I thought he took care of you the night of the fire, but now I see what his real game is. Guy’s a gangster.”

Wyatt walked into the kitchen, sporting a Hawks jersey and no trace of surprise at the impromptu family meeting. He opened the fridge, rooted around, and emerged with a box of moo shu pork leftovers that only someone with an iron constitution or a death wish would tackle. Their oldest brother lived in the duplex next door, and since Luke had moved out to set up house with Kinsey, he had been ambling in every morning doing the zombie-hunting-for-brains impression rather than heading to Mariano’s and buying his own damn groceries.

“Come on in, Wy, and join the cavalcade of ‘Let’s blast Alex’s very bad choices.’ All we’re missing is Beck.”

“I’m here, niña,” Beck said over the speakerphone. “Silently judging.”

Mother of God, who the hell was putting out fires in Chicago?

“Not that I should have to explain this to anyone”—she arced a glare over the lot of them, including Wy and her phone—“but I am going to a couple of events with Eli Cooper because apparently the public loves living vicariously through the lives of other people. It’s a publicity thing. He’s my boss. I am not interested in him.” Her voice had climbed a couple of octaves higher than usual, driven in part by the nuclear heat of Gage’s knowing stare.

“Better not be,” muttered Luke.

“He’s such a tool that every time I see him I want to do serious violence to his body,” she added unnecessarily.

“Uh-huh.” Gage gave a wise nod. “Wouldn’t have pegged him for the submissive type in the bedroom, but maybe he likes that. Gives him a chance to relax at the end of a long day playing at being king.”

She shot her baby brother a look. “Violence that involves nut twisting and penis scrunching.”

“God, Alex,” Luke said. “There are sensitive men-children here.”

Wy sniffed the moo shu pork. Satisfied it wouldn’t give him food poisoning, he dove in. “You meet Bastian Durand at the game?”

“Yeah, we got a tour of the locker room. He has a teeny-tiny dick.”

“My next question,” Wy commented drily.

Darcy cleared her throat. “Look, I know this family feels hard done by Eli because of certain events for which no one seems prepared to accept their share of blame. Luke did punch out a CPD detective on camera last summer. Alex did destroy my assholic father’s car, also on camera. Kinsey did go behind her boss’s back and release that video—”

“Your point, D?” Kinsey cut in.

“None of you are giving him a fair shake,” Darcy finished.

Darcy’s and Eli’s families went back to the Mayflower, so she was clearly biased. Still, Alex felt herself inclining forward, waiting for something that might make her feel better about her mind-melting attraction to him. It couldn’t be merely hormones running riot. Surely her subconscious detected something beneath the man’s one-dimensional plastic surface.

Kinsey was wearing her most skeptical expression. “Oh, puh-lease enlighten us about St. Eli. Tell us about all those secret donations he’s giving to the puppy shelter and his incognito soup kitchen shifts.”

“I’m just saying that he’s not the villain people make him out to be,” Darcy went on. “He’s a Medal of Honor recipient. Went through all that horror as a kid. He donated his inheritance and he doesn’t even take a salary.”