Kinsey snorted. “Spare us the Batman sob story. Madison worked that angle so well during the first election that the voting ballots were damp with tears.” At Darcy’s shocked gasp, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, it’s sad. I get it. But we all have sad stuff. It doesn’t give someone a pass on using it to manipulate people into dating them.”

“No one is dating anyone. It’s just a few public appearances,” Alex insisted. “I think I’m enough of my own person to not feel pressured to”—give him a blow job that would rearrange his brain circuitry—“do something I wouldn’t be comfortable with.”

“I know how Madison’s mind works,” Kinsey said, still stuck on the publicity angle. “The poll numbers are finally going in the right direction and she thinks the two of you together are the golden egg. It gets him in good with the unions and detracts from the real issues.” She stared at Alex in a way that made her want to confess all her sins, then offer up a decade of the Rosary. “I can see how he benefits. I just don’t see why you’d agree to be a part of it.”

“Like I said, I’m doing him a favor. And I know what I’m doing.” Most of the time. As long as they ran, not walked, by all closets and avoided being alone together. Last night, she’d made herself clear: casual sex was out. Keeping the sizzle to subzero should be easy at public events where she’d be too nervous to even think about the things she’d like done to her by that talented devil-mouth. “If there’s nothing else?”

Barely mollified, Luke turned to Kinsey. “Come on, sweetheart, we’ve got to meet the housing inspector. Last check before we close.”

Kinsey looked positively giddy. “As long as you let me do all the talking. Not always your strong suit, babe.”

“Cosigned,” Alex said, steering them out the door. “Later, D and B,” she called out to Darcy and Beck before hanging up.

On her return to the kitchen, she found Gage trashing the moo shu and shoving Wy to the table, all while muttering about how he’d cook breakfast. Again. Wy smiled slyly like that was his plan all along because let’s face it, Gage made a mean Denver omelet.

Gage’s mouth was grim with concern. “You are going to be careful, Alex? Luke might be going about this all wrong, but he has a point. Eli’s sort of twisted.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Just some stuff Brady said. He’s got ice water in his veins and winning is all he cares about. We don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I can handle Cooper.”

“More like he wants to handle you,” Wy muttered over the lip of his coffee mug. “Last summer, when you were over at his house getting your ass chewed out, it was as clear as fuckin’ day. Guy likes you.”

A delicious thrill ran through her. “He likes to piss me off.”

Wy delivered his gunfighter squint. He looked tired, and not for the first time, she wondered what was so important it took him away once a week and kept his lips sealed tighter than a nun’s knickers. Luke claimed it wasn’t a woman, but speculation about their oldest brother’s mysterious overnighters was rife.

“Fun night, brother mine?” she asked pointedly.

“Not as fun as yours,” he quipped back in a very un-Wy-like manner.

She shot a glare at Gage, who must have been telling tales while she shoved Luke and Kinsey out into the street. “I wish you’d take that big blabbermouth of yours and move in with Brady for good.”

“Damn, you’re awful cranky for a gal who got some action last night,” Gage said with that brazen grin that got him both into and out of trouble. “I had to tell someone how my poor innocent eyes were scandalized. And talking to Wy is like confessing to a priest. Without the judgment. Or the need to say penance.”

Admittedly, Wy was pretty top notch in the “live and let live” department, unlike the rest of the Dempsey nosey parkers. Now he stared at her, concern in his usually unflappable expression. “If there was somethin’ you needed, Alex, you’d tell us, right?”

Guilt pinched her chest. Lying did not come naturally to her, though if she spent more time with the mayor, the man’s deflection and dishonesty might rub off her. Or other things, that craven voice in her head whispered.

“I’ve got this.”

But she had the unsettling, yet oddly pleasurable feeling that Eli Cooper had her—exactly where he wanted her.

 CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Mr. Cochrane is already in your office, Mr. Mayor.”

Eli barely managed to suppress his disgust with that news as he nodded absently at Kelly, his receptionist. Early again. Though Chicago’s wealthiest businessman might prefer to assert his dominance by breezing in late, Eli was fairly sure Sam knew the mayor’s schedule to a T, and planned his meetings so Eli wouldn’t be in his office when Cochrane arrived.

Much better to make himself at home and make Eli look like the interloper when he walked in.

No matter how many times Eli strode into that office, if Sam Cochrane was already there, then the point was made. And today, as he entered and found that stone in his shoe sitting in Eli’s chair behind Eli’s desk, he felt singularly renewed in his plan to extricate his political life from Cochrane, come hell or high water.

“Sam.”

“Mr. Mayor.”

There was insolence in those two words. They both knew that Eli owed the office to Sam’s backing.

Sam was powerfully built and trim for his age. His third wife, thirty years his junior, kept him physically active, and his brain found exercise planning corporate coups and how to screw over anyone who looked at him crooked. But the front lines of political power didn’t interest him, not when so much could be gained by working behind the scenes.

Enter Eli.

At thirty, he was a year out of the Marines, working as an assistant state’s attorney, when Sam Cochrane approached him with his kingmaker proposal. The then-mayor was a three-time incumbent who had allowed city hall to ossify during his reign of inertia. Eighteen months to the election, and everyone expected an unopposed run—like the previous two elections. Butting up against the status quo would take chutzpah and money in spades.

Eli had the chutzpah. Guess who had the money?

He was under no illusion about what he was getting himself into. Sam was a shark who tore through business enemies and allies alike with razor-sharp teeth, but Eli was sure he could temper that ferocity once he was in office.

Over the course of a year, Eli attended every community meeting in every rat-infested South Side death trap of a school. He met with grassroots leaders and listened to their needs. He wrote opinion pieces calling out the current administration’s inadequacies and—wait for it—proposing solutions. By the time he declared eight months before the election, everyone knew who he was and what he stood for. He would be tough on crime, he would curb spending, he wouldn’t stand for bullshit. (He even swore on TV during a debate, and that clip was played over and over. Street cred for the win.)

That’s not to say the election wasn’t hard fought. It was. Precinct by precinct, ward by ward, Chicago’s own Battle of Stalingrad. But what threw him over the top was not his looks or charm or passion. It was not even his service in Afghanistan, where he had been captured by the Taliban, making him a bona fide American fucking hero.

It was the human-interest element. They were voting for that little boy who had crouched terrified in that closet all those years ago. They were voting for the son of a great man.

“Glad to see you’re none the worse for wear after the fire.”

Eli walked to the window and looked out over the busy Loop streets of his kingdom. Another snowstorm was forecast, promising a dangerous evening commute. Treacherous roads ahead.