—Chicago Tattler

Five days. Five days without a word.

Oh, she saw him on the news. It was impossible not to. The man was the news. He was followed everywhere he went, from a visit to an after-school program where he played basketball with the kids to a meeting of concerned parents for the Chicago Public Schools system. With each new sighting, she strained to see if he’d replaced her, but he appeared to be riding solo. Alex imagined she saw Madison in the background, doing her job, and every glimpse sent a hot snake of jealousy crawling through her insides. Then she felt embarrassed and petty.

Damn Eli Cooper.

He had made no promises to her, so his admission about his unfinished relationship with his ex-wife should not have affected Alex in this way. A free agent, he was welcome to conduct his sex life any way he chose, but sleeping with an ex seemed like a whole other level—a whole other meaningful level. How could they do the deed and divorce—ha!—it from all the feelings they once had for each other?

Her posse was split down the middle: Gage and Darcy thought So what? All that matters is who he wants now. Kinsey had taken Alex’s side, though there’d been a hint of disappointment in her tone that Alex was letting this get under her skin. Such girly weaknesses were not permitted in the enjoy-the-cock-ride code.

What the hell did it matter? Alex and Eli were not in a relationship. The man didn’t even believe in love. The fairy tale was for suckers, and she was another lamb waiting in line for the love’ll-kill-you slaughterhouse. Instead, Eli Cooper was getting his sexual appetites satisfied without the inconvenience of a connection. His ex-wife one week, the woman who saved his life the next.

Yet . . .

When he’d stripped her bare with his eyes and his hands, she had seen something there. Some link between them that grew stronger with each encounter, whether it was a sexy banterfest, a sixty-second orgasm, or a night of hunger awakened and barely sated. He was looking for something—and why did it feel like she was the one person who could give it to him?

It’s good to be king, he had said. Pretty fucking lonely, too.

Seated in the back of the truck on her way to a traffic accident scene, she tightened the strap on her helmet and mulled over the maudlin turn her thoughts had taken. What a sap. Strangely, she missed him. Not just his muscular, scarred body and those clever, clever hands. She missed his voice, his snark, his quick mind, his cocksure opinions. And she missed how special he had made her feel, transitory though it was. With Eli Cooper, she felt like the only woman in his world.

Wise up, dummy. Hallmarks of a good politician.

Determined to shove him from her mind, she shook her muddled head and focused on her job. Venti was calling out updates from the computer in the cab of the truck as they barreled toward Lake Shore Drive and Addison, mere steps from Cubbies territory. A semi had collided with three cars on the Drive during morning rush hour, and they needed all hands on deck.

CPD was already on site, working to move cars aside so the first responders could cut a path through, but Engine 6’s truck still met the immovable force of stopped traffic at least two hundred feet from the pileup. Up ahead, they could see the truck bed of the semi embedded in the roof of an SUV. Shit, that was not good. There was a reason why trucks were not allowed on the Drive.

“Fox, Dempsey, with me,” Venti barked. “The rest of you work with CPD on getting these cars cleared for the EMTs.”

Why the cap had chosen her wasn’t clear. Other members of the crew had a ton more experience with this kind of incident.

“What’ve we got?” Wyatt asked before she had a chance to.

“One dead on the scene, at least eight injured ranging from critical to a broken ankle . . .” A pair of EMTs were doing CPR on a guy laid out on the ground. So much blood . . .

They picked up the pace, heading toward the SUV wedged beneath the truck’s flatbed. The vehicle had lost a quarter of its height, dangerously compressed in a way that prevented the doors from being opened without cutting equipment—and even that would be difficult given the angle. A uniformed cop stood hunched over at the smashed window, alternating between speaking into a radio and assuring the driver that help was on the way.

Alex assumed they were the cavalry.

Venti called out the details. A heavily pregnant woman was trapped in the SUV, her leg pinned, but conscious enough to speak. The LT in charge from Engine 69 was Alex’s former lieutenant at Engine 6, Tony “Big Mac” McElroy, a rock-solid guy who was also a good friend. On seeing them, he nodded them over.

“Her leg’s stuck under the dash and we need to collar her before we can cut her out . . .”

“But you can’t fit anyone through that back window,” Wy finished, assessing the crushed roof of the SUV below the forced shelter of the flatbed.

“Yeah, she’s at thirty-nine weeks. Not in labor, but if we don’t move her right, it could turn to shit real quick.”

Alex went to unsnap her jacket, knowing now why Venti had chosen her. Sure she was bigger boned than the average woman, but in this case her slimmer female frame was a benefit.

“Keep it on,” Wy said about her jacket. “You’re going to need protecting from the glass.” Within sixty seconds, he had boosted her up and passed her through the back window opening. Landing butt first on a lovely collection of shards, she smiled grimly at the crunchy sound they made. Good call, bro.

“Ma’am, can you hear me?” Alex asked the driver while Wy passed in the collar they’d use to keep the woman’s neck in place during the extraction.

“I—I can’t move my leg and . . .” Splintering panic made her voice high pitched. “It feels wet! I can’t tell if it’s blood or my water’s breaking.”

Alex ripped off her glove, reached around, and checked the woman’s pulse. Strong, thank God, but she had an ugly gash on her temple, and she was clearly in some distress. Her hand cradled her swollen belly protectively.

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Wh—what?”

“Your name? I’m Alex.”

“M-Mia.” She gasped through her pain. “Mia. And . . . oh, shit. This baby’s coming.”

Of course it was. Babies, both the unborn and the untethered kinds, were not known for their timing.

“You hear that?” Alex called out over her shoulder to the crew, careful to keep her voice modulated so as not to spook Mia. “Get the paramedics in here. This lady would like to have her baby.” With one hand supporting the back of the driver’s-side seat, she adjusted it until it reclined to a forty-five-degree angle.

“I’m going to put this collar around your neck, Mia. Try to remain as still as you can.” The access was awkward, but Alex managed to get the collar in place. Where the hell were the EMTs?

With the sound of Mia’s obviously increasing pain ringing in her ears, Alex turned back to Wy, who was leaning in. “She needs to be pulled out now.”

Venti said something she couldn’t hear, but Wy was on hand to translate.

“All EMT crews are busy with other vics, and the next round of support is five minutes away. Now she’s collared, you need to get out so we can take the Hurst tool to the back and rip this bad boy open.”

Mia screamed. “This is fucking happening! Believe me when I say I know. It’s my fifth.”

Alex shared a worried look with Wy. In her days as an EMT, she had come across all sorts, but dragging a kid out of Hotel Utero in a glass-ridden, torn-to-shit sport-utility vehicle was most definitely not in her repertoire. One thing she did know: if a mother of four said her baby was coming, then the baby was definitely coming.

“I’ll get the supplies,” Wy said.

The next ten minutes passed in a messy blur. Mia’s contractions were coming less than a minute apart and starting to blend into one another. During one of the downtimes, Alex went to work releasing her trapped leg—another nasty cut but not life-threatening—and pushing the seat back as far as it could go. She would have preferred to move Mia into the back, but maneuvering a woman at close to full term—and in labor—around a crushed SUV was not so easy. The best she could do was slide her across to the passenger seat so she’d be in a better position to deliver her baby. A pillow behind her head to make her somewhat comfortable against the side window, and they had themselves a less-than-ideal, but cozy birthing space.