“Okay, Mia, you’re the expert at this. I’m just here to make the catch.” Alex hauled in the deepest breath she could, drawing on all her experience to quell her jangling nerves. The baby was already crowning, Mia was panting up a storm, and everything was happening much too fast.

“We okay?” Wy called in, and only because Alex knew him well could she tell there was the slightest worry threaded through his voice.

“Just fine,” Alex returned, then to Mia, “So do you know if we’re meeting a boy or girl today?”

“A girl,” she panted. “I have four boys already and—and I’m ready for a girl. Or thought I was.” Her face, shiny with exertion, scrunched in concern. “Have you done this before?”

Made the catch? Alex was only the best catcher on the Engine 6 crew. She’d even been chosen to represent CFD during the annual charity ball game against CPD last September. So maybe she hadn’t caught a baby hurtling down the chute, but she had great hands. She could do this.

“Tons of times,” Alex said with the easy assurance Mia needed to hear in these fraught moments. “Now, on the next contraction, you’re going to—”

That sentence died a quick death because scream-push-pop and suddenly Alex’s hands were full with a slippery bundle of action. Wow, this baby wasn’t fooling around. Only instinct kept the package in the secure hold of Alex’s hands.

“Is she okay?” Mia gushed out after a few seconds, catching her breath. Woman was a total pro.

Alex swiped a finger across the baby’s nose and mouth, removing the amniotic fluid, and waited one, two, three . . . she gasped her first breath, hauling a breath of chilly January air into her little lungs. Praise the Cubbies.

Did Alex think little lungs? Seconds later, Chicago’s newest citizen bellowed a shieldmaiden’s cry, letting Mom and anyone within a five-mile radius know she had arrived. Look out, world!

“Oh yeah, she’s more than okay.” After wrapping her in a towel Wy had supplied, Alex placed the fresh-born babe against her mom’s chest, keeping her own hands in reserve in case Mia was too weak to hold her. But she hadn’t reckoned with a mother’s innate strength. Mia’s arms locked naturally around her own flesh and blood as her lips brushed the crown of her dark-haired head.

“Just wait till your papi sees you, niña,” she murmured, adding sweet baby talk that only moms and babies understood.

“How we doin’ in there?” Wy called out, cutting into the female power cocoon. There was work to be done getting Mia and her baby to ultimate safety, but for now, all was right with the world. Another kick-ass girl had joined the ranks.

Alex met Mia’s blissed-out mama smile. “Fucking awesome.”

Tired, but still riding the high of this morning’s run, Alex let herself into her home. She had showered back at the firehouse and all she could think of was catching a few Zs before she headed into the bar for a shift.

Well, that wasn’t all she could think of. There was him, but she was doing a pretty good job of cramming the asshole into a dank spot in her mind. Which left room for little baby Alex, who was doing just fine at the hospital with her very grateful mom and dad. Okay, so they hadn’t named her Alex at all—just a spot of wishful thinking on her part—but she felt a humbling connection to this kid who’d fought her way into the wintry world under such tricky conditions. What Alex did every day was important, and every moment on the job affirmed her decision to join the CFD tribe. And she didn’t need a bossy-as-all-get-out throwback Neanderthal who was still hung up on his ex to complete her. Get back to your cobwebbed corner, lizard dick!

A warm bed and clean sheets beckoned, but just as she was heading upstairs, the doorbell rang. Shit. Her next-door neighbor Mrs. Gish probably wanted Alex to shovel her sidewalk again.

“Delivery,” said the bright-eyed FedEx guy as he moved from foot to foot to stave off the positively balmy twenty-degree cold. At his feet was a medium-sized box with no visible markings, which she signed for and pulled inside. Not heavy, just a little awkward. Unpocketing her Swiss Army knife, she sliced through the box and unveiled the contents.

Her pulse rate shot into the stratosphere.

That tricky bastard.

 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Mr. Mayor, you’re proposing a hybrid plan to manage the underfunded fire and police pension plans and bring— Eli, are you even listening?”

Eli looked up from his phone to find his chief of staff, Kenneth, Madison, and the rest of the campaign team staring at him in the fifth-floor conference room at city hall.

“Sure, I’m listening. ‘The hybrid solution will include self-managed plans along with a social security—like element,’ etcetera, etcetera.” He waved off the recitation.

“Say it like you mean it, Eli,” Kenneth chimed in.

Madison cocked a hip. “The debate is in less than two weeks and your lack of engagement worries me¸ Eli. When Jenkins comes after you on the math, you have to be able to shut her down.”

“I know the math inside out. My original platform was pension reform, and if the fucking unions weren’t still so in love with Dick Daley, who left it in this putrid mess, I wouldn’t even have to answer questions about it.” For three years, he had struggled with the municipal unions to get them to understand that pension reform was a necessity. They were living in la-la land, where they thought twenty years of service guaranteed a gold watch and a cottage in Lake Geneva.

His gaze dipped to his phone again. She should have gotten it by now.

This week had almost killed him. Begging a woman’s forgiveness was not his style, and frankly, he had done nothing that needed forgiving, except tell the truth. Which Alexandra apparently was incapable of handling.

Did he go apeshit when she told him about that prick who callously used her, then bragged to his friends about nailing America’s Favorite Firefighter? So maybe his brain had done a 360 in his skull and maybe his lungs and heart had fought a cage match at the thought that anyone would dare to hurt her. But he kept his reaction on the DL, because he didn’t want to be that guy. Jealous guy. Who technically had no reason to be jealous because this thing between them was supposed to be casual.

Casual. What a stupid fucking word. These past five interminable days without her had crystallized what was obvious to him from day one, though he was too stubborn to admit it: nothing about his feelings toward Alexandra Dempsey were even in the same zip code as casual. His blood boiled in her presence. His body became a cauldron of want and need. Every nerve ending shrieked to rawness when he was denied the chance to touch her. And when he did lay his hands on her silky skin, his IQ dropped to single digits and he devolved to a cock on two legs.

How did that qualify as casual?

It would fade soon. It had to. This depth of attraction never lasted, though he couldn’t recall a single woman who had turned him inside out like this, not even Madison. Their relationship had been—and still was—civilized compared to what he had with Alexandra. Civilized conversations, civilized arguments, civilized sex.

With Alexandra, he felt dangerously unmoored. Out on a narrow ledge with the wind battering him, the only anchor the plunge of his cock into her body. He wanted to fuck her into oblivion—and to not have to pick through the rubble of a romantic entanglement afterward. This should not be so hard. He should not be so hard. All the time.

His phone buzzed with an incoming text message.