“I wish you’d tell us what he did,” Kinsey said, “because last we talked you were going to ask him how he felt. Now we have this gag-inducing hearts-on-buildings business, so what’s the problem here?”

“It’s not so simple.” Alex had shared with her friends and family that she and Eli were kaput because she elected to pull out before she was pushed out. She longed to confide in them, but it wasn’t her story to tell. “This is just another stunt. Like everything with him.”

“Well, it’s a pretty good stunt!”

Sighing, Alex turned away from the crew, which was watching her avidly, waiting for her to break down in a girly puddle of mush, she supposed.

“He can light up every building from here to Bangkok. Maybe he’ll electrocute himself and do us all a favor. Gotta bounce.” She hung up with Kinsey and faced her crew. “Something to say, gentlemen?”

“Wouldn’t want to risk it,” Derek said. “Like my balls where they are. Outside my body.”

“I cannot believe you’re all on his side now. You’re supposed to hate his guts!”

“My union has spoken,” said Murphy, that fickle idiot.

Wy met her gaze. “He’s doin’ the best he can with what he’s got.”

God, where was Luke when she needed him? “You make it sound like he’s some emotionally stunted geek who doesn’t know how to speak to a woman. The guy is a professional bamboozler and that’s what he’s doing to you and everyone in this city. He’s not playing fair.”

“Who said love was fair?”

Ack! Her phone rang with a number she didn’t recognize. More media. She silenced it.

“I need it to be fair.” That’s all she had ever wanted. To be treated on the job not as a woman, but as an equal. To be treated on her dates not as a job, but as a woman. It wasn’t fair of Eli to throw his power around like a spoiled child because he didn’t like a particular outcome. He had so much at his disposal—money, charm, now the support of an entire city—and she had nothing but her titanium spine and justifiable sense of outrage.

“He’s an ass.”

“Sure is,” Wy agreed, rubbing his chin.

Her gaze zeroed in on the reddened knuckles of his right hand. “It was you,” she hissed. “You hit him.”

He pulled her aside into the corridor. “Of course I did. Did you think I was going to let him get away with what he pulled here? How he hurt you?”

“You don’t even know what he did.”

He gentled her jaw and forced her eyes up to meet his blue-gray ones. They sparkled with an intensity and passion she rarely saw because he was always so guarded. As a child, she had been closer to her other brothers, especially Gage. While Wy’s love and loyalty were never in doubt, he was the one who seemed to need them the least.

“He made my beautiful baby sister cry. That’s all I need to know.”

Here come the fucking waterworks again. “Oh, Wy,” and before she knew it he had enveloped her in his unyielding strength.

“I know how hard it is for you here,” he whispered against her hair, “and how you never once complain. Murphy rakin’ you over the coals, implyin’ you’re not tough enough for this job. I know what he’s been doin’ to you, but I also know that you can handle it. Because that’s how you’ve always been. So fuckin’ strong. And not once have I seen you lose it until this shit with Cooper.”

“I tend to eat my emotions,” she said on a sniff. “Burritos and ice cream get me through.”

He huffed a low laugh and she cheered a minor victory because Wy was so hard to crack.

She bit her lip. “Was it just one punch?”

“Yeah, I kept it fair. He didn’t fall over or anythin’, but it surprised him.”

“Good,” she whispered.

“He’s not going to give up, Alex. He enjoys the challenge, and now he’s got the touchdown of the election, you’re the conversion. That lawsuit he invented? Only a politician would come up with a scheme that twisted.”

She drew back, swiped at her eyes. “Right. And no matter how romantic Darcy thinks his shenanigans are or how swoonworthy Kinsey thinks that building love letter is, it comes down to this: I can’t trust him. Keeping me in the dark, trickery and lies, that’s his default setting. He doesn’t know any better, Wy. It’s ingrained in him because of his job.”

His genetics.

She would never betray his confidence, but knowing what she did about Weston Cooper put a gloss on the situation that no one else could see. Eli was upholding the legacy of a criminal to prolong his stay in the mayor’s office. It was a slap in the face to every true hero.

Eli Cooper and Sam Cochrane deserved each other.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Shouldn’t you be getting home to your empty mausoleum and crippled dog?”

Eli looked up from his desk to find Madison leaning against the doorjamb, briefcase in hand, coat draped over her arm.

“Even Shadow can’t bear my company.” Last night, Eli’s sad sack vibes had driven Shadow to turn his back on his master in disgust and lie across the hearth. His banged-up puppy missed Alexandra. “Anyway, I have all I need here.”

Madison stepped inside. “You’d better be talking about scotch.”

Sighing, Eli pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich from the bottom drawer along with a couple of cut-crystal old-fashioneds. The city of Chicago had a zero-tolerance policy for alcohol on city property, but screw the rules. Tonight he planned to get well and truly smashed.

He poured a couple of fingers apiece and slid one over to Madison, who had taken a seat opposite. “What news of the campaign?”

“Numbers are perfect with a practically unassailable lead two days out. Operation Date-a-Firefighter was a stunning success. You terminated a little earlier than we had planned, but the overall benefit was the same.” She raised her glass. “To four more years.”

He stared her down. “Why didn’t we work out?”

She mouthed an “ah” and took a moment to consider. “You were too young and too drunk. I was too jaded and not drunk enough.” It left her lips sounding well rehearsed.

“No, later. In the last few years, we’ve had more dinners and spent more time together than most married couples, maybe had more sex than most married couples, yet we’ve never wanted to take it further. It’s not as if we don’t get along.”

“You have an aversion to commitment and I have an aversion to dirty socks on my bedroom floor.”

“I feel as though we could have overcome these obstacles.”

She knocked back her drink in one gulp and placed the glass down. Ever graceful, she stood and moved toward the window. It was where she did her best thinking.

“Remember that day you came to M Squared after Alex Dempsey had been maligned in the news for her dating escapades?”

He nodded, though she couldn’t see him. All her focus was outward over the city streets.

“You crashed through the door of the conference room, all fury and passion and vengeance, and beelined straight for her. Nothing else existed for you in that moment, only her.”

Not just in that moment. Since the first moment. In Smith & Jones, he had recognized something in her that he didn’t just crave. It was the part of himself he was missing. This good, pure thing he needed to wash away his sins and make him whole.

Brave, beautiful Alexandra, following in the footsteps of heroic giants. She’d accused him of appropriating her family’s legacy because his own was corrupted. Soiled. All true—God, what a dick he was—but as always, there was more gray than black-and-white in this sordid tale. Every decision Eli made before the age of thirty was to honor the father he had idolized since before he could walk. Law school, the Marines, Chicago’s mayor. Finding out what Weston Cooper had done, the monster he had become, had killed something inside of him.