The local NBC news affiliate was busy detailing his demise with their typical glee. Last week, he’d been the most romantic man in America. This week, he was a conniving monster. Can’t win for losing.

“Quiet,” Kenneth called out to the chatty staffers, “the fifteenth ward is in.”

“Results from the fifteenth ward and it goes to . . . Caroline Jenkins. That places her at 49.2 percent of the vote against Mayor Cooper’s 48.8 with six wards left to report.”

Low curses blanketed the room, but then his team got back to work making calls and checking in with polling stations. Anything to avoid looking at him. More than once, he found a staffer, usually female, gazing at him with a mix of wonder and pity before dropping her eyes in embarrassment. Only a fool would shoot himself in the ass like he had, that look said.

“Eli,” he heard behind him. Madison.

“Any news from the forty-eighth?” he asked without turning.

“Howdy, Mr. Mayor.”

He shuttered his eyes against the possibility he might be imagining her presence. She had come to him at last. Slowly, he turned as if that could ensure she wouldn’t bolt, but Alexandra Dempsey was not a runner. She was the bravest person he knew.

“Sucks to be you right now,” she murmured.

He coughed out a laugh. Not at all. It was great to be him.

She was wearing jeans and those favorite boots of hers and that parka he had peeled off her at the Hawks—Red Wings game, then later that night when he made her come. Twice.

Get your mind out of the gutter, Cooper.

But he couldn’t. Thinking of the woman before him inevitably led to lust, as well as admiration, respect, fury, and love. Every part of her appealed to every part of him, and his heart howled to be completed by her touch.

“Let’s talk, Alexandra.”

He walked toward the bedroom of the suite and pushed through the door. She followed and shut the door behind her.

“Eli, what you did—”

“Do you mind if I speak first? I need to get it off my chest before you say something nice.” She was here, so that had to be a good sign, but he refused to take anything for granted.

She bit down on that fleshy pillow of her lower lip. “Seeing as I don’t do nice, that’s rather optimistic on your part, but okay.”

Still busting his balls. Perfect.

He inhaled what felt like the deepest breath of his life. “This is probably not news to you, but I’m a dick. I’m a complete asshole. I’m everything you’ve ever called me and probably a few things that hillbilly trucker mouth of yours hasn’t thought of yet. From the beginning, I’ve been trying to control everything. It’s how I’ve always powered through all the shit I’ve endured. Through every situation. Hell, I sabotaged a date because I didn’t want someone else to have you.”

She smiled, a ray of sun cracking the clouds. “It was a lousy date anyway.”

“I used an extremely underhanded method to force you to spend time with me.”

“Well, I probably would have shot you down.” Her brow furrowed. “Maybe instead of focusing on all your nefarious shenanigans, you should start selling me on awesome Eli.”

He scrubbed his mouth. “I’m only realizing now that winning the election was secondary, Alexandra. Winning you was always my evil plan. You were right to despise me, to call me out on my shit. You were right to do everything in your power to resist me because I wasn’t the man for you. I wasn’t worthy. Maybe you sensed that.”

She touched his lips with two cool fingers. “I’m going to stop you there. I have no right to demand you make yourself worthy to win me. To change for me.”

He took her hand, kissed her palm. Just being able to touch her like this made him wild with joy. “Honey, you do. You’ve every right to demand that you get the man you deserve and, hell, if I can’t change for you, then I can’t change. Before I met you, I was pretty numb. Since you’ve entered my life, I feel everything to the max. The food I eat with you is the best I’ve ever tasted. The orgasms I have with you are the best I’ve ever experienced. The breaths I take with you are the fullest I’ve ever drawn.”

The corner of her lush mouth quirked. “Food, orgasms, breathing. Very important.”

“They are! They’re all worth fighting for. We’re worth fighting for. You said I never saw you as an equal and you were right, but not the way you think. You’re a goddess and I’m not worthy to worship at your feet, but I’m happy to spend the rest of my life trying to be good enough for you.”

“Eli.” Uttering his name in a throaty whisper, she placed her palm on his chest. So soft, and yet she completely undid him. His heart leaped, reacting to his woman’s strength wrapped around it. The cage of her hand, the mistress of his soul.

“Oh, God, Eli, I said you could confide in me. That I would be there for you if you ever needed to talk, and the first time you opened your heart, I fucking blew it.”

“It was a lot to take in. I don’t blame you for how you reacted. Not a bit.”

She looked forlorn. “And then what you did in that press conference . . . I know I goaded you, but it was never meant to destroy your campaign, you moron!”

“Yet there would have been no other way to prove to you how much I love you.” He gathered her close. “You held up a mirror and showed me what I’d become. How I’d risked turning into him with every gray decision and every turn of the card. I needed to break his legacy, annihilate it, because I could no longer let it remain tied to mine. I’m my own man. Not Weston Cooper’s son, not Sam Cochrane’s puppet. But with that said, I’ll still happily admit to being a slave to another.”

Her smile was shy, not like his Alexandra at all. “Is this person difficult, mouthy, liable to say the wrong thing, and a general all-around pain in your ass?”

“Yep. And my heart belongs to her completely.”

She squeezed his hand. “And her heart belongs to you, too. Unfortunately for you and your political future, her mouth and family come with it.”

He grinned and pulled her into his arms. Never letting go.

“Many years ago at my parents’ funeral, Alexandra, your father told me to call on him if I ever needed anything. I never did make that call, but I knew he was there for me, and that if the occasion had arisen, he would have welcomed me with open arms.”

“He would have. He did.” Tears sparkled like glossy jewels on her lower lashes. “Eli, I think Sean’s spirit was with me the night of the fire, looking out for both of us. Making sure I’d be strong enough to save you. That we’d be strong enough to save each other.”

A connection forged in fire. Mutual life debts, mutual responsibility. “The universe is telling us something. Or someone up there thinks we should stop screwing around and make a go of this.”

She sniffed. “Thought you didn’t believe in the fairy tale.”

“Who needs the fairy tale when crazy, messy, sexy reality with the woman I adore is a million times better?”

“Eli, I love you so much.” The tears that had been threatening for the last five minutes finally spilled down her cheeks. “And now you’ve made me cry. Again. You—you prick!”

“Aw, honey, let me kiss it better.” He claimed her mouth, swallowing her laugh-sob, savoring her emotion. They stayed that way for a few blissful moments, until their pulse rates calmed to manageable levels.

“I know what’s going on here,” she whispered against his mouth, a breathy hitch in her voice.

“You do?”

She smiled through her tears. “All these years, you’ve been an honorary Dempsey under that sexy skin.”

“God, I can’t wait to tell Luke.”

Her husky laugh rocked his world. “If they love you a tenth as much as I do, then you should be in good shape.”

“I know. I’ve witnessed it and I’ve got so much to learn.”

He knew she would teach him, carry him the rest of the way. Just like that night in the hotel when she infused his body with air. With new and wondrous life. Eli Cooper was one lucky son of a bitch to have been rescued by Firefighter Alexandra Dempsey.