Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (19 page)

Eli folded his arms. “The result came in under the legal limit.”

That revelation seemed to take the wind out of Alex’s sails, but in typical Dempsey fashion, the deflation didn’t last long. She turned to Wyatt and swore in colorful language more suitable to an army mess hall. “That pigfucker hates our family because Beck’s in love with his daughter. Ever since Luke’s fight with Dickwad McGinnis, Cochrane’s sided with the CPD in his paper, and now he has them in his pocket.”

Kinsey watched Eli’s reaction carefully. He covered it well, but she could tell the truth of Alex’s assertion resonated. Nonetheless, he remained unshakably political.

“Unfounded accusations of corruption aren’t going to help you here, Alexandra. There’s still the little matter of damage to a very expensive car. Drunk or not, he will now likely sue the city.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can figure something out, Eli. You entitled big shots always flock together.”

“Firefighter Dempsey.” Kinsey shot a sharp glance at Wyatt, who had settled back in his chair with arms crossed and an avid curiosity in the exchange before him. This situation was hurtling out of control, and big brother was supposed to be making sure Alex’s best interests were considered, not looking like he wished he had a box of Milk Duds in one hand, an extralarge Coke in the other. Wyatt met Kinsey’s gaze for a moment and, evidently unaffected by the desperation he saw there, turned back to the action.

For the love of her ovaries, did Kinsey have to do everything?

She sent a pleading look Eli’s way. “Mr. Mayor, she’s upset and—”

“No, wait a second,” Eli said, holding up his hand to curtail Kinsey’s defense. His gaze bored into Alex. “Do you even know the meaning of ‘entitled’? Because if you looked it up, there’d be a holiday photo of the clan Dempsey, Alexandra. You think because you’ve got dead firefighters on your family’s résumé and your godfather is the commish, you’re a special snowflake? That’s not how it works. You’re very small in the grand scheme of things, and fucking with Cochrane does not make you look bigger. It makes you look stupid. I’d put it down to some tigress-defending-her-cubs dynamic, but I’d risk accusations of being a patriarchal woman-hating asshole.”

“I was raised to be proud of my family and to not take shit from people who screw with them,” Alex shot back.

Eli’s eyes flashed with admiration—there were Oscar-worthy levels of eye flashing going on—but they quickly dimmed to indifferent. “Oh, be proud, Alexandra. Be proud all the way out of a job.”

“Fine! I’ll resign.”

“Alex,” Wyatt warned. “Not another word.”
Finally.
He stood and looked the mayor right in the eye. “Firefighter Dempsey will cooperate with any and all hearings.”

Eli glowered right back. “CFD HQ will be in touch later on today about the next steps.” His tone was dismissive, and everyone took it in that spirit, except Alex, who hunkered down to rub Shadow’s
ears, making the dog thump his tail in joy. Kinsey suspected she was trying to compose herself and using the dog to get her emotions under tether.

Wyatt moved toward the front door. Kinsey rose to join him.

“Stay a second,” Eli said.

Kinsey froze, her chest filling with dread because she knew she was going to hear it.

“Not you, Kinsey. Be in my office as soon as you get to city hall today. Alexandra, I want a word in private.”

Wyatt bristled. “Anything you have to say—”

“It’s okay, Wy.” Averting her attention from the dog, Alex stood and touched her brother’s arm. “If I’m not out in five minutes, you can send in the search squad to retrieve my body. And make sure they play Green Day at my funeral.”

Wyatt still looked torn, but one hairy-eyeballed glance at Eli was apparently enough to convince him Alex was not going to be compromised by the big bad mayor. That military brothers-in-arms code, perhaps.

However, Kinsey wasn’t completely out of the woods yet, as the mayor turned to her for a parting volley. “You’re walking a fine line here, Kinsey. Be careful about aligning yourself with a volatile bunch like the Dempseys.”

Alex made a strangled sound of disbelief.

“I’m not going to do anything that runs counter to the city’s interests, Mr. Mayor,” Kinsey said firmly. Or her own, she insisted to her Luke-muddled brain.

“Good to know you have my back,” he said with a knife-edge smile she didn’t believe for a second.

Kinsey followed Wyatt out to the house’s entryway, where they stood for a few awkward moments
looking at the walls, the grandfather clock, and anywhere but at each other.

Finally he huffed out a disgusted sigh. “Since when are my sister and the mayor on a first-name basis?”

Kinsey pounced on the subject, grateful for any crumbs of conversation. “As far as I know, they’ve met only once. The mayor and I were having dinner at Smith & Jones and we ran into Gage and Alex.”

Wyatt digested this information. Or at least, Kinsey thought that’s what he was doing. Unlike Luke, who wore his heart on his sleeve, Wyatt was impossible to read.

“I thought you were here to make sure she didn’t get bullied,” she said into the lengthening silence.

“Is that what we’re calling what happened in there?”

Point taken. What they had witnessed was more like a mating ritual between two hopped-up, hoof-pounding moose. In that moment, Kinsey realized that Wyatt had done exactly the right thing in hanging back and leaving his sister to duke it out with Eli. If anything could save Alex, it was Eli’s attraction to her.

Not too shabby, Mr. Fox.

A minute passed in silence.

Then two.

“Tell Alex I’ll be in the car.” Wyatt stepped outside, and Kinsey released the breath she’d been holding. The guy still freaked the shit out of her.

Just as the five-minute mark loomed, Alex emerged, her cheeks fire red.

“What happened?”

“Let’s just go,” Alex muttered, throwing open the heavy oak door.

Kinsey caught up with her on the stoop. “What
did he say?” Silence. Alarm soaked her chest. “Did he . . . did he make a pass at you?”

Horrified, Alex shook her head like a dog coming out of water. “Of course not! He just—” Her cheeks still burned and she raised her hand to her face to cool them. “Where’s Wy?”

“He couldn’t stand to spend one more second in my scintillating presence, so he went to the car. Are you going to tell me what happened or do I have to go back in there and extract it from Eli?”

Alex muttered something unintelligible.

“What’s that?”

“We talked about the dog. He’s a Lab retriever–Border collie mix.”

“The dog?”

She gave an embarrassed shrug. “He wanted to know how I was holding up.”

Ah, that was more like it.

Alex waved Kinsey’s smirk away. “Oh, don’t worry. The sympathy thing lasted all of five seconds before he defaulted to his usual cocky, I’m-the-man self. He told me I made him so mad that he would like nothing better than to put me across his knee.”

“He can’t say that to you! It’s sexual harassment.”

“
Hello,
have you seen where I work? He wouldn’t go there if he didn’t think I could handle it.”

Perhaps, but it was still outrageous behavior from a sitting mayor. Kinsey huffed her indignation. These politicians and their power trips. “I hope you gave him a piece of your mind.”

“I said, ‘Do that, Mr. Mayor, and prepare to live testicle-free for the rest of your miserable days.’ ” She broke into a nervy giggle that morphed into slightly
hysterical. Oh, God. The woman had Eli ensorcelled in her glimmer and she was positively giddy on the power.

“Damn,” Kinsey said, “I’d better stock up on flashlights and bottled water.”

“Huh?”

“There’s going to be some sort of ‘end of days’ deal when you two get together. Earthquakes, riots, swaths of prime real estate on Chicago’s Gold Coast falling into Lake Michigan.”

Alex tripped down the walk to the street, a rather inappropriate spring in her step considering her precarious situation.

“Don’t worry, the world is safe. Mr. Metrosexual and the girl who snacks on the leftover Chinese food she finds in her hoodie? Uh. No.”

“I’m not saying you have to birth his babies, but you could scratch an itch. I know you’ve thought about it.” Every conscious female in the Western hemisphere had thought about it.

As if powered by the loud snort she issued, Alex moved more quickly along the tree-lined streets of Lincoln Park. Kinsey pounded her feet double time to keep up.

“Not enough mirrors in my bedroom to satisfy his need to check his hair while he’s doing it.”

“Bet there are in his, though,” Kinsey said with a grin.

“Look, I might have the worst dating record of any woman in Chicagoland, but believe me when I say I’m not desperate enough to go
there
.” She headed toward where Wyatt was waiting, a dark curtain descending over her face again. “Right now, I need to be focusing on how to get out of this mess, K. What am I going to do?”

 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

G
age dipped the puke-sodden mop in the bucket and wrung it out. He had thought this week could not get any worse, but hey, here he was.

Alex on suspension while she waited for her hearing. Luke snapping Gage’s head off whenever he so much as parted his lips to apologize. And now some drunk dickhead had thrown up in the can at the bar, leaving a Jolly Rancher–colored stream of—was that curry?—all over the tile.

He had eliminated the Brady situation from his litany of Life Sucks. That shit no longer made the list.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from checking his phone every five minutes on the off chance there might be a call from Mr. Surly. Three weeks since the farmers’ market kiss-and-bolt, and Gage could still feel Brady’s stubble-peppered jaw against his. Every day since, Gage had jacked off to the visual of the habanero-hot chef pushing him hard against the SUV, all that need leeching from his mouth and pores. The feel of his cock rubbing—

Don’
t torture yourself, man. The guy is just not into you.

But deep down, Gage knew different. Disinterested
men did not lose a few seconds of sanity and tongue the guy who carried their veggies around for them.

What was holding Brady back? Normally Gage would be pumping his sources for information by now, but his only connection was the mayor, and that wasn’t happening, not when the Dempseys were
familia
non grata.

With the last of the mess mopped up, Gage stowed the equipment, washed up, and made tracks to the bar. In the corridor, he spotted—
shit
—Jacob Scott coming his way. Despite being coworkers on the truck, he and Jacob had never really gelled, something Gage put down to the guy’s DEFCON 1 level of disgust anytime he came within touching distance of Gage. So his typical play was to walk on by with a quick, not unfriendly nod.

However, tonight Jacob stopped him with a hand on Gage’s arm. “How’s Alex?” he asked.

“Hanging in there. Her hearing will be in a few days.”

Jacob nodded. Then nodded a few more times.

“Okay, dude?” Gage asked, because the guy seemed all tweaker agitated.

Jacob stared at him for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth. When their gazes clashed again, Jacob leaned in and . . .

Kissed him.

Jesus.

Gage pushed him away, shock vibrating through his body. “The fuck!”

“S-sorry.” Jacob was panting hard, his breathing serrated like he was having an anxiety attack. “Sh-shit, man, I’m sorry.”

“You want to tell me what that was about?”

“Just too much to drink,” Jacob muttered.

Uh-uh. No way could that be laid at the feet of an extra pint of the black stuff. Gage took Jacob’s arm and steered him toward the back office. “This isn’t college, Jacob. You can’t experiment with your coworkers, and you certainly can’t lay one on them without warning.”

Jacob ran his hand through his blond buzz cut while an ugly red flush crept up his thick neck. “I know, Simpson. I guess . . .” He swallowed and stared at Gage directly. “I guess I just like you.”

Shit on a shingle. That was about the last thing he would have expected out of this guy’s mouth.

“Well, that’s not really how it works. Just because I’m gay and you’re—” He paused. “You are gay, right?”

Jacob nodded sadly, a slump in his massive shoulders.

“Just because we’re both gay does not mean we’re supposed to hook up. It’s not a proximity thing.” Sometimes it was, but this minute? Nah-ah.

Blowing out a heavy breath, Gage leaned against the office desk laden with paperwork. He’d had a couple of nice encounters on this desk, but there would be no repeat performance tonight. Jacob Scott—who the hell would have thought it?

“Look, I know someone like you would never be interested in someone like me,” Jacob said. “I mean, you’re gorgeous and cocky and . . . you know who you are.”

Hell if that didn’t make Gage feel pretty shitty about all the times he’d been less than nice to Jacob. He couldn’t remember a moment when his sexual orientation hadn’t been woven into the very fabric
of his being. Owning it early was his way of coping with his mom’s cruelty and narcissism, of sticking it to the mean kids, of surviving. He had reveled in his difference, so it was hard to fathom denial when he saw it. Denial of self. Denial of happiness.

“I’m sorry, man, but . . .” He trailed off, because the guy was doing the “sad-eyed, you killed my puppy” thing and Gage didn’t much relish his role of dream destroyer.

He supposed Jacob wasn’t half-bad looking with his smooth, boyish features, doofus grin, and bull-like physique. And to top it all off, he was part of the anointed: Chicago Fucking Fire. That last checked box alone meant Jacob would be fighting them off with a freakin’ Halligan in any bar in Boystown.

Jacob continued to stare at him intently, like he was working up to say something, and Gage braced himself. But it was not what he expected at all.

“What if I could help your sister?”

“And how exactly would you do that?”

“I have a video of Cochrane’s meltdown, Alex with the Hurst, the whole thing.”

Gage’s ears perked up to the ceiling but he kept his voice bland. “Which doesn’t exonerate her.”

“But we all know that the perfect sound bite can beat out a dry newspaper report anytime. Get a video to the press with Cochrane running his mouth off and people immediately start to sympathize with her. With the whole lot of you. Then it looks like you’re being persecuted.”

The man made an excellent point. “And what would I need to do to get this favor from you?”

Jacob tilted his head and placed his hand on
Gage’s chest. It had been awhile since Gage had been touched with any intimate intent, not since Brady, who couldn’t slough off whatever demons lived in his head. Sure, it was Jacob Scott, recent addition to the Pink Posse, who Gage wouldn’t have looked at twice even if he were dressed in a sparkly thong on a Gay Pride float in June. But he had something Gage wanted, and the heady brew of being able to extract Alex from this mess
and
that someone actually wanted him was downright intoxicating.

Didn’t mean Gage would make it easy for the blackmailing little fuck, though.

Unmoving—and strangely unmoved—he watched as Jacob ran a hand over Gage’s shoulder, testing, gulping down a lump of nervousness as he did it.

“You been with a guy before?”

“Just anonymous hand-job stuff at the gym.”

Gage could see that. It wasn’t his thing, but he knew every kind of hookup was imaginable in the steam rooms at Equinox. Evidently taking Gage’s silence as an invitation to proceed, Jacob’s thick fingers curled around his neck, and Gage closed his eyes, imagining it was Brady. Imagining the gruff chef’s lips roving his jaw, his neck, his chest.

But reality was far too vivid. The weight of Jacob’s hand was all wrong, the skin too soft to maintain the lie. Or perhaps the burning knot behind Gage’s breastbone was telling him how whack this felt.

He opened his eyes and placed a hand over Jacob’s, readying to push him away. He probably had the video on his phone. Gage could get it from him without blowing the last guy on earth he would ever think of in that way.

But of course, the moment couldn’t just go to shit—it had to go to nuclear crap levels, because Gage was having that kind of day. A noise at the door arrested his attention, and Gage raised his gaze to find sharp black eyes boring into him. The red, mottled skin on the new arrival’s face looked more raw than usual, matching the grim line of his mouth.

Gage knocked Jacob aside. “Brady.”

He was already gone.

God
damn it.

“Don’t move,” he barked out to Jacob as he rounded him to follow Brady. Chasing this guy down was getting to be an ugly habit.

Considering that Brady was a bit of a hulk, Gage was surprised to find he was already out the door by the time Gage made it to the bar. Drilling though the crowd, with Alex calling out that she had sent Brady back a moment ago—
thanks for the heads-up, sis!
—his mind pinwheeled in panic. He was going to lose this before it had even started.

“Brady!” He caught up with him about a half block down the street as he was throwing a long leg over . . . a Harley. The guy drove a frickin’ Harley and this was the first Gage knew about it?

Focus, Simpson.

“That wasn’t—”

Brady’s eyes snapped up, slitted and accusing.

“Okay, maybe it was.”

“None of my business,” Brady bit out. But he remained still on the bike, a column of moored energy, and the fact that he had not yet punched the gas flooded Gage’s chest with hope.

Brady had come
here
, to Dempsey’s bar, obviously
with the intention of . . . God knew what. Now Gage had to work with the knowledge that this man, who had the communication skills of a parking meter, had something on his mind.

Well, sometimes the best way to find out what someone wants is to tell them what
you
want.

“You’re right, it’s none of your business, but I want it to be,” Gage said. “I need more from you. I need proof that you even think of me that way.”

Brady’s frown deepened. “Then I’m sure you can find any random dick on Halsted to give it to you. Don’t even have to go that far. Door’s behind you.”

“I don’t want a random dick. I want you.”

“Why?” Brady shook his ravaged, fucked-up head. “I don’t get it. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. At that market, every single guy was staring at you. You’re on billboards, for Christ’s sake! I’m just a guy who can’t even—” He clamped his mouth down on the words.

Gage edged forward. “Can’t even what?”

Brady lifted his gaze, and what Gage saw there—the pain, the out-and-out sorrow—smashed him to the ground. Terrified the bejesus out of him, to be honest. Maybe he didn’t want to know what Brady’s problems were. Maybe he couldn’t handle the demons fighting at the gates of his soul.

“Can’t even what?” he repeated, moving closer into Brady’s space, a sneaky shift into the lion’s den. Not especially brave, but baby steps.

Brady held his breath, and Gage could see him fighting to let that breath go, to push it out, so he could haul a deeper one, but his chest muscles were in a rigid lockdown. The moment teetered on the edge
of intimacy, and despite his best intentions, Gage’s cock roused. Getting close to Brady, getting close to his truth, turned Gage on.

“I’m just some challenge to you,” Brady grated. “Is that it?”

Gage choked out a laugh. This idiot. This beautiful, broken idiot.

“Yes, you are. But not the way you think. I’m not in the business of bringing reluctant gays over to the dark side. I’m not here to be your spirit guide into Queerlandia. When I met you, I was scared shitless, because I’d never experienced that with anyone before. You knocked me on my ass, you—you asshole! I want to cook with you and wake up with you and give you the best blow job you’ve ever had. And then I want to start the day all over again. With you!”

All color drained from Brady’s face, except for the hamburger meat zigzags on his right cheek and temple.

Whoops, that might have been a bit over the top. Gage searched for words to temper it. Tell him that Brady made him so mad it inspired Gage to spew mouth shits. Tell him that he didn’t really want to reach inside this man’s chest to pry open his locked-up soul. They could take it slow. Just have fun.

Brady and fun?
Puh-lease.
Send in the frickin’ unicorns.

“And what if I can’t give you what you’re looking for?” Brady’s brow crumpled in rather endearing bafflement that made Gage want to smile.

“And what if you can?”

Brady’s answer was to blow out a breath, giving Gage a blessed moment to catch his own. “I came
over to see how you were. Saw the stuff on the news about your sister.”

“I’m handling it.” Or he had been, before Brady showed up and unloaded a big ole jealousy bomb on him, because that could be the only reason he was vexed about this.

“That’s what you do? You handle it?”

“I’m not one for games, Brady. I see something, I take it. There’s a problem, I fix it.”

“Think you can fix me?”

“Think you need to be fixed?”

Brady stared with those dark, sinful eyes, and again Gage felt that sorrow rolling off him. Whatever had happened to him was keeping him just out of Gage’s usually long reach.

“It’ll take more than a blow job, Gage. I’m unfixable.”

“Sucking your dick sounds like a great start. We can work up to the hard stuff later.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Brady’s face shuttered, his shoulder muscles went taut.

“You’ve got a willing fuck ready for you back there.” Gripping the hog’s handlebars, he stamped the gas pedal with a vengeance. “I can’t give you what you need.”

In a haze of ear pollution, Gage watched Brady drive out of his life. Whatever, the man was right. He couldn’t give Gage what he needed because Gage didn’t need anything. He had his family, his job, and a keen awareness of who he was. And back in that bar, he had a guy desperate for whatever Gage had to offer.