Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (20 page)

Brady Smith could go screw himself, because Gage
sure as hell wouldn’t be begging for the opportunity. Come willingly or not at all.

He headed back into Dempsey’s. From behind the bar, Alex mouthed at him “You okay?” and he nodded, then issued an order to Jacob Scott, who had not stayed put as requested.

“With me. Now.”

In the bar’s office, he waited on the balls of his feet, with fists scrunched and fire in his veins. Ten seconds later, Jacob trudged in, a sheepish look on his face.

“Was that your boyfriend?”

Gage white-knuckled the edge of the desk. “No.”

Jacob’s expression turned smug, like he thought he had the power to make a difference here. Like he could hold this over Gage and screw with his head and his family.

“C’mere,” Gage said.

Jacob shuffled forward a few steps, his eyes alive with anticipation.

Gage ran a finger down the front of Jacob’s shirt, feeling each button of his Oxford all the way to the slight paunch on his stomach. Jacob’s eyes lit bright, and for a moment, Gage considered giving in. It would be so easy to push him to his knees and shove the hard-on with Brady’s name on it into that slack, inexperienced mouth. Lord only knew, when it came to sex, Gage’s default was easy.

Shaking those thoughts free, he focused.

“Here’s how it’s going to work. You will give me that video. I will not beat you to a pulp. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll introduce you to somebody more your speed.”

“But—”

“No buts, Jacob. Because if you don’t hand it over, I’m going to have to tell everyone what you tried to pull here and I won’t be able to stop the hellfire that rains down on you after that. Do we understand each other?”

“You think I’m afraid of your brothers?”

Gage coughed out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, you
wish
I was talking about them. Hope you enjoy eating through a straw. Should I call her in now?”

Jacob blanched with the realization that he risked incurring the wrath of a certain green-eyed brunette. As had been recently demonstrated, a Dempsey female was not to be trifled with.

His mouth twisted peevishly. “You’ll take me out with you one night? Cruising on Halsted?”

Gage smirked. “You’re gonna have so much cock aiming for your throat you’ll need plastic surgery to make your mouth bigger. Now, give me the fucking video.”

 CHAPTER NINETEEN

I
n the mayor’s office up on the fifth floor of city hall, Kinsey employed several strategies to avoid staring at Eli as he viewed the latest video tainting the reputation of the Chicago Fire Department.

She picked at some imaginary lint on her pencil skirt.

She uncrossed and recrossed her legs.

She focused on the history that dripped from every crack in the wood-grain wall paneling. Photographs of previous mayors shaking hands with the notable and the not-so-notable peppered the walls, including one of Mayor Daley and a young assistant state’s attorney, Weston Cooper, father of the man who sat across from her behind the antique mahogany desk. If these walls could speak . . .

Gage had brought the video directly to Kinsey. When she asked him why he didn’t just blast it online and let the chips fall where they may, he countered with the argument that they needed to protect Darcy, Sam Cochrane’s daughter, who was like another sister to Gage. Darcy might not get along with her father now, but Gage knew she didn’t want that to be the final chapter in the story, and neither did he want to be responsible for causing any irreparable damage. It
would be better all around if Kinsey could use it as leverage against the badly behaved billionaire.

Which was why she now sat in an uncomfortable chair in the mayor’s office, lashes and head lowered in humility.

As Sam Cochrane’s homophobic, racist, and chauvinistic rant gave way to the earsplitting sound of shredding metal, she risked a peek and found Eli’s mouth stretched in an ear-to-ear grin. That made her duck her head to hide a smile of her own. She was relying on two things: the mayor’s innate sense of justice, and his even more innate attraction to Alexandra Dempsey.

He put the phone down, propped his elbows on the desk, and steepled his fingers, all traces of amusement now replaced with gravity.

“So?”

“It’s not a very flattering portrait of Mr. Cochrane, sir.”

Eli arched a “don’t even bother” eyebrow at her use of
sir
.

“What I see here merely confirms the sequence of events. This can’t damage him. It only makes it worse for us.”

“So far, we’ve only heard reports of what Cochrane said.”

“Leaked by someone at CFD HQ who was privy to Firefighter Dempsey’s statement.”

Kinsey might have had something to do with that.

“The words in print don’t mean much, but spoken aloud, heard and viewed by millions, they acquire power.” Kinsey stood, needing the stretch to make her point. She was back at Berkeley, persuading her class
mates in Public Speaking 101 that smoking wasn’t so bad for you, that transfats had benefits, that Stalin was a goddamn saint.

“We want to get out in front of this. We have to show the public that Cochrane is a foul-mouthed, drunken bully who verbally assaulted the brave men and women sent to save him from his own worst excesses.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, the mayor swiveled his lantern jaw toward the other person in the room. Madison Maitland stood with her back to them both, her regal gaze drinking in the city streets like Boudicca surveying the Roman enemy before heading into battle.

Without turning, she spoke. “There was no evidence of drunkenness and he apologized for his behavior in that press conference. He’s contrite and slick.”

Kinsey suppressed a growl. Cochrane had handled this better so far for sure, first with his finagling of that Breathalyzer test in his favor—she was still uncertain if it was CPD corruption or just old-fashioned ineptitude—and then blaming his potty-mouthed tirade on his claustrophobic panic at being left too long in a “steel coffin” (his words). Kinsey had listened to his statement so many times in the last twenty-four hours she could have recited it word for word.

. . . And while my behavior is in no way excusable, the situation does make me question the suitability of this firefighter who could be so easily baited. But then,
Alexandra Dempsey comes from one of those entitled firefighting families who believe the rules and
regulations do not apply to them. Less than a month ago, her foster brother instigated a brawl against the brave officers of the police department and was allowed to buy his way back on the job by flaunting his naked body on billboards. Now we have yet another example of this family
’s blatant flouting of the rules. There’s a physical exam requirement, lowered some years ago to accommodate female applicants, but perhaps we need a psychological aptitude test for the fire service. Or perhaps Firefighter Dempsey’s judgment was impaired for other reasons.

When questioned about that cryptic statement by reporters, Cochrane made an offhand comment about how Alex herself should have been Breathalyzed at the scene (oh, the irony), a baseless implication that took the heat off him and transferred it to her in one fateful stroke. He offered a halfhearted apology, but the damage was done and had wormed its way into the city’s hearts and minds. The jury of Alex’s peers was already questioning her judgment.

They needed to fight fire with a nuclear bomb.

But Kinsey could understand how this placed Eli in a delicate situation. Cochrane had both media and financial clout, both of which Eli needed in the next few months as they drew closer to the election. The only thing Eli had going for him is that Cochrane would be loath to switch to Eli’s opponent so late in the race after he had invested so much in the mayor as incumbent.

“He was drunk,” Kinsey insisted, “no matter what CPD says. You saw him stumble out of that car.”

“Unsteady after being rescued from a car crash,” Madison countered.

“And his slurred speech was due to claustrophobia and post-traumatic shock?”

Madison locked eyes with Eli. Some intimate knowledge passed between them.

“Cochrane’s not a politician,” Madison said after a few taut seconds. “The public won’t care about the meltdown of some guy they barely recognize. Do you think people are going to boycott his paper, stop going to Cubs games?” All endeavors in which Cochrane had a substantial financial interest.

“I think we can get people on Firefighter Dempsey’s side. On our side,” Kinsey shot back. “We need to use her. She’s photogenic, a woman working her ass off in a male-dominated profession, a sister defending her gay brother and the rights of twenty-first-century women everywhere to break the mold. It’s David versus Goliath. We couldn’t have come up with a better poster child.”

Eli strummed the table, then pivoted in his chair to look out the window. “It was so much easier in the desert.”

Agh!
Channeling the patience of a saint, Kinsey managed to keep from screaming her head off. Frankly, she didn’t have time for Eli’s “war is hell, ain’t it great?” reminiscences. Alex’s job was on the line, and they had a smoking gun that smelled so sweet.

“Print is dead, Eli. You might not need Cochrane as much as you think. Your coffers for the election are healthy, and it’s not as if he can donate above the campaign finance limits.” Ethics rules prohibited any one individual from giving more than five thousand dollars to a Chicago mayoral campaign. Of course,
Cochrane had so much influence he was able to use his friends and employees to contribute above the threshold.

“Who else has seen the video?” Madison asked.

“Gage Simpson brought it to me. The only other person is the firefighter who took it, but Gage said he could be controlled.”

Eli’s eyes shot up. “She hasn’t seen it?”

“We—I thought it best.”

The remaining Dempseys were in the dark because Gage insisted Luke would go ballistic if he actually saw what had gone down. Knowing the man, Kinsey was inclined to agree. She and Luke hadn’t spoken in two days, not since they had all crowded around the kitchen table in the Dempsey kitchen the morning after the Cochrane incident. The times they had spent together—mattress shopping, up on the roof, the baseball game, the sex (God, the sex)—had been touched with some sort of magic that vanished like an illusionist’s trick as soon as that call came in from Wyatt. She knew Luke was working, but that wasn’t the only reason behind this sudden distance. They had retreated to their respective corners, and while she had tried to explain that they were on the same side, she understood his reluctance to see her point of view. Minimizing the damage to the city would likely lead to maximizing the damage to his family.

Yet again she found herself on the wrong side of the divide. Luke’s protective streak was a mile wide, and she wanted to find shelter inside the wagon circle. To be his first and last thought, not the woman who was collateral damage in the battle to save his family.

“I can persuade Cochrane not to sue, Kinsey,” Eli
said. “It’s worth more to him to have the city on his side while he has several real estate development projects in the works. But someone has to pay.”

There was something else, something he wasn’t telling her.

“Maybe it’s time to cut Cochrane loose.”

A muscle in Eli’s jaw contracted and she could see how much effort he made not to look in Madison’s direction. “Decisions made above your pay grade, Taylor.”

Understanding dawned. Cochrane had dirt on Eli. It was the only explanation for why he’d stick with such a liability.

Kinsey’s eyes bored into the mayor’s. “And Firefighter Dempsey?”

She thought she saw regret in Eli’s stark blue gaze, but it could have been a trick of the light. “She was never going to come out of this with her job, but at least she won’t be in debt for the rest of her life.”

Kinsey’s heart sank to her soles. She’d really thought she could pull out a win here. And she hated to lose, especially like this.

There was one last hand to play.

“You like her,” she said to Eli. It came out of her mouth, sounding like an accusation. Sounding desperate.

“Like?” Eli leaned back in his chair, faintly amused. “God, no. It’s just . . . she’s so damn young, filled with all that loyalty and fire. Even a jaded soul like me can appreciate it, but there’s only so much I can do.” He shook his head, strangely subdued. Where was
his
loyalty? Where was
his
fire?

“And even if I did like her, Kinsey, it wouldn’t
affect how I do my job. You’re letting your fucking hormones rule your judgment. I don’t care that you’re sleeping with Almeida and I don’t care that the Dempseys are your new besties, as long as
you
don’t forget who pays your salary.”

Rage made her muscles seethe. It was pointless to deny her relationship with Luke, not that it could be characterized as that, especially of late when they were barely on speaking terms. Neither did it matter how the mayor knew that she and Luke had crossed that line—the most powerful man in Chicago probably had spies everywhere—but no way would she stand for accusations of “decision making by vagina.”

“That is not why I’m advising you to play this differently.”

He shot her the dangerously pointed glare he used on the city council when they wouldn’t cooperate with one of his proposals. “Kill the video, Kinsey, and one more thing . . .”

She was barely listening to him now, her mind racking up frequent-flier miles as she worked all the angles. Anything to counter the slow, sick spin of failure in her stomach.

“Kinsey.”

Looking up, she found him glowering. “I want this whole Dempsey-McGinnis cluster stitched up and gift wrapped ASAP. What we discussed the other day—”

He halted on seeing the frown she knew was cemented on her face. What they had discussed was a move that was only going to pull the pin out of the grenade-shaped head of a certain Cuban Irish fireman.

“I’ve given you far too much latitude with this situation. Bring Almeida to heel. Now.”

She switched on her “yes, Mayor” expression. “The community party at Engine 6 is all set for a week from Saturday.” Bouncy house. Check. Face painting. Check. Gathering representatives from fire and police together for a cozy how-do-ya-do, axes and Halligans within spitting distance. Goddamn priceless.

“And the rest?”

“It’ll go exactly as planned, Mr. Mayor.”