Flirting with Fire (Hot in Chicago #1) (26 page)

 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

D
empsey’s on Damen was in full swing tonight since the Engine 6 community party, declared a “rousing success” by the CFD brass and the sharp-clawed media, had gone some way to sealing the fissure between the city’s first responders. The bar was traditionally blue, so Luke was glad to see the police again rubbing shoulders with their brothers in the fire service. It was good for morale—and profits.

He also had another reason for his cheerful mood.

This afternoon he had taken the lieutenant’s exam, and now he had a couple of weeks to wait until the results. But he was sure he’d aced it because he was already a CFD lieutenant in everything but name. The only crimp in his happy was that Kinsey wasn’t here. She had returned to San Francisco to visit her family, and three days without her was making him scratchy.

Off in the corner, he spotted Josie, Kinsey’s assistant, playing darts with a gaggle of Trixies-in-training. She bounced over and leaned across the bar, her eyes big and expressive.

“Luke, are you okay?”

“Never better. You?”

Sadness tweaked her pretty face. Shit, maybe something had happened to her cat.

“I’m fine. I mean . . .” She squeezed his arm. “It’s awful about Kinsey getting fired, isn’t it?”

“What?”

Her mouth formed into a perfect O. “You didn’t know?”

Pulse hammering, he blinked rapidly, as if that could somehow change what he had just heard. Kinsey had been fired? And she hadn’t said a word?

Josie seemed to take his silence for encouragement to continue. “I don’t think it’s public yet or anything, but it was inevitable the mayor would find out about her part in the whole Cochrane video thing, and of course, he’s not going to stand for that kind of disloyalty . . .”

His heart was still pounding. Josie was still talking.

“. . . Not when he told her to keep it on the down low . . .”

Luke gulped down a boulder of guilt. Shit, she’d lost her job—because of the Dempseys?

Because of you, shithead.

“. . . And it’s all anyone can talk about at city hall because she was one of his favorites. He’d bypass his top press guy to get her opinion, though Porn Stache John was probably the worst person to represent the city. I mean, would you trust a guy with that kind of facial hair . . .”

Luke tuned Josie out. He needed to talk to Kinsey. Now. His aggravation at being kept in the dark was overpowered by concern for her. She must be crushed, at home in San Francisco licking her wounds, not wanting to worry him. He took a few blind steps away only to freeze as the last thing out of Josie’s mouth penetrated his skull like a hollow-point bullet.

“Say that again.”

“I guess it’s a good thing she has that job lined up back in San Francisco.”

“What job?”

Josie looked both annoyed at his ignorance and taken aback by his snappishness. “With that politician, Max something. I heard her talking about it on the phone when she came in Monday morning to pack up her office. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but she usually leaves her door ajar because she always has, or had, this open-door policy and . . .”

The thump of his blood boomed in his ears. His swallow sounded unnaturally loud.

She already had her next job lined up.

In San Francisco.

He pulled out his phone and, in a daze, studied the last text she had sent him earlier that day. He’d wanted to share news of the exam with her, but then thought it would be better to surprise her when he officially passed. When she was in his arms again. Instead he had asked about her day.

Dad’s trying to force bacon on me!

His response:
Suck it up, baby.
When you
’re back, I’ll make you all the damn salad you want.

She had replied with a smiley face. A fucking smiley face.

She wasn’t coming back. Not permanently. She hadn’t even confided in him about losing her job. Why the hell would she keep him in the loop about her life plans?

Maybe Josie had the wrong end of the stick. God knows what sort of game of broken telephone went on down at city hall with everyone
not
eavesdropping and the bathroom stalls buzzing with half-truths and gossip.

He needed to calm. The. Fuck. Down.

“Back in a sec,” he said to Gage, who nodded absently, too busy flirting his ass off with all comers at the bar.

He stepped into the hallway near the restrooms, drew a deep breath, and hit call. She picked up on the end of the first ring. “Hi.”

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Good . . .” Her voice faded out and then he heard her hiss, “Jax, quit it!” She came back on the line. “Sorry, that was my brother Jax. He’s making up for months of not being able to torture me in person. So, how are you?”

Not so hot. “I heard the strangest thing. Apparently you were fired, but I thought that couldn’t possibly have happened because you would have told me about it.” He knew the words came out pissy, but there was no honey-coating his fury. She had lied to him, and while she might not owe him a future, she owed him the truth.

The pause was full, weighted. “I didn’t want to worry you. I knew as soon as you heard you’d feel bad about it because—”

“You did what you did for my family.” For him.

“Right, and I needed to figure out my next move.”
Alone
, she left off the end of that sentence. This was to be a Kinsey-only decision.

He took a deep breath. “And does your next move involve an actual move back to California?”

There was another pause, and it sounded as though she was walking somewhere. He heard a low squeak, like the opening of a screen door.

“I’m not sure,” Kinsey said finally. “There’s an
offer working with someone I admire here in San Francisco. It’s a U.S. Senate race and I’d be a fool to pass it up.”

Then be a fool. Come back to me and plug the void that could only be filled with your smile, your smarts, your compassion. Be a fool for me.

But she had been here before when she moved for her ex, compromising her career and her principles for a man who did not deserve her. Luke knew he didn’t deserve her either, and prostrating his body before her would only make a proud man feel low.

Or lower.

Kinsey had never promised him a thing. She was supposed to be his rebound, the first woman since Lisa. And clearly that was the function he fulfilled for her.

But for him it was more. So much more. She’d saved both his and Alex’s jobs, kept his family together at Engine 6, and pried open a heart that had been closed for an eon. He had somehow managed to convince himself that playing Dempsey Dad was enough, but it wasn’t. Kinsey had shown him that it was okay to want good things. To strive, to use his skills as a leader, to speak up when he saw something that needed to be rectified. He would make an excellent lieutenant.

He wanted to share that with her.

He wanted to share everything with her.

But of course she wouldn’t care. She was like Mary Poppins, swooping in with a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Making his crapfest of a life palatable with her quick wit and gorgeous smile, and now she was on to her next challenge. Boxes
checked, mission accomplished. Luke Almeida had been domesticated and returned to normal society.

“Luke, are you still there?”

Barely. He felt insubstantial, transparent. Surely this was happening to someone else. “Listen, I gotta go, we’re gettin’ busy in here.”

“Oh . . . okay.” She sounded like she had more to say, and he waited, praying there was something else worth saying. But when she spoke again, it was to bid him good night.

It sounded a lot like good-bye.

W
ell, that went down like the
Titanic
.

Sagging in her own skin, Kinsey gripped the marble countertop in her dad’s kitchen and shot for a logical analysis of her feelings.

Coward.

No matter how she sliced and diced it, that was the one word that taunted her. She was a coward for not telling Luke she’d been fired. She was doubly a coward for not telling him about the job offer from Max. And ding-dong, three times was the cowardice charm for not telling him how she felt. She missed him. Terribly.

But she had missed David, too, when he put them on a break to complete his residency in New York. She had missed him when he left for Chicago to take the next step in his high-powered career. Missing someone who’s filled a gap in your life, no matter how briefly, was not a sound basis for life-altering choices. She was the poster child for piss-poor decisions fueled by hormones, from her cross-country
move to her management of the Cochrane video, and damned if she would let her hoo-ha get the jump on her common sense again. Sure, she could find a job in Chicago and see where this journey with Luke led, but what about the opportunities here and now?

This morning, she had met with Max Fordham at city hall, fully prepared to fess up about why Eli had fired her. But he already knew.

Eli had called Max, not to scuttle her chances, but to sing her praises. He had canned her—then come through with a glowing reference. After Kinsey explained what happened, Max had looked at her differently. Oh, she knew he had respected her before, but now she was the moral heavyweight who stood up to the powerful mayor of Chicago.

Max had loved that.

Short of something embarrassing popping up on her background check, she was a shoo-in for the job. She was under no illusion that Max was any less jaded than Eli or any other politician she’d worked for, but she wanted to be in at the beginning. Crafting his message from scratch was the new challenge she needed. The guy might be a senator, maybe even president one day.

All this should have made her feel better.

Dispirited, Kinsey returned to the backyard of her father’s house in San Rafael, where Dad, Jax, and Ali—Jax’s girlfriend—sat at the picnic table. The sun was hitched on the horizon, its peachy glow promising a beautiful day tomorrow. But despite the warm air, the chill of regret she’d brought with her from Chicago remained in her bones.

“We okay?” her brother asked, that familiar worry
crinkle bisecting his brow. He topped up her glass of Pinot.

“Fine.” She took a sip, then put the glass down.

“Easy there, tiger, we’ve only got three bottles left,” Jax said, and when Kinsey looked she was shocked to see the glass was half empty.

Her father was watching with eyes narrowed to curious slits. “Was that Luke?”

Ali perked up. “Who’s Luke?”

“Her firefighter fling in Chicago. Used to be a Marine.” Jax’s expression was filled with brotherly disgust. “Sounds like a tool with a hero complex.”

Since the David debacle, her brothers had become more protective of her. But because they were men and had the emotional subtlety of grizzlies, this protection took the form of insulting any man in her immediate orbit. Case in point: Eli Cooper was, in Jax’s words, “a lily-livered, hair-obsessed tyrant.”

“A firefighter who’s ex-service?” Undeterred by Jax’s assessment, Ali leaned in conspiratorially. “Tell me more.”

Kinsey squirmed in her seat. Where the hell had all the oxygen gone? “There’s nothing to tell.”

Her brother cocked a “you shittin’ me” eyebrow. “According to his Facebook fan page—yeah, this tool’s got a fan page—he’s an Irish Cuban split, likes to punch people who piss him off, and gets off on showcasing his abs on billboards. In fact, he’s such an exhibitionist, he and K are not averse to broadcasting their sexcapades to the whole family. FaceTimeing it to whoever’s online.”

“Dad! I can’t believe you told him that.” More to the point, she couldn’t believe Jax would have such
top-notch weaponry in his arsenal, but was only firing off a round now.

“What’s this?” Ali proceeded to collapse in giggle fits as Jax regaled her with his version of the caught-on-cam story (which wasn’t even
his
story). By the time he’d finished, it had become ten times more naked and twenty times more pornographic.

Her father gave an unembarrassed shrug. Military men. Unshockable. “After I got over the surprise of interrupting my daughter as she was about to . . . you know, I found it to be quite funny. I like your beau, punkin.”

“He’s not my beau, Dad. He’s—”

“Just a fling?” Ali smiled, the epitome of coy.

He was the man who restored her faith, one kiss, one touch, one heartbeat at a time. “Just a nice guy who made the Windy City a little more bearable.”

On a grunt, Jax raised his glass. “Like I said. A tool.”

T
hey were talking about him in reverent, worried whispers. Or, Gage and Alex were. Luke imagined Wyatt listening with a barely raised eyebrow as they discussed “How do you solve a problem like Almeida?”

He strode into the kitchen, tempted to whistle to see if it would throw them. In the week since he’d found out about Kinsey losing her job, Luke had gone about
his
job, which made them all suspicious.

Each Dempsey had different MOs when it came to the crapshoot of relationships. When Gage broke up with someone, he cooked. A lot. Until they had chicken marsala coming out of their ears. Alex “scared guys dickless,” so there was no protocol
there. As for Wyatt, he lived like a monk, except for the mysterious overnighters he refused to talk about. And Beck was all loved up with Darcy.