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stopping by.”
    “And thanks for hearing me out.” The quirk at the corner of his mouth was probably the only acknowledgment she’d get that this round had gone to her—the calendar was the kill shot—and that, more important, he didn’t mind. Wow, how sexy was that? Meathead Luke Almeida had managed to surprise her.
    He lifted his big body off her desk and moved lithely toward the door, then turned when he got there. “Your assistant . . . ?”
    “Josie?”
    “Josie. Is she seeing anyone?”
    Her heart leaped into her throat. “Not as far as I know.” Insisting that her quickening pulse was purely a reaction to all the caffeine she’d had today was anassertion she’d take to her grave. And just when her feelings toward him had crossed into warm fuzzies territory.
    Score one for Mr. Almeida.
    He nodded and made to leave, but she wasn’t quite done with him yet.
    “When’s your birthday, Luke?”
    Turning to face her, he speared her with those electric blues, now contracted in suspicion. “July.”
    Try as she might, she couldn’t hide her grin. “Mr. July has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
    On that, she pivoted quickly to maintain her grip on that precious last word and bent over the desk to grab, oh, the stapler that was a few inches out of reach. She could feel his penetrating gaze on her ass as it shifted under her tight skirt. A cheap thrill, perhaps, but the way her sex life was going, she’d take the thrills where she could find them.
    Only when she heard the door close behind her did she let go of the breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

 CHAPTER FOUR
    “T he chef here is amazing, Kinsey. He’ll knock your heels off.”
    She didn’t doubt it. Though San Francisco had its own thriving food culture, the culinary options in Chicago beat it hands-down. From deep-dish pizza and pierogi to five-star tasting menus and molecular gastronomy, you could eat out at a stellar restaurant every night of the week for a year and still not have exhausted all your options.
    Kinsey tried to imagine how the firm, fit body of her dining companion would handle a daily assault of butter, carbs, and sugar. Probably very well, considering Eli “Hot Stuff” Cooper—as Chicago’s female denizens referred to their disruptively handsome mayor—usually ran six miles to work and back instead of taking the car that his predecessors had seen as their due. Every morning, Kinsey checked Facebook and found photos of the mayor high-fiving other joggers on his run along Lake Shore from the tony streets of Lincoln Park. Occasionally, he took the “L” so he could glad-hand commuters while proclaiming the CTA the best transit system in the country. It was far from it, but ridership had skyrocketed as hopeful women vied to rub shoulders (and otherbody parts) with the most eligible bachelor east of the Mississippi.
    “Well, Mr. Mayor—”
    “Kinsey, I’ve told you to call me Eli. Mr. Mayor was the last guy.”
    “Eli,” she said, not yet wholly comfortable with the informality. Having worked for a board supervisor and numerous big shots in San Francisco after earning her communications degree at Berkeley, she found this loosey-goosey style of her new boss disconcerting. Marching into her office without going through her assistant was standard. Texting her before she had made it to work at eight was par for the course. He called whenever he felt like it, including this morning’s 5 a.m. wakey-wakey with an idea to win the hearts and minds of Chicago’s public librarians. In recent months, they had been raking his ass across the coals over his threat to cut their funding.
    “Cupcakes with cat-face icing, Kinsey. Those bookworms love cupcakes and cats.”
    Why the mayor had lately singled her out for special attention was hard to say. Working under two other members of the Media Affairs team—John Hernandez, aka “Porn Stache John,” and Mark Baker, senior to her in position, junior to her