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in age—usually kept her out of Eli’s orbit. Since starting in February, her daily grind revolved around press releases about the city’s parking app or the popularity of Divvy, the bike share system. The puff pieces. The feel-good stories. That all changed a few weeks ago when the mayor began soliciting her opinion in the morning meetings. This CFD-CPD bust-up was the first meaty project she’d been given in her four months on the job.
    Tonight he had invited her to a late dinner at Smith & Jones, a trendy new addition to Restaurant Row in the west Loop. She had agreed, hoping Eli’s motive was just business, because despite the fact that she could cut a steak with that jawline, sleeping with the boss was not an option. Anyway, the man wore far too much product in his hair.
    A plate of meat appeared before them. “The sausage bonanza with lamb merguez, pimiento-cheddar chicken sausage, and fennel kielbasa. Compliments of the chef,” their hipster-Goth server tossed off with just the right amount of practiced indifference.
    Glancing over his shoulder, Eli gave a one-fingered salute in the direction of the kitchen and the white-jacketed chef who stood sentry at the entrance. His thick, inked arms, folded like armor across a barrel chest, gave the impression of a man who had ways of “making” people like his food. With a curt nod, he spun around and headed back into his culinary sanctum.
    “Someone you can’t work your charm on?” Kinsey teased.
    “We got unsolicited sausages, didn’t we?” Eli slathered one encased meat tube with stone-ground mustard and took a bite. A little grease spattered on his French blue shirt and the suspender bisecting one of his broad shoulders. Yes, the mayor wore suspenders.
    “Chef Brady Smith and I go way back,” he said around his chewing. “Served together in Afghanistan.” He inched the meat platter toward her.
    “No, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.”
    She might as well have asked him to go veg, if thehorror that crossed his brow was any indication, but he quickly recovered and caught the attention of the server.
    “You eat cheese, Kinsey?”
    “Like it’s going out of style.”
    “Bring her the goat cheese and sweet corn dumplings,” he said to their server, “and I’ll take the bone-in rib eye, medium rare.”
    Well, that was unexpectedly thoughtful, if a little high-handed. Not at all like her ex-fiancé, who had never really made peace with her vegetarianism, usually going out of his way to take her to steak houses where the only option was the slim-pickins salad bar. Strange now to think of how she had let pass his sly digs about her life choices. How she’d made excuses for him and allowed him to take the lead in their relationship because his ego was as big as all outdoors.
    Then came the ultimate insult. She moved here. For him.
    A woman in love should not be allowed to make life-altering decisions at the behest of the fiancé who thought his career was more important. She had left behind her family, her friends, and a great job working for the city of San Francisco for a man whose spine was so soft he needed scaffolding to stay upright. Not that her new job wasn’t decent—it was—but the bitterness of compromise was a tough pill to swallow.
    She had thought they were the golden couple. The handsome cardiac surgeon and the savvy media professional, a match made in the pages of a glossy lifestyle magazine. So maybe she spent more time hosting catered parties for David’s colleagues than enjoyingthe fruits of their high-powered pairing, and maybe the sex had waned to zilch in the last year of their relationship, but moving to Chicago a month after he was appointed chief of cardiac surgery at Northwestern Medicine was supposed to fix it. For all his complaints about her lack of support and self-absorbed focus on her own career, he had sounded so pleased when she said she’d found a job in Chicago.
    But within two months of her cross-country move—and less