All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (12 page)

“Shane, I’m trying to let you down gently. You’re just not my type. There’s no future here, so let’s not drag it out.”

A slow, good ole boy Texan nod was his response or maybe she was just reading into it because of the stupid, sexy hat. “Is this about Maisey?”

She coughed out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, Irish, that’s cute. You think I’m jealous.”

“Well, you were sending her the stink eye, LT. Got any gypsy in you?” He was laughing at her now, not outright but she could hear the mockery warming his voice.

“I was not sending her the stink eye. Believe me, if I was, she’d know it.” Damn, that sounded like she was jealous. “This should never have happened. None of it should ever have happened.” Over his shoulder, she spotted a cab on a crawl-by to Broadway and she stuck her arm out. With shaky fingers and a couple of tries she got the car door open.

He held the door, blocking her entry. “Cara, I know you think I took advantage of you in Las Vegas—”

“I’m going to stop you right there.” She pressed her hand against his chest, then curled it into a ball because the flat of her palm felt unaccountably intimate against all that vitality. He was as hard as Sheetrock. Sheetrock with wonderfully sensitive nipples.

Stop. It.

“No one takes advantage of me,” she said, smoothing her voice to a businesslike tone. “I cannot be played. You’re not the first mistake I’ve made and I can guarantee you won’t be the last, but I’m owning it and now I want to move on. It happened and we can un-happen it. It doesn’t say anything about who we are or who we want to be or what we mean to each other.”

A strange look passed over his face, as if he had come across a puzzle that needed to be solved. He needn’t bother. She couldn’t figure herself out; she certainly didn’t need someone to “understand” her.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” he asked.

She had no answer for that, or more likely, she was just tired. It had been a long couple of weeks. She slipped by him into the cab, careful to avoid his hard body. Through the window, her eyes lifted unavoidably to that brute streak of male with his arms crossed over that sturdy chest, scene of her last meal.

He continued to stare at her in a way that made her uncomfortable. Usually that was her job, eroding the balance of the enemy so she could stay on top. She didn’t like this new feeling, this squall of unease whenever she was with him. She especially didn’t like that he no longer felt like the enemy.

She tried not to watch him in the cab’s rearview mirror as they pulled away but even now, the sight of him riveted her. He didn’t move an inch, as though the act of waiting for her to drive away was some statement of intent. A refusal to back down. She wished he would because she wanted the decision to be taken away from her. Let Shane make his choice—let him confirm hers—so Cara wouldn’t have to consider it.

But when you let outside forces determine your decisions, you may as well not bother getting up in the morning. For years, she viewed herself as a number: on a scale, a measuring tape, a clothing tag. The tyranny of digits, the bane of every woman’s existence, but especially Cara, who had had lived her life as a constant negotiation.

When I lose another ten pounds, I’ll have more friends. When my waist is twenty-two inches, I’ll find a man to love me. When I’m thin, I’ll finally be happy.

Bargaining for perfection had gotten her nowhere. Negotiating was for losers. Today, she was healthy, more secure in herself than she’d felt in years, maybe not entirely content but she had the means to grasp it. Not by being married to some guy she’d met ten minutes ago but by changing the terms going forward. She whipped out her phone and did what she should have done the moment that early morning Nevada sun had streaked across her pillow.

Her first call went to voice mail. And the second. She tried again until she got through to a human, though that was debatable. Insert lawyer joke here.

“Marty, I have a legal problem I need taken care of yesterday.”

Chapter 6

Cara accepted her award for parallel parking queen on a busy residential street in Andersonville, steps from Lake Michigan on the city’s far north side, and braced herself for the afternoon ahead. Sunday lunch at Casa DeLuca. Oh, joy.

She had read somewhere once that those we most love are the most alien to us, and nowhere did this seem truer than when she spent time with her family. That she loved them, she had no doubt. That they loved her, she didn’t question. She just never felt like she measured up.

Led by her nose, she entered the kitchen and was greeted by a whole lot of doing. Her father and Jack stood at the stove, arguing over how best to divvy up the burners so as to ensure everything would be ready at the same time. Aunt Sylvia busied herself coating a cookie sheet with olive oil for the pillows of gnocchi. Stuffed with asiago cheese if her senses served. Off in the corner, Lili furtively picked at something on the granite countertop. Cara didn’t need X-ray vision to know what her sister was up to—she was sneaking surreptitious bites of Jack’s truffle-oil focaccia. Cara smiled. Some things never changed.

“Hi, Cara.” A willowy blonde carrying an even blonder child shuffled into her orbit. Jack’s sister Jules. She offered the beatific smile she used to calm the world around her and Cara found herself responding with a press-on grin. They weren’t particularly close. Jules’s particular brand of helplessness held little appeal for Cara. She liked to play the victim, wearing her single motherhood like a badge of honor and wrapping everyone around her little finger, including Cara’s parents, who had taken her in when she crashed a taping of Jack’s show at DeLuca’s Ristorante. The one Cara was producing at the time.

She’d since made herself at home, a perfect substitute daughter for the DeLucas. A soft, fertile version of their oldest one. It was bad enough Cara felt like an outsider with her food-obsessed family, standing next to Jules always made her seem…less. But Cara had a soft spot for Jules’s six-month-old son, Evan, who invariably left her reeling and broody.

“He’s getting so big,” Cara said, surprised at the tremor in her voice. She stroked his wispy hair gently, absorbing his breathy sigh and sighed back at how her body morphed into this tower of need around children. Since moving back to Chicago, there had been moments when she thought anything was possible—a relationship, a child, a future—but every step forward was met with two steps back, reminding her that she wasn’t normal enough to expect those things. A woman who was holding onto the ledge by her impeccably manicured fingernails could hardly be expected to provide adequate care and sustenance for a helpless parcel of humanity. Her hips were made for Prada, not for childbearing.

Which is why she really shouldn’t have asked, “Could I hold him?”

“Oh, please,” Jules said, her London accent dragging the words into a singsong. “He’s getting so heavy.”

Handoff made, Cara enjoyed a moment’s bliss as the infant’s scent washed over her, leaving all the kitchen smells in the dust. Evan burrowed in the crook of her neck and Cara knew if she was taken now, she’d die in ecstasy.

At Jules’s curious expression, Cara realized that Evan had caused her world to come to a standstill and several moments had passed when she should be carrying on some sort of adult conversation.

The younger girl bit down on her lip. “I know you work a lot but if you have a night free—”

“I’d be happy to babysit anytime,” Cara cut in, far too quickly. “If you ever need to get out of the house, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Desperate much?

“Thanks for offering, but actually, I was thinking about the two of us going out some time. Just you and I,” Jules said, her green-gold eyes smiling. “Us single girls have to stick together.”

Stifling her surprise, Cara swallowed hard. Whatever would they talk about? Who was the blondest of them all? However, Jules lived with Jack and Lili, and if she had to witness that love fest every day, she probably deserved a night out. “Sure, let’s do that. I’ll text you.”

Jules’s face clouded over. “Might be better to call. I’m not big on texting.”

Weird, but whatever. Cara nodded and then felt her lips shaping a grin at the sight of another blonde, lately arrived from the backyard where lunch would be served beneath shady Linden trees.

Though several inches taller than her mother, Cara mirrored her in coloring with golden-girl northern Italian looks. All evidence of Francesca’s bout with cancer a couple of years back had been relegated to the past now that her hollows had filled out and her hair had long since grown back, but Cara’s heartstrings still plucked with guilt every time she saw her. There had never been any recrimination from her parents over Cara’s fade out during that awful time, only understanding that no two responses to fear are the same. Lili’s was the correct response, of course. The Italian response. Her baby sister had dutifully accepted the mantle of caring for their mother, running the restaurant, and absorbing Il Duce’s dictatorial moods. Between the sisters, a strained truce had been reached but it could be better. With the wedding, Cara would make it better.

“Cara, ciao,” Mom said with a warm embrace that took in Evan. When her mother pulled away, she had somehow managed to extricate Evan at the same time. Woman was as tricky as they come. “I’ve got him,
tesoro
. He’ll spit up all over your lovely blouse.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Cara murmured to deaf ears. Evan was already comfortably nestled on Francesca’s hip, clearly used to his de facto nonna’s ample curves. Poor child was probably glad to get away from Cara’s bag-of-antlers sharpness.

Speaking of sharp, her mother’s gaze honed in on the bottle of Syrah Cara had placed on the sideboard.

“Californian,” she said in the same disappointed tone she might use to describe overcooked linguine. “You know your father won’t approve.”

“Let’s see,” Tad jumped in, taking the bottle and applying his eagle-eyed scrutiny to it. Steward of the DeLuca Ristorante wine cellar, her cousin was never afraid to wow everyone with his erudition. “Good choice, Cara. One day, Uncle Tony will have to admit that it’s possible the New World might have something to offer viniculture.”

“Glad you approve,” Jules said. “Of course, you always know best, don’t you?”

Whoa, Nelly. What happened there? Tad’s face sharpened, and he flattened his lips, but Jules had already refocused on Evan.

“Thanks, Frankie. I think he needs to be fed.” She scooped him out of Francesca’s arms and moved off to the fridge.

“What did you do?” Cara asked her cousin. Those two had been airtight since Jules arrived in Chicago, though they’d yet to run with it. Whatever their connection, it hadn’t stopped Tad from plying his bad-boy charm credentials on anything in a skirt. Perhaps that was the problem.

“Why do you assume it’s my fault? I mean, you try to be the good guy…” He trailed off in his grumble and then slid a dark look to Jack. Aha. So Jack had laid down the law with Tad about laying hands on his baby sister. Made sense.

Tad returned his troubled gaze to Cara, but not for long. “Hey, Shane. Good to see you.”

Cara spun around a little too hastily and then compounded it by choking out a testy, “What are you doing here?”

“Lovely to see you too, Cara,” that devil-lipped demon of her dreams said.

The smell of his leather jacket wafted under her nose, a perfect addition to Evan’s baby scent. Good Lord, that was the stuff. For the past five nights, sleep had been a stranger as she twisted up her bedsheets thinking about that frustrating man a couple of walls away. The night of the line-dancing class, her apartment had benefited from her insomnia as she vacuumed every inch her Dyson could reach. Then again the next night when she still couldn’t catch any
Z
s. That kiss…that kiss had shocked her entire body to life and even now she buzzed with the memory of his mouth on hers, the taste of his skin, how not-numb she had felt. Because numb was her default when it came to sex.

For so long, she and her body had been barely on speaking terms and only recently had she felt the opening overtures of a renewed understanding. Emerging from hibernation, she found herself relearning how to relate to her body’s basic functionality. Enjoying food. Enjoying sex. Enjoying life. Appreciation for food had returned in fits, though she still had issues with eating around others. Appreciation for sex was something else entirely. With Shane, her appreciation was off the charts. Hell, the chart hadn’t been made for how combustible the heat was between them, and that was the problem. No way, José, was she ready for a Shane Doyle assault on her senses. That kind of pleasure required effort and devoting it to a man was not on her agenda.

“You must be Shane,” her mother said brightly. “Lili said you’d be joining us. Benvenuto.”

Shane hooked those kiss-me-deadly lips up, sending his dimple into a two-step. Every uterus within a ten-mile radius probably felt a disturbance in the Force.

“Thanks for inviting me, Mrs. DeLuca. I hope it’s okay that I brought something sweet. A blackberry cheesecake.” He held out a plastic-domed tray to her mother. Dimples, deference, and dessert.
Brown nose.

“We never say no to dessert, and please call me Francesca. Taddeo, get our guest a drink,” her mother ordered as she got busy crafting a spare square foot of counter space for Shane’s offering.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” Cara asked in a low voice that only Shane could hear. “I think I made it very clear—”