All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (37 page)

“Do I look okay?” Lili asked with a hitch in her voice Cara credited to the champagne. Jack had arranged for a bottle of bubbly to be sent to the room earlier and they’d both indulged in a glass or three in preparation for a night on the town.

“Stunning, Sis.” She linked Lili’s arm, determined to keep a vise grip on her throughout the night. She might joke about picking up a new husband, but with her propensity for the idiot move, staying in Lili’s orbit was the best strategy all round. “Let’s do this.”

As they stepped off the elevator, Cara’s buzz crashed in a fiery ball of crap. Her cousin Tad leaned against a gold-leafed pillar looking tall, dark, and smart-assed. In a suit.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

Tad raised an eyebrow in Lili’s direction. “You haven’t told her?”

“I was just about to. You’re supposed to be in the bar, dummy.”

Cara turned to her sister, confused. “What’s going on?”

Lili pulled her away from the pile-up they were causing at the elevator bank.

“I’m getting married.”

“Uh, hello, I know. I’m planning your amazing wedding. I’m your maid of honor.” Definitely maid, now that she had confirmed her status with Marty. The annulment had been finalized this morning, but she was too numb to care.

Licking her lips, Lili shot a harried glance at Tad. “Actually, I’m getting married now. Tonight. Here in Vegas.”

“What?” And then when the full force of it hit her, she added another resounding, “What?” So articulate.

“There’s still going to be the big wedding with the carriage and the fountain and the three hundred guests, but…” Lili looked helplessly at Tad.

“We need you to calm the fuck down, Cara,” he said.

“Tad!” Lili glared at him.

Cara double-glared at him and then turned back to her sister. “But you want the perfect day, Lili. The dress, the bridesmaids, everyone looking at you, wishing nothing but the best for you.”

“Yes, but—but that’s more what you want for me.” She bit her lip. “I know you and Jack had this grand plan and I kind of got swept up in it. I’m still going to do that because Jack wants the big wedding. But I want it to be about us, too.”

Stunned, Cara had no words. She had pushed Lili into a wedding she didn’t want—oh, surprise, surprise. She had plenty of experience there. Some events planner she’d turned out to be, one who couldn’t even intuit her client’s needs. Instead of putting food on her feelings like normal people, she had put her dreams on them. She wanted the fantasy day for Lili, but of course she was living vicariously. Transference of your smashed hopes into another vessel. Psych-freaking-101.

“You mean Jack’s here?” she asked stupidly. Of course he was here. “That’s where you were last night. You were sneaking out to meet your fiancé!”

Lili had left the hotel room to get ice, but in no universe, not even one with a maze like the Bellagio’s twenty-third floor, did it take twenty-five minutes to fill a bucket. The lying minx.

She had the decency to look sheepish. “Cara, the wedding is still going to happen on Saturday. It’s still going to be as wonderful as you planned and no one else needs to know that Jack and I will have already said ‘I do.’ He’s doing this for me because he understands that when it comes down to it, it’s our day. Please say you understand.” She wiped a tear from her eye.

A tight fist grasped Cara’s lately brittle heart. “Lili, of course I understand. I’m sorry I’ve been so…well, me.”

“No apologies.” Lili hugged her, drawing her into the comfort of her soft, curvy body. “You need to forgive yourself, Cara,” she whispered in her ear. “For everything.”

Cara felt like she had been punched in the chest. She opened her mouth to say,
For what?
but closed it again, because hell, she wasn’t that stupid. She had been ill and couldn’t come home to help her mother. She had been ill and couldn’t confide in her family. Keeping her secret had required so much more effort than finding it within her heart to accept that she didn’t have to do it all alone. Her family loved her the way she was—control-freak, messed-up, far-from-perfect Cara.

Today, one marriage had officially ended and another one would begin. It was a good day.

Lili, in her shimmery red dress that made her look like a goddess, released her and smiled with glossy eyes. “Tonight, I’m marrying the hottest man on the planet with my favorite people as my witnesses.” She linked Cara’s arm and rubbed Tad’s shoulder.

Tad smirked. “We’re your favorite people? Knew it.”

Cara smiled, relieved that it wasn’t as difficult as she expected. “So if we’re your favorite people, who’s Jack got? Jules, I suppose, and…”

At Lili’s grimace, Cara’s heart plummeted to a splat on the carpet.

“About that…”

Chapter 22

You know I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.” Jack put his hand on Shane’s shoulder, halting his fidget. “It’s my wedding day.”

Shane threw another glance around the chapel, a notably classier version of the one he’d gotten hitched in six weeks ago. White pillars, draped in flowing fabrics, gave it a heaven-for-hire ambience. Cara might have liked this—if she’d had a choice. His visual circuit led back to the double doors through which Lili and Cara would be entering any minute now. At least, he hoped Cara would be. By now, Lili should have dropped the M-bomb and Cara was either steeling herself for the nightmarish twenty minutes ahead of her or hightailing it to McCarron Airport as fast as her heels could carry her.

“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Jack muttered.

Depends.
“Like what?”

“I dunno, lie prostrate before the maid of honor begging for her forgiveness?”

The door opened, Shane’s stomach flipped, and in walked…Jules.

He turned back to Jack and pushed his mouth into a facsimile of a grin. “I was thinking more along the lines of hijacking the toasts and making it all about me. See how you like it.”

“As long as you don’t ruin the ceremony.”

“We’re ready,” Jules said to Jack, her eyes bright. She shifted her gaze to Shane. “Still not sure what to call you. Step-bro? Brother from another mother—and father?”

Shane coughed out a laugh. “You could just call me Shane.”

Again, the door opened and this time it was…Tad. Who held Jules’s withering glare boldly. Those crazy kids.

The flash of red that came through next signaled Lili’s arrival. Shane slid a sidelong glance at his brother, whose face had broken into a grin big enough to power the Sunset Strip.

Behind Lili…no one. The door closed. Ah hell.

Immediately, it opened again and Cara stepped through, secreting her phone in her purse. Probably making arrangements for the next flight out. A few quick steps, and she had caught up with Lili and linked her arm. She looked beautiful, shell-shocked, like she wanted to be anywhere but here. And then she took one look at Jack and another at Lili, and her face transformed into sun. Nothing forced about it either, a genuine ray of brightness at how happy her sister and Jack made each other. If she was pissed about the surprise nuptials, she hid it well.

That was Cara. All class.

She refused to look at him. There was only so much magic Jack and Lili’s joy could work. His heart broke into a thousand ice shards, spreading a glacial chill across his body, a return to the state he had been in before he met her. He had made it to the other side of the glass but he hadn’t reckoned on the frosted veil separating him from the woman he wanted more than anything.

Thirty minutes later, they were toasting the happy couple in a private room at Mint, Jack’s Las Vegas outpost in the Paris hotel. Cara was speaking to everyone but Shane. Jules was speaking to everyone but Tad. Which meant he and Tad suddenly had a lot more in common than just their love of Harleys.

“What did you do?” he asked Tad.

There was no missing the oblique glance he sent Jules’s way. In a single gulp, he downed his champagne and had already grabbed another glass before he met Shane’s eyes. “Why does everyone assume I did something?”

“Because that’s the way of the world, man,” Shane said. “Every day as part of your penance, just apologize to the first three women you meet. That way, the balance of the universe might one day be restored.”

“It’d take more than that, my friend.” He directed another dark look at Jules. “It’s for the best.”

Interesting. Tad seemed like one of the good guys, not that it’d make a difference to someone as overprotective as Jack. Big bro had made it clear in no uncertain terms that Tad might want to invest in permanent body condoms so as not to contaminate Jules.

“Can’t believe you’re letting Jack get in the way of a good thing,” Shane said.

That drew an expression of surprise from Tad. “You think I’d let Jack Kilroy have some say in where I dip my wick? No way. Believe me when I say this is better for all concerned.”

He didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked downright miserable.

“You okay?” Shane asked.

Tad’s eyebrows snapped together and then just as quickly separated as if he had flicked an internal switch from pissed-off-at-the-world to the carefree, ladies’ man everyone knew. It was quite the display. His grin stretched wide as he made eye contact with the perky waitress circling with a tray of bubbly. The one with breasts that would break a man’s nose coupled with come-hither eyes and pouty lips.

“I will be very soon.”

Taking a few steps forward, he cut her off before she got to Shane and launched into his good ole boy offensive. Shane caught Jules’s deepening frown. She turned back to Cara who must have a crick in her neck by now, so valiant was her effort to ignore him.

What Shane wouldn’t give to have Tad’s ability to turn off his feelings like that. Better still, a time machine would come in handy. He wanted to hit the restart button and take a do over. Walk down the Strip with a beautiful girl, bring her line dancing in Chicago, look after a cat together while they figured each other out.

All the courting, none of the marriage. He wanted his wife back.

*  *  *

Midnight and Cara was back in the bar of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. Alone again, natch. Six weeks ago, she had bundled the DeLuca ladies through the door and surveyed the room; now she was solo and had no expectations.

In the time it took her gaze to fix on him, he was already on his feet, gesturing to his seat. She sighed and headed over, the inevitability of it like pincers in her chest.

“You look like you could do with a drink, beautiful,” the tall, dark stranger said. Sharply dressed. Smelled good. Not Shane.

“Sure,” she said but her heart wasn’t in it. All her bonhomie had been used up marking time through the reception dinner. She had soldiered through, and it had been evident that Shane was on the same wavelength. Get it over with. Grin and bear it. A couple of times, she had found him looking at her, his eyes a warm secret. But there were no more secrets between them, just a fractured history that could be tucked under the rug with a couple of signatures. Six weeks of joy and pain signed away and notarized.

She had wanted to talk to him but her feet couldn’t move in the same direction as her heart. Come dessert and the final toasts, she had turned and Shane was gone. All that strength she had been harnessing over the last couple of months—strength that should have made her brave enough to chase him down—had evaporated into the ether.

“What brings you to Las Vegas?” Tall, dark, and strange cut in to her thoughts, his eyes flicking appreciatively over her teal Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress. Not a lot of women looked good in teal, but Cara’s coloring allowed her to pull it off with style.

“A wedding.”

“Great city for it.” He added a smile. It was a nice smile, just not the one she wanted to see.

She took the seat TDS offered just as her phone rang with “Single Ladies” and a Chicago number she didn’t recognize. That mockery of a ring tone would have to go. It was so 2008.

“Hello?”

“Cara DeLuca?” She recognized the nasal whine of a put-upon assistant. “Mrs. Napier is on the line. Please hold.”

The only Mrs. Napier Cara knew was Penny Napier and why she would be calling Cara at one A.M. Chicago time was not immediately clear.

“Miz DeLuca,” breathed a patrician, moneyed voice down the line. “I hope I haven’t disturbed you but I understand that you’re in a city that never sleeps.”

“Yes, Mrs. Napier.” Cara swallowed her surprise and tried to sit up straighter on her bar stool. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I hear my son has been throwing his weight around trying to get Jack Kilroy to perform like a seal at his wedding. Let me say that his behavior is in no way endorsed by me. Little prick’s been a thorn in my side since I pushed him out of my womb thirty-four years ago.”

Good thing Cara hadn’t ordered a drink because she might have spilled it all over her dress. For the love of Frank, what was happening here?

“Your name has come before me more than once in the last year, Miz DeLuca. I hear you know how to throw a good party and tell a good children’s story.”

Cara managed to draw enough breath to form a sentence. “I’m a very resourceful woman, Mrs. Napier.” Maybe it wasn’t her best sentence.

Penny chuckled knowingly. “We have to be in this day and age. No one’s going to give us what we want on a plate. Got to make our own road.” Burying three husbands was Penny Napier’s road, and the woman had definitely run with it. The pause sat weighted and Cara imagined a conductor with a baton building to the cymbals crash. Her heart beat triple time.