All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (5 page)

Instead of dragging Lili around Nordstrom, she should have been on the phone to a lawyer. Two days ago at Gina’s wedding, she had told her husband—gah!—that she would handle it because, damn, that’s what she did. She handled, she managed, she overcame. Yet an entire week had passed as Mrs. Shane Doyle. She was a busy woman but this was absolute insanity.

The first-year wedding anniversary was paper, and Cara speculated on what kind of celebration should occur after a mere week with a ring on her finger. Oh, right, she didn’t even get a ring out of the deal!

Not that a girl should be in it for the bling, but Cara as blushing bride had certain expectations: a flowing gown, smiling friends and family, a sober groom. But more than that, marriage was supposed to be about common goals and compatibility, finding that soul mate who got you and, if not completely understanding of your weirdness, was man enough to deal with it.

As the likelihood of Cara finding this paragon was negative ten thousand, she had apparently hit upon the perfect solution: ply a stranger with hard liquor and when she had him soused to perfection, drag his catatonic ass down the aisle. Perpetuating fraud was her only option because there was no way she could get a husband by fair means. What sober guy in his right mind would want a freak like her?

Certainly not a friendly, gorgeous guy like Shane.

Now here they were, living under the same roof. Like man and wife. An illicit thrill fluttered in her chest at the thought, but she quickly punched it into submission.

No, not like man and wife. He would lead his life—late hours at the restaurant, later hours at the dank speakeasy all the chefs gravitated to after service—and she would lead hers. Working from her perfectly appointed office above Sarriette’s kitchen, organizing bachelorette brunches and wedding rehearsal dinners before hitting the gym and kicking the shit out of the rock-hard abs of Mikhail, her personal trainer. There was no reason she would have to cross paths with Shane Doyle, either at work or at home.

Shane Doyle. Her husband.

“Everything okay?”

She jolted at Lili’s voice, though she’d known she was here with her in Cara’s bedroom, pulling exquisite shoes and stunning designer clothing out of even more beautiful bags. Sometimes, Cara thought she was paying a premium for the fabulous packaging. She looked down at her hands, now filled with shredded tissue paper.

Lili’s liquid blue eyes met Cara’s. “Are you upset about Shane?”

“I’m not upset. Why would I be upset?” She fought hard to dial down the hysterical hitch she imagined in her voice.

“I didn’t realize how much you dislike him.”

“Don’t be silly,” Cara snapped. “Of course I don’t dislike him.”

Lili picked up one of Cara’s tops, a celadon silk halter in a size six that old Cara would have considered a sign of the impending apocalypse, and sighed.

“This looks like something a doll would wear.”

Not exactly, but it was sweet of Lili to say so. Going up three sizes from her usual zero was an achievement Cara was trying to be proud of. Fear of gaining weight was a constant for women like her, but her recovery demanded she look at all the positives associated with gaining. With added weight came added confidence, spontaneity…and a new husband. Not a positive per se, but somehow she doubted old Cara would have acted so instinctively.

Reverently, Lili placed the top down on Cara’s silver-gray coverlet, the only splash of color in her all-white, Hamptonesque beach-style decor. Embalmed in such purity was supposed to help center Cara after a bad day at the office or an unsatisfying bout at the gym. Or, you know, finding out your secret husband is living less than ten feet away from you. Right now, the serene surroundings were doing nada for her nerves.

“He needed a place,” Lili said. “He’s been crashing on a friend’s couch for a couple of weeks.”

Grabbing the halter, Cara beelined to the celadon section of her walk-in closet. Yes, she had a celadon section, slotted between hunter and jade. The closet’s ordered rows and vicious categorization appealed to her rigid personality, and after living in a studio the size of a prison cell in New York, it had been first on her list when she moved back to Chicago six months ago. Jack had given her carte blanche to rehab the apartment and she’d spent three months overseeing its transformation into a space worthy of
Architectural Digest
. A space worthy of the life she had always imagined for herself.

“So it’s okay that he’s living across the hall?” Lili called in after her.

“What?”

“Shane. Is it okay? You seemed a bit surprised when you saw him.”

Cara hung the top, careful not to crumple it as she slid it between a Jason Wu and an Isaac Mizrahi. A real Mizrahi, none of that Target dreck.

“It didn’t take him long to get his feet under the table,” she said on exiting the luxurious comfort of her closet. “I can’t believe Jack would be on board. Isn’t he worried about me corrupting poor, innocent Shane?” She tackled the next bag, extracting a slender box that held Chinese slippers in a lovely shade of pomegranate with silver-bound jewels sewn into the shimmering fabric.

“I can handle Jack. You’re going to have to tell me what happened some time. Did you turn Shane down?” Lili raised a dark brow and pushed back her voluminous shock of hair. “Oh God, did
he
turn
you
down?”

Cara could feel the imminent eye roll but she managed to suppress it. “Nothing happened, Lili.”

“Did you scare him off? You are sort of scary.”

“You mean I’m a bitch.” Cara knew exactly what her coworkers and select members of her family thought of her. “Lemon Tart,” the brigade at Sarriette called her, though they probably didn’t realize that she embraced the moniker. So apt, a light-as-air confection with an acerbic bite. Not part of the kitchen or waitstaff, her status apart was compounded by her aloof manner and her rejection of practically every request for a date.

Practically.
Jeremy, Shane’s predecessor at the pastry station, had widened his puppy dog eyes and she’d taken him for a quick turn to stretch her legs. Her first date since she had returned to Chicago six months ago. He had been solicitous, polite, as interesting as wood paneling, and finally wet-eyed when, at the end of the night, she told him thanks, but no thanks. A month later, he was gone, leaving behind an open position for pastry chef and a sticky rumor that she had taken immense pleasure in punching holes in his heart with her four-inch spiked heels. Lemon Tart’s reputation had been set like a Jell-O mold, reinforcing what everyone thought they knew about her.

Snooty Cara who won’t join the brigade’s meal before service because eating with the plebs was so beneath her. Hard-as-her-manicured-nails Cara, so focused on her career that she barely came home to see her mother while she battled cancer. Never mind that the thought of eating with others turned her stomach to knots of fear and her mother’s frail, gaunt form served as too potent a reminder of Cara’s mistreatment of her own body. Breaking free of other people’s misconceptions was harder than it looked.

She flipped on a smile for her sister’s benefit. “That’s what people think of me, isn’t it? I’m a bitch.” She tried to take pleasure in the word, but it got clogged in her throat.

Lili’s eyes softened. “No, I mean that you can be a bit intimidating to guys. Maybe Shane’s not your type, too nice for you.”

“Hmph. He’s not so nice. I can’t believe you’re falling for all that leprechaun and shillelagh crap from Mr. Just-off-the-boat.”

Lili scooped up a throw pillow from the bed and picked at a stray thread. “He seems like the kind of guy who’d romance a girl,” she continued as if Cara hadn’t spoken. “Give her flowers. Wine and dine her. Hold her hand. Yeah, much too nice for you.”

“Clearly,” Cara muttered as she walked back into the closet to deposit her slippers safely in plastic shoe boxes. Of course Shane was too nice for her. She knew it as surely as she knew she hated lasagna and she didn’t need to have it drilled into her skull by her loved-up sister.

“That’s what I would normally have thought,” Lili threw out, the words muted in the layers of plush fabric draping her closet rails. Cara was just about to ask for clarification when a shadow fell across the doorway. Lili with arms folded beneath her pin-up breasts, cocking one of her rounded hips. Willing away her envy of Lili’s amazing figure, Cara tried to focus on what her sister was yammering on about.

“He seems like the kind of guy who’d hold hands on a first date.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Oh, nothing.” Lili studied her nails and Cara’s body clenched. She knew that avoidance stratagem like the back of her…nails. She’d invented it.

“Lili…”

“Just something odd that happened in Vegas. But I’m leaving it there.”

Damn, she had to ask because ignoring it would be as good as dousing a flame with paraffin. “Liliana Sophia DeLuca, out with it.”

“Well, you know how we had that elephantine-pink limo as we cruised the Strip?” She laughed that husky giggle that sounded like a torch singer from the forties. “Angela was already passed out, and I was left pulling Gina and her cronies down from the sunroof because a certain wedding planner had gone AWOL.”

“I told you I was tired. I went to lie down.”

Lili tilted her head. “Was that before or after you took a walk down the Strip holding hands with a cute Irishman?”

Oh. My. “God.”

Lili’s eyes sparked into puckish joy. “You sneaky girl. I couldn’t believe it when I spied the two of you taking a leisurely stroll, gazing up with open mouths like you’d just hopped off the Greyhound from Podunk. Lights! Fountains! Hookers!”

Cara pushed past her sister and occupied her trembling hands with folding shopping bags. “I was just showing him around. He’d never been to Vegas and he was acting like a kid.” She stole a glance back at Lili, who leaned against the closet entrance, looking like she had a shovel at the ready but would much rather let Cara break ground first.

Which she proceeded to do.

“You know how it is with these rubes. He probably grew up in a peat bog without electricity so the Vegas lights blew his country-fried mind.”

Memories of Shane’s wide-eyed wonder burbled to the surface of her brain. His infectious enthusiasm. His earnest curiosity. His large, warm hand interlocked with hers. She couldn’t recall the last time a guy had held her hand. Usually, it was a sweaty palm at the small of her back as she left a restaurant or a movie theater after a first date, a subtle pressure that every woman understood.

I’ve paid up, now what can you do for me?

The hand holding hers that night had felt dry and safe. Occasionally, he’d let go to point at something outrageous like escalators on the street.
On the street, Cara!
Or he’d walk backward to tell a story, bumping into strangers whose surly expressions would turn cheerful in the face of that charming brogue and megawatt smile. There were only friends on the Strip for Shane, and Vegas, a tacky monstrosity blossomed into something magical when seen through his eyes. The rest of the night was a blur of bars and cab rides and silly jokes. She had made the biggest mistake of her life but the abiding memory was the warmth of Shane’s hand.

“Is it because he’s a few years younger than you?” Lili’s soft words yanked Cara back to chilly Chicago.

“He is?”

“Yeah, he’s the same age as me. Twenty-five.” And five years younger than Cara. Shane Doyle, her boy-toy husband. The gift that keeps on giving.

Cara held her sister’s gaze, as if focusing might help make what she had to say next sound more definitive. “We had a few drinks, we walked around, that’s it.”

Lili matched Cara’s blue-steeled look with a challenging one of her own. “And now he’s across the hall. Turning on the lamps, enjoying all that American electricity. A biography of Thomas Edison on his nightstand. Wishing his dream guide would give him another tour of the sights. The sexy sights.”

“Oh, shut up,” Cara said above a laugh. She couldn’t laugh at this. Not yet.

“Maybe I should ask him to Sunday lunch with the parental units.”

“Why would you do that?”

Lili gave a half shrug. “I think he’s lonely. Anyway, what do you care? You haven’t been to lunch in weeks. I thought you moved back to Chicago to get back to your DeLuca roots yet you hardly ever come to the house.”

That was just one motivation for gracing the shores of Lake Michigan once more. A while back, she had figured something out: her life in New York, comprising her so-called friends, her dangerous dieting, and the unattainable goal of perfection, was killing her slowly. She had surrounded herself with like-minded women who despised their bodies and delivered fake sympathy when you mentioned your own weight gain and malignant rejoicing when you dropped an ounce. Queen bee of her clique—the Skinny Bitches, they called themselves proudly—she presided over liquid lunches where the only topics of conversation were the latest fad diets and ways to keep the pounds from the door. Drinking Diet Coke like it was going out of style and engaging in a constant game of one-upmanship over who had the lowest BMI.

She never lost that one.

Until almost a year ago, she might have gone on in the same fashion, but something happened. Her sister fell in love, and Cara lost her chance to produce Jack’s network show when he gave it up to focus on a life with Lili and his once-estranged sister, Jules. Seeing their joy had inspired Cara to a closer examination of what the hell she doing with her life. In winning the war on appetite, she was losing so much more. Her chance at contentment. Her chance at normal. Now, at the long-in-the-tooth age of thirty, she was trying to remake herself.