So Irresistible (27 page)

“It’s lies,” Gabriella told him. “It’s
all
lies.”

Sadly, Shane shook his head. For a moment, she actually believed he was heartbroken about this. About hurting her.

What kind of damn voodoo power did he have over her?

It couldn’t have been love. Because that was gone.

If it had ever existed.

She’d
so
wanted it to exist....

“It’s not as if you’ve never told a lie,” Shane pushed. “Last night, with your parents, you weren’t exactly honest.”

“Maybe not.” Gabriella straightened, knowing that was true. “But I never hurt them. I
never
did that. Not the way you—”

Hurt me
. She broke off, unable to finish.

Shane reached for her again, his heart in his eyes. “Gabby, I never meant to hurt you. I swear, I did worse on this job than any job in my life. I let chances go by, I did the
right
things . . . hell, I learned to
mop
for you! How can I make you see—”

“You can’t.” Boldly, Gabriella stopped him. She held close her unwanted dossier, wondering if Shane would actually let her leave with it, or if he’d try to stop her. When she’d said she was in over her head with him, she’d had
no
idea. “I’m leaving.”

She made her move by swerving past him.

Shane seemed surprised—or hurt—enough to let her go.

But not far. Gabriella only made it to the living room before Shane grabbed her arm. She whirled around, crumbling on the inside. On the outside, though, she felt as strong as steel.

“You can’t leave.” Shane stood there, looking almost as defenseless as he had while asleep. “You still need me.”

His gaze lifted to hers. Gabriella felt drawn in, pulled nearer, desperately inclined to just . . . forgive him and forget.

You can’t leave because you still love me
, Shane’s gaze seemed to accurately intuit.
You can’t leave because I still love you
, it whispered further . . . but only in Gabriella’s wishful interpretation. Because nothing Shane said communicated that.

“You’re still in danger.” Stonily, he lowered his hand. “You still don’t know who the saboteur is at the pizzeria.”

For a long moment, Gabriella only stared at him.

“I know who the saboteur is,” she finally said. “I’m looking at him. He just broke my heart.”

Then she grabbed the rest of her things, hugged close the proof of Shane’s treachery, and left his apartment without looking back—still wearing his shirt and still wanting to stay.

 

 

Gabby had left him.

She’d found out who he really was, and she’d left him.

With the sound of his slamming door still reverberating in his head, Shane stared at the place where Gabby had just been. If he tried, he could still feel her warmth. He could still smell her signature blend of basil and tomato and sweetness.

He could still wish everything had gone differently.

Ordinarily, Shane knew, he would have deserved this. He
would
have betrayed her. He
would
have lied, stolen, manipulated and coerced. For that, he would have deserved everything he got.

Even the wounded look in Gabby’s eyes.

But this time, damn it, Shane
hadn’t
deserved it. This time, at Campania, with Gabby, he’d tried his hardest to be good. He’d sweated and strived, mopped and chopped . . . and all for what? To be disbelieved? To be accused of sabotage?

To be abandoned, all over again?

Helplessly, Shane felt his knees buckle. It had taken all his strength to try to convince Gabby to stay. Now his strength was gone. Teetering, he grabbed the peninsula for support.

He should have known this would happen. He should have known Gabby wouldn’t
really
stay. She wasn’t the first to leave him. She wouldn’t be the last. Shane knew that. He always had.

Maybe that’s why he’d kept on compiling info on Campania—why he’d kept acting on autopilot even after he’d quit fixing. On some level, Shane reasoned, he must have wanted a safety net.

Because this would have ended eventually between him and Gabby, Shane knew. She hadn’t even known what he really did for a living. That was laughably basic information for people in a relationship to have. Once Gabby found out what kind of man he truly was, Shane told himself, that would have been it. It was better it had happened now, before he got in too deep.

Who was he kidding? He was already in too deep.

But he was gifted, damn it! He was
persuasive
. Until that final moment before Gabby left, he’d truly believed he could make her stay. If heartfelt need had the ability to work magic, he would have done it, too. He would’ve hit it out of the park.

Instead, he’d failed. Gabby had gone. He was alone.

Alone
. Consumed by the realization, Shane felt his eyes burn. He hadn’t cried in years, but he was on the verge now.

I know who the saboteur is
.

I’m looking at him. He just broke my heart
.

Under his breath, Shane swore. He’d never seen Gabby seem so cold. So implacable. So
devastating
as she had just before she’d walked out on him. For a few moments, she’d wavered. For a heartbeat or two, she’d seemed on the brink of listening to him—on the edge of forgiving and forgetting. But then she’d tapped into that impressive well of inner steeliness she’d always possessed, and she’d told him to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

Shane admired her for that. He didn’t want to, but he did. Gabby didn’t put up with any bullshit. She didn’t suffer fools lightly. She didn’t accept betrayal. End of story. End of
him
.

He had to respect that about her . . . even as it gutted him.

Because the same thing that made Gabby so perfect for him was the same thing that felt so brutal to him now. Her strength was more than equal to his own. So was her determination. Shane
couldn’t
manipulate her. Gabby was too smart for that.

That made it all the more ironic that she’d accused him of sabotaging her pizzeria. Because of all the targets he’d had,
she
was the only one he’d been unwilling to take advantage of.

Maybe he should have, Shane told himself as he pushed away from the peninsula. Maybe he should have stuck to his principles—jaded as they were—and got the job done. Maybe he should have delivered the Grimanis’ pizzerias without looking back. There’d been several choice points in this job. He’d apparently chosen wrong every time he’d come up against one. He’d screwed up. Just the way his father had expected him to.

Giving an ironic chuckle at that realization, Shane paced across his apartment, ignoring the faint sounds of the city awakening below him. It wasn’t too late, he realized. He still had inside information on Campania and the other pizzerias. If Waltham Industries
hadn’t
moved quickly to offer Robert Grimani a deal—if another rival company
had
—Gregory Waltham would want the info Shane had compiled. He could still win this one.

He could still force his father to respect him.

It would work, Shane told himself, full of misery and fury and regret. He obviously couldn’t make it in the regular world. He wasn’t equipped to go straight, the way Casey Jackson had. He was bad and dark and untrustworthy. He was good at that. After all, it hadn’t been until
after
Portland had started softening him up with friendly baristas, scenic park blocks, and roses beside the freeway that Shane had started feeling discontent.

Clearly, behaving honorably wasn’t a good fit for him.

A decent woman like Gabby wasn’t a good match, either.

Shane needed someone with whips and chains and a sense of distrust even blacker than his own. He needed
not
to hope.

Hope hurt. He knew it. Now Gabby did, too.

Thinking of her made him stop in midstride. Struck by another stab of remorse, Shane closed his eyes. He loved her.

Given enough time, that would pass. Everything did.

Ruthlessly, Shane got dressed. Acting by rote, he shaved and collected his things. Wallet. Keys. His actual dossier.

Grabbing it stopped him short. Where the hell had that
other
dossier come from? it occurred to him to wonder. Just as he’d told Gabby, that research hadn’t been his. Despite everything, he didn’t think it was Lizzy’s, either. She didn’t need to compile a separate cache of research. Anything she found could easily be added to Shane’s meager hoard of the Campania recipe book, Robert Grimani’s customer notebook, the USB stick with the pizza dough video on it, the old Campania computer, and the set of pizzeria keys he’d liberated from Gabby’s office.

It wasn’t as if Shane had examined any of those things very closely. He hadn’t even combed over that old PC to collect additional financial, customer, and employee information. He’d brought it to his apartment after swapping it for the new laptop he’d given to Gabby, but he hadn’t had the heart to do what any reputable fixer in his position would have done:
use
it.

Hell
. Realizing exactly how far he’d fallen, Shane straightened with his original dossier in hand. Time to move.

A few seconds’ hard-faced striding brought him to Lizzy’s door. He pounded on it, feeling better now that he’d decided what to do next.

His assistant opened the door, dressed and alert, wearing her contact lenses instead of her glasses, with no indie-girl trappings. It was as if Shane had simply imagined finding Lizzy there a few days ago endearingly bedheaded and adorably grumpy. Today, there was no sign of anything but professionalism in her.

“You tossed my apartment, you bastard.” Stonily, she regarded him. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Yes, actually.” Shane pushed past her. “I did.”

“You were wrong.” She crossed her arms, then eyed him with new concern. She sighed. “What happened? You look like hell.”

Gabby left me
.
Everyone leaves me
.

Shane shook his head. “I’m closing out this job.”

“I thought you’d already quit. Gregory said you quit.”

“I’m on my way to see Robert Grimani right now,” Shane went on relentlessly. If he was right, Gabby’s father wouldn’t know about his fix yet. If Shane struck fast, he could win. He could expedite the pizzeria turnover if Waltham Industries was behind the new offer. If not, he could derail Robert’s deal with another company. “I want to leave town tonight. Make it happen.”

He turned, leaving Lizzy astonished in his wake.

He made it all the way to the door before she spoke up.

“I know you love Gabriella Grimani,” Lizzy told him.

Shane stopped, keeping his back to her.

“You
must
love her,” his assistant persisted. “You did a crap job on this fix. You blew opportunities. You ignored obvious ins. You
mopped
. That wasn’t required. You’re like the original Tom Sawyer, persuasive and glib and charming. You could have convinced someone else to do that for you.”

“You’re confusing me with Casey. He’s the one who makes people enjoy being ‘fixed.’” Shane touched the doorknob. “I’m the one who makes people leave. Every fucking time.”

Lizzy was silent. Then, “So go after her.”

Shane shook his head. His whole body hurt. Especially his heart. Who knew a damn heart could really ache? He’d thought that was hyperbole—just fodder for dumb country-western songs.

“The only way someone can leave you is if you
don’t
go after them.” Lizzy’s voice bored into him, full of all the certainty and wisdom and play-it-straight insight that had originally made him hire her. “So do it. Go after her.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understood well enough to have hidden that other dossier in my apartment, in case Gabriella saw it and got the wrong idea,” his assistant pointed out. “Someone left it at your place—”

The real saboteur
. Had they planted that second dossier in hopes of driving a wedge between him and Gabby? In hopes of demoralizing her even further, so she’d close the pizzeria?

In his grief, Shane had forgotten about the person who was really trying to destroy Campania—to destroy Gabby and everything she and her family had worked so hard for.

“—and I knew it wasn’t yours, obviously,” Lizzy was saying, “so I took it and stashed it until I could talk to you about it.” She poked Shane to make him turn around. “I hid it, you thief, because there are people in my life right now who don’t need to see—”

“I’ve got to leave,” Shane interrupted, preoccupied.

“Listen, you dope.” His assistant put her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve got your back, Shane. I’ve
always
got your back. That’s why I took this job. I had other options, but I picked you. Not because I want to get frisky with you, not because I want to join your ‘I’m-a-heartless-bastard’fan club, but just because I
like
you. Because I—”

“I pay you to be here. That’s it.”

“—want to watch out for you,” Lizzy insisted. “You
need
someone like me. You need
ten
mes. So if you’re done pouting—”

Shane muttered an expletive, trying to make her shut up.

“—you should listen to me tell you that you’re not as big and bad as you think you are.” Lizzy didn’t back down an inch. “That’s why you’ve been so unhappy lately. Because it goes against your grain to be bad, Shane. You got stuck in it—”

“I’m not listening to this.” He slanted her an irate glance. “You get laid a few times and now you’re Mother Teresa?”

“—and then you leveraged it into a job, and then you got even more stuck. You’re smart. You used fixing to survive, and it worked for you. But not anymore. You need to get out.”