All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (29 page)

“I don’t wear glasses.”

He touched his fingers to her lips. “Shush, don’t ruin it. There’s a pointer involved and then you pull your hair out of your bun when you get to an exciting part.”

The temptation to suck his fingers into her mouth almost engulfed her. Luckily, he removed them before things got X-rated. Mouth dry and finger-free, she glanced down at her screen. “When I describe the omphalos?”

He moved in closer. Close enough to slide his unslinged arm around her but he still held off. Tease. “The phallus?”

“No, the omphalos. It’s Greek for ‘navel.’ That’s what they call what we’re looking at.” She gestured up. “The navel.”

“You look really cute today,” he said, his gaze smoking over her.

“Thanks,” she whispered, unreasonably pleased that he called her cute instead of hot or sexy. There was a tenderness about it that turned her insides to liquid.

“Do you mind if I…” He did that a lot—asked “Do you mind if I…” and then went ahead and did whatever the hell he wanted. Gentleman in charge. He reached around and pulled her hair out of its knot. His fingers brushed against the nape of her neck as he teased her hair out. “I like your hair loose.”

Her heart skittered like a flat stone across the lake. “Oh, okay.” As if she had a choice in the matter.

Still watching her with that smoldering gaze, he shoved her hair tie into his pocket.

“Did you just steal my scrunchie?”

“Just to put under my pillow. It’s not creepy or anything.”

He coasted his knuckles up and down her arm, an electric lick of fire, before finally settling in a hover near her hand. He was waiting for her to make the next move. She placed her hand in his and squeezed. Immediately, he returned the pressure, a sublime jolt that traveled up and out to every pulse point of her body.

“Your family doesn’t know about your volunteer work, do they?”

Oh. She had not been expecting that. The vibe had gone from sexy to serious in an unrecognizable instant. Caught off balance, she said the first thing that came into her head. “They wouldn’t understand. They’d think I was just trying to make up for my sins.”

A long beat passed before he spoke. “That’s a very harsh word, Cara.” His gaze was filled with compassion and she had to look away, though she still held onto his hand. “Is this because you weren’t around when your mum was ill?”

The noise of children, pushing and laughing and playing, sent a wave of sadness breaking over her. She usually felt this rawness for a few hours after her visits with the kids at the hospital, or the Frequent Fliers as they were known. Under the Bean, one little boy, no more than five years old, pulled his older sister’s hair. So heartbreakingly sweet.

“They caught the cancer fairly early but my mother still had to go through surgery and chemo and radiation therapy. Looking at her was like seeing myself when I was at my worst. Bones poking through skin, the dark circles under her eyes. I knew she had no choice and it shamed me because
I
had a choice. For years, I chose to do that to my body. To treat it like a science experiment because I thought it would make me more loveable.”

She swiped at the tears but they were already falling too fast. “I bailed when I was needed and let Lili do all the work. I was always too busy with the TV show I was producing, with the important, glamorous life I was faking. It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

He released her hand to capture her now unstoppable tears with his thumb. Warmth and comfort pulsed through her at his touch. “You had to take care of yourself, Cara. Make yourself better. No one would fault you for that.”

Ah, but she could. Every. Single. Day. “I should have been here,” she choked out around a sob.

“And now you are here, doing an amazing job with Lili and Jack’s wedding.” How sharp of him to realize one prong of her atonement was Lili’s big day. Her husband was quite the smarty-pants.

His thumb brushed over her lips. “Managing the little things helps you take care of the big things—is that how it works?”

She nodded. “Something like that, but I feel like I’m hardly coping or managing at all. Every day—”
Is a struggle,
she wanted to say. If it wasn’t, she could take this feeling she had whenever she was with Shane and thread it through her life.

He made a sound of disbelief. “You think you’re not coping? Cara DeLuca, you are
so
kicking butt. It’s like you’re tailor-made to recover from an eating disorder.”

Her shocked laugh loosened something in her chest. What an odd thing to say. “How’d you make that out?”

“Ah, sure, don’t I have a theory?”

She inched closer, craving his heat and strength. Craving him more than her next breath. “Okay, tell me this theory of yours.”

“Well, whoever’s up there watching us down here, whatever higher power you believe in, he—”

“Or she.” Surely a female deity was involved in Shane’s creation.

He nodded wisely. “Or
she
assigns problems for reasons. So you got this perfectionist gene but you also got this inner strength, this ability to overcome anything with sheer Cara cojones.”

“Cara cojones?”

“Yeah, or
caglioni
in Italian.” He smiled. “I’m multilingual. So, because you have these special Cara balls, you’re in the perfect position to kick the arse of any problem that comes along. You’ve already made anorexia your bitch. That’s not to say it’s easy, because it isn’t, but you’ve done this amazing job so far. And it means you will continue to do an amazing job. You’re Cara DeLuca. You can do anything.”

He sounded like the fortune cookie message of every body image and self-help book she’d ever read, and still her parched brain soaked up his hokey platitudes like an arid swatch of desert. Cara DeLuca might not be able to do anything, but Cara DeLuca Doyle definitely could.

“So the control-freak-perfectionist gene that contributed to my anorexia is also why I’m able to recover from it so spectacularly?”

“Don’t mess with the theory, Cara. What’s important to remember is that now you’ve come out the other side you don’t have to keep up that tough-girl façade any longer. Pretending to be something you’re not is an awful lot of work.”

She heard his weariness, and when she looked into his deep, chocolatey eyes, the sadness in them tore through her.
I’m the master of secrets,
he had told her once. Perhaps one day, he would peel back that armor of charm and let her in.

“Cara, you don’t have to wolf down my pastries or throw your clothes on the bedroom floor. You just have to be yourself. I know you’re not ready to do that with the rest of them, but there’s no need to pretend with me.”

Her heart exploded on the spot and repaired itself in the same burning instant. How did he do that? How did he see right into her? While strolling down Sunset Strip with her hand wrapped in Shane’s safe grip, she had felt solid, and not like she could be blown away by a gust of Nevada wind. Now with Shane’s words, she realized that maybe she wasn’t so crazy to want good things.

The thickness in her throat prevented any response, but neither did he seem to expect it. In returning their attention to the Bean, her hand found his again. Fun-house Cara didn’t look so strange after all.

Chapter 15

A little twist,” Cara said, bending once more to her task.

“’S fine,” Lili said. “It’s been fine for the last thirty minutes.”

Shane shot a glance at Jack, whose only contribution for the last half hour had been a knowing eyebrow hitch at regular intervals.
DeLuca women.

Though they had moved into Sarriette’s dining room, it was almost as warm as the kitchen, which meant the chocolate icing would start sweating any moment. If they didn’t get the shot soon, he’d have to start over. Lili got back behind the complicated-looking camera set on an eye-level tripod, and clicked several times.

Shane’s Bella Donna chocolate ganache cake was now part of the gallery of photos that would adorn the pages of Jack and Tony’s cookbook. He had never felt prouder.

It was the perfect end to a perfect day spent cooking and laughing with Jack, the DeLuca girls, and the crew at Sarriette. With his arm stuck in a sling, Shane was useless in the kitchen, so he spent his time dispensing orders to Jack and Mona, and enjoying every second of it. He even got to choose the music! The rest of the crew had gotten an unreasonable kick out of it as well; per Derry, Jack was now “Shane’s bitch.” Jack had grumbled but he didn’t disagree.

Shane owed it all to Cara. At first, he was worried about her talking him up to Jack but he comforted himself with the knowledge that all Jack’s offers came Shane’s way because he had earned it. He was talented and he deserved his place in Jack’s kitchen.

“Despite the fact you’ve done nothing but piss me off all day,” Lili said to Cara while she packed up her camera equipment, “I’m still prepared to let you buy me an expensive adult beverage tonight.”

“No can do,” Cara said far too quickly. “I’ve got something else on.” She made a point to look anywhere but at Shane.
Real subtle, LT.

Lili certainly didn’t have a problem with looking at Shane. “How about you, Irish? Will you be around to keep me company while my man earns the big bucks?” She raised an eyebrow in challenge. “I know you can’t work with your gimpy arm. Probably not much you can do.”

“You’d be surprised what I
can
do, gimpy arm and all, but alas, I’m busy tonight.”

“Hmm.” She gave him the DeLuca stare down but didn’t press.

While Lili placed a lens in a soft case, Cara caught his eye with a smile that might have flattened a lesser man. True, he was busy tonight, and true, the reason for his busyness was spelled C-A-R-A, but neither hanky nor panky were part of the equation. Since that day in Millennium Park, they had been hanging out and watching movies with the cat curled up between them playing chaperone. He was teaching her to cook and once the film’s closing credits rolled, she was headed to her apartment and he was headed to a cold shower. By the time he’d toweled off, the hum of the vacuum two walls over was just winding down. He was clean, her apartment was clean, everyone was a winner. He would have liked to remind her there were plenty of things they could do that wouldn’t hurt his shoulder—Cara on her knees came to mind—but the anticipation was so damn sweet.

He also had another reason for holding back on reinstituting the good times. Gnawing guilt. As the physical pain in his shoulder lifted, the weight of his lie filled the void. But the only way out was forward. Keep up the pretense. He was a ninja at it, and sure, wasn’t what he had now almost as real? A job he liked, friends who liked him, a woman who wasn’t easy but then he had never done easy.

Shane wasn’t given to flights of fancy nor was he prone to let his imagination get a jump on his common sense, but he’d felt a change in his relationship with Jack. It was subtle—an opinion sought here, a shared anecdote there. All the ordinary hallmarks of workplace camaraderie, but it coursed through Shane’s veins like jet fuel. Jack actually liked him. Shane shouldn’t have been surprised; he was very likeable. And being liked by your boss—your friend—was a helluva lot better than being hated by your brother.

What would be gained by telling the truth but a place outside the glass, looking in? He hadn’t liked it out there. This way, he had one foot in the door and he could feel the warmth of the hearth on his face. Giving it up to return to the chilled shadows was not an option.

Jack and Cara had moved off to the bar with “The Binder” and curiously, Lili didn’t make a move toward them. Shane approached her with two forks. Sighing, she took one from him and dug into the subject of her latest photographic masterpiece.

The grim set of her mouth brightened as soon as the chocolate morsel made contact with her tongue. He allowed her a moment to savor all that rich, dark goodness.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I am now.” Eyes closed, her face teetered on the edge of ecstasy. “Have I told you lately that I love you, Shane?”

“Watch your mouth. You’re
el jefe’s
lady.”

She slid a sidelong glance at Jack and Cara, now in a head huddle at the bar. “And you’re a saint.”

He laughed. “How’d you make that out?”

“Your boss is a tyrant and the woman you may or may not be sleeping with is a control freak of the highest order.”

He could feel a smile tugging at his lips. Lili was no dummy.

“It takes a certain personality type to handle them. We’ve got the knack.” He scooped up some of the Bella Donna and cleaned his fork with his mouth. “How come you’re letting them run roughshod all over you for the wedding?”

That netted him a dark look. “No, I’m not.”

“I get the impression you’re not into the big do, that you’d rather something more low key but you’re doing it to please Jack and Cara.”

She rolled her eyes. “Neither Jack nor Cara know how to do low key.”

“That’s for sure.”

They both laughed conspiratorially.

“Seriously, though, if you don’t want it to be so crazy, you should speak up.”

She sighed. “I want them to be happy. It’s one day and it’ll make them happy.”

“Yeah, but it’s your day, too.”

She considered this. Lili was like Cara in that respect: she thought awhile before she spoke. “When we were kids, Cara used to make us all enact her big wedding day. She’d wear Mom’s dress and round up all the cousins and neighbor kids. She had more husbands than Elizabeth Taylor, scrapbooks filled with magazine photos, tons of ideas for her own future wedding. No one ever said no to her and that was when she was nine.”