All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (38 page)

“Sarriette can host the Pink Hearts Appreciation Dinner without the attached string of my son’s wedding. When you’re back in Chicago, make an appointment with my assistant and we’ll talk about that and what else you’re good at.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Napier. Could I ask how you found out about your son’s, um, bargain?” Somehow, she doubted Mason had boasted about it over eggs benedict with the Momster.

“Your chef came to see me.”

Your chef.
Cara’s tongue was suddenly too large for her mouth. “Jack?”

“No, the gorgeous one with the dimple. Of course, I already knew about my son’s ham-fisted tactics through my sources but your chef charmed his way past my assistant and then he wouldn’t leave until I agreed to hear him out. I wasn’t really listening to a word he said—the man is absolutely sinful and then he opens his mouth and it’s like a choir of angels singing. He could have been confessing to murder and I’d still be nodding like a lobotomized nun.”

Shane Doyle and his stupid accent, marauding his way through Chicago’s glitterati.

“Anyway, Miz DeLuca, I’m sure you have better things to be doing than talking to me. Wicked, wonderful things.”

Cara smiled ruefully to herself. Her wicked, wonderful days were long behind her. “It was very nice talking you, Mrs. Napier. Thank you and sleep well.”

“Oh, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, Cara. Good night.”

Cara stared at her phone for a good minute. Rumors of her demise were grossly exaggerated. Once the wedding was done, she would sketch out a business plan for DeLuca Events (she’d need a new binder!) and would start working on her contacts to draw up locations, menus, and vendors. She could do this. The last few weeks had revealed
caglioni
she never knew she had. Cara
caglioni.

How she wished she had someone to share her news with. She wanted to take this new strength, stop being afraid, and open her heart, but first she needed a very strong adult beverage.

Another chirp from Beyoncé put a crimp in her cocktail plans. From the screen, Lili beamed like Doris Day on her birthday, which was pretty close to how she had looked all night. Tall, dark, whatever angled her an impatient look.

She answered with, “Hey, shouldn’t you be busy trashing that suite with all your acrobatic, monkey sex?”

“Consider it done, Cara,” Jack rumbled back from the other end.

“What’s going on? Have you put my sister into some sort of sex coma? Lili, Lili, are you okay?”

Jack chuckled. “Maybe you should be less obsessed with the sex life of your sister and worry more about getting your own love life in order.”

She groaned. “Did you really call me at midnight on your wedding day to give me relationship advice?”

“Yes, Cara. Yes, I did. The sacrifices I make for my family.”

His pride in joining clan DeLuca rang clear and she had to admit not a small amount of pleasure that he considered her in that way. In the background, Lili called weakly for help.

“Shush, sweetheart, I’ll take care of you. Cara, you still there?”

Could they be any more adorable? “I’m almost ears.”

“Open your mind, love, then turn around.” He clicked off. For the second time that night, she stared at her phone. Was that it?

Slowly, she turned—she’d always had a flair for the dramatic—and met the warm, brown gaze of…TDS.

“Excuse me, do you mind?” She waved him aside; he went easy.

At the door stood Shane, and man-on-fire, he looked good. During the ceremony, he had worn a suit, all sharp lines that did little to contain his boundless energy. Now, he was back to his usual uniform of faded, overly washed shirt and jeans, their supple softness almost tangible above those boots. Always the boots. There was plenty of scruff affixed to more jaw than one man needed, enough to remind her of how devastating his explorations of her body had been. How he had claimed every part of her. How he still owned her, body and soul.

With all the lithe grace that made him an excellent dancer, he glided over, only breaking eye contact to take in TDS, whose brow was ridged with annoyance. She couldn’t blame him. He had given up his seat and his return on investment was appallingly low.

“Not wasting any time, I see,” Shane said. A scent as familiar as her own lit up every cell of her body.

“Gotta start somewhere. I kind of enjoyed the married life.”

Shane grinned, that crooked line that she saw now was so like Jack’s. Not just sexy and carnal, but knowing. It certainly knew her.

“You know this guy?” TDS asked, affronted.

“I have no idea who he is,” Cara said, unable to tear her eyes away from the man she knew she would love until her last breath.

His shoulders, those annoyingly broad shoulders, relaxed, smiled even. He thrust out his hand to her. “I’m Shane and I’m an idiot. I make pastry for a living and I happen to be related to Jack Kilroy.”

A tangle of hope and nerves duked it out in her chest. She grasped his hand, that warm, male grip that never failed to make her feel safe.

“I’m Cara and I’m a recovering perfectionist. I manage like nobody’s business and I also happen to be related to Jack Kilroy.”

“Small world. Do you mind if I?” Releasing her hand, he gestured to the tight square foot of space between her bar stool and the next occupied one.

Do you mind if I?
As if that had ever stopped him. Gentleman in charge.

“Sorry to have taken up your time,” she said to TDS, who was already skimming a look over his shoulder, alert for less troublesome possibilities. With a shrug, he swaggered off.

Shane grasped the bar rail and held her gaze. She waited for the charm and blarney to come flowing like honey out of his gorgeous mouth.

After a long moment of pinning her to the stool with those eyes as dark as a decadent chocolate ganache, he said, “I lied. About something incredibly important, but it wasn’t just a lie to you or to Jack. It was a lie to myself. You’ve no idea how long I’ve denied who I was and what I needed.” His Adam’s apple bobbed with his emotion.

She had some idea. If anyone could understand the weight of a secret, the burden of denial, it was she. But she had been honest with him as soon as her heart allowed and now she compelled the treacherous muscle to cooperate in the face of Shane’s anguish. His pain rolled through her, all the more sharp because of his strength in healing her these last few weeks. He had been her rock and it hurt not to touch him.

“Lili said you knew for years,” she pushed out. “Since you were a kid.”

He nodded. “It was complicated. I hated Jack because he wasn’t around. Because I was left with my father when I could have been with my brother, which is completely irrational because Jack didn’t even know I existed. And if he had, he wasn’t going to take on some kid he didn’t know from the back of beyond. He hated John Sullivan and I assumed he would hate me if he knew me, so I got busy hating him first.”

Something clicked in her muddled brain, snatches of the pain he had confided in her mixed up with an accusation he had thrown at Jack during his come-clean in Chicago.

“The forgiveness your father was looking for when he was ill? It was from Jack, wasn’t it?”

He nodded slowly, the hurt incised on his handsome face.

Oh God, how that must have crushed him. To have survived what he did only to have this cruel, sick man no longer recognize the son he had almost destroyed and seek absolution from the one who’d had a lucky escape. She could see now how confusing it must have been for him. Needing to find that connection with Jack despite all the resentment he felt toward him. Tears stung the backs of her eyelids, but letting go would be too self-serving.

“Shane, I’m so sorry,” she managed to whisper.

“I know you are, Cara,” he said, and she hoped he truly did. “Despite all the shit with my father, I still wanted to meet Jack. To be sure, you know?”

She nodded.

“I expected he’d be an arrogant dickhead—”

“Well, he is.”

He laughed, the sound more sad than amused. “Yeah, he is, but I liked him. I wanted to keep on hating him, but I couldn’t. And then I fell for the whole lot of you and I wanted to be part of your family.”

“So you just wanted to get close to Jack? To the rest of the DeLucas?” She could feel a headache bursting behind her welling-up eyes.

His smile was grim. “No, that’s not it. I’m not explaining myself very well. I had no intention of forcing myself into Jack’s life. My plan was to satisfy my curiosity and move on after a couple of months. Meeting you, Cara, knowing you, changed me. It made me realize that I wanted it all. I didn’t want to live on the outside anymore.”

She knew the pain of that kind of longing. She still knew it. But then he threw it away when he ended their marriage without telling her.

“When were you going to tell me you signed the annulment papers? Congrats, we’re no longer married, by the way.”

His brow knitted. “After the day we spent together with the sick kids and at the park, I wanted to start fresh and move forward without all the baggage of Las Vegas. The only way was to give you the annulment you wanted but then we were spending all that time together, and you never brought it up. There we were, getting along like a house on fire, like we were actually married and liking it, but I’d signed the papers and ended our legal relationship. And that’s all it was. Just words on a piece of paper. What matters is what we felt that night and how we built on it for the last six weeks.”

He moved closer and gentled her jaw.

“I can’t change what happened, Cara. I know I screwed up. I should have told Jack sooner. I should have come clean with both of you.”

Yes, he should have, but she could see why keeping it in was easier. We fool ourselves into holding onto the pain because the alternative—that we might get too used to days without it—would likely drive us mad with hope.

She sucked in a ragged breath. “Tell me why you said yes, Shane. I have to know.” The thought that something so randomly chaotic had laid siege to her life was too difficult for her to comprehend. She knew why she asked him. He made her feel. Surely he knew why he said yes.

He held her face with both hands, his touch so agonizingly gentle that she trembled.

“Cara, my beautiful Cara. Have you any idea what you did to me that night? That you destroyed me the minute you walked through that door? I said yes because I’d found something unexpected. A woman who seemed to have this off-center relationship with everyone around her, but who had a laugh that warmed me from the inside out. This girl who should not be giving someone like me the time of day, but who made funny noises at my stupid jokes, held my hand like she meant it, and made me wish I could be man enough to deserve her.”

His hands slid to her shoulders and he touched his forehead to hers.

“Jack is the reason I walked into your life, Cara, but you’re the reason I stayed.”

Her heart beat so erratically that she worried she might die. Just fall down dead on the spot. “Oh.”

He looked offended at her underwhelming response. “Yeah, oh. Sure I sobered up and realized that what we did that night was hovering on the city limits of Crazy Town but I never forgot the feeling. Every time I was with you, I got that feeling. This gut pinch telling me it wasn’t a mistake. It was supposed to happen. We were supposed to happen.”

She knew that feeling. She had embraced it that night, the magic and freedom of acting on a wild impulse because it felt right. She had embraced it, and fought it, for the last six weeks, undergoing more highs and lows than the bar in a limbo contest. There had been ecstasy and pain, but through it all she had felt alive.

“You should have told me later. Over movie night,” she said, unable to dampen the thrill she felt that he had somehow managed to turn this around. That blarney-talking peat-bog dweller.

“Ah, so that’s it. You’re just annoyed because I didn’t spill my secrets. Women always have to know everything.” He smiled, both heartbreaking and sexy at once. “If I had told you first, you would have insisted I tell Jack. I wasn’t ready. That kind of realization takes time.”

Didn’t she know it. She had waited thirty years to come to hers and when it came to life-changing epiphanies, Cara DeLuca had Shane Doyle beat six ways from Sunday. There was no way in hell she was going back to old, unhealthy, controlling Cara. New, healthy, a little bit wild, Cara had so much more to recommend her. She should wear teal more often.

She slid off the bar stool. “How are those boots feeling?”

He looked down at his weathered boots, ones that had taken him all over the world and brought him home to her.

“I’ve been wearing them all day but that’s never stopped me. How about those heels?”

She flexed her right foot, beautifully clad in a strappy bronze sandal. “Not bad. I think I could make it a few hundred feet.” Closing her eyes, she held out her hand.

A few, interminable seconds ticked by, but then warmth flooded her as he curled his fingers around hers and joined their palms together. Heat flared through her body and fired all her neurons.
Ping, ping, ping.
This is what happened that night.

This is what’s happening now.

Jack had told her to open her mind, but she was Cara DeLuca—Lemon Tart, Miss Recovering Perfect, zombie apocalypse leader-in-waiting—and she could go one better. She opened her eyes to color and joy and Shane’s smile. She opened her heart to love.