All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (24 page)

“Oh, yeah,” Lili said with a naughty giggle.

Before Lili could wander off track to lusty thoughts of ripping Jack out of his breeches, Cara swiftly moved on to her intended target. “But I think the Cinderella carriage would be best all around. Especially with the dress I have in mind.”

“Cara,” Lili started. “This all seems a bit over the top. The whole princess thing isn’t really my style. A bit too Disney.”

Her words turned Cara’s spine rigid. Didn’t Lili realize it had to be perfect?

“It’s your wedding day. Hopefully, your only wedding day. You want it to be memorable and dreamy and so amazing everyone will be sick with envy. You want people to go away thinking that it was the most gorgeous wedding they ever attended.”

Lili stared, and Cara realized she had been doing her high-pitched babble thing again. “I do?”

“Of course you do.” Cara shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

At the buzzing of her phone, Lili’s gaze slid sneakily to the screen. The message sent her into a husky laugh and she turned it around for Cara to see.

Make sure Cara gets quality European doves. No white-trash North American ones.

From her future brother-in-law, the comedian.

“Hey,” Cara said, trying to be a good sport about it all. “I thought he wanted something special. I thought you both did.”

Lili’s expression was probably aiming for sympathetic but it got stuck on pity. “We do. He’s just kidding. You’re doing a great job.”

They had four weeks and everything seemed to be crashing in on her like a tsunami. St. Jude’s was booked, the reception would be held at the InterContinental on Michigan Ave—Jack, ever the romantic, insisted they spend the wedding night there so they could relive the memory of their first time in the sack—and DeLucas scattered across the globe were preparing to descend. But all the things that would make it perfect—the outfits, the favors, the intimate touches—were still to be worked out. In short, it was a bridal bouquet away from catastrophe.

“We still need to get you a dress.”

Usually the dress would have been ordered months in advance but Lili claimed not to like any of the ideas Cara had offered. At this rate, they would have to get something off the rack and pay a premium to get it altered in time.

Her sister smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m wearing Mom’s.”

“You can’t.” It was out of Cara’s mouth quicker than it took the thought to form.

“Why not?” Lili’s brow drew into a
V
. “If you’re worried it won’t fit me, don’t be. Sylvia’s going to let it out at the seams.”

Though her mom was certainly a couple of sizes smaller than Lili, Cara’s first thought had not been that it might be a tight squeeze on her sister’s bodacious curves or that Cara already had six appointments at bridal shops early next week.

Her primary thought?
That was supposed to be my dress.

As a girl, she had spent hours holding her mother’s gown up in front of the mirror, then several more roping Lili and her cousins into the make-believe weddings starring Cara as the most beautiful bride who ever lived. It was old-fashioned, with a sweetheart neckline and a scalloped hem. Almost hippie-like in style, not really chic at all. But Cara had loved it and mentally called it as her own all those years ago.

Heart in chaos, she focused on the walls, dressed with Lili’s beautiful art, and tried to shake off the bookend images of an innocent girl with her best days ahead of her and a stupid woman who made a foolish mistake. The years in between had guaranteed she’d have no use for that dress, so it was churlish to begrudge Lili the joy of wearing it. There’d be no white wedding for Cara, only a quickie followed by an annulment.

“You okay?” Lili asked, her brow ridged with concern.

“Fine. Just thinking about all we have to do.”

Lili compressed her lips. “I don’t have to wear the dress. It’s just…Mom offered, and with the shortened time frame, it seemed like a good idea.”

Cara forced her smile bright and her eyes wide to keep the unshed tears at bay. “Lili, it’s a great idea. I made some appointments but I’ll cancel them. One less thing to do.”

Her sister looked like she wanted to say something else but the oven timer went off, saving Cara from further awkwardness. “Could you let Jules know the pizza is ready? She’s putting Evan down.”

Heading upstairs, Cara used the time away from Lili to get a handle on her emotions, though walking through the hallway of photo love on the next level made her pulse quicken again. More fuel for the raging envy monster inside her.
Get a grip, girl.

From Evan’s room came Jules’s low murmur and a couple of steps farther in confirmed she was reading
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
. A favorite with the kids on the oncology floor at the children’s hospital where she volunteered, Cara could recite it from memory. But not Jules. Maybe she was trying, but she stumbled over certain phrases.
Milk mustache. Nail scissors.

Cara stuck her head around the door and found Evan fast asleep, his sweet breathy sighs filling the room. Jules sat slumped in the corner armchair, the book open in her lap, her face a mask of frustration as she read aloud the page about the mouse wanting to hang his picture on the refrigerator with Scotch Tape. When Cara’s father had read it to her all those years ago, they laughed at the absurdity of a mouse wanting to hang his picture. It still made her smile.

Jules took a deep breath and skipped over the word
Scotch
to
Tape
. Mouth in a downturn, she snapped the book shut and stood quickly.

“Hi,” Cara said softly so as not to startle her. “Pizza’s ready.”

Jules gulped audibly. “Oh, right, thanks.” As she returned the book to the super cute canary-yellow bookcase, Cara couldn’t help noticing that her hand shook.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” she said but her smile was thin and watery. She raked her fingers through hair that looked like it’d already been thoroughly tousled. “I know he’s far too young for that, but I want to be ready when he’s old enough.”

“No harm being prepared, I suppose,” Cara said, confused as to why a book aimed at three- to five-year-olds needed to be studied in advance.

“You see…” Jules rubbed a spot on her wrist. “It won’t be long before he wants to read along with me, so I’m getting a jump on the classics. Before he jumps ahead of me.” Her adoring gaze fell on her son. “I have dyslexia and I’m trying to improve my reading. Jack hired a tutor for me.”

Oh.
Cara recalled a set of instructions the night she had babysat for Evan. Half the words were misspelled and looked like little Evan could have written them himself if he had sufficient motor control. She also recalled her callous conclusion that it was a good thing Jules lived with Jack and Lili because she didn’t have much going on between her ears.

Her heart sank at how she had misjudged this girl. She had no idea what she had gone through, but she’d whipped out her Judge Judy gavel all the same and pronounced. Jealousy at how Jules had easily slotted into the DeLuca family had played a part, but mostly it was because she never seemed to struggle. She had won the life lottery: girl-next-door looks, a healthy child, the unconditional love of her family. But all this time, she had been bearing her own painful burden.

Cara rubbed Jules’s shoulder, feeling awkward. Seemed it was her default setting these days. “I’m sorry I haven’t been very welcoming to you.”

Her eyes flew wide. “Oh, not at all. Your family was there for me at the worst possible time.”

“Yes, but
I
haven’t been a good friend. I’ve been kind of wrapped up in my own stuff.”

Jules smiled sweetly, making Cara feel like the worst bitch on the planet.

“We’re all the centers of our own universes, aren’t we? Though, once I got pregnant, it wasn’t long before I realized how my priorities had to change because soon I would have a new center for my universe. I had to make an effort to open up, to Jack, especially. Ask for help because I couldn’t do it on my own and if I wanted to be a good mum and sister and friend, I needed to trust people.” Her smile shone so brightly that it lit up the twinkly night sky on the ceiling above their heads. “No woman is an island and all that.”

The truth of that struck Cara like an arrow to her heart. Last night, she had shared something with Shane, starting with that shameful part of her, and now the thought of having to go back sat like an elephant on her chest. Old, furtive Cara slipping away from the family table so she could get rid of what she had eaten. Sneaky, desperate Cara getting up two hours before God—or Il Duce, same difference—so she could exercise in secret. Her body might have healed but those clandestine habits die hard. She couldn’t tell anyone about her anorexia but the yearning to confide that other skeleton in her closet battled to break free.

“Cara, are you all right?”

“No. No, I’m not.” She leaned over and stroked Evan’s hair, marveling at his perfection from his watercolor-pink cheeks to his tiny, perfect toenails. “I married Shane in Las Vegas.”

Jules’s hand flew to her mouth. “Get. Out.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.” She sighed. “I should start at the beginning.”

*  *  *

“So,” Lili said, her gaze unfocused after her third glass of wine. “Shane.”

Cara swallowed, then realized that might look like she had something to hide. Which she did.

Jules tilted her eyes up over the glass of red she’d been nursing for the last two hours. Her knowing look summoned a moment’s regret that Cara had spilled her guts before dinner. She had sworn her to secrecy and, given Jules’s proven ability to hold secrets of her own, Cara had no choice but to trust her.

“Yeah, Cara,” Jules said with a wry smile. “We want very specific details, and if you need a pen and paper, I’m sure we can provide.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara said, shooting for haughty. “He’s my neighbor.”

Lili blew out a well-oiled raspberry. “Tad was leaving the restaurant and saw you arriving home last night on the back of Shane’s bike. He said you were showing so much skin he’s surprised you didn’t get pulled over by Chicago’s Finest. Fess up now.”

“Jeez, he’s the worst gossip,” Cara muttered. Her blabbermouth cousin claimed it was a necessary skill for a bartender. “It was just a one-time thing.”

“What, no good?” Jules asked. “He looks like he’d be good.” She leaned in, ready for girly confidences. “I mean, we all know there’s nothing better than young, virile cock.”

“Stitch
that
on a pillow.” Lili moved Jules’s wine glass away. “I’m cutting you off. If your brother could hear you now.”

“Are you kidding?” Jules looked put out. “You know I’ve barely drunk a drop, not while I’m breastfeeding.”

Cara started to giggle uncontrollably. “Oh God, she’s right. He was like the Energizer bunny. Just when I thought I was done, he started right up again.” She fanned herself, then took a bite of her now-cold pizza, one of the best things she’d tasted in ages. Giving herself permission to enjoy life had opened her taste buds to the max, including her taste for young, virile man flesh.

“The only reason I’m walking straight is because I made him leave right after.”

Two sets of startled eyes glared at her.

“You kicked him out? Girl, that’s cold.” Glumly, Lili shook her head and placed her palms on the coffee table. “So, he could go all night but was he any good?” She pounded each word out for emphasis.

Jules took Lili’s half-full glass of wine away from her.

Cara felt her lips part, but no words took shape. It seemed appropriate to acknowledge Shane’s quality in reverential silence. Truth be told, her body hadn’t recovered. Close to twenty-four hours should have been enough to dull the hormone high and bring her crashing back to earth, but she was still a raging bundle of energy. This morning, when she stepped beneath her shower spray, a host of erotic images flowed unbidden through her mind.

Not exactly unbidden, though. Completely bidden.

Then this afternoon, walking past the crew, she couldn’t stay away from his orgasmic chocolate dessert or ignore the blatant invitation in his cocoa eyes.

Shane was turning out to be irresistible.

The hush was broken by Jules’s heavy sigh. “I need to be rogered good and proper.”

Lili and Cara burst out laughing.

“What about Tad?” Cara asked, grateful for the opportunity to deflect from her own alternately amazing and sorry love life. “I thought you two…”

“No, no.” She waved her hand, then waved it again for emphasis. “Tad and I are a nonstarter. He’s made it very clear we’re just friends.”

“Or Jack has,” Cara said. “I think he warned Tad off.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Jules said morosely. “My brother is so over the top.”

“He means well,” Lili said automatically, falling back on her role of peacemaker mixed with a shot of stand by your man.

“You do know you’re marrying Dad, don’t you?” Cara said to her sister. “Dad with a British accent.”

Lili’s mouth worked indignantly. “I—I am not. Jack’s nothing like Dad.” She turned to Jules for support.

“She’s not wrong,” Jules said, breaking into a grin. “But you can handle him.”

So true. Jack instilled confidence in Lili and she reined in his excesses and gave his life focus. Wasn’t that the recipe for a perfect match? Two people filling gaps and bringing out the best in each other. She had no idea what she brought to the table, but she had to admit that Shane did for her what no other man had ever done.

In starving her body, her heart had wasted away but since that sexy Irish cowboy had swaggered into her life, it felt full again. Crazier still, he wanted more of her, even after her confession. Of course, how convenient a booty call she would make…over her desk, in Sarriette’s kitchen (to hell with health codes!), a quick knock on the door across the hall.

But then, like all good things, it would end and pain would fill its place. There would be spying through her peephole as he brought dates back, surreptitious watching to make sure he wasn’t around before she left her apartment.

Hell to the no. She had an addictive personality and Shane Doyle was a drug she could not afford. Getting out before she had her heart handed to her on a pike was the best decision she could have made.

Chapter 12

I’m wearing the wrong shoes,” Cara said to Lili’s back. “You could have told me where we were going.”

“But if I’d done that, you wouldn’t have come,” her sister threw back, the words faint as they were snatched by the unseasonably cool breeze whipping across the flattened grass of Lincoln Park. They had parked the car on Cannon Drive and were now squelching their way toward the south end of the park, having left the paved path a while back. Last night’s May shower had muddied the ground and with every step, the spikes of Cara’s Cole Haan boots sank like golf tees into a field of jam.

In the distance, she spotted a bunch of men clustered in a very cozy lump, their arms latticed across each other’s backs.

Rugby. She groaned.

“Oh, be quiet,” Lili threw out, not uncharitably.

By the time they’d made it to the sideline, the man huddle had separated and one poor sucker had scrabbled about six feet before three others tackled him to the earth. Very civilized.

Lili nudged Cara in the ribs. “Jack’s been at me to come see him play, so here we are.”

“Why is it ‘we’ and not just ‘you’?”

Her sister raised a tricksy brow and nodded in the direction of the field. Cara followed her gaze until it landed on…Mason Napier.

“Wait, Mason Napier plays rugby with Jack?” If he already knew Jack, why the hell was he trying to wrangle chef’s tables out of her?

“Who?” Lili’s face scrunched up in query. “No, that guy’s on the other team. I draw your attention to Shane ‘O’Steamy’ Doyle.”

That six-foot leprechaun, also known as her husband, emerged from behind Mason. Covered head to toe in mud, he practically blended in with the brown puddles but all that filth couldn’t cover those thick, muscled thighs. Lust rooted her to the spot, but then she looked down and saw that she was actually rooted to the spot. She extracted her heel from the jellied earth.

Jack spotted them and trotted over.

“Sweetheart, you came.” He threw a grime-streaked arm around Lili’s waist and pulled her in for a deep kiss, then turned a suspicious eye on Cara. “I wouldn’t have thought this was your scene, Cara.”

“All my idea,” Lili confessed. “She hadn’t a clue, as evidenced by her inappropriate footwear.”

Someone called Jack into the game. “We’re going to the pub for a plateful of grease after, so don’t go anywhere,” he said, backing up.

“Wild horses wouldn’t drag me away,” Cara said, before adding in an undertone to Lili, “Why am I here again?”

Lili slid the sole of her boot along the grass in a vain attempt to wipe off a gob of mud. “I thought it might be fun to get some air.”

Cara cast about the park, her gaze unavoidably drawn to Shane, who somehow looked taller, the dirtier he was. He also looked sweaty, the mud matting the hair of his arms—well, she couldn’t see that level of detail but that’s how she imagined it. He was definitely going to need a shower after this.

Stop. It.

She delivered her most condemning look to Lili. “You’re going to have to give up some time. I’m not interested in Shane.”

“Why not?”

“You were right. He’s not my type at all. Too much of a puppy dog.” A vision of Shane’s amber eyes drilling into her as he…drilled into her was usurped by the hurt version when she shoved those annulment papers at his hard chest.

“So who was it?” Lili asked darkly.

“Who was what?”

“The guy who turned you into a man-hating drone.” She frowned. “You used to want things. Love, marriage, the fairy tale.”

Thrown by Lili’s assumption, Cara fought for balance. She didn’t hate men; she just knew she didn’t have it in her to make one happy. There was a big difference. “Just because I’m discerning does not make me a man hater.”

Lili
hmphed
. “So someone like Blonde Ambition, he’s more your style? He’s good looking, I suppose.”

Cara glanced in Mason’s direction and got a wave in return. She stitched on a smile.

He
was
good looking, all Teutonic efficiency and exquisite engineering distilled into six feet and change. Successful, a go-getter, the kind of guy she had always thought she would end up with when she dreamed her girlish dreams.

Beside him, Shane looked like he had stepped out of a coal mine, his muddied skin as dark as his mink-brown hair. Her piece of rough, her scruffy cowboy. Too easygoing, too young, all wrong. Yet when she assessed the two men before her, only one of them made her heart beat dangerously fast. Only one of them made her smile and freed up the knots in her brain. Only one of them made her unreasonably hopeful. And it wasn’t Mason Napier.

*  *  *

Shane had forgotten how dirty rugby was, especially when you hadn’t a clue what you were doing. By the time he had figured out the lay of the land, the land had figured out him. After only twenty minutes on the field, the soft ground underfoot was very familiar, as was the elbow of the big lummox he had been assigned to mark. He already had enough reasons to hate this guy with the perfectly pressed rugby strip and the boots so new they squeaked when he stepped back, usually onto Shane’s feet. Then he started waving at Cara. That she had smiled back was not inspiring a boatload of confidence.

The cool nip in the air had vanished as soon as he saw her slender form amble up to the sideline with Lili. She wore white jeans that looked like a canvas waiting to be spattered, so flush he imagined he’d have trouble getting his hand inside the waistband. Oh, but how he’d love to try. Pity his services were no longer required—sexual, husbandly, or otherwise. Now she was here waving at this streak of shit.

There was a lull as one of the guys got medical attention up near the goal line.

“So you know Cara?” he asked his mark with as much disinterest as he could summon.

Two Left Feet squinted at Shane, evidently torn on whether he should divulge this top secret information.

“Yeah, I know her. She’s done some volunteering for my mother’s cancer charity and we’ve socialized a bit.” His eyes narrowed further. “And you know her how?”

I’m her husband, bozo.
“I work with her.”

He offered his hand. “Mason Napier.”

Shane took it, making sure to smudge some mud into the guy’s palm. “Shane Doyle.”

“Irish? You guys know your rugby.”

“You could say that,” Shane said curtly. He didn’t mean to sound so cagey but he had his answer about how this guy knew Cara and he wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Unfortunately, Napier was blind to the smoke signals.

“Cara’s quite the girl. Lots of guys I know want to date her.”

Though a volcanic bubble burned his skin, Shane held his tongue. Napier nodded slowly, like Shane had said something. Gobshite. The whistle blew, signifying the resumption of play, and Shane started a slow jog down the field, waiting for the ball to come his direction. Napier stuck to him like Shane’s mud was magnetic.

“Is she seeing anyone right now?” Napier asked.

“Yeah, I believe she is.”

“She’s a beautiful woman,” he said, his voice jumpy from the gallop. “I’d love to take that to pound town.”

That halted Shane so fast he almost got whiplash. “She’s with someone.”

“Really?” Mason sped up as the ball filtered across the line heading to the goal. Shane maneuvered to his left to intercept the pass that was two players away.

“She’s taken. I’m sure,” Shane said, about one second before he stepped between Napier and the ball, got an elbow in the face, and became the filling in a sandwich with the ground on one side and six hundred pounds of muscle on the other. The wet pop and searing pain in his shoulder happened simultaneously, and everything went black.

“Shane! You all right?”

He opened his eyes tentatively to see Jack bent over him, his eyes wide with concern. Shane tried to get up—operative word, tried—but his whole left side was on fire.

“Fuck, that hurts.” He made another attempt to get up just to be sure. Yep, still hurt.

“Don’t move. Doc’s coming over.”

“Doctor’s already here?” Shane muttered, confused. “How long was I out?”

“You weren’t; you just blinked. Doc’s on the team.” Jack broke into an approving grin. “Sport of the oppressors, right?”

That dragged an excruciatingly painful laugh out of Shane.

A big guy with a beard who had introduced himself earlier as Max stepped in and started poking around. It didn’t help. Shane groaned and twisted to his good side.

“Sorry, man. You zigged while I zagged,” Napier said from far above like a golden god. Wanker.

“Shane, are you okay?” Cara knelt in the mud—God Almighty, in those snow-white jeans—and grasped his hand. “Sorry, stupid question.”

“No, it’s not stupid. Thanks for asking.” Their gazes held, hers as wide and blue as the sky over her fair head. “You’ll ruin your clothes, gorgeous.”

She squeezed his hand and…it didn’t make him feel better in the slightest.

“Shane, look at me.”

Milk-pale, she stared and he stared back. For a nanosecond, a Cara-induced endorphin rush flooded his brain. Then Max threw his shoulder back into the joint and he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.