Spitfire Suckerpunch (House of Pain Book 2) (8 page)

She could hear the train coming, so she turned and ran down the stairs, fumbling in her coat pocket for her Metrocard. The train screeched loudly, braking hard as it reached the station. She swiped her card quickly and pushed her way past the turnstile. As she stepped onto the platform, she couldn't resist turning back and seeing if he'd followed her down. She wasn't surprised to see him through the bars that separated them, studying her. He wanted answers. Maybe he was pissed, as well.
Good
, she thought as the train's doors opened. She wanted him to be mad. She wanted him to be shaken up. Maybe that was all she wanted. Maybe that was good enough.

She forced herself to look away from him as she boarded the train, but it didn't last. She grabbed the pole and glanced back over her shoulder, trying to be sly but failing. He was still standing there. He hadn't moved. His eyes were still on her, even as the doors slammed shut and the train lurched forward. She didn't stop looking for him either, until the train entered the tunnel and he faded from view. Then she slumped into a seat and took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her chest. She closed her eyes, telling herself to calm down. Tate Grayson was intimidating, there was no denying it. He was big and hard to read and too quiet. She wasn't used to quiet people. She was used to loud people who talked a mile a minute and laughed and said inappropriate things. She wasn't used to hard questions and deep stares. She wasn't used to
him
. The sad truth was, she didn't know what she wanted from Tate Grayson.

All she knew was that it felt like she hadn't gotten it yet.

***

The girl in the picture looked terrified. Her eyes were bright and wild. Her pretty face was calm, but her eyes gave her away. She was trying to be tough. She'd almost succeeded in fooling everybody, Tate thought as he ran his thumb over the edge of the mugshot. Everybody thought that she would crack, but she hadn't. But in the picture, it was plain to see. She was scared to death.

Tate slammed Shay Spears's file shut and tossed it on his desk. He'd read through it three times and he didn't even know what he was looking for. The whole situation was so fucking frustrating. What was even stranger was that he was considering going to look for her. He knew where her aunt's beauty salon was. He knew Shay Spears's old stomping grounds like the back of his hand. They were his stomping grounds as well. He'd worked in Harlem his entire time on the force. He didn't know why she had suddenly appeared, but he didn't like surprises. He didn't like not knowing what was coming around the corner for him. And he definitely didn't like that she seemed determined to fuck with him.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes. He could still see her on the subway platform, hopping into the train while he stood there on the other side of the gate like an idiot. He'd considered jumping the turnstile and grabbing her before she got on, but first, that would've been illegal, and second, that would've been crazy. So he'd just stood there and watched her get away scot-free, while he was left with a million questions. He'd gone back to House of Pain and grabbed his stuff and headed home, but he still couldn't shake whatever feelings she'd made bubble up in him.

The truth of the matter was, he'd never forgotten Shay Spears. Her case was one of those cases that had stuck with him through the years and he wasn't exactly sure why. What had happened to her had been shitty, but it wasn't like she was innocent. Everybody on the sting force the night she'd gotten arrested had known that she hadn't stolen the car, but it didn't matter. She was driving stolen property without a license. When they'd finally sat her down in the interrogation room, she'd been uncooperative. The District Attorney made it clear that he wasn't going to go easy on her, despite it being her first offense, but it hadn't made a difference.

Her eventual prison sentence hadn't come as a shock to anyone, except maybe her. It was shitty, but it was what it was. If police did their job, criminals went to prison. That's how the system worked, on a good day. He'd been a member of the NYPD long enough to know that sometimes criminals got away and sometimes innocent people had to suffer. Shay Spears's father was a prime example of that.

They'd never caught the bastard. He'd fled the City after Shay was arrested and no one had laid eyes on him since. Sam Spears was underground somewhere, biding his time. No one knew where he was and if someone did know, they weren't talking. Tate was sure Sam would fuck up at some point and end up in prison sooner or later. It just hadn't happened yet. Not that it was  any of Tate's concern. He was no longer on the case. He'd moved to homicide four years earlier. Since Sam Spears was very much alive, he was no longer Tate's problem.

Neither was Shay Spears.

It didn't matter that she'd been on his mind since early that morning, when he'd woken up from a fitful sleep and stared up the ceiling in the darkness and thought about her soft, curvy body pressed against his in the ring. He thought about the way she'd glared up at him on the street, her eyes flashing and angry. She was looking damn fine, not that it mattered. She was legally grown now, no longer a teenager, but she was still young. She wasn't much older than Tiny, for fuck's sake. But when he looked at her, he didn't see someone as young and innocent as Tiny. Shay was hard, like she had steel in her bones. Her gaze was knowing and weary, like she'd seen and done some shit in her life. No, she wasn't innocent in the least.

He wondered if she still wore bright red lipstick.

Not that it mattered. Hopefully, he was never going to see Shay Spears again. He had a feeling it wasn't going to be that easy, but a part of him hoped it was. He had enough going on in his life. He had twenty open cases; he was busy. He was dating, or trying to date, and that was a hassle. And he had to stay in shape and keep up his skills in the ring. That was more than enough problems. He didn't need a crazy woman with a chip on her shoulder trying to distract him. As he shoved her file to the corner of his crowded desk, he told himself he wasn't going to think about Shay any more.

Especially in the middle of the night.

His phone vibrated beside his elbow and he grabbed it and answered it without checking the ID.

“Grayson,” he said, grabbing another thick file and cracking it open.

“Tate?” a familiar female voice said on the other line and he felt his heart squeeze in his chest in surprise. “It's, uh, it's Leah. From the other night?” He raked his teeth over his bottom lip as his heart sped up as quickly as it had seized.

“Hi,” he said, drumming his fingers on the desk to try and distract himself from the slight panic that he was experiencing. The call was completely unexpected, but not unwelcome. He liked Leah—she was pretty, funny, and charming. She didn't seem to take any shit, which he always appreciated. He certainly didn't want to fuck up any chance he had with her. Especially since she seemed to like him too. If she didn't like him, why else would she be calling?

“I'm sorry. Are you busy?” she asked and he could hear that she was just as nervous as he was.

“No,” he answered, willing himself to relax. “I'm at work but I can talk.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, trailing off. He could hear the street rumble in the background of her call. He imagined her standing on a street corner in an expensive dark suit and heels, wearing a thin blouse that showed off just enough cleavage to give a man ideas. She was probably about to rush off somewhere, maybe to meet a client. He dropped his head back to rest on his chair as his fantasy unravelled. He liked thinking of her like that. Powerful. Important. Beautiful. That was how he liked his women. “I got tired of waiting for you to call,” she said, and he could hear a smile in her voice as well as a little bit of a challenge.

“Did I wait too long?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.

“I think twenty-four to forty-eight hours is acceptable,” she said. “Anything longer than that is just mean.”

“Mean? I'd never be mean to you,” he said, feeling himself loosening up a bit. “Unless you wanted me to be.”

“Unless I...?” she trailed off and laughed. “Well, since you're giving me a choice, I'd have to say no. I don't want you to be mean. I'd much rather you be nice.”

“I can be nice,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and he wondered what her face looked like at that moment. He wondered if she was getting as cautiously excited as he was. It usually wasn't easy for him to talk to a woman like this. Yet, there was something about Leah that made him feel comfortable and relaxed. He liked it. He liked it a lot. “So ask me out,” she continued and his heart squeezed in his chest again.

“What are you doing Friday night?” he said, without thinking.

“I think I'm free,” she said, not bothering to play coy.

“How does dinner sound?”

“It sounds like a date,” she said and he let out the breath he'd been holding. He wasn't completely out of the woods, but it seemed like Leah liked him. She wanted to have dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner with her, too. He was actually looking forward to it. It was strange, but he wasn't going to question it. Too many strange things had been happening to him lately. He didn't want to dwell on why, all of a sudden, the universe had started paying attention to him. Despite the odd timing, he was optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, but optimistic all the same. All he knew was that he finally had a shot. A shot at normalcy, a shot at happiness and, also, a shot at good sex. He had no intentions of blowing it. There were so many ways of it going bad, but he was going to do everything in his power to make it go well.

There was no way in hell he was going to fuck this up.

Chapter Six

S
hay was antsy.

All day at work she could scarcely sit still. She kept feeling like any minute, Tate Grayson and a horde of cops was going to bust in the door at the salon with a warrant and arrest her for harassment or some other trumped up charge. Even as the day came to a close and nothing out of the ordinary had happened, she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. She left Gina behind at the shop around six o'clock and headed home, taking the long way despite the chill in the air. She tucked her scarf tightly around her neck and shoved her gloved hands in her pockets as she turned down a quiet side-street. 125
th
was too loud and noisy at that time of night. She needed a minute of peace and quiet to try and clear her head. Well, honestly, she needed more than a minute, but the walk home was all she was going to get.

She knew that she should give up on her slight obsession with Tate Grayson. There was nothing to be accomplished by internet stalking him and finding out what precinct he worked at or what criminals he'd investigated and put away. She'd found out about House of Pain purely by accident. Otherwise, she might never have come face to face with him at all.

A confrontation in the middle of Harlem was not what she wanted. She would avoid him on the street, she told herself. The neighborhood was her only real comfort zone, but even it had grown unfamiliar in her absence. As she walked past a row of freshly rehabilitated brownstones, she couldn't help but glance in the windows. The warm light emanating from them was too alluring. Some of the windows looked into empty rooms, but at the last brownstone, she could see a white family inside, sitting down to dinner. The kids probably went to a private school, Shay mused. The parents probably had fancy jobs in Midtown. It looked like a damn ad for Better Homes and Gardens, she thought as she forced herself to look away.

But she wasn't bitter. Well, she didn't
want
to be bitter. She wondered if she would ever get over the shit that had happened to her. She wondered if she would ever be able to move on and start her life. Harlem was changing, block by block, for better or for worse, but she was still stuck in the past.

Maybe she was just a coward.

She'd gone to House of Pain to see Tate in his natural habitat. She'd gone because she couldn't stay away. When it came down to it, she supposed she was more than a little obsessed. The sad reality was that there was nothing else really going on in her life. Andre, the cute delivery guy, came in and flirted once in awhile, but otherwise, there were no romantic prospects on her radar. She didn't even know if she wanted to open that can of worms yet. She was an emotional bomb about to go off. She didn't want to scare off any potential mate by revealing how much of a mess she really was. She put on a cheerful face most of the time, but on nights like this, she felt it deep in her bones.

She wasn't happy.

She turned another corner and hurried her pace. The cold was starting to get to her. And she was hungry. Her mind drifted to the cake she'd baked a few days before. Baking it had calmed her down and made her feel better. The next morning, she'd wrapped it up and brought it to work, and watching Gina and the other people at the shop devour it made her feel even better. Even though it wasn't perfect, it was still hers. She'd made it. She didn't have much to be proud of in her life, but she was oddly proud of that cake.

It hadn't been anything special. She hadn't even decorated it because she didn't know how. She supposed she was going to have to go out and buy some decent pans and maybe a piping bag if she was going to learn. It sounded silly, but baking the cake had been the only thing that had made her feel at home in all the time since she'd been released. She'd been alone in Gina's tiny-ass kitchen, but she'd been relaxed. Satisfied, even. The feeling was so fleeting that Shay didn't question it. She just wanted it back.

A sharp cracking sound, not unlike a gunshot, surprised Shay out of her thoughts. The people on the sidewalk around her didn't dive for cover, so she didn't either. She just glanced up at the street, looking for the source of the sound. An old car was driving down the road and as it came closer, Shay recognized it immediately. She knew old cars like she knew old friends. From the day of her birth, her father had hammered car facts into her brain. Cars were Sam Spears's lifelong obsession. Knowing tons of inane facts about cars and being able to spout them on command had endeared her to him. She'd been a little girl who loved her daddy and wanted to please him. So if he was obsessed with cars, she was obsessed, too.

Narrowing her eyes as the car passed to avoid the glare of the headlights, Shay could see it was a light blue '64 Chevy Impala. It passed under the street light and she noticed that it had still had its original bumper and taillights. It was in mint condition, but it'd been painted recently, she could tell that much. She cocked her head, a heavy feeling dropping into her stomach. All hunger faded and her mouth went dry. The car was rare. Very rare. The parts were expensive. It was the kind of car her father would drool over.

It felt like a sign.

Now, normally, Shay didn't put much stock in signs. But it was too much of a coincidence. She'd taken a different route home and she'd been thinking about Tate Grayson and suddenly a car like that had appeared out of nowhere? Suddenly, she didn't feel like going home to stew in her emotions. Without thinking, she looked both ways to avoid traffic and then hurried across the street, heading in the opposite direction of Gina's apartment. It was probably crazy, but she didn't care. Her mind was already elsewhere.

She was going to go play with fire, like the little troublemaker she'd always been.

***

House of Pain was the same as it always was when Tate walked in the door that night after his shift. It always smelled the same and looked the same. The same people were usually hanging around. Mikhail was by the free weights. Hector was probably up in the office. Big Sid and Little Sid were in the ring, trading punches. It was like time stopped in the gym everyday at 8:00 p.m. The daily repetition and routine were easy to take for granted.

They'd all learned that the hard way a few months back, when Gennifer had suffered a stroke after the Bout It competition. The thought of losing her had hit everyone like a punch to the gut. It was almost impossible to imagine the place without a member of the family. The big old gym was Big J's pride and joy. It was the place where almost all the kids he and Maria fostered came to learn discipline and self-respect and love. Tate had learned to love himself and his new family within the walls of House of Pain. He sure as hell didn't take that for granted, not one bit.

Which is why it pissed him off all over again to see Shay Spears standing with Erica beside the ring, watching Little Sid throw jabs. He told himself to ignore her. He had other shit to worry about. So he threw his stuff in a locker and got to work. He nodded to Mikhail as he stepped out on the floor but Austin wasn't there yet, so he started his workout alone. He told himself to focus on the speed bag in front of him as he pummeled it over and over again, but the truth, his mind was on the purple-haired girl across the room. She hadn't looked at him once, even when he walked in the door. She was still playing a game with him and it pissed him off even more to know that she was somehow winning.

When he was dripping with sweat and his muscles were crying out for a break, he finally dropped his arms and took a step back from the bag. He dragged his towel across his brow and couldn't help but steal a look at the girls standing by the ring. Erica and Shay were chatting like old friends, but the fact was that Erica barely knew the girl. Shay was a goddamn ex-con and a stalker and, quite possibly, crazy, but they were laughing and talking like they'd known each other forever. Well, Shay wasn't smiling as wide, at least. She looked distracted. Her eyes kept darting to the mirror, like her attention was elsewhere. He had a feeling her mind was just as much on him as his mind was on her. He tossed the towel over his shoulder and grabbed his water off the floor. He took a small swig and swished the water around in his mouth as he secretly studied her.

He didn't know why, but she was definitely wearing one of Gennifer's old Rutger's T-shirts. He would recognize them a mile away. Gennifer had a ton of them. They'd all seen better days and they were all ripped and tattered. This one had the bottom hem cut off. With every movement Shay made, it rose up a bit, exposing a slash of brown skin above the waistband of her plain black yoga pants. He ran his eyes down the length of her, not able to resist. She wasn't much more than 5' 6'', he guessed, but her long legs made her look taller. He tried to ignore her ass, but it was difficult. It was round, like her hips, and he could still remember how it felt pressed up against him in the ring. It had been distracting then, and it was distracting now, even from across the room.

He remembered that when she was younger, she'd carried a bit more weight on her. She'd been cute then, but she'd reminded him of his younger sisters. There was nothing cute about her now, except for her purple Converse sneakers. No, now she was different. She looked like she was out for blood. He barely knew her, but the one thing he did know was that she was stubborn and she was angry. Her whole life had been one drama after another and now she was trying to bring some of that shit into his life. But he wasn't going to let her.

Slinging his towel over his shoulder, he decided he was done playing her game. He strolled over to the ring, taking his time because he had to figure out what he was going to say. He was going to confront her, that was a given. But first he had to know what he was going to say. He didn't want to be intimidating or show how pissed off he really was, but he wanted to be firm. He wanted her to know that she wasn't welcome. No matter what Gennifer or Erica said, she wasn't welcome, dammit. As he neared the two women at the side of the ring, Shay turned her face and caught his eye. The smile on her lips faded.

Good.

The bad thing was he found himself staring at her lips, which were tinted a distractingly bright shade of pink that contrasted in a strangely attractive way with her brown skin. Her lips were the one thing that hadn't changed in all those years—they were still plump, still too bright, and still too distracting. Forcing himself to look away, he glanced up at the ring. Big Sid and his grandson were climbing down off the ropes and hopping down on the mats below, apparently finished with their training for the evening. He gave a nod to Big Sid, who answered in kind. They were both men of few words, but he'd known the older man ever since he was a teenager. Back then, before he began training his grandson, Big Sid trained Hector and Tate. Everybody at Big Jim's went way back, except for the sly fox that was currently invading the gym and his sanity.

“Hey Tate, what's up?” Erica said brightly as he reached the two women, running her hand through her red curls in a subconsciously flirtatious way. Erica was always like that, too friendly and too loud. Gennifer and Hector had a soft spot for her, but Tate had always found her a bit too trusting and open. Too naïve, maybe. Shay stood beside her, and it struck him then how she was Erica's complete opposite. Shorter and less forward than Erica, but more knowing and observant. Her presence felt so much darker and stronger. As a cop, it was his job to pay attention to the way people carried themselves and what they projected. Some people might scoff at the idea of auras and all that hippy-dippy shit, but Tate was a firm believer in them. Even though Shay hadn't yet said a thing, her presence was so damn undeniable. She was like a magnet, sucking up all the energy in the room.

“Not much,” he mumbled in response to Erica's greeting, then turned back to Shay. She was eyeing him warily and he didn't blame her. “What's your name again?” he said, playing dumb. She narrowed her eyes slightly.

“Shay,” she said, smiling slightly and pretending to be friendly even though everything about her posture yelled the exact opposite. He was sure it probably fooled Erica, but it in no way fooled him.

“You were in Gennifer's class last night. You did well,” he said, not completely lying. Once she'd gotten over her initial hesitation, she'd gone at him like a pit-bull. If he didn't dislike her so much, he might actually be able to summon up some admiration for her aggressiveness.

“She almost got you a few times,” Erica pointed out with a laugh. Shay's smile widened.

“I did, didn't I?” Shay said, flicking her eyes down to his chest and then back up to his face. His  T-shirt was wet with sweat and sticking to his chest and all of a sudden, he was extremely self-conscious of it. He rolled his shoulders before he could stop himself.

“Ring's empty,” he said, nodding toward the ring. “I can show you some moves if you want.” As soon as the words left his lips, Erica's face lit up and her eyes went wide. Shay, however, looked less than pleased. Her brow furrowed a bit and she lost her smile.

“Why?” she asked, her suspicion hard to hide.

“This is a boxing gym,” he said, keeping his face as blank as possible. He didn't want to know his real reason for wanting to get her alone. “Everybody in here has to at least learn the basics.”

“If I want to learn the basics, I can watch other people do it,” Shay said after a minute. “I just watched that kid hop around in there, I think I have the general idea.”

“You learn by doing,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and staring her right in the eye. It was like a challenge. She was either going to get in the damn ring or she was going to get out of House of Pain. It was that simple. She narrowed her eyes again and he knew she got exactly what he was trying to say.