All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (9 page)

Her heart beat like a wild thing, and she swallowed to send it a message to calm the hell down. “I’m still going to get the lawyer to draw them up.”
So there.
She could print the generic forms off the Web but she’d rather get her lawyer, Marty, to handle it. There could be no loose ends.

“Go for it, LT.” He skirted her desk and headed to the door, then turned and tilted his head. A delinquent lock of hair fell across his forehead and was answered by an uptick of her pulse. First the dimple, now the man-bangs. She was toast.

A gentle, yet irritating smile touched his lips. “So, what are you doing later?” His eyes flicked to the big board over her shoulder, then relocked on hers. Tonight’s schedule was event-free and that crazy peat-bog dweller knew it.

“Not making my marriage work,” she said sourly.

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”

*  *  *

Cara stepped out into the hallway of her apartment building, pondering the etiquette of canceling a date by Post-it note. Maybe it wasn’t a real, honest-to-God, chance-of-nookie date but it had certainly sounded like one.

She never missed her Tuesday-night Pilates class, not even when she’d had stomach flu and the thought of contorting her body was enough to make her more ill. An office yoga session might have made up for it but she didn’t even have that on today’s résumé.

Damn Shane.

Her equilibrium was shot; that was certain. Left behind in Las Vegas along with her single-girl status and a very expensive pair of Christian Laboutin leopard-print pumps.

Sorry, something came up,
the note said in her very neat script, penmanship Sister Mary Margaret had said was the envy of the entire school at Casimir Pulaski High. Envy of the nuns perhaps. The other kids didn’t seem so envious when they pulled her hair for being so perfect. Her gaze fell to the note once more. Emily Post would not approve.

Heart thumping madly, she took another step toward Shane’s apartment, only to get the fright of her life when something furry glanced by her bare legs. She looked down and saw…it.

Because it couldn’t possibly be described as anything else. The sorriest bundle in the world stared back up at her, all eyes and fur and defiance. A broken, scrawny thing. Too big to be a kitten, too small to be a cat, it coughed out something plaintive from its throat, then devolved into a sneezing fit.

“Who are you?” she asked, while looking around for a possible source. There were only two apartments in the building, hers and Shane’s, but sometimes the front door was known to stick. Her husband—no, her neighbor—probably left the door open, an invitation for all manner of riffraff to make themselves at home. Standards were definitely slipping.

Gingerly, she picked it up. Its eyes locked onto hers. A small, not insignificant gash on its nose appeared to be on the mend. It sneezed again, right in Cara’s face, and her heart broke on the spot.

Cara didn’t possess a mushy bone in her body, but lately she had felt itchily sensitive, as if a whole layer of emotion was hovering beneath her skin’s surface waiting for an open vein. Or a gawky stray with missing patches of gray fur and what looked like the remnants of an alley fight marking its sad little body.

They were meant to find each other. Two creatures buffeted like corks in a cruel and unfeeling sea. She smiled to herself at that thought—she’d always had a knack for melodrama. Raising her hand purposefully, she jumped when Shane’s door opened as if it had been waiting for her touch. Her world suddenly became smaller as a mess of hot male crowded her senses.

“Hey,” Shane said. His gaze dipped to the package in her arms. “Ah, grand, you found him.”

Him?
Cara was sure he was a she. “He’s yours?”

Before she could adjust, Shane extracted her charge and dropped her—or rather, him—to the floor inside his apartment.

“When I moved in, he moved in with me. Just walked in off the street and made himself at home.”

Oh, definitely male, then. So much for thinking they had a connection. Pushing her disappointment down deep, she refocused on her current problem. All six feet of him.

“I was just—”

“I’m afraid this isn’t going to work, Cara.”

Shock froze her in place. He’d better not be canceling. “It’s not?”

He made a sweeping motion with his hand that took in the line of her body, still bedecked in her gray pinstripe suit, coral silk shell, and four-inch Manolos. She’d changed from her sweats to business attire for a late-afternoon appointment with a client.

“Well, you look wonderful as always.” How he could make a compliment sound apologetic, she had no idea. “But that outfit’s not suitable for where we’re going.” He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Gripping her elbow, he gave an unsubtle push back toward her apartment. “You need to change.”

“I do?” Jeez, she couldn’t think straight. Only single-syllable words were making the cut today.

“Where we’re going is pretty casual.”

Her chest constricted at how fluidly he tossed out that word.
Casual.
There was no such thing in Cara’s regimented world. Did he mean a casual bistro? The taqueria on the corner? Mickey D’s?

“About that. I’ve already eaten and—”

“That’s okay. I won’t be hungry until later anyway.”

Relief loosened her muscles, allowing her lungs to fill to capacity. With narrowed eyes, he assessed her crazy overreaction but didn’t question it.

“For now you need to change into something more like what I’m wearing.”

If that wasn’t an invitation to look, she’d eat her heels. Starting at his neck, she drank him in and took her fill. A faded gray henley beneath an even more faded blue button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows accounted for the top half. Butter-soft jeans, torn in inviting places, molded taut against his thigh muscles, reminding her of how they had cradled her while they slept the sleep of the dumbass ten days ago. The outfit was topped off, or bottomed out, by those cowboy boots he must take showers in. She knew for a fact that not even his wedding night was worthy of their removal. They looked like they were ready to split where the soles met the uppers, their mileage competing with the rips in his denim for supremacy.

“I don’t think I have anything like what you’re wearing,” she said seriously.

He stalked her and she backed into her apartment like a sleepwalker.

“Just throw on some jeans and meet me out back. I’ll give you five minutes.” He turned to leave, then double-backed with a jaunty turn similar to his dance steps at Gina’s wedding. She loved how he moved. It was the first thing she had noticed about him as they walked down the Sunset Strip. A loose-limbed insouciance, lithe grace in every sinuous stride, so languid she wondered how he stayed upright.

His dig into his pocket pulled her gaze to his burrowing hand. He passed something off, brushing his fingers with hers. An electric shock sizzled through her as her hand closed over a small metal object, still warm from its heated cocoon.

“My spare key.” From her other hand, he extracted the crumpled Post-it note and scanned it. “Something’s come up all right.”

Without waiting for a reply, he bounded off down the stairs to the street. He made a lot of noise while doing it, too.

Lithe grace? Ooh, that clodhopper had some nerve.

Fifteen minutes later—it had taken her only six minutes to change, but she sat on her sofa for nine—she walked around back, clad in Rock and Republic dark wash stuffed into calf-length red cowboys with a stacked heel. She’d countrified her white waffle weave Oxford by turning up the sleeves and tying the shirttails at her midriff.

Shane leaned against the hood of her royal blue BMW Z4 roadster, giving it a wary examination. On her approach, his gaze swept over her, making her tingle.

“You look beautiful,” he said in a tone Barry White might want back.

“Thanks,” she murmured, as if she’d never heard it before, and in a way, she hadn’t. Not like that. When Shane said it, the compliment sounded new and meaningful. That Irish accent had a lot to answer for.

Stepping away from her car, he plucked a helmet from the seat of his death trap, known in some circles as a motorcycle.

“Put this on.”

She gave the helmet her most dismissive glance. “I don’t think so.”

“You can’t ride the bike without it.”

“Fine by me. I have no intention of riding that thing. My cousin Tad has one and he’s already wiped out twice on it.”

“I’m not your cousin.” He delivered an insolent grin, making it clear that they were in no way related, at least not by blood, and her stomach fluttered madly. More likely, the thought of placing that steel time bomb between her thighs was making her jumpy.

The motorcycle, she insisted.
The motorcycle.

“We can take my car,” she said, thumbing behind her.

He looked unimpressed. “It’s cute, like you. But I’m not riding in a girl’s car.” Before she could muster a response, he placed the helmet over her head. Its heaviness stopped her in her tracks.

“I know it’s probably a touch big, but you should be okay.” He adjusted the strap, his knuckles brushing against the underside of her chin.

She gestured to the bike again, feeling discombobulated by the weight on her head and the nearness of him and, oh yeah, the fact that she was headed out on a date with her husband. The means of transport seemed like the least of her problems.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said, having no clue to what she was referring. The motorbike, the man, the marriage.

His fingers grazed her jaw. “Don’t worry, LT. I’ll take care of you.”

The sincerity in his voice and his use of that nickname brought back the flutter. Well, it had never left, but now it felt like her stomach housed a swarm of butterflies attacking a mango. He straddled the bike, and her body fired in appreciation at how his jeans stretched tight over his most excellent ass.

Cut that one out, frame it, stick it in the Art Institute.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, and his lips hooked up at one corner. Because she had been noticing his assets and he had noticed that she noticed.

“You ready to have fun?”

“I don’t know.”

He grinned broadly. “That’s my girl.”

*  *  *

Cara gave a cautious sniff. There must be some rule that said all church basements had to smell like musty socks, as if the nuns’ revenge was to be derelict in their duty to keep the parish priest in fresh, laundered smalls.

“Shane!”

A unified cry of mixed voices went up
Cheers
-style as soon as they descended from the last step into a large room, poorly lit and uncomfortably stifling. The solitary box fan in the corner wasn’t fooling anyone.

On the fifteen-minute drive, Shane had told her nothing about where they were going, though conversation would have been pointless as they zoomed down Western Avenue. Between the fact she couldn’t hear the sound of her own thoughts (good) and all her must-not-die energy was focused on holding onto his strong, tight torso (excellent), small talk didn’t seem to be on the menu. Something far more terrifying was, though.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she muttered, wondering to which particular hell she should attribute the jellied shake in her legs. The wobbliness could be from the most exhilarating thrill ride she’d ever taken while molded to Shane’s body at unsafe speeds through the city streets. But it could just as easily be laid at the feet of the sight before her.

Shane had brought her to a line-dancing class.

Her date was already making the rounds with the other dancers, a strange mix of young and old, and by the sounds of it, mostly foreign. Everyone had an accent or spoke another language, and there seemed to be a preponderance of ladies compared to men.

From the preponderance, a squeal went up. “Shane! I got you a present.”

Shane ducked his head in that aw-shucks way he had that Cara was no longer buying. “Maisey, you didn’t have to do that.”

Maisey. One of the servers at Sarriette and Shane’s enthusiastic dance partner at Gina’s wedding over the weekend. The effervescent Maisey, with her purple-punk coif, a cut-off top that revealed taut cheerleader abs, and a denim skirt that barely skimmed her pert ass, drew a cowboy hat from behind her back and put it on Shane’s head.

“Ah, that’s just perfect.” Toothy grin flashing, he pulled it down over his brow and rocked back on his heels. Stroking the brim, his eyes crinkled with joy. Something darkly feminine curdled in Cara’s gut.

“Hi, Cara,” Maisey said, as if she’d just noticed her. “I wouldn’t think this is your kind of thing.”

“Oh, I’m game for anything,” Cara said.
And I’ve got more game than you, little girl.

“Well, it’s great to see you joining in,” Maisey added, the dig about Cara’s propensity to keep to herself at the restaurant not lost on her. “Though our Shane could probably persuade the dogs off the meat truck.”

Shane’s grin stretched wide, taking in both of them, and Cara balled her hands into fists. In her office today, there had been tungsten behind his cute smile, and again when he dictated their manner of transport. While the female of the species had more leeway in the realm of contrary behavior, no woman wanted that in a man. If she was in the market for a man—a big
if
—she would want a clear-cut, straight shooter who didn’t play games, not a guy who confused the hell out of her with his farm-boy demeanor one minute and his rip-roaring certainty the next. He was both the good cop and the bad cop in one delicious law enforcement package. And now that he had the hat, he was rocking small-town sexy sheriff.