All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (28 page)

“Thanks for the lift,” he said, no longer in the sharing mood. He opened the door and climbed out, which, given his useless arm, was harder than it appeared.

“Want me to stop by in an hour and pick you up?” Jack asked.

“Nah, I can take the train.”

“Need a couple of bucks for your fare, rookie?”

“Bite me.”

Jack laughed and went on his way.

Sunlight dappled the blue-gray water out over the lake as Shane left the doctor’s office forty-five minutes later. The ortho surgeon had strapped his ribs and told him to not even think about pounding the dough for a while. They’d had a good laugh about that one. The upshot was that Shane couldn’t work at Sarriette for at least two weeks while the ligaments in his shoulder healed.

Inevitably, his thoughts strayed to Cara, Jack, and the rest. They were being so bloody nice to him and he was being so bloody…deceitful. There was no other way to describe it. Here he was wedging his way into their lives under pretense. The longer he left it, the deeper he sank. The deeper he sank, the more he wanted it. The more he wanted it, the more impossible it seemed.

He wanted it all. Sunday lunches with the DeLucas, playing uncle to baby Evan, catching a beer with Tad. Acknowledgment from Jack.

Not just that, but acceptance as a fully fledged member of his family. He had always thought he could muddle through with no one. Since Jo passed on and Packy settled his feet under the bar at the great brewery in the sky, it had been easier to keep all his relationships superficial. Friendly, yet distant. That was how the cockamamie plan was
supposed
to play out. Get along with everyone, do his work well, satisfy his curiosity about Jack. From the interviews and the episodes of Jack’s cooking shows, Shane had a few ideas on what his brother would be like. Cocksure, arrogant, not a little vain…well, he was all those things but he was also a stand-up bloke.

Rarely had Shane allowed his mind to wander to an actual truth-telling showdown with Jack but when it did, there were fireworks. Jack would go into a ballistic rage and Shane would feel vindicated, the prophecy fulfilled. Then he could move onto his new business, onto something of his own. He could live his life free and clear. But now all he could think of was the people he would leave behind. Jack, the crew at Sarriette, the DeLucas.

One DeLuca, in particular.

He wanted to be part of something real—a real brother to Jack, a real husband to Cara, a real person—but acknowledging it wouldn’t make it happen because therein lay the rub.

He had out and out lied. To Jack. To Cara. To everyone. He had snuck in like a thief and sat at the family table, thinking he could purchase their affection with smiles and charm and pastries. He could blame Jack for not being the total dickwad Shane had expected. He could blame Cara for losing her mind in Las Vegas and making him lose his. But he knew who was really to blame. Shane was the only person here in full possession of all the relevant facts and he had blundered in with an exit strategy worth shit.

How could he tell these people he’d come to care so much about that he had flitted from place to place looking for somewhere to call home? That he couldn’t settle as long as he knew his brother was out there—existing? He hadn’t even known himself until now. Jack would think he was on the make. The man was already offering to invest in Shane’s business and carve out space in his cookbook. As for Cara? Every single moment they had spent together would be tainted by his lie. Every motive would be suspect.

With the truth, it would be over and he wasn’t ready for it to be over. Not by a long shot.

Walking away from the lake, he headed toward the train stop four blocks west and tried to enjoy the sight of girls in summer dresses, which in all honesty was not too difficult. His shoulder might be shot, but the rest of him was working just fine. At the intersection, his gaze attached to a pair of very nice ankles in very high heels. Up his eyes sauntered to a heart-shaped behind in a tight skirt below a ramrod-straight spine that tapered into a kissable neck. A couple of wispy tendrils had escaped her chignon and lay listlessly against her skin. He wanted to lick up one side of her banging body and down the other, then work his way in.

“Hello, Mrs. Doyle,” he whispered against her ear.

She turned, her eyes softening as they fell to his banjaxed arm supported by a sling.

“Hey, what did the doctor say?”

“Rest up for a few days,” he said, underplaying the injury’s severity. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help from friends, Romans, noncountrymen. Or women.”

“The DeLucas aren’t Roman,” she said primly. “We hail from Fiesole, just outside Florence.”

“I love Fiesole. Great pizza town.”

At her golden laugh, his heart squeezed.
This is what happened that night. This feeling.

“Where are you headed?” he asked, knowing the answer. Their walk across the street took them within a couple of blocks of the Michigan Avenue retail mecca. Cara’s world.

Her brow went from smooth to lined. She snuck a glance over her shoulder, drawing his attention to a colorful array of ocean-inspired artwork hanging in floor-to-ceiling windows. The large frosted logo, a hand print over a ball, announced the entrance to Lurie Children’s Hospital.

“Is this where you volunteer? Reading to the kids?”

“Yes, and I’m running late.” She stepped away, her slender frame now fraught with tension. Throwing another furtive glance over her shoulder, she turned back with her teeth firmly embedded in her lip. “Would you like to visit with me?”

Hell, yes.

Five minutes later, he was signed in, badged up, and sitting in the White Sox Play Area, sixteen floors up in oncology. Bright, inviting, a complete one-eighty from the soul-sucking hospitals he’d spent too many hours in after another “accidental” fall. Along the windows with panoramic views of the steel-blue Lake Michigan were the patient rooms. Doctors and nurses swayed in and out, and every briefly opened door revealed a child hooked up to equipment that no kid should ever have to see, never mind be connected to. As easy as it would be to succumb to melancholy and despair, there was none of it on show. The staff was all smiles and laughs through what he knew must be heartache. Perhaps they’d become inured to it. He knew something about that.

“You okay?” Cara was giving him that look where she was trying to decide what his game was. His charming mask had been slipping lately and she was seeing more of him than anyone ever had. He needed to be more careful.

“Sometimes it upsets people to see kids like this,” she added gently.

He reached for his smile. There it was. “I’m grand.”

Shane sat in an overstuffed chair and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of upright kids who acted like having cancer was a walk in the park. Well, more like a wreak-havoc sprint with the odd break to play with (destroy) one of the myriad toys that dotted the tyke-level tables. He shouldn’t have been surprised that these kids, even sick ones, would have a lot of energy. That’s what he loved about them. Their awe-inspiring resilience.

Besides, he needed all his surprise for the woman at his side. His wife was like a Jedi master with the little blighters. Once the more energetic ones had worn themselves out, she called them to order for a story. Something about a mouse and his sugar-induced shenanigans—the details were sketchy because his senses could scarcely process the scene before him.

Cara wasn’t just complicated; she was a complete mystery. He had no idea that bearing direct witness to her passion would affect him so much. Rapt, all the kids listened as she worked her storytelling magic. A sallow-skinned bald boy, aged about five, climbed onto her lap halfway through and looked at her with plain adoration. Something inside Shane clicked and locked.
Right there with ya, kiddo.

The story came to its conclusion and the kids started whining. Bloody kids, never satisfied.

“I want you guys to meet my”—Cara paused and cocked an eyebrow—“friend, Shane, who works as a pâtissier. Does anyone know what that is?”

The kids shook their heads and eyed Shane, holder of the mysterious occupation, with juvenile suspicion.

“That means he’s a pastry chef,” Cara continued. “Basically, he eats cakes all day.”

“Is that why he’s so big?” This from a blonde cutie who looked like a budget version of Cara.

Cara nodded gravely. “Yes, Lizzie, it is. He just eats and eats. Still growing, I imagine.”

A few shockingly inappropriate comebacks came to mind, but he remembered his audience.

“What happened to his arm?” the admirer in her lap asked. The little mite’s concern pinched his chest.

“He was playing a silly boys’ game in a muddy field and five men sat on him.”

“More like fifty,” Shane corrected.

“Silly,” Mini Cara said.

“Very silly,” Cara agreed.

Several female staff stopped by to say hello and give him the twice over. Judging by her recall of life snippets about Jenny’s five-year-old starting kindergarten here or Patricia’s recent gall stone removal there, it was clear Cara was a regular. It was also clear that her work was valued. That she was valued.

An hour later, the kids were redistributed to their parents or doctors, and Cara and Shane were on their way. A sneaking suspicion played in his mind that no one in her family knew about this side of the many-faceted Cara.

“You’re a very surprising woman, Mrs. Doyle.”

Her face bloomed and brightened, and then he became aware of the unsettling fact it wasn’t blooming or brightening for him. A tall, dark, and, probably by some objective standard, handsome doctor stopped and flashed more teeth than strictly necessary at Cara.

“
Ola,
mi cariño
. You look great,” Dr. Hot Stuff said. He kissed her cheek with lips that lingered a touch too long. With a superhuman effort, Shane managed to suppress a growl that he was a million percent certain would have come out sounding like “Mine.”

“Hi, Darian,” she said. “Thanks for the heads-up about the board position.”

“Well, you’re a shoe-in after all your work around here. It just needs Madame Napier’s approval.” He expanded his gaze to Shane and thrust out his hand. “Darian Fuentes, a friend of Cara’s.”

Shane stiffened his spine, though it hurt like hell, and grasped the outstretched hand, though that hurt like a motherfucker. “Shane Doyle, Cara’s husband.”

Cara gasped. Man, he was in trouble. It was worth it to see the bafflement on the good doctor’s face.

Dr. Hot Stuff’s hand went limp. “Congratulations, Cara. I had no idea.”

Shane released the hand. Victory was his. “It was a whirlwind romance. Swept her off her feet.” He patted his bum shoulder. “Still recovering, in fact. She’s very physical.”

He didn’t need to turn his head—probably would have hurt anyway—to know that he wasn’t just in garden variety trouble. More like shit creek approaching, paddle in smithereens.

The guy took his leave and Shane stepped into the open elevator, his shoulder radiating pain throughout his arm and back. Worth every second. When his eyes touched Cara’s, she just sighed like he was an overgrown child to be indulged and tolerated with the rest of the kids in her care.

“Don’t worry, LT, that ugly, nasty doctor won’t bother you again,” Shane said.

She gifted him an eye roll, and it felt like she’d fashioned it just for him. Yeah, he was a goner.

*  *  *

They stood beneath the concave underbelly of the Bean and looked up, searching out their reflections.

“There we are,” Shane said with the enthusiasm of newfound discovery. He pointed off in another direction with his good arm. “And there.”

How did they make it so smooth, Cara wondered? Inspired by liquid mercury, the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park, affectionately known by Chicago’s denizens as the Bean, was a miracle of engineering. A seamless, elliptical wonder that reflected and distorted the city’s skyline. Underneath, the surface of the Bean’s navel showed a multiplicity of views like a fun-house mirror.

Shane was supposed to be resting up. Cara was supposed to be wrestling with the wedding seating plan that would need UN observers to keep the peace. In the elevator at the children’s hospital, Shane had asked her what tourist trap she had yet to visit and she had countered with “all of them.” It was her right as a Chicagoan. She didn’t have to do the sights.

“Good thing you’re wearing that red top so we can spot ourselves,” Shane said.

The milling crowds under the Bean made it difficult to distinguish one spectator from another in the smaller versions of themselves, but her cherry-red blouse popped out like “Where’s Cara?” From a distance, they looked insignificant and fragile. Close up, the visions were contorted—bendy Cara, curvy Cara, skinny Cara, blobby Cara. It wasn’t real but it still unnerved her.

“In this dimension of warped space, the solid is transformed into the fluid, so deconstructing empirical space and calling to mind the manifold possibilities of abstract space,” she said in her best schoolmarm.

Shane looked at her, surprised. “Oh, yeah?”

“That’s what it says on the Internet.” She held up her phone.

“Sounded pretty sexy.”

“It did?”

“Yeah, all those big words. I’m imagining you giving a lecture in your tight skirt and brainy-girl glasses—”