All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (4 page)

About Cara? It had to be about Cara.

“Told you what?” Shane fronted.

Jack scrubbed his hand through his thick, dark hair, making it stand on end in furious spikes. A very specific memory invaded Shane’s brain, and he forced it deep. He was so like…Looking at Jack and not being reminded was a downright impossibility but that’s the path Shane had chosen. Gotta take the bad with the good.

“I had to hear it from Lili.” An edge of vexation had crept into Jack’s voice.

So Cara had finally confided in her sister. Made sense, though the sisters hadn’t struck him as being all that close.

“It just sort of happened,” he muttered.

“Well, you should have come to me.” He raised his gaze to the building behind him as though pondering some great question. Pulling a jangle of keys from his pocket, he moved up the stoop toward a big oak door, about fifteen feet from the main entrance to DeLuca’s restaurant.

“Come on up,” he said with weary resignation.

Shane’s mind raced a mile a nanosecond. Was that it?
You’re married to my future sister-in-law, so come on up?
Not how he pictured his welcome to the family. He had a whole raft of other images in his head about that.

Jack was already inside and had left the door ajar. When Shane made it to the top of the inside stair, Jack had disappeared through another doorway. He followed into a comfortably cluttered apartment, walled with an array of funky art pieces.

“It’s a bit of a mess and I can move the furniture into storage if you don’t need it.” He surveyed Shane with a quick up-down as if he were assessing his armchair requirements. “Although I imagine you probably need something given how you’ve been living the last few weeks.”

Realization clobbered Shane like a kiss with a two-by-four. “You’re offering me a place to live?”

There was that mouth twist again. Uh, maybe not. Jack arced his arm around the space, taking in a large living room with a decent-sized kitchen.

“I purchased the building about six months ago when I bought out the previous investor in DeLuca’s. Lili and I used to live here before we found the townhouse a few blocks over and I haven’t gotten around to fixing this unit up. She said you needed a place.”

Shane’s brain was starting to settle with the knowledge that, one, Jack didn’t know about Cara and, two, he was offering him a place to stay but he didn’t seem too happy about it. Relief and confusion got tangled up in his head, refusing to comb straight so he could make whatever he said next sound coherent.

“Is there a problem with me living here?”

“No,” Jack said in a tone that rhymed with
yes
. “Lili said that sofa you’re sleeping on now is bad for your back. Not that it seems to have affected your dance moves.”

Shane tried to swallow the horse-pill-sized lump in his throat, but it refused to budge. The last thing he wanted was for Jack to think he was angling for some kind of advantage. The last thing he wanted was to owe Jack Kilroy
anything.

“I wasn’t trying to wrangle a bed out of you,” he said sharply. “I was just making conversation after we danced at the wedding. I didn’t even think she was listening.”

Jack held up both hands in a placating gesture. “Oh, I know. Lili likes to take care of people and it looks like you’re her next victim. You know how Italians are. No stray left unfed. Or unhoused.”

Shane took a few steps toward the kitchen and trailed his fingers along the edge of the sturdy farmer’s table that would be great for making pastry dough. The corner of Jack’s mouth tipped up in a half smile.

“Are you worried about the rent?”

“No.” Shane took another look. It was hard to find a furnished flat in Chicago and this was so bloody perfect, he didn’t know where to start. The crazy-looking art above the living room sofa might be as good a place as any. Apparently, someone had stuck egg shells onto a rug sample and daubed it with wood varnish.

“Is the art included?”

Jack’s lips twitched. “Sure. What do you think of it?”

Oh hell, that backfired. What the fuck was he supposed to say that wouldn’t offend the man’s fiancée?

Shane tilted his head like he was taking in a
Playboy
centerfold and held his response for a couple of beats. “It’s interesting. Almost Dadaist in its commentary on social connections and the interior life.”

Jack laughed, a robust sound that transformed the flat into a home. “Don’t worry, mate, Lili’s medium is photography. That belongs to one of her whackadoo artist pals, but good move all the same.”

Shane couldn’t help his smile nor the way his heart lifted at the easy way Jack drew him in. Still, there was something all wrong about this. He had to refuse.

“We’ll sort out a manageable rent. The place has a lot going for it—the best Italian food in the city downstairs, parking around back for that sweet ride of yours, only a ten-minute drive to work.” Jack leaned back against the table and folded his arms, a move that made Shane think he might be planning to stay awhile. A few moments clicked by, the silence surprisingly comfortable.

“You play rugby?” Jack asked.

“The sport of the oppressor? More a football man, myself.”

“Don’t tell me, you’re one of those clover-blooded Irishmen who trots out the misty-eyed rebel songs after five pints of Guinness. The Irish have as long a rugby tradition as the British, you know. Besides, I’m Irish, too. On my mother’s side.”

Shane knew all about Jack’s mother, but he was more interested in what Jack hadn’t said. The man’s father was also Irish but apparently, that connection wasn’t to be acknowledged.

He turned to take another gander at the apartment as if he needed time to make up his mind. Jack blathered on, which was another thing he found surprising. The guy could talk the hind legs off a herd of mules.

“I’m in a league that plays in Lincoln Park on Saturday mornings,” Jack was saying. “We get muddy, then hit a local pub for a full English and Premier League footie on the big screen. You should join us the next time.”

A confetti bomb of—Jesus,
joy
—exploded in Shane’s chest, and he swallowed to get a grip. Rolling around the mud, a greasy breakfast, and the match on the telly sounded like an excellent way to spend a Saturday.
Control yourself, boyo.

“Sure,” he muttered, as noncommittal as possible.

Jack answered with a nod and a smile, the warm, approving one the brigade waited on the balls of their feet to get every dinner service, and Shane knew then the fuzzy feeling a puppy must get when petted by his owner.

Shit, he did not want to feel this way. The sooner Shane extracted himself from this murkier-by-the-minute situation, the better, because after only two weeks in Jack’s kitchen, the worst had already happened.

Shane was starting to like his brother.

He could tell him now. Spill it out while they were having this little moment. Two chefs—no, two friends—enjoying a laugh about sports and nut-job art. Two brothers from different mothers finally united after years of not knowing the other one existed. Well, one of them had known. Shane had found out twelve years ago that he had a half brother nine years his senior. And not just any brother.

Jack fucking Kilroy.

Already a big fish in his small British pond, Jack was about to take New York by storm when Shane’s father had dropped the bomb. He’d knocked up Jack’s mother twenty-odd years ago, leaving her no choice but to hop the night boat to Liverpool and raise her kid the best way she could. The eerie similarities to his own situation had gripped Shane’s thirteen-year-old psyche. John “Packy” Sullivan hadn’t married Shane’s mother either and only acknowledged Shane when she died five years after he was born. The old bastard was no more interested in Jack than he was in Shane, at least not until he saw an opening. An opportunity to make an easy Euro.

His father had laughed about how much of a pushover Jack was, how he’d forked over the cash without a word, but Shane knew there was more to the story. Not long after, when deep in his cups, a version closer to the truth emerged. Jack had paid up on the condition his father never showed his weathered, whiskey-pored face again. A bitter and twisted man, Packy had corkscrewed the knife into Shane’s heart, making it clear that Jack wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the man or his no-goodnik family. Any hope Shane harbored about finding a real connection with one of the men who shared his genetic code had died during that revealing conversation.

Yes, their father had sullied any possibility for a heartfelt union of brother and brother. Every interview Jack had given after he surrendered his TV shows had told Shane the same thing. The man didn’t appreciate being used for his fame. An ex-girlfriend had sold him out to the tabloids and there was no end to the hangers-on looking for a piece of him. He never came out and said it directly, but Shane read between the lines how jaded Jack had been by that whole scene, what a relief it had been to get out of it and make something real with Lili. To get back to what he cared about—the food. His
real
family. If Shane spoke up, Jack would see shades of Packy Sullivan all over again. Just another guy on the make. Another user with an outstretched hand.

Shane didn’t need Jack’s help to succeed and he sure as hell wasn’t here to ask for a handout. He had traveled the world, worked with some of the best chefs on the planet. He had earned his kitchen stripes, and damn, he deserved his place on Jack’s brigade. So what the hell was he doing here trying to prove something to a guy who, even if he knew Shane existed, wouldn’t give a flying fart about him?

Simply put, he was curious. Packy was dead now, which made Jack Kilroy Shane’s only living relative and Shane interested enough to put his life on hold for a while because what he didn’t know was likely to kill him. He had to know what Jack was like without all the noise of the tabloids and interviews.

He hadn’t reckoned on Cara, but then that was his father’s dominant genes coming up trumps. Shane didn’t look like the man, but apparently he had inherited his worst traits. The drunken, selfish, impulsive ones. Once he’d sorted out the Cara problem, confirmed his brother was an arsehole, and made the wedding cake to end all wedding cakes, he’d move on to the next phase.

Unfortunately Jack was not playing his part and Shane’s oh-so-brilliant plan was suddenly fraught with risk. Working with the guy was bad enough. In the last five minutes, he had signed on as his rugby teammate, though he knew dick about the game, and a dangerous camaraderie was simmering to a boil. Camaraderie led to friendship and respect and other dangerous, unnamable emotions.

Accepting an offer to live here was a terrible idea. He opened his mouth to say so.

“Oh, you’re here,” a soft voice husked out behind him.

Shane turned to find Lili dumping a passel of shopping bags in the hallway before stumbling over them to come inside. She touched his arm gently and Shane’s maudlin musings faded in the brightness of her smile. Soft, curvy, and warm, Lili was impossible to dislike.

“You’re going to take it, Shane?”

“Sure he is. He loves the art work.” Jack shone a conspiratorial smile in Shane’s direction.

Man, couldn’t you at least try to be more of a dick?

Lili plunked down on the plush, well-worn sofa and kicked off her shoes. “I found this in an alley two blocks from here. Tad almost broke his back trying to get it up those stairs.” She chuckled, pleased that she’d put her cousin through such torturous exercise. “Good times.”

She tilted her head up to Jack, who was still leaning against the kitchen table.

“Good times here as well,” he said, his voice so low Lili’s face flamed the color of steamed lobster.

“Jack,” she murmured.

“Lili,” he murmured right back.

Shane rocked back on his heels, realization dawning.

“You guys have christened every stick of furniture, then?”

“Shane!” Lili’s hand flew to her still-pinked cheek.

“Well, the coffee table wasn’t really conducive,” Jack said to Shane. “Not that we didn’t give it the old college try.”

Lili’s embarrassment gave way to a laugh, and as Jack joined in, Shane felt he had earned the right to as well. A warm glow filled him up, washing through his veins, tapping into wells of emotion he had thought long dry.
This is a terrible idea,
the voice of reason repeated, but it was a faint echo now.

A movement in the hallway caught his attention.

“Lili, there are still eleven million bags in the car— Oh, what’s going on here?”

The laughing tableau was shattered by the appearance of Cara, her slim silhouette between the doorjamb exuding enough tension to splinter the frame. On seeing him, she gripped her shopping bag handles tight and launched into a toe-tap, one of those I’m-waiting-for-an-answer bits that Shane thought you saw only in movies. Anticipation and dread sloshed over him, and he looked to Jack for confirmation.

“Shane, if you run out of sugar, Cara will be happy to oblige,” Jack said dryly. “She lives across the hall.”

*  *  *

Inside her walk-in closet, Cara hung her new Nicole Miller lace sheath dress and tried to look on the bright side, but all she could see was shadow.

Shane. Shane Doyle. Her neighbor.

Her husband.