So Irresistible (18 page)

Because as Shane kissed her again, it occurred to Gabriella that, of all the people she’d spent time with since returning home to Portland, Shane was the one person she’d confided in most. Shane was the one person she’d trusted overall.

He was also the most likely saboteur of her pizzeria. Because, after all, didn’t Shane Maresca have the wealth, the know-how, and the charisma to orchestrate a takeover?

He did. He’d all but admitted it to her the other day.

I know how to do things
, he’d said.
I have skills
.

Technically, he’d been offering to help her, Gabriella remembered. But maybe Shane’s idea of “help” required surrender.

Maybe Shane’s idea of “help” meant relinquishing Campania.

Full of confusion, Gabriella kissed Shane back. She heard his words echo in her ears and urgently wanted to believe them.

Just when I think I know you, you go and make me love you more
.

Even now, Shane’s openhearted expression confirmed his feelings. He’d never seemed more . . .
bedazzled
than he did just then. If he was to be believed, that was because of
her
.

She couldn’t handle this. Not right now.

“We’d better boogie,” Gabriella told Shane inelegantly. Wrinkling her nose to augment her clumsy forthcoming fib, she gave him a shove. “You
really
need that shower.”

Looking injured, Shane reared up. Chivalrously, he helped her to her feet, too. He didn’t start moving, though.

Instead, his gaze penetrated her. “Is something wrong?”

He accompanied his question with a trademark grin—one that ordinarily would have melted any resistance. Except, ordinarily, Gabriella wouldn’t have suddenly suspected him of sabotage.

Had
Shane
endangered her dad’s health with the earlier takeover attempt? Had he returned now to finish the job?

When she didn’t answer, Shane deepened his look to a deadpan frown. “Hey.” He touched her arm. “Is it something I said?”

Like, I love you?
Those words hung in the air, unanswered.

Gabriella felt hopelessly unkind. Ignoring what Shane had said was tantamount to saying she
didn’t
love him back.

She was too close to falling for him for that to be true.

Still, she had to protect herself. If Shane
was
working behind the scenes to break her oven, waylay her suppliers, and cause rifts with her creditors, she had to stop him somehow.

The only way to do that, Gabriella realized, was to stick with him. To track him every step of the way. To catch him.

Determinedly, she rallied. She could do this.

Even if she didn’t want to.

“Sorry.” Not meeting Shane’s eyes, Gabriella brushed her grass-stained hands on her running shorts. “Low blood sugar. It terrorizes me after a run every time, especially if I’ve gone long.” Purposely, duplicitously, she wavered. “I feel woozy.”

Shane steadied her. “Do you need to sit down?”

“No.” She waved off his concern. “I just need a snack.”

“Easily done.” With unnerving perceptiveness, Shane studied her. He gestured to a nearby food cart vendor. “Hang on.”

Two and a half minutes later, having worked his magic on the vendor, Shane pressed something into her hand. A paper cone full of rustic Yukon Gold french fries. Their savory, salty aroma wafted into the air, accented with black pepper and fresh Italian parsley and drizzled with pungent Oregon truffle oil.

Despite everything, Gabriella couldn’t help laughing. “Are all our bonding moments going to happen over fried potatoes?”

“Maybe.” Shane nodded at them. “That’s not the healthiest postrun snack, but it’ll do for now. Eat.”

Dutifully, Gabriella nibbled a french fry, feeling guiltier than ever before. Why was Shane being nice about her deception?

If he was a bad guy, he should have been mean. Right?

“So . . .” Looking stern and concerned and somehow . . . anxious? Shane watched her. “Were you too woozy to remember . . . everything?”

Oh, God
. Gabriella knew he was asking if she remembered his love declaration. His kiss. His goofy grin that sealed the deal.

If
she
were a bad guy, she would have said no, she wasn’t too woozy to remember. She would have said she’d heard him perfectly and chosen not to reciprocate. Because he would have deserved it. Because she wouldn’t have cared. But she did.

“It’s all pretty hazy,” Gabriella hedged. “I remember falling onto the grass. Then there was . . . a kiss, right?”

Shane’s face cleared. “Damn right, there was.”

His obvious relief at her “forgetfulness” only stoked her suspicions. Maybe Shane hadn’t meant it. Maybe he
had
, and was freaking out now.

Maybe she didn’t know anything and was grasping at straws.

“I’m better.” Gabriella tossed her fry cone. She wiped her hands on the back of her running shorts, gave a still-worried-looking Shane a cheeky grin, then did the only thing she could think of that would temporarily end this stalemate. “Race you home?” she asked. “Last one there soaps up the winner!”

She took off at a run, feeling ungainly and shaken.

Maybe Shane’s love declaration had affected her more than she wanted to admit. Or maybe truffle fries weren’t good fuel.

That was probably it. Truffle fries. Deliciously bad.

“Soaping up the winner?” Shane caught up to her without breaking a sweat. They ran side by side in a horrible Bizarro World version of Gabriella’s fantasy—only this time, she couldn’t trust Shane. “That sounds like a prize to me.”

Whoops
. It did. She was clearly awful at subterfuge.

“Care to double down?” Gabriella asked.

“On showering? With you?” Shane grinned. “You bet.”

“On a new bet. With me,” she clarified, literally thinking on her feet. What would be useful? She knew she could win. At the bottom of the hill earlier, Shane had probably looked upset because he’d been gassed—worn out by his run. She, on the other hand, felt pretty capable. Fired by desperation. “First one there wins a key to the other one’s apartment,” she declared, then amended, “Or house,” because she lived in a cottagey place not far from Campania. “First one there wins twenty-four/seven access to the other.”

That
she could use. To snoop on Shane with. Sneakily.

Argh.
Why was she in this mess in the first place?

“You’re on,” Shane panted. Then he took off at a sprint.

Gabby was
clearly
lying to him, Shane realized.

She was hiding something from him, too. Something big.

He’d suspected it four days ago, during their surprise meet-up at Portland’s waterfront park. At first, Gabby had been her usual straightforward self. She’d been generous and kind and caring. She’d been helpful and sweet. She’d been
devious
.

At least by making him laugh by tickling him, she had been.

Damn
. Remembering those moments as he pulled another flat of button mushrooms from Campania’s refrigerated walk-in and then headed back to his new chopping station to slice them, Shane shook his head. Gabby had been relentless that day about cheering him up. She’d recognized his despondence over his phone call with his dad, and although it had been clear she’d wanted to know more, she hadn’t pushed or pried.

Instead, she’d
tickled
him. Shane had laughed until his stomach hurt, helplessly and joyfully. Because tickling was funny, damn it. It was. He simply hadn’t realized it before. Because, although he hadn’t said as much to Gabby, he’d never been tickled before.

He’d been bluff ing—
guessing
—about not being ticklish.

Now, he knew he was. Growing up, first with no siblings—and then with three snooty, competitive, mean-spirited stepsiblings who’d jeered that they might catch “ghetto syphilis” if they were actually forced to touch Shane, much less hug him—Shane hadn’t had an opportunity to experience tickling. Foster parents tended to be pretty hands off. His fellow delinquents weren’t the tickling type. And the other women he’d been involved with . . .

Well, they weren’t like Gabby, plain and simple.

For one thing, none of them had ever received a dumb-ass love declaration from him.
None of them
.

Remembering that now, Shane grabbed his knife and started chopping. He made sure to do so clumsily, so he’d catch Gabby’s eye. That would bring her over to him, where he wanted her.

Where he stupidly wanted her.

Just when I think I know you, you go and make me love you more
.

Argh
. He didn’t know what had made him say it. He’d just . . .
felt
it, and then it had popped out. Truthfully but inanely. Because the last thing a fixer needed was to fall in love with his target. Shane wasn’t a rookie. Even when he had been a rookie, he hadn’t made a mistake the size of this one.

Especially for someone who didn’t love him back.

He’d known damn well that Gabby hadn’t had a low-blood-sugar-induced bout of amnesia that day. She’d heard him, all right. And then she’d panicked. Maybe because she wasn’t ready.

Maybe because she didn’t feel the same way.

Except when Shane got Gabby alone with him, all he saw was affection for him in her eyes. All he felt were acceptance and desire. So what the hell had made Gabby lie outright to him?

Still chopping with purposely inept thwacks of his chef’s knife (borrowed from one of the ringers he’d put in place at Campania), Shane contemplated Gabby’s weird behavior. He’d never doubted he could make Gabby and the others trust him. That was what he excelled at. He’d never doubted he could “fix” things here.

Maybe that was the problem. His “fix.”

Could Gabby have overheard his phone call with his dad?

Still chopping while everyone worked busily around him, Shane went over that call in his mind. He didn’t think anything incriminating had been said. In fact, he was sure of it.

Besides, Gabby’s odd behavior had happened later.

After the tickling, after the kissing, after the . . .

. . .
love declaration
. Damn it. That
had
to be the problem.

Well, if it was, Shane decided while rowdy music played in the kitchen and Bowser played air drums beside him, he could fix that. He could make sure that Gabby believed he hadn’t meant it.

He could make sure she believed he wanted only one thing from her: hot, spine-tingling, earth-shattering sexual liaisons.

Even if that wasn’t true (and it wasn’t), it sounded good.

It sounded believable, especially from someone like him.

Having struck on a plan, Shane shafted a glance toward Gabby. She was coordinating things on the make line with Emeril, getting set up for tonight’s first service. Beside them, Frosty was scaling and rounding mounds of pizza dough, putting them on sheet pans, and sliding them into place. Later, they’d be opened into skins—the circles of dough ready for topping—and baked.

Shane hadn’t learned how to do those steps himself yet, but he’d learned from Gabby how crucial they were. Pizza dough was integral to Campania’s operations. Its unique flavor and texture were two of the pizzeria’s hallmarks. Making dough involved painstakingly calibrated ratios of Italian flour, yeast, salt, and water, plus enough time—at least thirty-six hours or so—for the whole thing to ferment properly. It was an art, really.

And a science. And Frosty was trusted with it. Not Shane.
Frosty
. A man who believed the
cornicione
referred to the head of an Italian mobster family, not (rightly) to the puffy edge of a properly made pizza crust. Two days ago, Bowser had convinced Frosty that their customers’ “pizza bones”—the crusts some people left after eating their pizzas—could predict the future like a gypsy’s tea leaves.
Frosty
was more trusted than Shane was.

Deliberately, Shane brought down his knife extra hard.

The clatter caught Gabby’s attention. She came nearer.

“Whoa. Hold on.” She steadied his knife-holding hand with her palm atop his fist. “You’re being way too macho with these mushrooms. They’re wobbly little suckers. If you hit one wrong—”

“I’ve already shot a few across the room,” Shane admitted with faux sheepishness. He waved to Pinkie, who helpfully and opportunely chose that moment to fish out a rogue mushroom from her stockpile of vanilla crème anglaise. “I’m trying, though.”

“I know you are.” Gabby offered her cousin an apologetic smile. “Just like you tried winning our race the other day.”

Their race
. Shane hadn’t understood why Gabby had seemed so insistent on running away from him after their encounter at the waterfront park, but he’d been determined not to lose. It hadn’t been difficult. He was fitter than Gabby. Faster than Gabby. He’d been on track to beat her to his apartment handily.

Then he’d remembered the stakes. He’d remembered that the winner would receive a key to the loser’s home. And while the fixer inside him had clamored to win a key to Gabby’s house—which he still hadn’t seen, because she’d made a convenient excuse to bail after their race—the man inside him had slowed his footsteps purposely. The man inside him had faked a cramp. The man inside him had watched, doubled over in pretend pain, while Gabby triumphantly took a shortcut and won their race.

It hadn’t been until Shane had awarded Gabby her prize that he’d realized the truth. He
wanted
her to have a piece of him. He wanted her to have access to his apartment (as fake and temporary as it was). He wanted her to have
him
. All the way.

Giving her that key had felt like a commitment. It had felt like giving a part of himself . . . and having Gabby accept him, even in a small and unknowing way. It had felt like a beginning.

“Hmmph. I guess now you guys are going steady,” Lizzy had told him acerbically when she’d found out. “When is prom?”

But Shane hadn’t been bothered by his assistant’s gibe. Because as he’d watched Gabby string his apartment key on the lanyard she used to keep track of her numerous Campania keys, he’d felt a surge of possessiveness and fondness that awed him.

Gabby was his now. And he was hers. If she wanted him.

And okay, so Shane had also evened things out by wrangling himself a set of pizzeria keys later. He’d lifted them, partly prompted by Lizzy’s prodding that he should get his “share of the key action.” But that was business to him, not personal.

To Gabby, getting his apartment key had been personal. She’d wanted it. Remembering that heartened Shane now.

“I
did
try winning our race!” he protested convincingly, getting back to his conversation with Gabby. “I got a cramp.”

“Mmm-hmm.” With an efficient air, Gabby surveyed his messy, mushroom-strewn work space. “All the same, you’re wreaking some serious havoc here. I’m putting you on dough duty instead.”

She gestured at Frosty, signaling him to give up his post. The big man did, then was summoned a second later to help Bowser make Campania’s special oregano-laden pizza sauce. Beside them, Hypo acted quickly to slice ciabatta and smash fresh garlic.

Today, the crew was working like a well-oiled machine. In his capacity as a fixer, Shane should have wrecked that.

In his capacity as a crew member, he didn’t have the heart.

Because during his days at the pizzeria, Shane had learned a few things. About the value of hard work. About the satisfaction of teamwork. About the capacity to build, not destroy. He wanted to do more of that. Only
partly
for Gabby.

Mostly for him. Because he liked being valued for more than his ability to derail a business partnership or force a lower price for a corporate acquisition. He liked being known for more than charming secrets out of strangers and causing mayhem wherever he went. He liked the feeling of playing it straight.

Not that he would have admitted it to anyone. Shane still wanted a win. He also wanted Gabby. He couldn’t have both.

Not unless he played his cards very, very carefully . . .

Almost too late, Shane shook himself back to the present. Damn, he was distracted today. This wasn’t like him at all.

“Dough duty?” Shane glanced at the waiting tub of just mixed pizza dough. Yes, it was crucial to Campania’s success. Yes, it required careful regulation of hydration and ambient temperature—especially in the quantities required by the pizzeria. But he could handle it. He could handle anything. He’d just maneuvered his way into the job, hadn’t he? “But I haven’t mastered mushroom chopping yet.” He gave Gabby an inciting look. “Isn’t skipping phases of training against the rules?”

Gabby folded her arms, her expression cryptic.

Probably, she was fed up with his questioning her.

“I’m
sure
I read something about that in the employee handbook.” Shane patted his whites as though searching for his copy of that tome. Then, “You know how I feel about the rules.”

Gabby smiled at him. “I think you’re allergic to them.”

“I know. That makes it weird that
I’m
insisting on them.”

“Yeah, it does.” With growing thoughtfulness, Gabby looked at him. Then she shrugged. “I guess this means I’m winning.”

Shane scoffed. He was pretty sure
he
was the one who was winning. He was the one who’d initially persuaded Gabby to let him skip the stocking phase of training. He’d been promoted to mushroom chopper faster than anyone in Campania history.

He figured that was because she liked having him near her.

“I’m breaking you down,” Gabby goaded him. “Taming you.”

Something heated and provocative flared in her eyes. Shane recognized that look. It was the same one Gabby wore when she bossed him around in bed. Evidently, she got a similar charge out of believing she’d conquered him at work, too.

“Whatever you need to believe.” Casually, Shane set aside his borrowed chef’s knife. “I just want to make you happy, boss.” He lowered his voice to a rumble. “Just as
happy
as you can be,” he added. “Over and over and over again.”

This time, it was
his
turn to dish out a seductive look—one redolent of late nights, breathy cries, and naked bodies coming together with fervor and need. Gabby caught it, too.

She inhaled quickly. Her gaze darkened. She leaned nearer.

Bowser guffawed. “For fuck’s sake! Just go in back and get all that out of your system, will ya? I can’t take any more.”

“No kidding.” Emeril kept chiffonading basil. “Just do it.”

“Use protection, though.” Hypo grinned. “Penguins!”

“A quickie in the walk-in will cool you down,” Pinkie advised. She glanced toward the front of the house, where Jeremy and Jennifer were busy making roll-ups. “I can vouch for that.”

Shane gawked. Pinkie and . . . Jeremy? No way. Or, maybe . . .

“A quickie in the walk-in would suffocate us,” Gabby said drily. “It would be like having a sexual romp in an abandoned refrigerator. There’s not much air in there, remember?”

“There’d be a whole lot of heavy breathing going on, too, so it would be twice as dangerous,” Frosty put in, his voice full of over-the-top innuendo. He grinned. “Uh, uh, uh,” he panted. “Uh, uh,
uh
!”

He grabbed his chest, pantomiming a fit of passion. He flung his head back. He grabbed the prep table, then writhed.

“Ah!” he yelled in fake passion. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Watching his antics, Shane and Gabby rolled their eyes.

But everyone else applauded. Bowser slapped his erstwhile nemesis on the back. “You’re all right, former fucking new guy.”

“Thanks.” Fully accepted now, Frosty took a bow. He wiped his brow, pretending to be exhausted. “But I feel so
cheap
now.”

Jennifer leaned in past the kitchen’s pass-through. “Frosty? What are you doing back here? Starting without me?”

“Ten bucks says he finished without you, too.” Jeremy lounged beside her, indolently wrapping napkins around cutlery.

“No, Jeremy.” Jennifer shook her head. “I told you, I’m sick of betting. It was fun at first, but now I’ve got to quit.”

“Why?” Jeremy pouted. “Afraid to lose?”