Spitfire Suckerpunch (House of Pain Book 2) (10 page)

“Can't I?” he asked, then clicked his tongue in that annoying way he did. The insinuation of his words hung between them and Shay couldn't deny that she felt a shiver of dread run down her spine. She was fucking with a cop, she reminded herself. Cops could in no way be trusted. But at that point, she couldn't let him know he was getting to her. She would rather rot in a prison cell than back down to Tate Grayson.

“Is that a threat?” she asked, jabbing him again in the chest. He was so hard under his shirt, she realized. She wondered if he was all muscle under there, because it sure felt like it. His long fingers circled her wrist before she knew what his was doing, his touch light but firm.

“Yes,” he said so softly she might not have heard him if he'd been further away. As it was, she was so close to him she could practically hear his heartbeat. And she could definitely smell his the light tangy scent of his aftershave. She swallowed hard, wondering if it was normal to feel so much conflicting feelings at one time. On the one hand she wanted to smack his face for everything she'd gone through. But at the same time, she had the oddest urge to suck his lower lip between her teeth and bite down.

Hard.

“We're done,” Tate said, dropping her hand suddenly and strolling to the ropes like he had all the time in the world. Shay, standing alone in the center of the ring, watched him hop gracefully down and out of the ring. He didn't look back at her at all as he stooped down and grabbed his towel from the chair at the edge of the mat. He dragged it across his face and Shay couldn't help but notice how his wet T-shirt clung to all of the muscles in his back and arms. He was an infuriating man, but she would have to be blind to not see how distractingly handsome he was. He was also a man of few words, but his body was extremely expressive. He kept his face blank, but he couldn't stop his nervous ticks. She was starting to notice how he would roll his shoulders when he was uncomfortable, or click his tongue when he was excited or pissed off. She could tell how angry he was just from the way his shoulders were hunched.

It was weird, but it was true.

But she didn't care that he was pissed. She was pissed as well. He was so damn rude and blunt. She didn't like it. She also didn't like how he was making her feel. She didn't like how he always seemed to downplay the shit she'd been through, like it didn't mean anything. Maybe it didn't mean anything to him, but it meant a lot to her. In fact, it meant everything. Every time she tried to move on, there would always be something to remind her. Cops in her neighborhood, rare cars showing up out of the blue, twenty-thousand dollars in cash hidden away in her panty drawer—all of them were signposts, whispers in her brain, telling her that she would never be normal. She was an ex-con, a former prison inmate. That would never go away.

She watched Tate make his way across the gym and shove open the door to the men's locker room. He disappeared inside, the pockmarked door swinging closed behind him. She glanced over her shoulder, quickly surveying the gym. There were a few dudes she didn't know working out near the front, but they weren't paying attention to her. Gennifer and Erica were talking as Gennifer spotted her husband on the benchpress. No one was paying attention to her. Seeing her chance, she climbed out of the ring and followed Tate's footsteps into the locker room.

The men's locker room was a hell of a lot smellier than the women's, she immediately noticed. It smelled like sweat and mildew and a dozen different types of cologne. She opened the door slowly, waiting to hear the creak of the hinges or any sound that would give her away. But the door opened silently and she sucked in her stomach and quietly slid inside the smallest opening possible. There were two rows of tall lockers in the middle of the floor and two hanging lights above. Only one of the lights had a bulb, casting shadows all over the concrete floor. She could hear two men's voices echoing in the dark, dank locker room. Crinkling her nose, she tiptoed around the second row of red-painted lockers, careful not to make a sound as she moved toward the voices. A locker door slammed and she jumped, peering carefully around the corner at the maker of the noise. She could see the preppy blond man she recognized from the day before, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

“Give me a suggestion,” she heard Tate say, even though she couldn't see him.

“Did she say where she wanted to go?” the blond man said, tugging his hem down over his impressive six-pack.

“No,” Tate replied and Shay heard him moving around although she still didn't have an eye on him. She heard another locker door open.

“Well where do you like to go? Take her somewhere you like.”

“I don't go out, Austin,” Tate said matter-of-factly. “I work and I go home. I don't have time for that shit.” The blond guy sighed dramatically and shook his head, a friendly smile stretching over his face.

“It's a good thing she likes you, otherwise I might really feel sorry for you,” Austin said. He took a swig of water from a plastic bottle and then continued. “Alright, look. Leah's not high-maintenance, but she's not cheap either. She'd like something classy and quiet, but not completely boring.”

“Like where?” Tate asked, moving around again. Austin raised his eyes to the ceiling in thought. In the few moments of silence that followed, Shay realized that they were talking about Tate's girlfriend. Or at the very least, a woman he liked. She bit down hard on her lip, a pang of anger hitting her in the chest. She didn't know that he had a girlfriend. Not that there was any way she would have known. He didn't have a sign hanging around his neck that said 'taken', after all.

“You know this is cheating, right?” Austin said, breaking the short silence.

“Cheating how?”

“Me giving you the name of a restaurant that I know she'll like,” Austin said with a laugh. “It's a lot more fun if you have to guess.”

“Fun for who?” Tate grumbled.

“I guess it's only fun for me,” Austin  replied. “Which is why I'll have mercy on you.”

“I appreciate it,” Tate said, sarcasm dripping from his simple words.

“Zaire. On the Upper West Side,” Austin said with a nod. “It's Ethiopian fusion. She'll love that shit.”

“Is it crowded?”

“No, not too bad. It's a small place. Intimate. Low light. You could finger her under the table and no one would be the wiser,” Austin continued, his grin getting wider and slyer with each word. Tate didn't answer and Shay wondered what kind of look he was giving his player of a friend. But she was also thinking about Tate's big hand slipping under the skirt of a faceless woman in a candlelit restaurant. She wondered what kind of dirty words he would whisper in his girl's ear as he did dirty things to her. Or maybe he wouldn't whisper anything at all. Maybe he would let his fingers do all the talking.

“Do I need a reservation?” Tate asked, abruptly changing the subject before Shay could completely wrap her head around the unsettling vision the blond guy had placed in her head.

“Probably,” Austin said with a shrug, shifting his hips. Tate mumbled something that Shay couldn't make out, even as she strained her ears. Austin shook his head in mock disgust. “Jesus Christ, you're helpless. How do you survive in this city?” Austin dug in the pocket of his loose workout pants, pulling his phone out. He began typing away. “What time are you supposed to meet her?”

“Eight on Friday.”

“I'll have my assistant make a reservation tomorrow,” Austin said, making a note on his phone. “You better not fuck this up, for all the trouble you're putting me through.”

“I can't guarantee that,” Tate said quietly. “But I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, you better,” Austin said, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “You coming back out on the floor?”

“No,” Tate replied. “I'm going home.”

“You do look tired as fuck. Get some sleep,” Blondie said, disappearing from Shay's line of sight as he walked toward the door of the locker room. “See you tomorrow. You owe me time in the ring.” Tate didn't answer and Shay heard Austin exit the door loudly. The door swung shut behind him and the locker room went quiet again. Shay put her hand to her mouth, trying to muffle her breathing. She was all alone with Tate and she didn't know why, but her stomach was suddenly in knots. She could hear him moving and then he stepped into her line of vision.

For a whole minute, she forgot how to breathe.

He was shirtless, every muscle in his chest highlighted in the stark light of the room. His shoulders were broad and his chest was smooth and pale. There wasn't an ounce of fat on him, at least not where she could see. He was damn near perfect, except for a large discolored scar that ran down his left side from his shoulder to his ribs. His pants were riding low on his hips, exposing the V of his pelvis and a thin line of hair running from his navel and disappearing into his waistband. If she didn't have her hand pressed to her mouth, she might've drooled.

He balled up something in his hand and tossed it in the trashcan in the corner. Her eyes ran all over his chest, taking in the movement of all of his muscles as he did the mundane action. Then he lifted his arm and scrubbed his hand through his hair, his eyes on the floor like he was deep in thought. He did look tired, she realized. She wondered if he was really going to go home and sleep. Maybe he was going to go stop by his girl's house. Maybe he was going to fall asleep wrapped around his mystery woman that night. The thought made anger flare up inside her chest. But she stayed quiet as he pulled on a shirt and gathered his shit and left the locker room.

She stuck around in the stinky locker room long enough for him to safely leave House of Pain. Then she quietly made her way back to the women's locker room and gathered her things. She didn't say goodbye to anyone as she made her way out of House of Pain. As she walked to the train she realized was angry, but that was normal. But there was something else she was feeling that she didn't like, not even one bit.

She'd felt it when she was an immature girl running around the streets with her little boyfriends. When another girl looked at her boyfriend or tried to talk to them, she'd been a terror, pulling hair and slapping faces. Not that Tate was her boyfriend, but it didn't seem to matter. She didn't even like Tate, but she couldn't stop the green-eyed monster from rearing up and clenching around her heart.

The fact of the matter was, she was jealous.

She didn't think she was really jealous of Tate and his mysterious girlfriend. No, that didn't make any sense. The more she thought about it, she realized she wasn't jealous of whatever woman he had waiting around for him. She was jealous of the normalcy—the normal day-to-day relationships between people. In prison, there were rarely any sweet moments. There was never any long-lived joy. And there was definitely nothing anything close to romance.

She wondered how it would be to have her own apartment and her own man and a dog a challenging job she actually enjoyed doing. Other girls spent their whole late teens and early twenties figuring out who they were and what they wanted and learning how to gain those things. Shay, however, had just been thrown into the deep end of the pool and she was discovering she barely knew how to swim. It wasn't fair, really.

None of it was fair.

Chapter Seven

A
ustin was right
, Tate thought to himself as he glanced around the small, dimly lit restaurant. He really needed to learn to give his friend more credit. Leah sat opposite him, her back toward the wall of the restaurant, staring down at the menu. Her black hair was up, exposing her neck, and she was wearing a light pink sweater and simple gold jewelry. She raised her eyes and caught him staring, but he didn't bother to look away. She looked good and it was a little overwhelming to be sitting in a romantic, quiet spot across from a beautiful woman.

It was almost normal.

Most of the time, Tate didn't care much about doing what normal people thought was important. His mother was always trying to get him to settle down and have lots of children, because that's what she did. Maria was a damn saint, actually, taking in and loving all the kids like she did. But even though he appreciated what she did, he didn't ever think that that was going to be his future. He had grown to love his adopted family with every fiber of his being, but after he left home and began to spend too much time around crime and death, he found it impossible to have such a rosy view of life. However, he couldn't deny that sitting across from Leah and seeing her smile just for him made him crave it.

“What made you pick this place?” she asked, her voice light. His eyes dropped to her lips, which were glossy, but not a bright, distracting color. She was completely different than Shay Spears in every way, he thought randomly. Shay was loud and rough and domineering. Leah was calm and comfortable to be around. She also liked him, for some reason. Shay Spears hated him. Frowning inwardly, he realized that the infuriating woman he'd recently become reacquainted with was invading his thoughts again. He was on a date with a beautiful woman and he didn't want to think about anyone else. He didn't want to think about Shay Spears's long, pointed nails or her purple hair or her... he let the thought trail off and shook his head, remembering that Leah had asked him a question.

“Austin told me it was good,” he said with a shrug. “I trust his taste.”

“Lately, I've been trusting his taste, too. For instance, he thought I would like you.” She smiled lightly and flicked her eyes up to meet his. “We should try a little bit of everything,” she murmured. She was flirting with him and he liked it. A lot. It was still hard to wrap his head around the fact that he hadn't fucked it up yet. Usually, by the end of a first date he'd said something that turned most women off. He'd always been blunt—he didn't know any other way to speak. But, for whatever reason, Leah didn't seem to mind. “Okay, I think I know what we should try,” she announced a minute later. “We definitely have to try this ahi tuna starter. And this kitfo...” she glanced up at him and studied him. Then she smiled widely. “You don't care what we get, do you?”

“No,” Tate admitted with a shrug. “I'll eat whatever you want.”

“Really?” She sat forward on her elbows and stared at him. “You really don't care?”

“I really don't,” he said.

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“Not that I know of.” He cocked his head, already feeling a smile forming. He sounded like the most boring man on Earth, but he couldn't help it. He liked good food, it didn't matter the ethnicity. Growing up in foster care, he'd learned to not be picky. “I don't drink hard liquor, though,” he thought to add. “Only beer, only occasionally.”

“I knew that,” she said, raising one well-manicured finger. “Our last date I figured that out.”

“Then you know all there is to know,” he said.

“I highly doubt that,” she shook her head, her eyes dropping to his chest. He was wearing a black button-up with black jeans, nothing special, but he knew she was checking him out. A slow heat crept up through his ribs and he took a deep breath. He was beginning to think he wasn't going to make it through dinner.

“What about dessert?” she asked, the double entendre obvious to even him. Or maybe he just had sex on the brain.

“Can't live without it,” he said, without thinking. “But I try.”

“Well you're doing a great job resisting,” she said, her eyes still on his chest. But then she cleared her throat and leaned back, trying to get herself under control. “You obviously take care of yourself.” Then she demurred, dropping her eyes and hiding her smile behind her hand. Tate didn't respond, just watched her acting like she was embarrassed even though she had no reason to be. He didn't mind that she was looking at him like she wanted to jump across the table and attack him. He didn't mind one bit.

The waitress interrupted them then, smiling brightly and asking what they wanted. Tate sat back and watched Leah as she took over the ordering, rattling off a list of items that she wanted to try. He wondered how in the hell they were going to eat all that, but he didn't complain. He liked a woman that knew what she wanted. He liked that she didn't care he wasn't cultured and interesting. In fact, he was beginning to think that the night wasn't going to turn bad. He was getting a slight hope, maybe more than slight. He'd been alone so long it was hard not to get excited about it.

After the food came and he was on his second beer, he was feeling even better. The meal was delicious and the conversation was sometimes awkward, but never too hard or forced. He was having a good time. When his phone rang as they were waiting for their dessert to arrive, he almost didn't bother looking at the caller ID. He didn't feel like answering it, but he knew it could be someone from work. Sure enough, it was a city number. If they were calling on his night off, it had to be some kind of emergency. He groaned inwardly and glanced up at Leah.

“It's work,” he said. “Is it okay to take it?”

“Oh! Yes of course. Don't worry about it,” she said, waving him off. He nodded and stood abruptly, pressing the phone to his ear as he headed out the front door of the restaurant into the cold, quiet night. The restaurant had steadily gotten more crowded as dinner had gone on, and it was too loud for him to hear over the din.

“Grayson,” he answered when he was outside, not bothering with niceties like greetings.

“Hey man, it's Derricks,” the familiar voice on the other end said. It was a fellow detective from his precinct.

“I'm off the clock,” Tate said, wanting to make sure Derricks knew he didn't want nor did he have time for a long conversation.

“I know man, I just got a quick question for you,” Derricks replied and, not waiting for confirmation, he began to spew facts about an ongoing investigation. Tate turned toward the street, staring at the building across the street as he listened, his mind running through the facts and pulling up information he remembered from the crime report that he'd read a few weeks ago. A double murder was not exactly something he wanted to think about at that moment. He was supposed to be feeling good, smiling and laughing. Instead, he was thinking about crime scene photos and blood spatter. He couldn't escape the gore for even one night.

Such was his life.

As he listened silently, his eyes were drawn to up to the second floor of the pre-war building. One of the long tall windows in the middle was lit up bright yellow, no curtain to block the view into the apartment beyond . A dark figure was moving around in the apartment. After a few seconds, it became apparent it was a woman from the way she moved. She walked past the window twice as he stood there watching, his mind elsewhere. Then she was joined by another dark figure.

“So I wasn't sure if I should send the fabric off to the crime lab, or if I should wait for the prosecutor's office to order it for evidence,” Derricks was saying but Tate continued to stare ahead at the couple in the window. Standing out in the street in the cold night, he was suddenly hit with a wave of loneliness, despite the fact that he was on the phone with someone he considered to be a friend and his date was waiting for him a few feet away in a warm restaurant.

“Why the hell are you calling me and not the A.D.A.?” he asked grumpily, watching as the couple embraced in the window.

“Didn't want to...”

“Didn't want to sound stupid?” Grayson asked the younger detective. “We have to keep communication open with the D.A.'s office. So if you have questions, call.” He watched as the couple in the window separated, disappearing from view and leaving the window open and clear.

“Okay. But still. What would you do?” Derricks asked, still not quite ready to give up on the conversation.

“Send it to the crime lab. Cover your ass,” Tate said without hesitation, turning back to the restaurant. The windows were foggy with condensation. He couldn't even see Leah sitting inside. A chill ran through him and all he wanted was to get back inside of the cozy, candlelit restaurant and discuss dessert options.

“Cool, man. Thanks,” Derricks was saying. Tate wrapped up the conversation and slid his phone into his pants pocket. Then he stepped up the cement step into the restaurant and opened the door. The comfortable caress of warm air on his face was a short-lived pleasure as a couple pushed past him in the tiny space, trying to exit. They were followed by another woman that was about shoulder-height in comparison to him. She was wearing a black hooded coat that covered her face. He didn't pay the woman much mind and continued on toward his table. Then something, he wasn't sure what, made him turn back. The shorter woman stopped in the doorway on her way out. The room was low lit and the shadows obscured her face, but he could've sworn he saw a flash of red lipstick on her plump lips.

His heart squeezed in his chest and he immediately dragged his eyes down her length, looking for other distinguishing features. It couldn't be her, he told himself. The woman was about the right height and build, but her long coat hid the exact shape of her figure from him. Then she raised her hand to the doorframe and he narrowed his eyes. It all happened in the space of several seconds—she raised her hand, revealing smooth brown skin and long, red nails and the flash of a ring on her ring finger. Then the woman was gone, the door swinging shut behind her. The windows were still fogged, so he couldn't see her as she made her getaway.

He may be fucked in the head, but he would've sworn it was Shay Spears, the vengeful ghost that continued to haunt him. But he tried to convince himself otherwise. He told himself that there was no fucking way that she knew where he was, or who he was with. He stared after her even after she was gone, a pit of dread settling in his stomach. Then he made his way back to the small table he shared with Leah. When he sat down, any warmth that he'd gained from walking back inside slowly drained from him. Leah was staring at him, her face hard and non-smiling. Her lips were a thin line and her arms were crossed over her chest. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as one thought started running through his mind on repeat.

It had all just gone bad.