“But you didn’t,” Cecily pushed.
“Nope.”
After a pause, Cecily asked, “What’s in the trunk?”
He didn’t answer.
“You have something really weird in your trunk, don’t you?” she teased.
He didn’t answer. Her smile faded; his slowly emerged.
Oh, man. He does have something really weird in his trunk. Did he have it when he picked me up? How weird is weird, anyway? “Are we going to drive all the way to New York with this question mark between us?”
“There’s no question mark for me,” Shane said. “I know exactly what’s in my trunk.”
“Man, you’re a pain in the ass,” she said. She stared out the windshield, thinking maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to sit up front. How did I get here?
Shane kept glancing over.
“Can you watch the road, please?” she snapped. She kept her mouth shut after that, for so long, in fact, that it had the interesting effect of making Shane uncomfortable to the point that he actually said, “Last night wasn’t a big deal. You should be okay . . .”
Cecily stared straight ahead. “I guess I’m not entirely okay after a completely embarrassing night during which I put the moves on a guy whose body seems to like it, but whose mind makes him turn me down.”
“It wasn’t embarrassing.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“It wasn’t embarrassing.”
“Oh, yeah, Shane?” Cecily said wearily. “If it wasn’t embarrassing, what was it?”
“It was hot. That embarrassing? I don’t think hot is embarrassing. I think hot is hot.”
Which made her hot and embarrassed.
“Hot and stupid,” he added.
Great.
“Do you get that if you were just a woman in an elevator I’d nail you in a second?”
Cecily’s blush turned into a burn. “What’s the difference between a random woman in an elevator and a random woman you met a day ago whom you happen to be driving around in your car?”
Shane shifted as traffic ahead slowed down, and then looked over. “You know you’re not random. I’m beginning to think the reason you picked this James guy is because you don’t know anything about guys. Try assuming the opposite of whatever you’re thinking and go with that. I think your mileage will improve.”
Cecily rolled her eyes.
“I think you’re a hot little piece, kid. Now try imagining me saying that to your brother and maybe you’ll have some insight into the situation.”
Cecily’s eyes widened. A hot little piece? A hot little piece, kid? What do you even say to that? “I cannot imagine why you think I’d share anything about my sex life with Dex.” That was, in fact, a revolting thought.
“He trusts me to take care of you, Cecily,” Shane said softly. “You’re Hudson Kings family. I don’t get to do whatever I want. You don’t mess with family loyalty for no good reason.”
What if I think having spontaneous hotel sex with you is taking care of me? What if I think your body looks like the best antidote to a terrible relationship experience I’ve ever seen? “Wait, you’ve had elevator sex?” Cecily blurted.
“I stay in hotels a lot,” Shane answered blandly.
“I never really gave it too much thought, but being around you is starting to make me realize how insanely vanilla I am,” Cecily mumbled.
“Vanilla is classic,” he said after a while. “Nice.”
Nice. Ugh. “You didn’t come back to the room last night. What did you do after you left?”
“I considered going down to the lobby bathroom to jack off in a stall, but I just ended up sleeping in the hall outside our room.”
God. At this rate, Cecily was pretty sure her cheeks were going to be stained pink with heat and lust.
“Not a great night for me,” he finished.
“I can’t help but notice that you’re talking more than usual,” Cecily said, getting a little desperate to change the subject matter away from elevator sex and jacking off. “I like that.”
“This conversation has been a good return on investment.”
Cecily looked over in confusion.
“Talking about sex makes you blush. Sometimes it makes you squirm. Just because I’m not interested in touching you doesn’t mean I’m not interested in watching you.”
He was smiling. And it was so excellent—that unguarded Shane Sullivan smile—that Cecily wouldn’t have even minded if he’d added the word kid.
One of his cell phones rang. Shane picked it up: “Sullivan . . . hey. Uh-huh . . . yeah, I got you, but I’m not sure about the timing.” He looked over at Cecily and then went back to his call. “Let me check, and I’ll get back to you with something more precise.”
After another moment he hung up, and Cecily looked over. “If there’s something we need to do on the way, obviously you should do whatever you’d normally do without me in the car,” she said.
“I’ve got a delivery to make on the way home.”
Cecily watched the scenery go by, an alternating blur of green and gray. “I’m happy to wait.”
“Figured you’d want to get to Dex as soon as possible.”
Cecily chewed on her lip. She should, especially given last night’s debacle. “Just saying that you’re doing me a favor, and I don’t mind if you need to detour and do your own stuff.” She flipped down the sunshade and checked her face in the mirror. “Besides, you’d be doing me a favor by delaying. If Dex is really looking, you can still see the bruise a little.”
Shane went silent for a while then. “That guy messed up your phone. And your face. What else did he mess up?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you run off without cash in your wallet?”
Cecily looked to see if Shane was joking. He did not seem to be joking. “I wasn’t going to steal cash out of his wallet!”
“He treated you like shit and said you couldn’t go when you wanted to. If you didn’t have cash in your own wallet, it’s ’cause he made it that way.”
“Stealing money from people doesn’t exactly come naturally to me. I knew I’d be with you—well, I didn’t know it was you—and I wasn’t thinking about how long it would take to get back to Dex, which was really stupid, now that I think about it, because now you’ve had to pay for everything . . .” Cecily felt ugly all over again. “I guess I should have thought about taking money out of his wallet.”
After a moment, Shane said, “You’re really fucking decent.”
“Is that an insult?” Cecily asked.
“God, no. But you need someone who’s gonna take care of you.”
“I definitely do not,” Cecily said, not even trying to keep the edge out of her voice. “James ‘took care of me.’ He made sure to remind me every day.”
“You need to go find a man who understands the meaning of taking care.”
“The way you’re taking care of me?”
Shane watched the road. “From personal experience I know the kind of taking care James gave you, and from the Hudson Kings I know what kind a girl like you should look for in a man.”
Cecily blinked, trying to imagine someone taking Shane’s credit and debit cards and breaking his phone and hitting Shane in the face and getting away with it. She blinked again trying to imagine Shane having more than a one-time personal experience with getting hit in the face. “Who hit you?”
Shane didn’t answer her question. His face was carefully blank, and Cecily knew she’d pressed a button. If someone had hit Shane, probably after his parents were gone and he was just a little kid, maybe they did it more than once. Maybe a lot to make a boy go so blank as a man. Cecily stared out the window, gritting her teeth, suddenly very, very angry.
Because Shane was Dex’s friend. Shane had taken his personal time to come get Cecily because of that friendship. And now Shane was her friend too, even if she’d done her best to screw that up in the middle of the night.
All of a s
udden Shane spoke, staring out the windshield. “I remember being a kid and having a pizza dinner every Friday night. It was just pepperoni pizza, you know. But it was a thrill. Everybody was in a good mood. Dad, Mom, me. We did it at the top of every weekend. We were tight. One time, my parents went to get the pizza, and some guy came in and shot up the parlor. Always thought that maybe if I’d been there, they’d still be alive.” He shrugged. “Anyway, life ended, you know. Got sent around different places, but nothing stuck. Mostly because I kept running away . . . lot of people who shouldn’t be around a kid will take in a kid for money.”
Cecily stared at Shane’s profile, tears welling up in her eyes. She wanted to touch him, comfort him. “I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered instead, knowing it wasn’t enough. He didn’t respond.
Shane was right. He did know the true meaning of taking care. He’d had it once, but it didn’t seem like anyone was taking care of him now or had in a while. “Does anybody in New York take care of you?” she asked gently, not sure what answer she was hoping for.
Shane looked over, puzzled. “Have you noticed I’m a fearless motherfucker with huge fists and access to weapons? Don’t need it.”
Of course not. Cecily turned her head back to the window so he wouldn’t see her small smile. She knew better. She’d felt his body relax in the hotel room; she’d heard the sweet sound of tenderness in that one breath. He might not recognize what it meant to connect with another person, to care and be cared for, but Shane Sullivan liked the feeling, and he needed it just as much as she did.
The phone rang again. Shane took the call. “Yeah. I’ve got a two-hour window, but that’s all I can spare, so let’s keep it simple.” He met Cecily’s eyes, something in his flickered, he went back to his call. “The gym? . . . That’s what I was expecting. Works for me.”
All he said when he hung up the phone was “Gonna take that detour now.”
CHAPTER 9
Shane pulled briefly off the freeway into a public rest stop, drove between a van and an SUV, and got out of the car. Cecily followed him to the front of the car, looking impressed when he reached under his bumper and flipped his plates. She followed him to the back, and he did the same and then popped the trunk. She instinctively backed away.
“C’mere,” Shane said.
She peered inside. A wide grin spread over her face. “Oh!”
“Push this button.”
Cecily pushed a button on the inside of the trunk, and the bottom section opened to reveal what looked like a flat garment bag . . . but it kept going and raised vertically until it was a mini garment rack.
Through the plastic window of the top garment the black satin lapels of a tuxedo were visible.
“Seriously?” Cecily said, clearly delighted by the unexpected surprise. “I guess I’m just so used to you in jeans and boots. I’ll bet you look amazing in a tux.”
I’d like to see you looking at me in a tux.
“I thought it’d be some kind of arsenal,” she added, reaching toward a hairline crack in the bottom of the wardrobe platform.
Shane wrapped a hand around Cecily’s wrist and pulled her back. Playtime was over. “No. That stuff doesn’t touch you.”
She stood quietly next to him while he moved the garment bags around and then opened one and selected a navy-blue sweatshirt stained with white paint on the pocket and a worn-out Chicago Bears ball cap. His tattoo vanished under the sweatshirt; his face vanished under the hat. Didn’t matter how much or how little he changed his appearance. Just the act of putting on something different from his usual helped him get in the zone.
He got back into the car and started it up. Cecily stood frozen for a moment before she got in the passenger side, deep in thought.
She opened her mouth to express those thoughts, and Shane cut her off at the pass: “Next time we get off the freeway, we’re going to drive and park outside a coffee shop called Bernard’s. I’ll be across the street. Gonna point you out to Bernard and get you a snack. You’re gonna eat the snack until I come and get you.”
“I’m gonna,” Cecily said under her breath and then knee-jerked out with “I’m gonna eat the snack.”
Shane found himself getting irritated. He got that she wasn’t keen on being told what to do; he’d try to remember that, when it was shit that didn’t really matter. Like he warned, they parked in front of Bernard’s. Shane came around and opened the passenger door because she hadn’t gotten out.
He held out his wallet. She sat there some more, staring at money poking out the side, and then with a big huff, she exited the car and took the wallet with an expression that suggested he’d sprayed it with some kind of contaminant. “What snack would you like me to eat, Shane?”
“I thought you were cool with me doing a quick job, Cecily. Are you cool with that, or are you not cool with that? ’Cause this is me doing a quick job. I don’t have time for nineteenth-century pleasantries or whatever the fuck it is you expect from me. I don’t have brain space to spend making you feel whatever it is you want to feel. If you are cool with me doing a quick job, I need you to follow orders without sass and go buy yourself a fucking snack and entertain yourself until I get back without leaving the café. Do you think you can do that for me?”
The sass had leaked out of her expression by the time he was done with his speech. Cecily’s eyes widened, and then she mumbled, “I can do that for you.”
“Didn’t think it’d be that easy,” he muttered, indicating she needed to start walking toward Bernard’s.
“Sorry, Shane, it should be, shouldn’t it? You deserve more respect than that. I trust you. You’ve earned it from me. Sometimes I forget this isn’t a movie, because I don’t really understand what you and Dex have gotten yourselves into. But this is real, and you’ve got business to attend to. I didn’t mean to be bitchy.” She went straight up the stairs into Bernard’s and got into line, Shane staring after her.
He shook his head and then popped the glove compartment and took out a gun, which he stuck in his waistband. Then he went to the trunk, opened the compartment underneath the wardrobe module, and pushed aside the weapons and the ammunition to grab the duffel bag he’d stowed. All the while, his mind tried to process her words.
Earned it? Respect? An odd sensation swept through him. Sweetness. He was surprised he gave a shit, but there was something really special about having earned even a fragment of fucking-decent-Cecily’s trust or respect. A man made it far enough with Rothgar to be given a room and a job with the Hudson Kings, that man got a certain amount of respect, de facto. Any friend of Rothgar’s, and all that. Not the case with Cecily, and it was with a truly warm feeling inside that Shane confirmed Cecily was in line to get coffee before he popped into the back room to set up a guard for her with Bernard. Bernard would have Cecily’s seat on his video monitor and one of the “baristas” out front keeping tabs firsthand.
He didn’t acknowledge Cecily on the way out, though he could see her through the café window when he looked back. And then he put her out of his mind, because that’s what he always did. He never let anything that was bothering him in real life touch him on a job, and he never broke a sweat.
Shane hoisted the duffel bag on his back and headed across the street to the gym.
The front of the gym was buzzing with action. The serious guys were training in a ring lined with shiny red padding and watched over by posters of current world boxing champions. A bunch of wannabes punched bags along the sides.
The back of the building was another story. You had to walk past a set of offices to get to the old section of the gym. Here, the decor was rotting wood beams, a rusty bench press, and some abandoned exercise bicycles circa eighties Jane Fonda. There was nothing else here except Shane . . . and Shorty plus his merry band of fuckups.
“You need me to repeat it?” Shorty asked, gesturing to the money. The duffel bag Shane had brought was zipped closed on the floor next to a patriotic-looking sports bag opened to reveal Shane’s cli
ent’s money; Shane’s cut was stacked on the bench.
“No. I want you to repeat it,” Shane said. Neutral tone, cold eyes. He figured he got his point across.
“I said, ‘You’re late, and we want a discount.’ That’s why it’s short.”
Shane watched a trickle of sweat slither down the side of Shorty’s nose. He felt his own pulse accelerate as the guy next to him reached down and pulled a knife from somewhere in a pair of voluminous sweatpants. He stared down at his portion of the money, which was definitely short, and raised his hand up to his jaw to scratch his stubble.
The move sent a wave of tension through the room.
“Well,” Shane said, his words light, his jaw tight. “This is highly unprofessional.”
He looked at the guy he was calling Shorty—for at least two reasons—and made a big, slow motion to pull out his phone. Eyes on Shorty, he dialed his Point A and let out a sigh while the phone rang once and the client picked up. “I’m standing here in a room that’s at least ninety degrees with a bunch of amateurs with sweaty hands who are giving me way too many clues about what I just dropped off. I’m seeing things I don’t wanna see and learning things I don’t wanna learn. They don’t have the money packed up and ready, and they’re asking for a discount, claiming I’m late. I had a window, and I’m inside that window. If this is not resolved, you and I have a problem. I don’t want us to have a problem. We’ve been doing happy business for a long time now. We clear?” Shane hung up the phone.
A second later Shorty’s phone rang. “Is that how it works?” he was saying too loud. “Yeah. I feel ya. Yeah . . . oh. No, didn’t do that.”
Shane tried to tune it all out. He pulled his knife from his ankle holster and cleaned a bit of dirt out from his thumbnail. Knowing more than he needed to put him in a bad mood, and there were too many other factors here already putting him in a bad mood. He should have been back with Cecily by now.
“Oh, shit,” Shorty said. “Really? Didn’t know that either.” Shane watched Shorty look around and gesture to a plastic drawstring shopping bag from the Gap sitting with some of the guys’ backpacks and workout bags. Still on the phone, Shorty snapped his fingers and said something Shane again tried really hard to tune out. All of sudden someone was dumping underwear and socks out of the Gap bag and using the bag to stash Shane’s cut of the cash.
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