A fire truck arrived and several firefighters dashed into the building. One met with the group to ask questions. Santiago was able to confirm that there was no one else inside and explained what had happened.
The cooking had gone well. After they had finished and were cleaning up, Lois went home. Santiago hadn’t noticed that one of the younger kids had tossed an apron on the stove where it ignited. The greasy frying pans on the burners made matters worse when one of the other guys tried to douse the fire with water. By the time he could get to the fire extinguisher on the wall, the flames had spread too wide for him to contain the blaze.
Santiago, shaken to the bone, turned to Shane. “I’m so sorry, man.”
“Look, all that matters is that everyone is okay.” Shane blew out a breath. He laid his hand across his chest while he took in huge gasps of air.
As the paperwork was logged, Shane and Audrey stood in their ruined clothes. They used the blanket as best they could to wipe their blackened and sweat-soaked faces, after which Shane called his insurance company.
* * *
After the firefighters finished and Santiago’s parents and aunts and uncles had picked up their kids, it was finally quiet at Feed U. Audrey and Shane were alone in the parking lot, exhausted, filthy and thirsty.
“My apartment isn’t far from here. Do you want to go there and get cleaned up?” he asked her, glassy-eyed and stunned.
“Sure.” She didn’t dawdle to answer.
Shane drove them there quickly and steered the car into his underground garage. They rode the elevator to the nineteenth floor of the modern apartment building. With a swipe of his entry fob, Shane opened the door and let Audrey in.
It was a bachelor pad just as she might have imagined it would be. Minimal man-furniture was contemporary and clean, and did its job of not distracting from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered a city view. The tops of the large hotels on the Strip stood triumphant in the background. Closer in, offices and university buildings were a reminder that Las Vegas was a thriving metropolis.
Shane rushed into his dark kitchen and returned with two waters. They popped the caps and both drank their entire bottle in one go.
“There’s a half bathroom right there.” He pointed to a door off the dining area. “Or do you want to take a shower in the master bath?”
Audrey gulped even though she’d finished drinking her water. The immediacy of the fire and the danger to the kids had triggered an agitated state and her lungs were still pumping faster than normal. But when she thought about entering Shane’s bedroom to get naked in his en-suite shower, her heart thumped at a pace so rapid she was worried it was going to burst through her body and race out the door on its own.
Yet the idea of getting out of the burned clothes and washing her grimy hair and skin sounded too good to pass up, and this was hardly a time to be thinking about her inappropriate attraction to Shane. She decided to brave her hesitation. “A shower would be great.”
Flipping on the bedroom lights, Shane showed Audrey in. Picture windows looked out to the same view as in the living room. “Sorry about the mess.”
It wasn’t much of a mess but she appreciated his awareness. Some clothes were strewn on the floor and over a chair. Magazines, an iPad, stacks of paperwork, empty drinking glasses and a couple of books peppered the nightstands. But the sheets and blankets on the bed looked crisp and clean. She couldn’t help taking pause at the idea that she was inches away from Shane’s bed.
Bed.
Where things besides sleep sometimes happened. For some people. Not her, but some people.
Handing her fresh towels he retrieved from a closet, Shane let her enter the bathroom and then closed the door.
Audrey tossed her ruined clothes into a corner. The heel was broken on one of her shoes and the leather on both was shredded. She stepped into the all-glass shower and blasted the taps. As hot water cascaded down her body, it turned gray and swirled into the drain. She rinsed until the water ran clear and then used the musky-scented soap and shampoo that sat on a shelf.
As the last whoosh of clean water rolled down her, her body quivered at an involuntary memory of Shane sliding against her on St. Thomas. Would she ever be free of that moment? She thought the other night dancing and writhing against him at Big Top nightclub might have eclipsed that split second in the Caribbean, but it hadn’t. Perhaps because that brush in the ocean had come at such a young age, and from someone who had made such a strong impact on her.
Tonight, a decade later and most unpredictably, she and that very same influential person had saved lives together. Saved lives! Perhaps the Las Vegas Fire Department would have arrived in time to free Santiago’s cousins Denise and Celia from the burning kitchen. But she and Shane were able to do it themselves. They got the girls to safety without harm.
Another memory that Audrey would live with for the rest of her life was lifting petrified eight-year-old Celia and carrying her out to the parking lot. Celia had clutched her around the neck with all of her might, the child feverishly hot and screaming for help even though she was already in Audrey’s arms.
Instinct had told Audrey what to do. In that moment, she’d never felt more protective, reliable and capable. Audrey had held the child as if she were her own.
When Audrey stepped out of the shower to dry herself with the fluffy yellow towels Shane had provided, she had one immediate problem. Looking over to the pile of near-ashes that were her clothes, she had nothing to put on. There was no choice but to ask Shane to borrow something.
“Shane,” she called as she opened the bathroom door and stuck her head out. When there was no reply, she yelled louder. “Shane!”
With still no answer, she wrapped one of the towels tightly around her, toed out of the bathroom and across his bedroom.
She found him in the kitchen.
“I’m starved. I thought you might be, too,” Shane said over the sputtering bacon he was flipping in the skillet. He popped slices of bread into the nearby toaster.
Only then did he look up and see that Audrey was dressed in nothing more than a towel. The look on his face was almost that of a cartoon character whose eyes literally boinged out of their head attached by springs. Audrey would have giggled except Shane’s expression swiftly changed to something darker. His eyes slit. His Adam’s apple jumped.
Wet hair draped across her still-dewy shoulders. Her lips parted ever so slightly as their eyes froze for a moment in which what wasn’t said was a lot. Sizzles ran up and down her body, mimicking the sound of the bacon.
“I need to borrow something to wear,” she rasped.
“You certainly do,” he concurred while clearing his throat. “And quick.”
He fought a smile trying to break through.
If she were a different person, she might have let the towel drop to the floor then and there. Done something crazy and impulsive that she would have regretted later. But that wasn’t her. Was it?
“Top drawer of the dresser.” Shane returned her to practicality. “There are T-shirt or sweats. Whatever you think will fit you best.” His eyes dropped to her bare legs.
She turned away and returned to his bedroom, somehow a little disappointed in herself.
All of his sweatpants were impossibly long on her so she settled for a big T-shirt that hung halfway down her thighs. That was greeted with another look-see from Shane that she interpreted as lustful.
As to the matter at hand, Shane laid out a much-appreciated meal of bacon, eggs and toast on square Asian-inspired plates.
“Do you have any jam?” Audrey asked as she took a seat at the dining table.
“Of course. How could I forget, Sugar?”
He fetched her a pot of what looked like homemade jam. “You go ahead and eat. It’s my turn for the shower.”
As welcome as the food tasted, all of Audrey’s
attention was alert to the fact that Shane was taking a shower in the next room.
She recalled that this day had started with Shane’s success in the restaurant kitchen using his grandma’s pots and pans. It then progressed to the casino night with his friends at the MGM before the fire at Feed U. And now to here. It wasn’t just the smoke that made her eyes feel heavy.
“My phone battery died. What time is it?” she asked when he returned wearing a pair of sweatpants that rode low on his hips and a white T-shirt that kept nothing of his muscled torso a mystery.
“It’s 4:00 a.m.”
While Shane ate, they discussed the fire. “We have so many safety checks in place, nothing like that has ever happened in any of our kitchens,” he explained.
“And, of course, you have staff who are trained in emergency procedures,” she agreed and took a sip of the tea he had prepared. “We had a dryer fire in a laundry room once. Certain oils and products the spa uses can be highly flammable. But it was quickly contained and no one was hurt.”
“Kids. I’ll chew the heck out of Santiago later, but I wasn’t going to say anything tonight when he was scared half to death.” Shane chomped on a slice of bacon.
“As well he should have been. I shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn’t got there when we did.”
“Those little munchkins’ faces...” Shane blinked his eyes in distress. “Heartbreaking.”
Audrey forked up the last of her eggs. “You like kids, huh?”
“Hmm. Yeah. I guess I do. I like how they just tell it as it is. And they always see the best in things.”
“Do you think you’ll ever have any of your own?”
Shane filled his cheeks with air like a balloon and then deflated them. “Absolutely not.”
Audrey wasn’t sure why the space between her shoulder blades tightened.
“I couldn’t even be responsible for the safety of a grown woman,” Shane said with a frown. “I sure as heck couldn’t be trusted with the well-being of a munchkin. Look at tonight. Thank heavens none of them were hurt, but I shouldn’t have agreed to let Santiago close up the kitchen.”
“Lois was there until she thought they were done.”
“Doesn’t matter. My kitchen. My problem.” He bit into a piece of toast. “What about you? Little Girards in your future?”
She quickly nodded. “No way. I’d have absolutely no idea what to do with a child.”
“Why do you always talk about kids as if they were a separate species?”
“Do I?”
“And when I took you to cook with them you seemed so uneasy.”
Audrey stuck her knife in the jar of jam and began spreading some on her toast. Tears threatened from behind her eyes. But this was no time to cry. Children’s lives had been at stake tonight. There was no room at the moment for self-pity.
Yet she wanted to confide in Shane.
More than wanted to.
Needed to.
“That’s how my mother made me feel,” she said softly with her focus still on her toast.
“How?”
“You said it exactly right. Like I was a different species.” She put the toast down, suddenly not hungry for it. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. My mother was uncomfortable around kids. Around me.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“She was afraid of me. Because she never understood my needs and didn’t believe she was up to the task of parenting.”
“Didn’t she have anyone around her to help her be a mother? In my big Irish family there were my grandmas and four aunts, and they were all always meddling in each other’s parenting.”
Audrey shook her head. “She cut herself off from everybody.” Her lip trembled. “Depression ran my mom’s life. Alcohol and pills were her only friends.”
“Where was your dad in all of this?”
“He saw what he wanted to see. He had the hotels to run. His response was to make the hotels my home away from home and my playground. And then to teach me the business. Not a bad way to go, under the circumstances.”
Daniel Girard was like a big kid himself. Always optimistic. Assuming the next day would be even better than the last. He probably thought he was sheltering Audrey by letting her grow up around hotel staff who watched over her.
Still, there was nothing to replace a mother’s love. The hole in her heart that nothing would ever fill.
Audrey looked out Shane’s windows overlooking the city. She mashed her lips, attempting to seal in the emotions that were trying to overflow. She’d said enough.
Shane sensed that she was deep in her own pain. He reached a hand over and put it on top of hers. Her head tilted slightly toward him.
“Alright, two people who think they are completely unsuitable to be parents put themselves in danger to protect some children tonight anyway.”
The irony brought a curve to her lips.
Shane shifted his chair closer to her. He moved his thumb across her piece of toast to get a swipe of jam.
“You didn’t taste my jam yet, Sugar. Blackberry.” He brought his thumb close to her mouth, daring her to lick it.
Which she was unable to resist. The fruit was especially sweet from the pad of his fingertip.
He thumbed another smear of jam and spread it across her bottom lip. “I’d like to try it myself,” he said in a low, gravelly voice.
Taking her face in both hands, he pulled her to him. With the tip of his tongue he flicked the jam from the soft pillow of her lip.
“Mmm,” he moaned his approval. The timbre of the sound coursed like an infusion straight through Audrey’s veins. She’d give the world just to hear it once more. Shane obliged by again licking her lip and again moaning with pleasure.
One of his hands moved to the back of her head, threading his fingers through her hair. The other hand remained on her face, caressing her cheekbone.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening again. Kissing him. The episode on top of his car had arisen spontaneously. The sunset had been beautiful and they were curious. But this time they knew better.
Yet the back of Shane’s big hand stroking her cheeks, one then the other, over and over, rendered her utterly powerless to stop him.
He’d enjoyed the jam kiss so much that he spread the purple sweetness on her lips for another. This time his warm tongue made an ever-so-slow circle all the way around her mouth before that sound roiled up from his belly, and then surged through her body. Her lower back arched inward.
In a sudden move, he gathered all of her hair in one hand. With the other, he used a finger to paint a line of jam from behind her ear down to the base of her neck. He made her anticipation build toward the inevitable, leaning over to let his hot breath settle against her tender skin before he gradually licked away his marking.
Then he took her mouth fully, joining it to his. Her lips rose up to him. He kissed her over and over, each meeting delivering more urgency than the one before.
He reached under the table and slid his hand beneath the T-shirt she had borrowed, feeling only bare skin underneath. Audrey gasped. His sure fingers clutched pieces of her. Her thigh. Her hip. All the way up to her waist.
In one fell swoop, he pushed his chair back to lift her into his arms and stood up. Her hands draped around his neck of their own volition, as if they knew they were supposed to go there, knew that was where they belonged.
Fear tried desperately to grip hold of her as he carried her to his bedroom. She shouldn’t do this. It would be a mistake. But if she knew it was wrong, why did she have a box of condoms in her purse that she had bought this morning when she stopped at the store for toothpaste?
Shane sat her down on his bed and slid off the thin T-shirt that had concealed her body. He laid her down and began to explore every inch of her. His curious hands were
closely followed by his mouth, causing tiny pinpoints of sensation to bring her higher and then higher still. Yet he modulated his pace so that she lifted when he wanted her to, carrying her up slowly. When he let her glide free, she flew into the air on a cloud of ecstasy he never wanted her to come down from. Moments later, her earlier purchase was put to good use as their bodies soared together through the dawn skies, where they crested in each other’s arms. Until the sun rose across the desert.
* * *
When the bright morning light hit his eyes, Shane rolled over for the remote control atop his nightstand that lowered the blinds on his bedroom windows. He had only slept for a couple of hours. Exhaustion weighed heavy in his bones. Beside him was glorious Audrey. With her spun-sleek hair and her velvety skin and her luxurious flesh reminding him of the exquisite pleasures they had just shared.
He wanted to wake her up with easy kisses down the entire length of her body. His own solid core let him know that’s exactly what he ached to do.
Yet his brain told him something else entirely.
As he watched exquisite Audrey take in the gentle breaths of peaceful sleep, Shane’s chest thundered with panic and regret.
CHAPTER TEN
CONSTRUCTION WAS NOT yet complete at the back of the hotel, so no one saw Shane drop Audrey off. With her burned and torn clothes now in Shane’s trash can, she was suited up in a ridiculous outfit of his belted overcoat and a pair of his flip-flops that were twice the size of her feet. Key card in hand, she hurried to her bungalow and slipped inside.
Cardboard Shane pinged his tongue against his top lip as she entered. A silly grin broke out on her face as she plopped backward down on the bed. She lifted the collar of Shane’s coat to find a faint smell of him.
Being wrong had never felt this right. Every inch of her body tingled as she recalled snippets of what they had just shared. His strong body entwined with hers in every possible configuration. Taut muscles presenting firm walls for her bonelessness to wrap around. The hypnotism of his kisses that robbed her mind of any past or any future.
Audrey had only been intimate with a couple of men. Both experiences were a long time ago and nothing like the heights she’d just climbed to with Shane. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her that he held more passion in the crook of his finger than most of the people she’d ever met in her life had combined. Lying on her bed in his coat, she swooned.
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