“I'm sorry. Are you busy?” she asked and he could hear that she was just as nervous as he was.
“No,” he answered, willing himself to relax. “I'm at work but I can talk.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, trailing off. He could hear the street rumble in the background of her call. He imagined her standing on a street corner in an expensive dark suit and heels, wearing a thin blouse that showed off just enough cleavage to give a man ideas. She was probably about to rush off somewhere, maybe to meet a client. He dropped his head back to rest on his chair as his fantasy unravelled. He liked thinking of her like that. Powerful. Important. Beautiful. That was how he liked his women. “I got tired of waiting for you to call,” she said, and he could hear a smile in her voice as well as a little bit of a challenge.
“Did I wait too long?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.
“I think twenty-four to forty-eight hours is acceptable,” she said. “Anything longer than that is just mean.”
“Mean? I'd never be mean to you,” he said, feeling himself loosening up a bit. “Unless you wanted me to be.”
“Unless I...?” she trailed off and laughed. “Well, since you're giving me a choice, I'd have to say no. I don't want you to be mean. I'd much rather you be nice.”
“I can be nice,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and he wondered what her face looked like at that moment. He wondered if she was getting as cautiously excited as he was. It usually wasn't easy for him to talk to a woman like this. Yet, there was something about Leah that made him feel comfortable and relaxed. He liked it. He liked it a lot. “So ask me out,” she continued and his heart squeezed in his chest again.
“What are you doing Friday night?” he said, without thinking.
“I think I'm free,” she said, not bothering to play coy.
“How does dinner sound?”
“It sounds like a date,” she said and he let out the breath he'd been holding. He wasn't completely out of the woods, but it seemed like Leah liked him. She wanted to have dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner with her, too. He was actually looking forward to it. It was strange, but he wasn't going to question it. Too many strange things had been happening to him lately. He didn't want to dwell on why, all of a sudden, the universe had started paying attention to him. Despite the odd timing, he was optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, but optimistic all the same. All he knew was that he finally had a shot. A shot at normalcy, a shot at happiness and, also, a shot at good sex. He had no intentions of blowing it. There were so many ways of it going bad, but he was going to do everything in his power to make it go well.
There was no way in hell he was going to fuck this up.
Chapter Six
Shay was antsy.
All day at work she could scarcely sit still. She kept feeling like any minute, Tate Grayson and a horde of cops was going to bust in the door at the salon with a warrant and arrest her for harassment or some other trumped up charge. Even as the day came to a close and nothing out of the ordinary had happened, she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. She left Gina behind at the shop around six o'clock and headed home, taking the long way despite the chill in the air. She tucked her scarf tightly around her neck and shoved her gloved hands in her pockets as she turned down a quiet side-street. 125th was too loud and noisy at that time of night. She needed a minute of peace and quiet to try and clear her head. Well, honestly, she needed more than a minute, but the walk home was all she was going to get.
She knew that she should give up on her slight obsession with Tate Grayson. There was nothing to be accomplished by internet stalking him and finding out what precinct he worked at or what criminals he'd investigated and put away. She'd found out about House of Pain purely by accident. Otherwise, she might never have come face to face with him at all.
A confrontation in the middle of Harlem was not what she wanted. She would avoid him on the street, she told herself. The neighborhood was her only real comfort zone, but even it had grown unfamiliar in her absence. As she walked past a row of freshly rehabilitated brownstones, she couldn't help but glance in the windows. The warm light emanating from them was too alluring. Some of the windows looked into empty rooms, but at the last brownstone, she could see a white family inside, sitting down to dinner. The kids probably went to a private school, Shay mused. The parents probably had fancy jobs in Midtown. It looked like a damn ad for Better Homes and Gardens, she thought as she forced herself to look away.
But she wasn't bitter. Well, she didn't want to be bitter. She wondered if she would ever get over the shit that had happened to her. She wondered if she would ever be able to move on and start her life. Harlem was changing, block by block, for better or for worse, but she was still stuck in the past.
Maybe she was just a coward.
She'd gone to House of Pain to see Tate in his natural habitat. She'd gone because she couldn't stay away. When it came down to it, she supposed she was more than a little obsessed. The sad reality was that there was nothing else really going on in her life. Andre, the cute delivery guy, came in and flirted once in awhile, but otherwise, there were no romantic prospects on her radar. She didn't even know if she wanted to open that can of worms yet. She was an emotional bomb about to go off. She didn't want to scare off any potential mate by revealing how much of a mess she really was. She put on a cheerful face most of the time, but on nights like this, she felt it deep in her bones.
She wasn't happy.
She turned another corner and hurried her pace. The cold was starting to get to her. And she was hungry. Her mind drifted to the cake she'd baked a few days before. Baking it had calmed her down and made her feel better. The next morning, she'd wrapped it up and brought it to work, and watching Gina and the other people at the shop devour it made her feel even better. Even though it wasn't perfect, it was still hers. She'd made it. She didn't have much to be proud of in her life, but she was oddly proud of that cake.
It hadn't been anything special. She hadn't even decorated it because she didn't know how. She supposed she was going to have to go out and buy some decent pans and maybe a piping bag if she was going to learn. It sounded silly, but baking the cake had been the only thing that had made her feel at home in all the time since she'd been released. She'd been alone in Gina's tiny-ass kitchen, but she'd been relaxed. Satisfied, even. The feeling was so fleeting that Shay didn't question it. She just wanted it back.
A sharp cracking sound, not unlike a gunshot, surprised Shay out of her thoughts. The people on the sidewalk around her didn't dive for cover, so she didn't either. She just glanced up at the street, looking for the source of the sound. An old car was driving down the road and as it came closer, Shay recognized it immediately. She knew old cars like she knew old friends. From the day of her birth, her father had hammered car facts into her brain. Cars were Sam Spears's lifelong obsession. Knowing tons of inane facts about cars and being able to spout them on command had endeared her to him. She'd been a little girl who loved her daddy and wanted to please him. So if he was obsessed with cars, she was obsessed, too.
Narrowing her eyes as the car passed to avoid the glare of the headlights, Shay could see it was a light blue '64 Chevy Impala. It passed under the street light and she noticed that it had still had its original bumper and taillights. It was in mint condition, but it'd been painted recently, she could tell that much. She cocked her head, a heavy feeling dropping into her stomach. All hunger faded and her mouth went dry. The car was rare. Very rare. The parts were expensive. It was the kind of car her father would drool over.
It felt like a sign.
Now, normally, Shay didn't put much stock in signs. But it was too much of a coincidence. She'd taken a different route home and she'd been thinking about Tate Grayson and suddenly a car like that had appeared out of nowhere? Suddenly, she didn't feel like going home to stew in her emotions. Without thinking, she looked both ways to avoid traffic and then hurried across the street, heading in the o
pposite direction of Gina's apartment. It was probably crazy, but she didn't care. Her mind was already elsewhere.
She was going to go play with fire, like the little troublemaker she'd always been.
***
House of Pain was the same as it always was when Tate walked in the door that night after his shift. It always smelled the same and looked the same. The same people were usually hanging around. Mikhail was by the free weights. Hector was probably up in the office. Big Sid and Little Sid were in the ring, trading punches. It was like time stopped in the gym everyday at 8:00 p.m. The daily repetition and routine were easy to take for granted.
They'd all learned that the hard way a few months back, when Gennifer had suffered a stroke after the Bout It competition. The thought of losing her had hit everyone like a punch to the gut. It was almost impossible to imagine the place without a member of the family. The big old gym was Big J's pride and joy. It was the place where almost all the kids he and Maria fostered came to learn discipline and self-respect and love. Tate had learned to love himself and his new family within the walls of House of Pain. He sure as hell didn't take that for granted, not one bit.
Which is why it pissed him off all over again to see Shay Spears standing with Erica beside the ring, watching Little Sid throw jabs. He told himself to ignore her. He had other shit to worry about. So he threw his stuff in a locker and got to work. He nodded to Mikhail as he stepped out on the floor but Austin wasn't there yet, so he started his workout alone. He told himself to focus on the speed bag in front of him as he pummeled it over and over again, but the truth, his mind was on the purple-haired girl across the room. She hadn't looked at him once, even when he walked in the door. She was still playing a game with him and it pissed him off even more to know that she was somehow winning.
When he was dripping with sweat and his muscles were crying out for a break, he finally dropped his arms and took a step back from the bag. He dragged his towel across his brow and couldn't help but steal a look at the girls standing by the ring. Erica and Shay were chatting like old friends, but the fact was that Erica barely knew the girl. Shay was a goddamn ex-con and a stalker and, quite possibly, crazy, but they were laughing and talking like they'd known each other forever. Well, Shay wasn't smiling as wide, at least. She looked distracted. Her eyes kept darting to the mirror, like her attention was elsewhere. He had a feeling her mind was just as much on him as his mind was on her. He tossed the towel over his shoulder and grabbed his water off the floor. He took a small swig and swished the water around in his mouth as he secretly studied her.
He didn't know why, but she was definitely wearing one of Gennifer's old Rutger's T-shirts. He would recognize them a mile away. Gennifer had a ton of them. They'd all seen better days and they were all ripped and tattered. This one had the bottom hem cut off. With every movement Shay made, it rose up a bit, exposing a slash of brown skin above the waistband of her plain black yoga pants. He ran his eyes down the length of her, not able to resist. She wasn't much more than 5' 6'', he guessed, but her long legs made her look taller. He tried to ignore her ass, but it was difficult. It was round, like her hips, and he could still remember how it felt pressed up against him in the ring. It had been distracting then, and it was distracting now, even from across the room.
He remembered that when she was younger, she'd carried a bit more weight on her. She'd been cute then, but she'd reminded him of his younger sisters. There was nothing cute about her now, except for her purple Converse sneakers. No, now she was different. She looked like she was out for blood. He barely knew her, but the one thing he did know was that she was stubborn and she was angry. Her whole life had been one drama after another and now she was trying to bring some of that shit into his life. But he wasn't going to let her.
Slinging his towel over his shoulder, he decided he was done playing her game. He strolled over to the ring, taking his time because he had to figure out what he was going to say. He was going to confront her, that was a given. But first he had to know what he was going to say. He didn't want to be intimidating or show how pissed off he really was, but he wanted to be firm. He wanted her to know that she wasn't welcome. No matter what Gennifer or Erica said, she wasn't welcome, dammit. As he neared the two women at the side of the ring, Shay turned her face and caught his eye. The smile on her lips faded.
Good.
The bad thing was he found himself staring at her lips, which were tinted a distractingly bright shade of pink that contrasted in a strangely attractive way with her brown skin. Her lips were the one thing that hadn't changed in all those years—they were still plump, still too bright, and still too distracting. Forcing himself to look away, he glanced up at the ring. Big Sid and his grandson were climbing down off the ropes and hopping down on the mats below, apparently finished with their training for the evening. He gave a nod to Big Sid, who answered in kind. They were both men of few words, but he'd known the older man ever since he was a teenager. Back then, before he began training his grandson, Big Sid trained Hector and Tate. Everybody at Big Jim's went way back, except for the sly fox that was currently invading the gym and his sanity.
“Hey Tate, what's up?” Erica said brightly as he reached the two women, running her hand through her red curls in a subconsciously flirtatious way. Erica was always like that, too friendly and too loud. Gennifer and Hector had a soft spot for her, but Tate had always found her a bit too trusting and open. Too naïve, maybe. Shay stood beside her, and it struck him then how she was Erica's complete opposite. Shorter and less forward than Erica, but more knowing and observant. Her presence felt so much darker and stronger. As a cop, it was his job to pay attention to the way people carried themselves and what they projected. Some people might scoff at the idea of auras and all that hippy-dippy shit, but Tate was a firm believer in them. Even though Shay hadn't yet said a thing, her presence was so damn undeniable. She was like a magnet, sucking up all the energy in the room.
“Not much,” he mumbled in response to Erica's greeting, then turned back to Shay. She was eyeing him warily and he didn't blame her. “What's your name again?” he said, playing dumb. She narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Shay,” she said, smiling slightly and pretending to be friendly even though everything about her posture yelled the exact opposite. He was sure it probably fooled Erica, but it in no way fooled him.
“You were in Gennifer's class last night. You did well,” he said, not completely lying. Once she'd gotten over her initial hesitation, she'd gone at him like a pit-bull. If he didn't dislike her so much, he might actually be able to summon up some admiration for her aggressiveness.
“She almost got you a few times,” Erica pointed out with a laugh. Shay's smile widened.
“I did, didn't I?” Shay said, flicking her eyes down to his chest and then back up to his face. His T-shirt was wet with sweat and sticking to his chest and all of a sudden, he was extremely self-conscious of it. He rolled his shoulders before he could stop himself.
“Ring's empty,” he said, nodding toward the ring. “I can show you some moves if you want.” As soon as the words left his lips, Erica's face lit up and her eyes went wide. Shay, however, looked less than pleased. Her brow furrowed a bit and she lost her smile.
“Why?” she asked, her suspicion hard to hide.
“This is a boxing gym,” he said, keeping his face as blank as possible. He didn't want to know his real reason for wanting to get her alone. “Everybody in here has to at least learn the basics.”
“If I want to learn the basics, I can watch other people do it,” Shay said after a minute. “I just watched that kid hop around in there, I think I have the general idea.”
“You learn by doing,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and staring her right in the eye. It was like a challenge. She was either going to get in the damn ring or she was going to get out of House of Pain. It was that simple. She narrowed her eyes again and he knew she got exactly what he was trying to say.
&
nbsp; “He's right, you know,” Erica was saying. “There's nothing like getting in the ring yourself.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Erica glance between the two of them, her smile drooping a bit as she sensed the mood had shifted. “But if you want to wait for Gennifer, I'm sure she'll be here soon,” Erica continued, unsure.
“No,” Shay said, her big smile returning just as suddenly as it had disappeared. “I'd be stupid to turn down such a generous offer,” she said with a low, slightly husky laugh that sent a shiver down his spine. He knew it was fake, all for show, but damn if it didn't sound a little dirty. He was imagining things again, he told himself. He was thinking with his dick again, like a horny idiot. Shaking it off, he nodded.
“Damn right,” he said. Erica let out a sigh of relief as the tension around them ebbed and disappeared. Shay dropped her eyes again and flipped her colorful ponytail over her shoulder. The modest engagement ring on her finger flashed under the bight fluorescent lights above. He stared at the ring for a second longer than he should have, wondering what man had put it there. And where the hell was he now?
“What did you say your name was again?” Shay said, breaking his concentration. She was playing with him again, but she was looking up at him from under her thick black eyelashes and for a second she almost seemed innocent. But he wasn't fooled.
“Tate,” he said simply.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand. Her nails were still long and colorful. And they were still distracting as hell. He took her hand and was taken a bit off guard when she squeezed it hard and shook it. He didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. Then she held up her hand and wagged her fingers, like she knew just how much her nails bothered him. “I'm not going to break a nail, am I?” she said, and coming from someone else, it might have sounded like she was a damsel in distress type, pretending to be weak to catch a little sympathy. But coming from her, it sounded like a challenge. He felt a sharp pang, like a pinprick of warning, between his shoulder-blades. Being around Shay Spears had that effect on him, he was beginning to realize.
Spitfire Suckerpunch (House of Pain Book 2) Page 8
