“I’m fine.” Her battle cry for the past hour. She gave him another one of those fake grins she’d given to her sister and Coach. The darkness of the car’s interior obscured her eyes. He desperately wanted to know if she was really okay.
“Let’s just go home,” she said. With a sigh, he started the car. He slid in a jazz CD and Carly once again rested her head against the seatback. She seemed content to just be in the car with him. He was astounded at how well she was taking the events of the past hour. Most women he knew would be hysterical by now, but not Carly. Growing up in a media fishbowl had obviously toughened her up. It was almost as if she were resigned to her fate. The thought made Shane’s gut clench.
Braking for a red light, he looked over at her again. She was still leaning against the headrest, but her eyes were open and she was staring at him.
“Thank you,” she said.
“We’re not there yet. Don’t thank me until you’ve arrived at your door in one piece.”
Her lips curved into a soft smile as she gently shook her head from side to side.
“No. Thank you for earlier. For, you know, dealing with Joel.”
Shane swallowed. God, she made it sound so simple. As if guys tried to force themselves on her and she needed rescuing all the time. His fists clenched more tightly on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.
“Don’t mention it. I have a reputation as a brawler, remember?” he quipped.
Gnawing on her bottom lip, she reached over to lightly caress his right hand where it rested on the steering wheel. He flinched as she grazed a bruised knuckle.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, quickly pulling her hand away. He hadn’t flinched from pain, but he didn’t bother telling her that. This was getting complicated. The sooner he got her home and got the hell away, the better. He needed his familiar safety net of isolation.
“No,” he said as he lifted the bruised hand and flexed it.
“Hank won’t sleep a wink until a trainer looks at it on Monday.”
“It’ll be fine by then. Don’t worry.”
The light turned green and Shane focused his attention back on the road. The only sounds in the car were the purr of the engine and John Legend’s piano. His plans for a quick getaway evaporated as they reached her town house. She hadn’t bothered to leave a light on. Silently, she sat staring at her front door. Shane would be a heel to let her go in alone after the night she’d had. Not to mention the coach would have his balls if he did. Getting out of the car, he walked around to help her out of the passenger side. She didn’t say a word as he reached in the back to take out a foam container. Gently, he guided her up the steps and stood as she unlocked the door. Her hand didn’t shake, which he supposed was a good sign. Turning on lights as he went, he guided her into the house. When he walked into the kitchen, he carefully placed the container on the counter. He turned to find Carly standing directly behind him, one hand still clutching the lapels of his jacket around her neck. She looked calmer, more like herself, here in the light of her kitchen. Definitely a good sign.
“What’s in there?” she asked, gesturing to the container.
“Ahh,” he said, pleased with himself. “Dessert to go.” He opened the container to reveal a perfect slice of chocolate mousse cheesecake, complete with whipped cream and a raspberry on top. Carly’s face lit up. A man can never go wrong giving a woman chocolate.
“Where did you get that?”
“I had the waiter box up your piece while I was getting the car. You seemed so excited about the dessert when you were talking with your nieces; I didn’t want you to miss it.” Shane also wanted to erase the look of vulnerability he’d seen on her face when he’d come upon Joel mauling her in the hallway. He was still coming to terms with the scene himself, and he could only imagine how Carly felt. No woman should ever have to go through what she’d endured earlier. Shane didn’t regret punching the little prick. He’d have done it for any woman. The fact that it had been Carly getting attacked hadn’t made his reaction any more intense. At least that was what he was telling himself.
“You didn’t bring yourself a piece?” she asked. “I suppose I could be persuaded to share. After all, you did beat up a guy for me earlier.” He absently rubbed at his chest in reaction to the pleasure flickering in her eyes. Despite everything that had happened this evening, the attraction between them still hummed. Common sense dictated that he leave her safely tucked away in her home with her dessert and get the hell out of Dodge.
“In that case, bring on the forks.” Apparently, he’d left his common sense out in the car. Taking a seat on the bar stool at the end of the counter, he watched as she bustled around the kitchen, transferring the cake to a plate and grabbing two forks. She pulled two mugs from a cabinet.
“Would you like some coffee? It’s decaf.”
Hell no! He needed a stiff drink after the night he’d had. “Sure,” he said instead.
She filled the carafe and turned on the brewer, then reached into the freezer and pulled out an ice pack.
“Here, put this on your hand. I’m just going to clean up a little while the coffee brews.” She slipped out of his jacket and laid it carefully on the other bar stool. Shane’s breath hissed as he saw the mark Tompkins had left on her neck. She followed his gaze and reached up to rub the spot.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “Lisa must have put a whole tube of antibiotic cream on it.” She disappeared upstairs somewhere as Shane unclipped his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves. As he looked around for a TV remote, he put the ice pack on his battered hand. Although given the way his body was reacting to Carly, he’d be smart to put it somewhere else. Of course, if Shane were really smart, he wouldn’t be sitting in her kitchen.
* * *
Carly brushed her teeth for a full five minutes. Lisa had cleaned and disinfected the bruise Joel left on her neck while they were waiting for the police. But now Carly needed to get the taste of him out of her mouth. She really should take a shower and crawl into bed, but Lisa had been right, Carly didn’t want to be alone. Shane Devlin was the last person she should be alone with, but her family was still at the gala. Certainly she could have a cup of coffee with the man without losing her head. Unclipping her hair, she brushed it out, removing the heavy sapphire dangle earrings as she went. She decided to leave the dress on. Shane was still in his tux, after all.
Shane had no trouble locating the remote to her TV and was watching SportsCenter when she came downstairs. When he saw her, he changed the channel to the cable company’s jazz station. Pouring them each a cup of coffee, she took a seat on the opposite bar stool.
“Well, at least he didn’t tear your dress,” Shane said out of nowhere.
“Ohmigod! Can you imagine?” Carly laughed as she stirred cream and sugar into her mug. “Julianne would hunt him down and castrate him if he had!”
Shane chuckled as he took a sip of his coffee.
“How’d you and Julianne meet anyway?” he asked.
“Boarding school,” she said wistfully. “Molly likes to think it was a scene out of The Parent Trap, but nothing could be further from the truth. The headmistress put us together because we had both lived mostly in Europe—Julianne’s father is an ambassador—and we’d both recently lost our mothers. Aside from that, though, we had nothing in common. She is artistic—which is a polite way of saying she’s a bit of a slob to share a room with. And she was the ultimate party girl in school. She knew everyone on campus and they all loved her. I, on the other hand, just wanted to bury my nose in a book and have everyone ignore me. I’d been homeschooled by my mom as we traveled around for her work, and boarding school was my first real exposure to the whole school experience.” Carly took a sip of her coffee, her mind drifting back through the years.
“Julianne is a force of nature,” she said with a grin. “She wasn’t going to let me hide out in our d
orm room. The other girls weren’t as friendly, really cliquey. I was kind of the odd girl out with a very different life experience. The other girls weren’t quite sure what to do with me and I didn’t really have the social skills to stand up for myself. Julianne took me under her wing. I think I was her first pet project. She didn’t care about what the other girls said about it. That’s when I realized that Julianne was her own person and always would be. I’ve been devoted to her ever since.”
“Your friend was speaking Italian in Cabo. One of the bartenders at the resort claimed she was from a mob family. Was he telling the truth?” he asked, a little in awe.
“No.” She laughed. “Her brother is a U.S. senator! I think Julianne secretly wished she was a Mafia princess. Her way of dealing with her mother’s death was to create a whole fantasy life. It’s what makes her such a fabulous designer today.”
Carly looked up from her coffee at Shane. His eyes were dark and contemplative. She almost asked him how he had dealt with his own mother’s death, but given his track record of avoiding all conversations involving his family, she decided against it.
“It helped that we both bonded against our evil stepmothers. Her father remarried a twenty-seven-year-old flight attendant from Brazil. She’s only a year younger than Julianne’s brother. Can you imagine?” she asked.
“Is she hot?” Shane asked, a lopsided grin on his face. Carly rolled her eyes at him.
“Of course!” She laughed. “Why else would we hate her?”
“Hugh and your stepmother aren’t hard to hate, either,” he said. His face had hardened again.
“Yeah, well, you can’t really blame them.” It had become second nature to Carly to defend them. “They weren’t exactly looking for another kid. They’ve mostly let me be.”
Shane shook his head and huffed.
“What about your dad?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject. “Do you see him much?”
He stiffened in the chair. When he raised his eyes to her, they were black as night. Too late, she realized that her attempt to change the subject had only increased Shane’s ire.
“No,” he said. Draining his coffee, he set the mug down on the counter with a thump. “He’s not a part of my life and I’m not a part of his.”
“Why?” She regretted asking as soon as the word left her mouth. This wasn’t a safe topic. She could feel it.
Abruptly standing, he paced a circle around her small living room, running his hands through his hair as he walked. When he turned to her, his face was taut with strain. He seemed to be debating something with himself. But then he spoke, his voice soft but lethal.
“The other day, you asked me if I had a problem with my dad.”
It was a statement, but Carly heard the question implied within. She tried to swallow, her mouth becoming suddenly dry, not sure whether she should let this conversation continue. Her curiosity got the better of her, though, and she nodded.
Shane let out a brief snort. “The Bruce Devlin the media portrays is a fake. The real-life version is a rotten SOB who abandoned his family when they needed him the most.” He paused to run another hand through his hair. When he spoke again, his eyes looked everywhere but at her. “My dad tried to escape the only career option open to him. He didn’t want to spend his life as a coal miner. So he worked hard at the one thing he knew. He threw a ball.”
Carly’s body tensed as Shane spoke. She knew he and his father weren’t close, but the vehemence in his voice was a bit startling. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the reasons Shane obviously hated his father.
“I’m not sure how,” he continued. “Luck, I guess, but he got a scholarship at a small university. It was an hour away from where he grew up, but to him it may as well have been a continent away. He was the big man on campus from the day he arrived. The dean of the school worked the media like a Madison Avenue professional to get attention for my father and the school. If they only knew what he would turn into.”
Carly stifled a shiver at the force of his words. She was familiar with Bruce Devlin’s story, having read the synopsis of the elder Devlin’s best-selling biography when the team was considering signing Shane. Clasping her hands in her lap and waiting for rest of the story to unfold, she knew Shane’s version of events would differ from the book.
Shane’s voice was a flat monotone as he continued. “When my dad knocked up a local townie, the dean was the one holding the shotgun at the wedding. My dad had enough sense to do what was asked. He knew football was his only means of escaping the life of all the Devlins before him.”
As he began to pace again, Carly’s hands gripped the seat of the bar stool.
“He married my mother, but that was it. They were like two kids playing house when I was born. He won the Heisman, got drafted in the top three picks, and promptly set my mom and me up in a house in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I’m not even sure he ever lived with us. He showed up for photo spreads and Christmas card pictures, but not much else. He was just going through the motions with us.”
Shane looked at her then. She opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Her heart ached for the little boy Shane had been. It was a childhood she could easily relate to.
“Yeah, I know what you are thinking,” he said, his tone clipped and bitter. “He was just a kid. But so was I. So was my mother.” His voice softened as he spoke of her. “She was great. She took me everywhere. She did everything with me. When I started school, I think it broke her heart to have me gone all day. Of course, this was around the time my dad blew out his shoulder. Instead of coming home, he began the drinking and the drugs. My mother got sick when I was in the second grade. She suffered through two years of chemo while my father boozed and snorted his way around the country feeling sorry for himself. He showed up a couple of weeks before she died.”
“He seems to have gotten his life back on track now,” Carly said softly. Shane whirled on her, his eyes angrier than Joel’s had been earlier. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel the same fear. Reining in his temper, he stared at her. Briefly, she glimpsed the vulnerable boy he’d once been, but then he tamped down the emotion.
“Yeah. Like your friend’s father, he went and got himself a trophy wife and a new family.” He didn’t bother to keep the bitterness from his voice.
“Don’t you ever see your half brother?” she asked. Carly couldn’t imagine not having Lisa in her life.
“No,” he all but sneered at her. “They keep the good child away from the bad seed.”
“Oh, Shane,” Carly said as she stood and walked over to him. She stopped inches from him, the tension rolling off his body in waves. Not trusting herself to keep from touching him, she wrapped her arms around her middle. They stood like that, toe to toe, staring at one another for several minutes before Shane closed his eyes, seemingly fighting his own inner battles.
“You know what I think, Shane Devlin?” she whispered. A muscle twitched on the side of his mouth as he opened his steely eyes. “I think the bad-boy persona you’ve cultivated all these years is just a ruse. A way to get back at your dad for hurting you. You’d like everyone to think you’re a selfish jerk, but I know for a fact you’re not.”
His eyes hardened at her words and Shane stepped around her to pace her small living room.
“Wow, Carly,” he tossed over his shoulder. “You’ve been reading your sister’s psychoanalysis books. That’s quite a diagnosis.”
Lisa would have a field day psychoanalyzing Shane, Carly thought as she turned to watch him pace. But she wasn’t being fair. She hated when her sister analyzed her. Although something told her peeling back Shane Devlin’s layers would be a much tougher challenge for Lisa.
Carly wanted to say she was sorry. Sorry for what he had gone through. Sorry for bringing the subject up. But she knew how empty the words would sound. She’d heard them too many times in reference to her ow
n life. So she tried to steer the conversation back to lighter waters.
“Well,” she said, clearing the coffee mugs. “Your story earns you sympathy, but you won’t get the big box of tissues until it’s been played out on the big screen and on cable every week.”
Shane stood in the center of the room, hands on his hips. She’d startled him, she knew, but after a few seconds, he shook his head and laughed. The sound resonated throughout the small area. Carly crossed her arms under her breasts and stared at him. The action seemed to startle him more. He slowly walked over to her, the hunger returning to his eyes. Her breath hitched. He glanced down at the cheesecake on the counter beside her and a slow grin spread over his face.
“I go to all the trouble to snare you your favorite dessert and you haven’t even touched it.” He shook his head at her as he sat on the bar stool and speared a piece of the cheesecake with a fork.
Carly’s mouth went dry again. Shane was waving the fork in front of her face until she had no choice but to open. The dessert tasted like sawdust, but the whipped cream was cool to her hot lips. She licked some off her lower lip. Shane swallowed. His knuckles were white where he gripped the fork. Reverently, he closed his eyes.
“Dammit, Carly,” he whispered. “I’m so tired of avoiding this.”
She took a step closer and stood between his knees, gently placing a hand on each of his hard thighs. His eyes shot open.
“So am I.” It was as if another woman had taken over her body. Carly knew she should not be getting involved with Shane, but she didn’t care anymore. He was right; she was tired of avoiding the incredible pull between them, too.
He put his hands on her waist, his thumbs reverently caressing her hip bones.
“Maybe”—his breath fanned her ear as she swayed into him—“we should just go ahead and get it out of our systems. Then we can move on to being . . .”
“Friendly coworkers?” she finished for him, her lips tracing his jaw.
Game On (AN OUT OF BOUNDS NOVEL) Page 11
