CHAPTER 6
I do not trust myself not to touch her.
I mean, of course, I’m not gonna touch her. I just . . .
Shit. If Shane were being smart, he’d go down to the bar, pick up a bored businessman’s wife, and bang her in the elevator on the way back upstairs.
But Shane was not doing that at the present moment, and it wasn’t just because the Hudson Kings’ Russian problem was lurking somewhere over his shoulder. He couldn’t take his mind off Cecily, sure as hell not while she was behind the door taking a shower.
He had to force himself to focus long enough to install devices on the front door and the windows that would alert him if someone tried to enter. Then he’d called room service and ordered steak for himself, chicken for her, plus a bottle of bourbon more his style and two bottles of wine to go with dinner—one merlot and one chardonnay since he didn’t know her tastes.
The hard liquor had arrived separately. Two cheeseburgers more than two hours ago were nothing against a whole lot of suppressed lust, driving fatigue, and a generous swallow of bourbon. Shane’s thoughts were beginning to spiral out of control. Never leave your glove box unlocked, he thought idly. If he was being honest, he’d have to admit that he’d somehow managed to do just that.
Now, he sat in a chair across the room from the bed upon which Cecily sat wrapped in a hotel robe after washing a man out of her hair with some kind of epically fantastic orange-scented shampoo, and the most coherent thought he could keep in his head was: Not. Gonna. Touch. Her. That said, if she wanted to reach her suitcase for some clothes, she’d have to step over his outstretched legs, and yet he didn’t so much as uncross his ankles.
She was probably naked under the swamp of white cotton, and in order to give him something to do besides stare and think way dirtier than he had any right to, he poured a second drink. Tasted awesome, but “Not. Gonna.” was quickly losing half its staying power; if dinner didn’t come soon, he might just forget about the “not” and be left with the “gonna.”
She smells like an orange. Never gonna look at an orange the same way ever again. I had an orange right now, I’ma take that orange. Gonna caress that orange, roll it between my hands. I’m going to peel that MOTHERFUCKING ORANGE and suck each and every part of it until her juice is running off my tongue and down my chin, and I can smell her scent all over me for days. I’m gonna—
“Shane?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re staring into space.”
Trust me, I’m not staring into space.
“Maybe you should eat some crackers or something out of the minibar,” she was saying. “Are you light-headed?”
“Just a long day, kid. Dinner’ll be here soon.”
Her expression told him he’d gotten his message out. “Kid.” Good as armor.
Fuck me, I shoulda gone outside; I shoulda got a suite with a door. I shoulda taken some precaution, whatever the hell that would have been. Shane had convinced himself that he was still here, in this room, this close to her and a bed, because he was maintaining the chain of custody; you don’t leave your delivery somewhere you can’t keep eyes on it. And you sure as hell don’t leave your delivery out in the open when you know that what she’s just been through ain’t over. Hence, the “there are no rooms with doubles left” lie—and a request for a view of the hotel’s driveway—down at the concierge.
And again, there was Dex, counting on Shane to do the right thing. “Handle with care,” he’d said. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.
From the little Dex had to say about Cecily’s opinion of James, it sounded like fold, spindle, and mutilate was the guy’s specialty, mostly directed at her mind unless she was lying about that bruise being the first time.
But it was what little Dex had to say about Cecily’s opinion of Shane that he couldn’t get out of his mind: “I can tell she feels safe with you.”
Here. With me. Well, she shouldn’t. He leaned back in the dark, while she sat under the halo of a reading lamp. She wouldn’t be able to see all of him, but he could get his fill of the wide blue eyes, the dripping wet hair and the pile of white fluff framing that heart-shaped face, all working overtime to make his dick twitch.
And that was just the surface shit. There’d been this moment, as he was coming toward her at the gas station that first time, sunglasses lowered, about to introduce himself. She’d looked him square in the eyes just before hauling ass backward, and something about her hit him in the gut. Something with a name he was still searching for.
Seeing she was what you’d call petite and seeing as how most hotel robes were made for “average” people, the fabric engulfed her. Without a single inch of skin showing beneath the neck, she was the sexiest thing Shane had ever seen in his life.
He’d had a lot of time and practice fostering a great imagination. Guy like him, people might think he didn’t have it in him to be creative, but idling on an LA freeway in ninety-degree heat, he could stay calm for hours just imagining being someone else in another life on a sunny day.
And right now, from the chair in the corner, he was imagining yards of naked Cecily under the white fluff while forcing himself to look completely impassive.
Apparently, she’d just asked a question. “What?” Shane mumbled.
She bit her lip, clearly fighting annoyance. Her gaze shifted from the bourbon bottle he was gripping like a stick shift to his face, which he knew she couldn’t see clearly. She’s worried I’m gonna get drunk, and I won’t be able to fill her in. And frankly, that’s a brilliant idea. Wish I could get shitfaced right now.
“I said I think room service is here. I’ll throw some clothes on,” she said, clutching the robe together at chest level as she headed resolutely for the closet and stepped over his legs. Shane did not help her lug the suitcase to the bathroom; room service got only half his attention while he noted how Cecily’s commitment to modesty at her neckline with her one free hand resulted in a nice lack of attention to covering the legs and thighs.
Room service was tipped and gone by the time Cecily got back. She was dressed in sweatpants and a tiny pink T-shirt with a glittering red heart in the middle. You’ve got to be kidding me. How is it possible to be so fucking adorable and so fucking sexy at the same time?
“Smells delicious. Thank you, Shane,” she said, a little shy all of a sudden. “This is all really generous.”
Shane gave a dismissive nod and was about to just pull over his warming tray of steak and tuck in, but Cecily was suddenly taking over, making sure he had a napkin, pouring two waters, removing the food from the trays, and reorganizing it on the plates he would have ignored.
He was starving, but he sat back, watching her do quiet, simple things, feeling an unfamiliar warmth spread across his chest. How could a man have this and put a hand to her? How could a man have this and make her cry? With this one girl, that guy could have had Friday-night sexy as all hell and Sunday-night chicken dinner happy.
With this one girl.
“Shane?” She was staring at him staring at her, holding out the breadbasket.
Shane shook himself out of his thoughts and grabbed the closest roll. “Trying to guess if you were merlot or chardonnay.”
“I know you’re not supposed to with chicken, but merlot, please.”
“You like what you like,” Shane said softly, picking up the merlot and the corkscrew.
Her eyes widened for a second, and she ducked her head down as she laid out the silverware in parallel lines, one set for each of them. “Why didn’t you want room service to come in and set up?” she asked, now serving out some salad while he poured her wine.
“Habit.” Shane watched her move around him, unaccustomed to sitting back and letting someone else take charge, do something nice for him. “Don’t like people looking around at my kit.” He indicated his bags. “Always aware of being on a job.”
“Do you have anything unusual in there?” Cecily asked.
“No,” he said, deadpan. “The unusual stuff is all in the trunk.”
Cecily’s eyes moved sharply back toward him, and a gruff chuckle came out of Shane’s mouth.
She laughed too, but then killed the moment by asking, “Speaking of the job, Dex said you’d fill me in.”
“I shouldn’t be the one filling you in. How much you need to know is Dex’s business.” He knew he sounded as exasperated as he felt.
“But he told you to fill me in, right?”
Shane didn’t like the answer so he didn’t give one. Which Cecily interpreted as a “go” sign. “First, how did you meet my brother?” she asked.
“Met on a freelance job. Found we had compatible skills and didn’t irritate the fuck outta each other. Now we’re both specialists for Rothgar, the man who runs the Hudson Kings. Our team is former military, former gang, former white-collar badass, wherever, whatever, from all over the place. High-class, low-class, good with ideas, good with plans, good with hands . . . I guess you could say that he recruited the best, and the men who answered that call were looking for something. And though I don’t know all the stories myself, and it sure as shit isn’t my place to tell you, I would guess that Rothgar demonstrated that he could give them something they were missing. Either stopped them from walking alone into darkness, lent a hand at a critical time, or, maybe, just something that would seem small to the outside world, like keeping a promise.”
Finally, finally, he looked right at Cecily. “That’s why he commands the respect he does. The loyalty. That’s why we’re a brotherhood, though we don’t share blood.”
She nodded slowly. He figured she was trying to guess what Rothgar offered to him that he needed so badly. He had no plans to share that with her.
“Your specialty is . . . cars.”
“In a nutshell.”
“My brother?”
“Dex is the team’s hacker.”
Cecily bit her lip. “You mean programmer.”
“I mean hacker.”
She took a deep breath. “And Roth—”
“The guy who keeps everything from falling apart.”
“No, really. What does he do?”
You know plenty. “Like I said, he’s the glue. You’ll meet him.”
Cecily paused, then tried again. “What other specialists do you work with?”
“We have a money guy. A demolitions expert. That kind of thing. Others.”
“The bomb thing wasn’t a joke, then?”
“The bomb thing wasn’t a joke, though he doesn’t get as much work as he’d like.”
There was a pause. Cecily cleared her throat, blinking as she moistened her lips. Shane had to look away from those lips. “You’re doing well, by the way,” he muttered. “Thought you’d be overreacting, freaking out around now.”
“Actually, I think my head might explode. Nice to know it doesn’t show.”
Shane chuckled.
“Which one is Flynn again?” she asked.
Nice attention to detail. He’d mentioned Flynn on the phone with Dex.
“You’ll meet him,” Shane said.
“How many guys do you work with?”
“You’ll meet them.”
She frowned. “Right. New direction. So, who does your team work for?”
“Mostly the government.”
Cecily’s eyes widened. “The government? Dex made it sound kinda illegal! Oh, thank god, and here I—”
“I didn’t say that,” he said evenly.
She went very still.
“Not everything the government does is legal.”
She swiped a piece of chicken through the sauce on her plate. “Okay, um. Mostly the government and the rest of the time . . . ?”
“The rest of the time we do what we like, take private jobs or whatever.”
She didn’t ask if they were legal. “And the name of the company—”
“It’s not exactly a company. Girl on the team called us the Hudson Kings as shorthand. It stuck.”
“There are women on your team? I mean, that’s cool. I shouldn’t have assumed there weren’t.”
You nervous about that? Jealous? “Just her. Her brother was one of our guys.”
“Oh. She lost him? He died?”
“He did.”
“What was his name?”
Shane didn’t like to think about it, because it was a painful memory, but he liked someone asking. He liked the idea that the guys wouldn’t be forgotten. Not by the Hudson Kings. Not by anyone. He liked the idea that it was clear that the loved ones left behind weren’t abandoned or forgotten either. So he told her. “We’ve lost two guys. Missy’s twin, Apollo, and Allison’s brother, Graham. We were out on a mission. Things were going fine. They were partnering out in the field. We lost comms, and . . .”
“And?”
Shane stared into his drink. “They were just wiped. Gone. No bodies. No equipment. No clothes. No clues. Comms off. Cell phones off. Nothing to trace, nothing to hack. Gone. We’re still watching, waiting. It’s a job that will never be removed from the boards.”
The room went so silent; the hum from the minibar sounded like an alarm. Cecily gazed at him across the table, eating her dinner—God, she was a slow eater—and not freaking out on him.
“Two girls lost their brothers,” she finally said. And then: “What happened to the girls?”
“Apollo’s sister, Missy, joined the Hudson Kings. She’s like Rothgar’s right-hand man, a full team member like the rest of us but doesn’t do frontline stuff out in the field. I don’t know why. She’s good enough. Rothgar probably doesn’t like to lose visual on her because of the past.”
“What about the other girl?”
“Graham’s sister. Allison. Jaysus, what a mess. Not her, I mean. She has it together. Kept it together. Just the situation. Told Rothgar to fuck off, basically. I’ve never seen anything like it. He hasn’t made peace with that. Never will. She lives in Manhattan still, but she’s got her own life. Bet you’d like her—you should see if she’s still renting that sweet apartment.” He’d followed up on her a couple of times early on, just to make sure she was doing okay, and the last time he saw her face, it was like he was looking in a mirror. Careful. Iced over.
“Two girls lost their brothers,” Cecily repeated. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Dex.”
Staring directly into Cecily’s eyes, Shane heard himself say, “I had a family once, what they call a magical childhood, before it all went to shit.” He swirled the ice in his bourbon. “I could have easily been on a different path.”
Cecily swallowed and said hoarsely, “I wish I’d taken a different path.”
Shane stilled the ice, his head cocked. “You know this is not your fault. This is his fault. That James guy. You get that, right?”
“I get that,” she said, but her smile was forced. Then she shrugged. “But he promised me the world, and I believed him. That’s my fault.”
What’s the world, to you? Shane almost asked. Instead he mumbled, “You should see someone in New York about this shit.”
“Do you see someone about your shit?” she asked.
An enormously long silence passed between them as Cecily and Shane stared at each other. Shane couldn’t help noticing thin streaks of light gold mixed in with the brown locks. He was close enough to run his finger down one of those streaks.
He didn’t try. “Point taken,” he finally said. “How about I’ll stay out of your shit if you stay out of mine.”
Cecily tilted her head, those big blues studying his face. Women either looked at him like they had sex on the brain or were too intimidated to look at him at all. Cecily looked at him like she was digging deep into his heart, pawing through what was left of his feelings for clues. Shane didn’t move a muscle under her perusal, but she was ripping him raw and didn’t even know it.
“How about we do the opposite. Try being honest and open?” she asked. “And you’re not going to tell Dex what I say to you, and I’m not going to tell Dex what you say to me.”
Honest? Open? That is not . . . what am I . . . I need to shut this shit down. Now. Never breaking eye contact, Shane took a massive swig of bourbon, belched like a fraternity brother trying to win a contest, and said, “Sounds like a fucking nightmare.”
It took Cecily a moment to process her shock. A stunned look on her face, she gently put down her fork and knife, mumbled, “Think I’m done. Excuse me,” and disappeared into the bathroom.
Shane slowly pushed away from the table and went to check the view of the action in the parking lot. Well played, he lied to himself. Well played.