CHAPTER 8
The car was waiting at the hotel curb. Shane was waving off the porter again, taking a longer time than she’d expect to Tetris his duffel bag and her suitcase back into the trunk. She thought of going back to have a look, but then she saw the popped lock on the front passenger side door.
Cecily moved closer; the porter appeared and smoothly opened the door for her, and she simply got in. He didn’t want to clear up last night? He wouldn’t let her apologize for being an idiot? Fine. No problem. But I’m not sitting in the backseat anymore. I’m an adult, and I made a mistake, but we’re stuck together until New York, and I am not sitting in the backseat like a toddler.
Shane stopped in his tracks as he saw her in the front seat. Cecily bit back a smile. He looked like he was processing this. He took his sunglasses off, studied her face, looked at the backseat, back at her, and then just got into the driver’s seat, pulled on his gloves, and turned on the ignition.
“I thought you might tell me to move,” Cecily said.
“I thought I might too,” Shane answered. He opened the sunroof and looked up at the sky. Just stared at the blue sky and the clouds for a minute and then got them on the road.
“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 sudden 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.”