The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) (19 page)

Right. All casual-like after a day at the office. She liked seeing him like this. He looked just as powerful, but more approachable.

She shrugged on the jacket and leaned in next to him again. This time his hand slid a little lower around her waist, the contact accelerating her heart rate. Was he flirting? When she turned her head to look, he was already watching her. Heat and amusement danced in his aquamarine eyes. Oh, yeah, he was flirting. Well, so could she.

She settled herself even closer to him, realizing how well they fit together. Then she felt his muscles lock into place, and she knew he felt it too. His smile looked a little more forced on the screen this time, but he took a few more pictures before pulling away.

“All right, I’m going to change,” he said, heading up the stairs with her bag. “Take as long as you need.”

“I plan to do a hair and makeup change too,” she said, following him.

“Whatever you need to do,” he said, but she could tell he was humoring her.

The spare bedroom was painted a bright orange that contrasted perfectly with the fluffy white comforter on the bed, and there was a full-length antique gold mirror in the corner next to a rocking chair. Again, she liked the look.

He stood in the doorway as she opened the suitcase. “Are you planning on watching?” she asked.

He was chuckling as he shut the door, and she took a moment to hug herself in the center of the room. She didn’t know what they were doing. All she knew was they were having fun.

A little fun never hurt anyone.

Chapter 16

Vander was wondering what in the hell he was doing as he shaved for the second time that day.

He told himself it was for the photos, but he was full of shit. He was couldn’t stop thinking about kissing Shelby, but it was impossible while she was still a client. He needed to find her father stat. Maybe tomorrow he could cancel his meetings and head to Haines.
 

When a man put on aftershave for a woman, it forced him to face the truth. He liked Shelby McGuiness. He liked her a lot. Even the way she’d treated Charlie earlier in his office had done things to his heart.

He wanted to kiss Shelby McGuiness and not stop. He wanted to get naked with her. She might drive him a little batty, but it didn’t infuriate him—far from it. It
amused
him when they pushed each other’s buttons.

Yes, Shelby was one of a kind.

When he left his bedroom, the door to the spare bedroom was still closed. He shook his head and headed downstairs. There was no telling what she was doing in there. All he knew was she was going to emerge looking and smelling nice. He liked that a whole heck of a lot.

As he set the table for dinner to occupy his time, he considered lighting candles and then decided against it. That was way too date-like, so it would have to wait until they could date.

When the doorbell rang, he heard her call out from upstairs, “Would you get that, Vander? I’m still getting dressed. Tell Lamont hello.”

He went to the door uncomfortably aroused by the thought of her in a state of undress.
 

A young man carrying not one but two bags of takeout grinned at him. “I’ve got your order, sir. Where’s Shelby?” He looked over Vander’s shoulder.

Vander wasn’t the kind of man to besmirch a woman’s reputation. “She said to say hello. She had to take a call. How much do I owe you?”

“Shelby has a running bill with us,” Lamont told him brightly. “We just love her.”

Apparently Gail wasn’t her only fan, and he was starting to understand why. Shelby was kinder than he’d originally thought, and fun to boot. Vander handed the man a whopping tip, and he gawked.

“Thank you! Are you related to Gail by chance?”

“No, we’re not related, but we’re acquainted,” Vander said.

“I knew it! Everyone Gail and Shelby know is cool. Well, I should run. Have a great dinner. Jared says hi too.”

Vander nodded and shut the door. Shelby must have made an impression on the head chef as well. His mind brought up a scene of Shelby and Gail eating at the fancy restaurant. Gail would be wearing some outrageous outfit, and Shelby would saunter in, doing that thing with her hips that drove him wild. He started to take the food out of the bags and soon realized she’d ordered a feast. Including several desserts.

He heard someone clear their throat behind him, and he turned.

Shelby was in a pale yellow dress that hugged every curve and dipped between her beautiful breasts, her hand propped on the interior wall of his kitchen.
 

If they’d been on a date for real, he would have told her she was beautiful and then kissed her senseless. If she’d been game, he’d have boosted her up onto the counter and taken her right there.

Instead he forced himself to say, “Did we need all these desserts?”

Her mouth turned pouty for a moment. “Sometimes Jared surprises me when he’s of a mind. He’s a dear man. What did he send over?”

She pushed away from the wall, and he caught a whiff of her perfume. The mixture of peonies, roses, and suede suited her, and he longed to bury his face in her neck. “See for yourself.”

Her exclamations over a double-decker chocolate cake and profiteroles made him smile as he put their individual dinners on their plates. When she drew out four sippy cups, her smile was as happy as her dress.

“Two each,” she said, uncapping the orange container. “I thought you might like their Southern Manhattan. It’s like a normal one, but the bartender, Jeff, adds a kick with basil and hot pepper cherries.”

He wasn’t so sure about the wisdom of combining hot peppers and cherries, but he could pour himself a plain bourbon if he couldn’t stomach it. “What did you order?”

“Their smoked ginger fizz,” she all but purred.

Turning his back to her, he wondered how the hell he was supposed to get through the evening without shattering his own no-dating-clients policy. He took their plates over to the dining room table and turned on the chandelier.

“Oh, you set a fine table,” she exclaimed. “Where are your glasses?”

“To the right of the Sub-Zero,” he told her, watching as she poured their drinks carefully into the glasses as intently as a hot, albeit mad, scientist perfecting a concoction to save mankind.
 

When she was finished, they sat at the table, he at the head, and her to his right. She handed him his drink and touched his glass with her own.

“To finding my daddy,” she said in a hushed voice.

He drank and watched her. The toast seemed to subdue her. Her see-sawing emotions captivated him somehow. She appeared so focused some moments. Then she got a little goofy. Now she clearly felt vulnerable.

“Let’s eat,” he suggested.

She didn’t dive in with her earlier enthusiasm. He cut into his steak and all but groaned as he chewed. The meat was juicy and perfectly seasoned.

“Is the chicken not to your liking?” he asked, scooping up a few of the roasted potatoes with a fork.

“No, it’s lovely,” she said, pushing it around with her fork. “I just got to thinking about why we’re really here. Vander,” she said, nudging her asparagus into perfect rows, “what do you think the odds are of us finding Daddy? I mean, I deal in numbers, and right now, I simply don’t have any sense of what we’re facing.”

When she looked down in her lap, he put his hand on her arm. “I don’t know. Our chances are definitely better than before we met Lenore. Shelby, I’ll do everything I can to find him. I promise you that.”

She didn’t shrug away from his touch, and he kept his hand there because she felt good. He also
needed
to touch her—even if this was the only way he could for now.

“I wanted to ask you something,” she said, still not looking at him. “I got all flustered at the hotel the other night and plumb forgot. And then I saw the picture and I just—”

“What?” He set his own fork down, sensing a change in her.

“When we were vising Me-Mother, you told her you knew what it was like to lose a parent.” Her head lifted, and her brown eyes were filled with so much warmth, his throat closed up. “I know a lot of what you do is acting, but this felt true…and I remember what you told me about losing your family. You said it was why you’d stopped believing in wishes.”

A pocket of air lodged in his chest. He almost never told anyone about his family, but he was used to people shying away from the topic when he did, almost like it was too heavy or dark for them. But Shelby was asking for more details, and it completely disarmed him. “It was true.”

Her hand moved to touch him in return. “How did it happen?”

While it was public information, Vander wanted Shelby to hear his story, the way he remembered it. “My dad was on the Nashville police force. He was murdered in the line of duty.”

“Oh my goodness,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “How horrible for you and your family! How old were you?”

“I was ten,” he said, trying to fight off the memories of that time. “They never found out why he was murdered.”
I’ve never been able to find out.

“Oh, Vander,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth before lowering it to her heart. “I’m so sorry. There are no words for how sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” he told her, unable to withstand the compassion in her eyes. A whole mess of emotion was rising in his chest, and he didn’t want her to see him like this.

“I know a pat answer when I hear one,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Daddy left me when I was two, and that was some twenty-six years ago. When people ask about my daddy, I tell them it’s in the past. That I don’t remember him. But it still hurts. I sometimes wonder how something that happened so long ago can still tie me up in knots until I’m fixing to come undone when I think about it.”

Perhaps that’s why he felt connected to Shelby. On some level, they understood each other.
 

“It’s why you’re so determined to help people,” she said. “Now I understand. Your daddy would be so proud of the man you’ve become.”

Shit, he actually felt tears burning behind his eyes. “My mother took me back to her parents’ house in Boston after Daddy was killed,” he gushed out. “They’d met at Vanderbilt. Hence my name.”

“I wondered,” she said, comforting him with soothing circles of her fingers on his arm.

“I…ah…lost my Southern accent in Boston,” he said. “Being there…wasn’t a happy time. For any of us.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” Shelby said. “How could it have been?”

Vander sometimes wondered how things might have been different if his mother had shared her grief with him and allowed him his. While he’d made peace with finding his own way in life—even though that had meant going against his mother and her family—there was still enough of that little boy who wished for a reconciliation. In that way, he was no different than Shelby.

“When I came of age,” he continued, “I returned to Nashville, determined to find answers to my father’s case.”

“And did you?”

“I was left with more questions in the end,” he said bitterly. “The case was more than cold. It was frostbitten. Every possible lead had dried up decades ago. I…all I wanted to know was why. Shit, that’s not completely true. I wanted to find the son of a bitch who’d taken my dad from me and see him pay for it.”

She pushed out of her chair and wrapped her arms around him. “For me, knowing why Daddy left us was as important as finding him,” she whispered against his chest. “I’m sorry you don’t have your answers. I can’t imagine how hard that must be.”

“Yes, you can,” he said, pushing back and tracing her cheek. “You’ve lived your whole life knowing how hard that is.”

A tear spilled down her cheek. “I’m sorry. I…seem to be more emotional than usual lately.” She swiped at her tear.

He pulled her back against his chest. Holding her, comforting her, wasn’t against his code.

“Is that picture over there of you and your daddy?” she asked softly.

He knew which one she meant. It was the only one he’d managed to keep out of his mother’s grasp when she’d gone through their things and purged the past. “Yes.”

“It looks like he loved you something fierce.”

Hearing that squeezed his heart. “It was mutual.”

She nodded against his chest, and they held each other in the silence for a long moment before she returned to her chair.

“Our dinner is cold,” she said.

“I don’t feel much like eating,” he told her, eyeing his half-eaten steak.

“That’s all the more reason to eat,” she said, picking up her fork. “Gail says when you feel like life has kicked you in the gut, you feast like a queen. It was on the day she’d signed her divorce papers that she first asked Jared to surprise her with his favorite desserts. She told me to never let the past completely steal my joy in the present. I think she was on to something.”

“I’ll heat up the food,” he said, taking their plates into the kitchen and popping them into the microwave.

“Vander,” Shelby said, putting her arm on his shoulder and making him turn around. “Thank you for telling me about your daddy. I know it must have been hard for you.”