The Good Chase (22 page)

“I'd say I can't believe you did all that on your own,” she said, “except that I totally do. I completely believe that you made all that happen. And now look at you.”

“Now look at me,” he echoed, thinking of the clothes he'd kicked into the closet barely an hour earlier.

She gasped. “You look, I hate to say it and I really can't believe it, ashamed. Like you're actually ashamed about all that you've accomplished.”

“No, no. I'm not at all ashamed of that part. But the beginning, where I started off, my childhood . . . it hangs over me. How we lived, what I didn't have, what I had to endure. I can't shake it, no matter what I do. I'm trying, but I just can't. You don't understand what it's like, hearing about where all these guys I went to school with and now work with came from. And it's not even that they all grew up with money, although most of them did, but just to have, say, running water was a hell of a lot more than what I had.”

He could feel his heartbeat kick up. His knee started to bounce. “And the culture I work in, Shea, it's crazy. It wants wealth alone and tends to look down on those who don't have it. So I keep my background private, close to me, because I don't want to be judged for it. I've worked my fucking ass off to get where I am, and I can't afford to be looked at any differently.”

She regarded him for a thick moment. “I think you've got it all wrong. I think people would respect you even more because of where you came from and what you've accomplished. I think that's what Pierce was trying to tell me.”

“Yeah, but Pierce grew up an orphan, passed around foster homes, taking handouts his whole life. He knows me. He gets me. It's different.”

She looked down at her lap, and he knew he hadn't convinced her. “I didn't know that about Pierce,” she said. “Are your parents still alive? Your brother and sister?”

He swallowed. “Yep. Still in South Carolina. Mom and Dad are still doing the odd-job, minimum-wage thing in their fifties. I don't even think they have insurance. They don't live in the train anymore. They've got a small apartment above a pizza place, but money is only slightly better than it used to be. Caroline just had a baby, well, not a baby so much anymore, but she never got beyond high school either, and her slacker boyfriend just barely supports them. Caroline works part-time as a cashier, but she's smart, capable of so much more. My brother, Alex . . .” Byrne blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

“Trouble?” Shea filled in.

“You could say that. Never did anything his whole life, and then the gambling and drinking took over and we lost him. He's destroyed my trust, but not my love. Not my hope for him. He's actually gone home now, says he's clean and wants to start over. I want to believe he's better. Caroline tells me to. I'm trying to hold on to that hope.”

He watched her eyes flicker around his apartment that even he knew was large and quite nice, even by New York standards.

“They won't let me help them,” he blurted. “At all. They are far too proud. They've told me they want to work, to earn whatever they have. I respect that, but it frustrates the hell out of me, this limitation. I could support them all, it's all I've ever wanted to do since I went away to college, but they won't let me. They don't want to be given anything. They want to prove themselves.”

Shea's smile was golden. “Like you.”

He sighed. “Like me, I guess. The checks I've sent them have actually gotten ripped up. I've learned my lesson.”

Shea's gentle, warm hand reached out and slowly unfurled his fingers where he'd unknowingly made a fist in his lap. When she flattened his fingers, she threaded hers through his and edged her body closer. Her stunning face, all shining understanding and pale beauty, was right there. Right there in front of him.

“I'm sure you've done all you could,” she said.

“No.” Man, his hand really wanted to make another fist, but Shea held it fast, and he found he was grateful for it. “They won't take my money, so I'm trying to do something else.”

Now this he'd never told anyone. Not Pierce. Not even Erik. Not anyone.

“What?” Her other hand slid up his arm and rested where his shoulder curved up to his neck.

He licked his lips. “I'm trying to buy the tobacco field we used to live on. The land is gorgeous, right near a river. My parents were so upset when we got kicked out. New owners came in when I was in junior high and told us to get off. I mean, we were squatting and it was their right, but they displaced a family, and my parents finally had to go apply for aid and all that. It destroyed them. Killed their pride. We lived in this box of an apartment in a terrible neighborhood where it wasn't safe to play outside, and every night we talked about the sunsets we used to have over the fields. Caroline and Alex and I missed running over the land, playing in the river. That fucking train was actually a good memory compared to where we'd been carted off, if you can believe that.

“So I thought that I could buy it back from the company who took it over all those years ago. Give it back to my parents. Maybe they'd let me slip in a house without them knowing.”

Shea's eyes glimmered. “My God, Byrne.”

“It's a huge parcel. Massive. A shitload of money. I've been after it for years. Ever since I graduated. But I finally have the money for it. Finally. And there are whispers that it'll be on the market soon.”

She gasped. “Is
that
why you do this?”

“This” meaning being Bespoke Byrne.

He looked into her watery blue eyes. Licked his lips. And nodded. “Yes. That's why I do everything. For my—”

He didn't get any further. Shea's mouth was on his, her lips wet and warm. She threw a leg over his lap, pressing his body deep into the couch cushions. And he gladly let himself be buried.

*   *   *

S
hea actually tasted more of Byrne as she kissed him this time. More of his life, more of his desires, more of everything that made him
him
. His story had been salt, bringing out the flavors of every aspect of his personality.

“It's so great to hold you,” he whispered.

“Are you kidding? It's incredible to hold
you
.”

Her tongue slid across his. Slow, gentle strokes that had her losing all manner of strength in her legs and arms. She could taste the truth of him, but also the reluctance of him having to voice it. He really was ashamed of himself, of where he came from. She could feel the power of that emotion in the clutch of his hands at her back, and then the way his fingers bit into her ass.

She regretted ever naming him Bespoke Byrne, for labeling him based on how he dressed. For assuming what kind of person his appearance made him. It was almost as bad as what he'd endured as a kid, only in reverse, and it made her feel ashamed.

And then all of a sudden it happened.

It happened when his kiss grew incrementally more insistent, his lips nudging open her mouth painfully slowly. It happened when he shivered beneath her, when she heard the sound of his desire get trapped in his throat.

It happened as all their prior conversations suddenly came rushing back to her—their jokes, their pure, true connection. It happened as she remembered the contentedness on his face as he'd said grace at her parents' dining room table, and when she'd sat on the dock telling him about her past. When she'd realized that he was no storybook fairy tale, that he was anything but false.

She fell in love with him.

It was not:
Oh shit, I'm falling, what the hell is going on?

Not:
If I'm not careful, I think I may fall in love with you.

But:
I'm already a goner. I've fallen. Whoops.

Shea tightened her hold on him, as though his body were a lifeline and she could use it to hoist herself up and out of trouble. But it was too little, too late.

She needed a breath, because the stilted ones coming through her nose weren't enough. She pushed against the couch cushions, removing her mouth from his with a final lick.

“No, no, no, no, no.” His eyes were at half-mast, his erection at full. “Where're you going?”

She ran a thumb over his bottom lip. “Don't want to take advantage of you in your fragile, exposed state.”

A bit of the amused gleam returned to his shadowed eyes. “No advantage. None whatsoever. Come back here.”

He reached for the button on her pants, got it popped out before she scooted off his thighs and somehow found her feet. He looked up at her questioningly.

“Did I scare you?” he asked, taking her hand. “You look a little spooked all of a sudden.”

He had scared her, but not in the way he thought.

“I like your bed,” she said. “I'm an old-fashioned girl like that.”

“Old-fashioned you are not.” He rose to his feet, dragging his body against hers.

She reached up and pulled out the band of her ponytail with one hand. As she led him down the hall toward his bedroom, he said, “I love your hair. Have I ever told you that? I love it down.”

Something that simple made her shiver all over again. It was almost as big a turn-on as straddling the hottest guy in existence on his mortgage-payment sofa. As she turned into his bedroom—a corner room, of course, with the mosaic of the city spread out just on the other side of the glass—she smiled at him over her shoulder. Turning back around, about to pull him over to the bed, she caught sight of an open door, the light on inside. His closet. Shooting him a sly grin, she dropped his hand and headed toward the sumptuous space done in deep cherrywood shelves and racks.

“Now where are you going?” he asked behind her.

“Another detour.”

“Now?”

“You got somewhere else you need to be? My detours are good, remember?”

When she tossed a wicked look over her shoulder, she was rewarded by a flash of white teeth.

“Oh my,” she breathed as she stepped into the closet. It was larger than her childhood bedroom. “You sure you're not a girl?”

“Pretty sure.”

She kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the plush carpet. The uplighting was soft and subtle; there was no harsh glare from a fluorescent bulb connected to a swaying string. Rows of suits and shirts and perfectly folded stacks of sweaters made her feel like she was in the middle of some upscale men's store.

It was official: she had closet envy.

A full-length mirror occupied the whole far wall, and next to it, strangely, was a pressboard dresser with a huge chunk of white laminate gouged out of the side. The front was covered with stickers for bands. Bands she liked. A lot.

Running a hand over the top of the out-of-place dresser, she saw how old it was. It was the kind of thing a kid would have in college. Something cheap, generic, utilitarian. The kind of thing an honest, hardworking, corporate-climbing clothes hound of a guy would keep around to remind him of where he'd been. Like the toy train.

She didn't have to crack open a drawer to know what was inside. “Rugby clothes?”

“You got it.”

She walked back toward him, down the length of the closet. “Which is your most expensive shirt?” She thumbed through the hangers of perfectly ironed button-downs, one by one.

“Keep going. Keep going,” he directed. Then, when her fingers dragged into a section of pastel colors she'd never imagined him wearing, he said, “That one.”

She pulled out the hanger. “This? This is your most expensive shirt?”

He smiled.

“It's . . . purple.”

He shrugged and leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “It's Italian. Got it in Rome during a client thing. And, you know, when in Rome . . .”

“Ah, yes. European peer pressure. ‘Here, dress like us so American males will look at you funny when you get home.'”

He chuckled. “Exactly.”

“I've never seen you wear it.”

“You haven't seen me wear a lot of this stuff in here. That's kind of on purpose.”

That made her pause.

“I actually had a bit of a fashion crisis before heading over to the Amber tonight. I didn't want to look like the guy I know you don't like, but I didn't really have much of a choice.”

She thought of how she'd internally commented on his clothing earlier that evening, and cringed. “This stuff's like your anti-Superman outfit,” she said.

“I know how you like me. Nice and dirty, remember?”

That crooked grin was veering toward an entirely different definition of dirty.

“You're pretty clean right now,” she said. “But I kind of want to fix that.”

“You do, do you?”

He'd already undone the button on her pants, so all she had to do was lower the zipper and let the things fall to the floor. He stilled, watching intently as she did just that. She reached up and unbuttoned her shirt. Deliberately. Teasingly. Then the fine white cotton joined the pants in a puddle.

Byrne's jaw worked. His fingers made heavy indentations in his upper arms.

Shea stretched behind her back and unclasped her bra, peeling the straps off her arms. She reveled in his stare for a moment, then, rolling her palms down her hips, she pushed down her thong, and gave him her back as she did it.

Byrne made a choking sound. “Jesus Christ, Shea.”

Part of her wanted to make a joke about how a good homeschooled girl with conservative parents wouldn't like that language, but the time for one-liners seemed to have passed.

His eyes were all over her naked body as she walked back into the closet; she could feel them on her like the best kind of summer breeze. She returned to the section with the pressed, button-down shirts and touched the purple Italian one.

“What are you doing?” His voice had gone a little breathless.

The fabric was sinfully smooth underneath her fingers, and it came off the hanger with a whisper. Draping it over her shoulders, she slipped her arms into the sleeves and let the cuffs dangle past her fingertips. Turning back to Byrne, she kept the buttons open, letting him see a whole naked strip of her, right down the middle.