Hesitating the barest of moments, lest Shane notice my anxiety, I draw it out of the plastic portfolio and hand it to him. To keep myself busy while he looks it over, I thumb through the other photos, stopping on one of Derek and Ginger smiling at each other over their coffee mugs. It’s a picture that always comforts me.
“Where was this taken?”
Bastard. I can interpret nothing from his tone. Placing the picture I’m holding carefully back into the case, I shift my attention to the one in Shane’s hands. “One day last spring, I convinced Derek to take me on a ride-along. It was actually Take Your Daughter to Work Day but I didn’t tell him that until after we got back to the station.” I laugh to myself, thinking of his baleful expression when I told him. My brother-in-law really is way too easy to mess with. “The day started slow. Then we were called to a homicide in Chinatown. A man had killed his business partner over something trivial, then climbed onto the roof, threatening to jump.” I point to the subject of the photograph. Not the main event, never the main event. “This is his wife, leaning out the window trying to talk him out of it.”
I remember the day I’d taken the photograph. Derek had commanded that I remain in the car, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from climbing out of the passenger side. Since the man’s wife had been speaking in Chinese, I couldn’t understood a single word she said, yet she’d had such horrible desperation on her face, I’d somehow known. She’d cried and pled, refusing to listen to any officer intervention from below. Then, just as her husband appeared ready to leap to his death, she’d reached behind her and picked up a sleeping baby, holding him out the window for the man to see. She held the baby so securely, I’d never once considered she meant to do anything but use him as motivation for her husband to remain alive.
That’s the picture I’d taken. A desperate woman holding her child out a high-rise window to convince her husband to come back inside. To choose them over the relief of death. The shutter had gone off before I’d registered a conscious thought. Just muscle memory and a need to capture that raw emotion on film. Miraculously, the man had gone back inside immediately after that, carefully inching his way off the ledge toward the window. If he’d jumped, I never would have submitted the photo to the contest. Even so, some people found it horrifying that I would take a picture of something terrible like that, but to me, it’s just the opposite. Love can save people’s lives. To me, that woman’s expression, her words and actions, are goddamn beautiful.
“Did he jump?”
“No.”
“I’m not sure what to say.” Shane drops down on the bed beside me. “Except they probably should have sent you to a better inn.”
My laugh is so unexpected, that for a fleeting second I’m unicorn girl. I don’t have the time or the ability to shape the laugh. It just flows out of me, and it feels unbelievable. When Shane simply watches me, like he’s finally figured me out, I force it to die down.
His thoughtful eyes are locked on mine, and I can’t shake the certainty he knows exactly who he’s looking at. I’m not some social experiment or a troubled girl with a smart-ass remark for everything when he looks at me. Even more, I don’t feel like one. I want to lean forward and kiss him so bad, it’s like a drumming need inside me, but I would dissolve. I’d dissolve under that look and his lips at the same time. His eyes soften in understanding, as if he can read that thought entering and leaving my head.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask.
“You read my mind.” He brushes a thumb over my bottom lip. “Grab that camera of yours and meet me out front. I’m going to take you somewhere.”
Chapter Sixteen
When Shane pulls up outside the Claymore Inn, he’s in a different car than the night he picked up Faith and I at O’Kelly’s. This one is candy-apple red, sleek, and low to the ground. A sports car. It’s also a convertible, but I suspect the retractable roof doesn’t get a lot of use in this rainy country. When he steps out of the driver’s side and rounds the car to open my door, I feel a wicked little hum kick up in my belly. In faded jeans and a bomber jacket, hair finger-mussed, he might as well be wearing a sign that says, I’m bad. But in a way that will make you feel really good. It does nothing to calm the category-five hormone storm taking place inside me when his gaze slides over my body like he’s planning on making a meal out of me at the earliest opportunity.
Feeling a little bit like I’m heading to my own funeral, I sink into the plush leather passenger seat, unable to keep myself from watching him through the windshield as he returns to the driver’s side. A moment later, we’re both enclosed in the car, the purr of the engine vibrating beneath us. It’s just after ten o’clock and the street is illuminated by streetlamps. Since the day’s warmth has lingered into the night, people stroll down Baggot Street, looking positively elated to be free of their jackets and umbrellas.
“Where have you been hiding this car?”
His hand slides over the steering wheel like a caress. “In a garage down the road. The attendant lets me store it there in exchange for a free pint now and again.” He throws the clutch into first gear and eases away from the curb. “Although I think he uses it to pick up girls by telling them he’s the owner.”
“And that works?”
He glances at my tightly crossed legs. “Worked on you.”
I should be annoyed or embarrassed by that arrogant statement. Or both. Instead, his confidence is ridiculously attractive to me. It’s drawing me closer, making me want him even more. Tonight alone, I’ve seen him surprised, regretful, grateful, and humorous. Now…now he is working his swagger. And shit, I like it way too much. The way he drives the car, capable hands working the gearshift like he’d been born inside of it, is sexy as all get-out. His thigh muscles shift each time he applies the break, the seat hugging his body like it had been customized for his muscular frame.
With a deep breath, I finally accept where this night is headed and admit I’m going there willingly. I’m done pretending I have the willpower to stay away from Shane. It’s a pointless waste of time, and I’ve never been a procrastinator. I just have to hope like hell when it comes time for me to get on the plane back to Chicago, I’ve got my damn head on straight. That after I satisfy this hunger inside me, I’m able to walk away and see this for what it is. A diversion. A passing attraction that might very well eviscerate my last relationship from my head, but one that can’t become a relationship in itself. As corny and old-fashioned as it sounds, we’re two ships passing in the night. Which makes my desire to know more about him rather inconvenient. What I should do is ask him to pull over so I can drag him into the backseat. But there it is again, that niggling curiosity that is far from satisfied, rearing its nosy little head.
“I overheard what Faith told you tonight,” Shane says, before I have a chance to ask.
“I thought as much,” I murmur, shifting my attention out the window.
“I also heard what you said back to her.” He waits until I’m looking at him. “Thank you for that.”
“Okay.” Uncomfortable with the gratitude softballs being lobbed in my direction tonight, I change the subject, wishing I was well-adjusted enough to simply say you’re welcome. “So, did you have this car before you left Ireland to race?”