by Lisa Plumley
Shane admired her for that. He didn’t want to, but he did. Gabby didn’t put up with any bullshit. She didn’t suffer fools lightly. She didn’t accept betrayal. End of story. End of him.
He had to respect that about her … even as it gutted him.
Because the same thing that made Gabby so perfect for him was the same thing that felt so brutal to him now. Her strength was more than equal to his own. So was her determination. Shane couldn’t manipulate her. Gabby was too smart for that.
That made it all the more ironic that she’d accused him of sabotaging her pizzeria. Because of all the targets he’d had, she was the only one he’d been unwilling to take advantage of.
Maybe he should have, Shane told himself as he pushed away from the peninsula. Maybe he should have stuck to his principles—jaded as they were—and got the job done. Maybe he should have delivered the Grimanis’ pizzerias without looking back. There’d been several choice points in this job. He’d apparently chosen wrong every time he’d come up against one. He’d screwed up. Just the way his father had expected him to.
Giving an ironic chuckle at that realization, Shane paced across his apartment, ignoring the faint sounds of the city awakening below him. It wasn’t too late, he realized. He still had inside information on Campania and the other pizzerias. If Waltham Industries hadn’t moved quickly to offer Robert Grimani a deal—if another rival company had—Gregory Waltham would want the info Shane had compiled. He could still win this one.
He could still force his father to respect him.
It would work, Shane told himself, full of misery and fury and regret. He obviously couldn’t make it in the regular world. He wasn’t equipped to go straight, the way Casey Jackson had. He was bad and dark and untrustworthy. He was good at that. After all, it hadn’t been until after Portland had started softening him up with friendly baristas, scenic park blocks, and roses beside the freeway that Shane had started feeling discontent.
Clearly, behaving honorably wasn’t a good fit for him.
A decent woman like Gabby wasn’t a good match, either.
Shane needed someone with whips and chains and a sense of distrust even blacker than his own. He needed not to hope.
Hope hurt. He knew it. Now Gabby did, too.
Thinking of her made him stop in midstride. Struck by another stab of remorse, Shane closed his eyes. He loved her.
Given enough time, that would pass. Everything did.
Ruthlessly, Shane got dressed. Acting by rote, he shaved and collected his things. Wallet. Keys. His actual dossier.
Grabbing it stopped him short. Where the hell had that other dossier come from? it occurred to him to wonder. Just as he’d told Gabby, that research hadn’t been his. Despite everything, he didn’t think it was Lizzy’s, either. She didn’t need to compile a separate cache of research. Anything she found could easily be added to Shane’s meager hoard of the Campania recipe book, Robert Grimani’s customer notebook, the USB stick with the pizza dough video on it, the old Campania computer, and the set of pizzeria keys he’d liberated from Gabby’s office.
It wasn’t as if Shane had examined any of those things very closely. He hadn’t even combed over that old PC to collect additional financial, customer, and employee information. He’d brought it to his apartment after swapping it for the new laptop he’d given to Gabby, but he hadn’t had the heart to do what any reputable fixer in his position would have done: use it.
Hell. Realizing exactly how far he’d fallen, Shane straightened with his original dossier in hand. Time to move.
A few seconds’ hard-faced striding brought him to Lizzy’s door. He pounded on it, feeling better now that he’d decided what to do next.
His assistant opened the door, dressed and alert, wearing her contact lenses instead of her glasses, with no indie-girl trappings. It was as if Shane had simply imagined finding Lizzy there a few days ago endearingly bedheaded and adorably grumpy. Today, there was no sign of anything but professionalism in her.
“You tossed my apartment, you bastard.” Stonily, she regarded him. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Yes, actually.” Shane pushed past her. “I did.”
“You were wrong.” She crossed her arms, then eyed him with new concern. She sighed. “What happened? You look like hell.”
Gabby left me. Everyone leaves me.
Shane shook his head. “I’m closing out this job.”
“I thought you’d already quit. Gregory said you quit.”
“I’m on my way to see Robert Grimani right now,” Shane went on relentlessly. If he was right, Gabby’s father wouldn’t know about his fix yet. If Shane struck fast, he could win. He could expedite the pizzeria turnover if Waltham Industries was behind the new offer. If not, he could derail Robert’s deal with another company. “I want to leave town tonight. Make it happen.”
He turned, leaving Lizzy astonished in his wake.
He made it all the way to the door before she spoke up.
“I know you love Gabriella Grimani,” Lizzy told him.
Shane stopped, keeping his back to her.
“You must love her,” his assistant persisted. “You did a crap job on this fix. You blew opportunities. You ignored obvious ins. You mopped. That wasn’t required. You’re like the original Tom Sawyer, persuasive and glib and charming. You could have convinced someone else to do that for you.”
“You’re confusing me with Casey. He’s the one who makes people enjoy being ‘fixed.’” Shane touched the doorknob. “I’m the one who makes people leave. Every fucking time.”
Lizzy was silent. Then, “So go after her.”
Shane shook his head. His whole body hurt. Especially his heart. Who knew a damn heart could really ache? He’d thought that was hyperbole—just fodder for dumb country-western songs.
“The only way someone can leave you is if you don’t go after them.” Lizzy’s voice bored into him, full of all the certainty and wisdom and play-it-straight insight that had originally made him hire her. “So do it. Go after her.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understood well enough to have hidden that other dossier in my apartment, in case Gabriella saw it and got the wrong idea,” his assistant pointed out. “Someone left it at your place—”
The real saboteur. Had they planted that second dossier in hopes of driving a wedge between him and Gabby? In hopes of demoralizing her even further, so she’d close the pizzeria?
In his grief, Shane had forgotten about the person who was really trying to destroy Campania—to destroy Gabby and everything she and her family had worked so hard for.
“—and I knew it wasn’t yours, obviously,” Lizzy was saying, “so I took it and stashed it until I could talk to you about it.” She poked Shane to make him turn around. “I hid it, you thief, because there are people in my life right now who don’t need to see—”
“I’ve got to leave,” Shane interrupted, preoccupied.
“Listen, you dope.” His assistant put her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve got your back, Shane. I’ve always got your back. That’s why I took this job. I had other options, but I picked you. Not because I want to get frisky with you, not because I want to join your ‘I’m-a-heartless-bastard’fan club, but just because I like you. Because I—”
“I pay you to be here. That’s it.”
“—want to watch out for you,” Lizzy insisted. “You need someone like me. You need ten mes. So if you’re done pouting—”
Shane muttered an expletive, trying to make her shut up.
“—you should listen to me tell you that you’re not as big and bad as you think you are.” Lizzy didn’t back down an inch. “That’s why you’ve been so unhappy lately. Because it goes against your grain to be bad, Shane. You got stuck in it—”
“I’m not listening to this.” He slanted her an irate glance. “You get laid a few times and now you’re Mother Teresa?”
“—and the
n you leveraged it into a job, and then you got even more stuck. You’re smart. You used fixing to survive, and it worked for you. But not anymore. You need to get out.”
“Right.” His voice was thick with sarcasm. “And do what?”
“Be with Gabriella. Make pizza.” Lizzy smiled. “Mop.”
Shane swore. “What’s in this for you? Are you working with my father?” He studied her. “Are you double-crossing me?”
“If I were, wouldn’t I have done it already?” his assistant asked patiently. “After all, you gave me all the tools to screw you over when you gave me that other assignment. Which is how I knew you were still redeemable.” She smiled, annoyingly. “Also, I knew that because of how sappy you were about Gabriella. Let’s just say … I trusted you, and you trusted me. Speaking of which—”
Shane’s cell phone rang, cutting her off. He glanced at its screen. His heart sank even further. He answered. “Jen?”
His secret ringer wasted no time getting to the point. Until now, Jennifer hadn’t given Shane much information on the pizzerias. Thanks to his relationship with Gabby, Shane had already had an inside scoop. But now, Jennifer did have some intel.
“It’s Frosty,” she said. “He’s been getting increasingly erratic over the past few days. This morning, it reached a crisis point. He’s the one, Shane. He’s working for someone.”
Jennifer named the company, a rival to Waltham Industries.
“A job that drew in this many fixers, especially in such short succession, was bound to raise some eyebrows,” Shane told her. “The pizzerias were weakened. They were attractive targets, ripe for a takeover by whoever pushed the hardest.” He wished he’d realized that sooner. His work might be shadowy, but it wasn’t undetectable to those in the know. He’d been so busy focusing on Waltham, he hadn’t considered rivals. “How much progress has he made? Robert Grimani has an offer on the table—”
“All the progress,” Jennifer interrupted, sounding worried. “The pizza oven, the tomato supplier at Campania, the online attack … every bit of sabotage has been Frosty, all along.”
“How do you know?”
“He let slip a few things. I’ve been keeping tabs on him, of course, but I wasn’t sure. Then I found his dossier. It contained everything. I brought it to your apartment.” Jennifer paused expectantly. “Didn’t you get it? I couldn’t hang around to make sure, and I couldn’t call to follow up with you until now. Frosty’s been with me since late last night. I figured no one was in danger as long as he was here, so—”
“What time late last night?”
Jennifer told him. It didn’t take a genius-level intellect to realize that Frosty would have had plenty of time to wreak havoc yesterday, then spend the night and morning with Jen.
“I got the dossier,” Shane told Jen. That must have been the research Lizzy had found and then hidden in her apartment. Shane swerved his gaze to meet hers. He mouthed I’m sorry to her. “At least I had the dossier. Gabby has it now.”
Beside him, Lizzy widened her eyes. She frowned.
“If Frosty finds out Gabriella has that information, he won’t be happy,” Jennifer said tersely. “He needs to cement that deal. He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s running out of time.”
Jennifer’s assessment made Shane go cold all over.
Do you really think someone is going to—I don’t know—do something to me? Gabby had asked him when they’d found that note last night. Shane still believed what he’d told her in reply.
If time is running out for them? Maybe.
Shane gripped the phone, intent and focused. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?” he pressed Jen, wishing he’d been in closer contact. With Gabby constantly with him, it had been tricky to coordinate his ringers’ activities. In the end, he’d left them to their own devices, knowing they were professionals. “I could have handled this differently. I could have—”
I could have protected Gabby.
“Because I couldn’t call you earlier.” Jennifer sounded brusque. And concerned. “Frosty didn’t leave until now.”
Oh no. If Frosty had left, Shane didn’t have much time.
“What do you want me to do, Shane?” Jennifer asked. “I’m here. You know I’m ready for whatever’s necessary.”
Lizzy’s face posed the same question. She looked … fierce.
“I’m on it,” Shane said.
Then he cut off the call and headed out of Lizzy’s apartment, hoping to find Gabby before it was too late.
Chapter Eighteen
Gabriella had never felt less interested in making pizza.
All the same, not long after leaving Shane’s apartment, she found herself walking into Campania, being enveloped by its cozy, tomato-and-basil-tinged familiarity. It felt … good to be there. Comfortable. Peaceful. At this hour, long, long before anyone else was due to arrive (even Pinkie), Gabriella had the place to herself. She inhaled deeply, then surrendered.
This might be one of the last days she could be at the pizzeria, she realized. At least as an insider. If her dad’s plans to accept his offer went forward, Gabriella wouldn’t have Campania’s tables and chairs, redbrick walls, and ugly linoleum to kick around anymore. She’d be ousted from them all, just the way she’d suddenly been exiled from the future she’d imagined.
The future she’d imagined with Shane.
Because she had imagined them both together, at Campania and at the other pizzerias too, working side by side. She’d envisioned them closing up and going for after-work drinks with their crew—their friends. She’d pictured them sleeping together, going for runs along the river together, sharing Stumptown coffee and Baker & Spice almond croissants until they were too content and happy to remember any other way of living.
Giving a caustic exhalation at her own gullibility, Gabriella strode to the back of the house. It was even quieter back there. She could hear her own thoughts much too loudly.
Frowning to herself, she ditched the dossier. Now what?
Maybe work would distract her. She slung an apron around her neck, then wrapped its strings around her waist twice. She knotted them, feeling her heart flutter at the memories that gesture engendered. Her saucy apron fashion show for Shane now meant that she’d never again tie on a simple white chef’s apron without feeling just a little bit weak in the knees.
Damn him. Damn him for abusing her trust. Damn him for making her naïve and stupid. Damn him for making her love him … all the way to the point of endangering the pizzerias.
Thinking of Shane’s sabotage, Gabriella went still. She shifted her gaze to the incriminatingly overstuffed dossier he’d compiled. She’d dropped it like a hot sheet pan on her office desk, as though it would cool if she left it long enough.
She knew she’d have to deal with it. She’d have to tell her dad what had happened with Shane. She’d have to admit that she’d invited a spy into their midst and then allowed him to trick them all. Just because it hadn’t felt like a trick didn’t mean…
It didn’t mean it wasn’t a trick, Gabriella assured herself, putting her feet in motion. She felt better as she left her office. Even better as she returned to the kitchen. Maybe she could call her dad later. Or go see him. They still needed to talk about the offer he’d received and essentially accepted.
It must have been Waltham Industries’ latest offer, made on the basis of Shane’s covertly gained information about the pizzerias, Gabriella guessed. She felt twice as credulous to have been taken in by Shane’s seeming surprise upon learning about her dad’s intentions last night. Shane had done a bang-up job of appearing not to understand that he’d essentially won.
Shane might not have been able to make Gabriella give up, but he’d won, all the same. Although she couldn’t help taking a sort of grim satisfaction in her own fortitude. She hadn’t known she was up against some kind of infamous corporate espionage expert. She hadn’t known she’d been sleeping with her own enemy.
Somehow, she’d managed to prevail any
way.
Not that that fact helped her forgive herself. It didn’t.
Finally giving in to the despair that had followed her there to Campania, Gabriella leaned on the make table, sightlessly staring at the sign on the pizzeria’s kitchen wall.
NO CRYING IN THE KITCHEN.
Ha. Today, her own rules and traditions could take a hike. They hadn’t done what they’d been designed to do. They hadn’t protected her or guided her. They hadn’t helped her avoid disaster or stay strong in the face of adversity.
They hadn’t stopped her giving her heart to Shane.
Even now, Gabriella yearned to see him, to touch him, to push him for answers and find out why he’d done what he’d done. But seeing him would be stupid. Touching him would be insane. Finding out why he’d betrayed her wouldn’t change the facts.
Shane had taken advantage of her. He’d used her.
Gabriella couldn’t possibly forgive him for that.
Even if she did have to wonder, as she stared at that battered no crying sign…. Was it her pride that hurt, because she’d been made to look vulnerable and weak? Or was it her heart that hurt, because she’d lost a person she’d really cared for?
She didn’t want to let misguided pride mess up her life a second time, the way it had with her parents. But Shane …
She just didn’t know about Shane.
Muddled and restless, Gabriella paced across the kitchen. Her gaze fell on the corner of the make table, where she’d gotten intimate with Shane, crazily and unprecedentedly. He brought out something so wild in her—so uncontained and new.
Maybe she was angriest at him for that. Because without him, she’d never have discovered those qualities in herself. Not that getting hot and bothered in a pizzeria kitchen was commendable, exactly, but it was … liberating. Because of being with Shane, Gabriella had remembered all the parts of her that didn’t fit into the chain of command and didn’t play nicely with others. Because of being with Shane, she’d risked … everything.