Redemption: Bad Boy Romance Read online

  "One of them said it might be a gang," she offered. "Coogan-something?"

  Shannen looked at her as if she'd just spoken complete gibberish, but he didn't refuse to believe her, which was at least better than the alternative. "I'm sure they're just guessing, though."

  "You tried talking to the old man about it?"

  "No, I didn't really have the heart to tell him," she answered. It was the truth, and if she was going to be so distracted she might as well not lie about it, she figured. That was the best way to handle the situation. At least, she hoped it was.

  "You should call him."

  "Why? There's nothing that he can do except get hurt by the news. I don't want to upset him."

  "If someone fucked up my gym, fucked up my trainer, fucked up everything I held dear, I think I'd want to know."

  She definitely understood that. Indeed, Dad would probably want to know, and he'd want to know because he would want to do something about it. She wasn't about to have him going off putting himself at risk all over his shop, especially not when he was supposed to be in the hospital getting better.

  "I don't know," she said. Her voice was low and frustrated. Someone in the corner watched them. He was creepy and she didn't like it, but then again when someone else came through he fixed his beady stare on them for a moment. Then his neck straightened and that same stare came back down on her.

  "I'm serious. You really should call him."

  She took a breath. "Okay, fine, I'll call him."

  "Call him now," Shannen said. "It's important."

  "Okay, fine," she agreed, with a roll of her eyes and a sigh. Men could be so damned insistent on the silliest things. The phone rang three times before he picked up, but Dad did pick up. He sounded better than he had, at least. He'd been looking better, too. He must have just woken up a few minutes ago, though, because he sounded particularly awake, especially for seven at night.

  "Sweetheart? Something wrong? You don't usually call this late."

  "I've got some bad news, Dad."

  "Is everything okay? You're not hurt, are you?"

  "It's not about me," she said. It was hard to say any of it to him, knowing that it would just hurt him in the end, but Shannen was right. He'd want to know and he'd want her to tell him. As soon as possible.

  "Okay? What is it?"

  "It's about the shop. Someone broke in, and..."

  "Oh, sweetheart," he said. His voice sounded like he was trying to reassure her, which was strange. She didn't want to think too hard about what the reasons for it were because if she did then she was going to have to think about what the reasons for the destruction of the shop were. "You don't have to be so upset about it."

  "But Dad," she protested weakly. The trouble was that she didn't know what 'but dad' was supposed to lead to. 'But Dad,' was as far as it went. The rest of it pulled her in a thousand different direction. Bud Dad, you loved that place. But Dad, it's not fair that it's destroyed. But Dad, you should have seen it. It was so awful.

  "Don't 'but Dad' me, Caroline. It's just a building. When I'm out of here I'll put it back together again, don't worry about it. If I weren't in this damn bed..."

  "You need to stay in bed, Dad. Don't go off doing something stupid."

  "No, you're right. I'm a little tired, even now. This stupid place sucks the life out of you, you know?"

  She did know. She'd seen it in him; she'd seen it in so many of her patients. The hospital was a place where you were supposed to go to get better, but so many people who stayed there only got worse as a result of the stay.

  "I love you, Dad. I'm about to eat. The food's here."

  He said his goodbyes, and as she set the phone into her pocket, true to her word, the waitress set their food down in front of them. It wasn't exactly a fine bistro, but it was at least something. Shannen smiled at the waitress, and the waitress smiled back at him, a little more interested in him than he was in her. Caroline didn't think about what they would have gotten up to if she wasn't there to dampen Shannen's libido.

  "What did he say?"

  "He didn't say anything," Caroline answered, halfway true. Something about it set her on edge. Something was strange.

  "He didn't know anything?"

  The thing that had been making her feel strange suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks. Like the nurse's clipboard on the bedside table.

  "He wasn't surprised," she said. "Like he expected it. 'If only I weren't in this damn bed,' he said. Like it could've been avoided."

  "That sounds a lot like gangs to me," Shannen offered. She didn't want to think too hard about how he would know anything about gangs, because the minute that she did think about it she was going to have to ask herself once again how she was supposed to feel about his career, and she knew what she was going to decide.

  She knew what she was going to feel about it the whole time, and the more that she tried not to think about it, tried to remind herself that she needed the money, the more it chafed not to think about it.

  "You know anything about the name 'Coogan?'"

  Something glinted in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant. A moment later he patted his lips with a napkin and he shrugged. "No, I don't."

  "Shannen, don't."

  "Don't what?"

  "I said, don't."

  "I'm not going to do anything," he said. He finished his food quietly. Whatever thoughts were running through his head, he didn't share them with her. She went to sleep that night, and by the morning she'd forgotten the conversation entirely, except for the vague sense that she wasn't fighting with Shannen any longer.

  It wasn't until she woke up, the coupe barely driving up when it should have been leaving for the morning as she started the coffee before her shower, that she remembered it. He came inside, a new lump raised on his cheek and his eye drooping a little shut, but he wore a smile in spite of all that.

  "What happened to you?" She almost forgot, looking at his ground-beef textured face, that she wasn't wearing much other than a long tee shirt. When she did remember, she did her best to pretend that she hadn't noticed it at all.

  "Nothing," he told her. "I just need a nap before I head to the gym this morning."

  "You look like hell," she told him. He shrugged, touched the swollen cheek and grimaced.

  "You won't be having any more trouble with Mr. Coogan's boys."

  "You didn't," she said, her eyes wide. "Tell me right now, you didn't."

  "I didn't do anything," he said, shrugging. "I just asked around, got in touch with him, and had a talk."

  She looked at his face again.

  "Then what happened to your face?"

  "He had a fighter in town. We went a couple rounds. He's a little outside my weight class, but it's good to fight up sometimes. Particularly when you're the underdog," he said. He smiled wider, showing her his teeth.

  "I'm going to hop in the shower," she said. "So if you have to go, then go."

  He shook his head. "Go on, you've got work."

  And then he walked away, and Caroline did her absolute best to imagine that he was telling her the truth. It didn't help.

  11

  Caroline's day was long. As long as any of them, and she spent the vast majority of it, for better or worse, worrying. She hated that she was always worrying. Hated that she was a worry-wart. She knew better than most that she could have gotten more done without all the worrying to do, but somehow it didn't make her feel much better.

  The worrying did one thing for her, though. It made the rest of her day go by a little faster. No matter what she did, it wasn't quite as stressful as the idea that someone she knew, someone in her house, had gone around beating the tar out of mobsters. Like it was some kind of game to him.

  Well, he would learn how much of a game it wasn't, she thought sourly. There were things that people simply didn't do, and it was generally for a good reason. For example, one didn't go around spitting on cops, because they knew the law better than you, and because they car
ried tasers. Or guns, for that matter. No matter how much you got mad, no matter how unfair it all seemed, the smart move was to wait until they were out of earshot before you started complaining about it.

  Going after mobsters, getting involved with them at all, as one of those things that people weren't supposed to do, and the reasons were just as good. There was a great deal of danger in doing that sort of stuff. Mobsters were good at punching back. It was what made them mobsters.

  Shannen seemed to think that he was invincible. Seemed to think that he could take on anything and come out of it untouched, but Caroline didn't have those illusions. She didn't have the luxury of thinking that no matter what happened she could just walk away from it unscathed like he apparently thought that he could.

  But if the mob wanted him dead, then how could he have gotten away without getting himself killed? No matter how good he was with his fists, unless he'd just murdered a dozen men or more, there was no way that he got away clean. She frowned. If there were people hurt that bad, then they would have been in the hospital. If there was a big gangland killing, then that would have made the news. Neither seemed to be the case.

  It wasn't something that Shannen would ever admit, she knew, but what if he weren't the winner of this one? What if he were the one who got the tar kicked out of him? What if he wasn't lying to her and he really had just gone in to talk to them?

  What did that mean for her? What did that mean for Dad?

  She closed her eyes and tried to calm down. There was no reason to freak out, and it wasn't going to help her even if she did. So she needed to think. And by the time that she managed to get any of that thinking done, work had run by so fast that she hadn't even realized that it was passing her by until Sarah was waving her away and telling her that she was free for the night.

  Caroline called the number in her phone, and two rings later Shannen picked up. "You need a ride?"

  She told him that she did, and he said that he'd be there in ten minutes. That was just about the right amount of time, she thought, because it would take ten minutes to get herself checked out, use the bathroom for the first time in two hours, and get herself downstairs.

  He was waiting for her when she finally came out the door. Caroline wondered again, for the thousandth time, whether or not it was normal for a tenant to come and pick up his landlord from work every day, and as she did every time she knew that it wasn't.

  But she wasn't going to complain. The Toyota only had so many miles left in her, no matter how much Caroline tried to baby her, and the little coupe was newer, nicer, ran quieter and smoother and faster. Never mind that the seats were more comfortable, so she certainly wasn't going to complain if he wanted to give her rides. She certainly wasn't going to complain if he wanted to do other things, too. She pushed that thought out of her head and pretended she hadn't thought it at all.

  If Shannen noticed the way that her face suddenly turned bright red as she slid into the luxuriously soft leather seats, then he didn't make any sign of it.

  "Work okay?"

  "You're looking a little better," she said. It was a lie, but she wasn't going to tell him the truth. It would have been downright rude to say that he looked worse, that the bruise on his face had turned an ugly purple color that she would have been worried about if she weren't used to bruises happening from any old thing. His lip had swollen, too, she saw now, and it stood out on one side a little bit where it was swollen up to almost twice its size.

  But he seemed less tired, at least. His eyes were both mostly open, one admittedly more than the other, but if it hurt then he didn't show it. Then again, she thought sourly, he never did, which was eventually going to bite him in the ass. She hoped it would anyways, because if it didn't then he'd never learn to cut the macho crap.

  "You hungry?"

  It always came down to food with him. "I could eat," she answered, like she usually did. And like she usually did, she was lying. Her stomach felt, as always, like it had been turned inside out and wrung out, but today at least she had other things that she was worried about than food, so it wasn't a total lie, not really.

  They drove in silence for a while, as he seemed to mull over where he was headed, going a little below the speed limit and off on the far right side of the road where anyone who cared to could scoot right on by.

  "What happened last night?"

  "I told you what happened. I went to talk to this Coogan guy, and we had a good, productive conversation."

  "But like, what did you guys talk about?"

  "Nothing really," he said, shrugging.

  "But guys like that, they're in it for something, right? They're not in it for their own health, or whatever." She let out a little laugh at her own joke, and hoped that he'd pick up on the idea that she wasn't trying to put him in a corner. If he did, then maybe he would let something slip. The easiest way to put someone in a corner, she thought, was to make them feel like they were going there without any risk, of their own volition.

  "Not usually, no. Particularly in the gangland profession, it seems like health is one of the last things on their mind."

  "I would imagine that's probably a good thing because I feel like they'd have trouble staying healthy when the people they're pissing off on a daily basis are, you know, other gangsters and stuff."

  He shrugged. "Basically."

  "So you must have said something to convince him to back off. If he was coming around, he was doing it for a reason, and if he stopped, that would be for a reason, too. Right?"

  He looked over at her as he pulled off the highway and frowned. "You're smart, you know that?"

  "Thank you," she answered. She hoped that she didn't look as pleased with the compliment as she felt. She couldn't stand the idea that he could just string a few pretty words together and she'd be wrapped around his finger like all the other women were. That didn't change the reality, though, which was that she was just like them. As long as he didn't know about it, it might as well not have been true.

  "It wasn't really a compliment," he said. His voice was flat and it was almost as if he didn't realize that he'd just put her down again. He looked past her as he turned right, And then she realized that he was looking at her, too. "Someone too smart, when you get involved with people like these guys, they run into trouble. You'd be better off being dumb, like me."

  "That sounds awfully smart to me," Caroline teased. He started straightening out the car as the hints of a smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

  "I suppose it might," he answered. "But then again, I've never been too good at taking my own advice. I'm not sure whether I'm too dumb to listen to such great advice, or too smart to listen to such a dummy."

  They pulled into a spot and Caroline didn't fail to notice that through all that, he had very studiously not answered her question. He'd offered something. There was a reason that Coogan was going to back off, if he did. And Shannen had been unwilling to tell her what it was.

  12

  Caroline stayed up later than she should have, but at least the next day was going to be a day off. She could at least hope to get some rest, she could sleep in as much as she wanted, and ultimately it didn't much matter whether she stayed up or not. That was good, because the more that she thought about it, the more worried she got about whatever Shannen had decided to do to fix her father's 'problem.'

  She woke up with her muscles all hurting from a sleeping position that was about as uncomfortable as she could possibly imagine. But in the end, she was satisfied that she'd gotten some of it done, at least.

  Her eyes still stung with sleep, and though the tiredness should have faded away from sleep, it seemed to have settled into her body. The phone beeping at her that it was nearly ten in the morning, on the other hand, was all the motivation that she needed to force herself to roll out of bed.

  Whether Shannen would tell her anything about what he'd done with or to Coogan and his boys, she wasn't going to keep trying to pretend that she wasn't worried ab
out it. Whatever he had done, however he'd gotten himself involved, she wasn't stupid enough to think that there was nothing to worry about. There was obviously quite a bit that she should have been worried about, or he would have just told her everything. Right?

  That, or he was telling the truth, but his little 'don't be smart, be dumb' speech hadn't missed its mark, either. He was telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she should back off, and she wasn't sure that she was prepared to question him on it.

  Whatever his day job was, she didn't doubt for a moment that he knew plenty about the mob, and about what sort of risks they posed. If he was worried then it was for a reason, and she didn't know what that reason was but she frankly didn't want to know.

  "It doesn't even matter," she told herself, out loud. Nobody would be around to hear it, anyways, she knew. He was at the gym, like he was every day at ten. She should have been up an hour ago but thankfully it didn't matter.

  She checked the phone, plugged in and resting on the kitchen counter. A missed call was unusual. Hell, answering her phone was almost as unusual. Nobody had any reason to call her in the first place. But it wasn't hard to figure out who had been calling, at least. For one thing, they had left a message, one that she clicked the button to play as she continued going about her day. For another thing, she knew the hospital's number by heart either way.

  She wasn't going in to work, no matter what they said. She was a hundred times too exhausted to go in, and this was one of her rare truly free break days. She wasn't going to give it up so that she could get puked on by nobody.

  The voice on the other end of the line was a doctor, one that she'd met before but never worked with. Dr. Strand was an older man and if he were a politician he would have been a handsome one. Doctors can be a little bit younger, though, and he was much, much too old to be of any interest to her.

  Second, he didn't work on her floor, so she wasn't going to work with him either way. He worked in the cancer ward. The one where her father was.

  "Hello, Miss Rice? It's Dr. Strand calling. It's about your father. There's nothing to worry about, but you might want to come around some time today. Your father's being transferred for surgery and if you'd like to see him beforehand, he's going in at, uh..." She could almost see him looking down to check his notes, even through the speaker.