Fourteen
Brody was holding court in the crowded tea room of the Tide Me Over Inn, rehashing a call gone wrong in this year’s playoffs. The guests were sympathetic to his indignation about getting called for offensive interference, particularly the three young Frenchwomen who most likely hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Will shook his head and began to step into the large parlor before a hand grabbed his arm.
“Don’t you dare take him from that room. He’s good for business.”
Will smiled down into the face of Patricia McAlister, the inn’s owner and Gavin’s mother. Her fiery red hair had faded into a more serene champagne color after some fifty-odd years, but her smiling eyes were blue as ever.
“Hey, you’ve got your own professional athlete in the family. Make him entertain your guests,” Will teased.
Patricia’s eyes dimmed. “The baseball season has just begun. He’s too busy. Besides, Ryan doesn’t come home anymore. Except maybe for weddings and funerals.”
Will mentally kicked himself for upsetting the woman who’d been a second mother to him. Apparently the estrangement between Ryan and his family was as bad as it ever was, especially after the death of his father a few years back. Patricia still grieved the sudden loss of her husband deeply; the rift with her son didn’t help matters.
He pulled her in for a hug, brushing a kiss over the top of her head. “He loves you. He just doesn’t like being in this town.”
“Spoken like one who feels the same way.”
“It goes without saying that I love you.” Will neatly sidestepped the second part of her statement. Like his mother, Patricia believed Chances Inlet was her destiny, the place where she’d get her second chance. Will and the McAlister boys all thought the myth was a bunch of crap, hightailing it out of town as fast as they could to find their destiny someplace else. Somewhere they could be someone else.
“I can’t let you in there,” Patricia insisted. “Not with those French exchange students in heat and you without a ring on. Really, Will, would it hurt you to wear a wedding band?”
When news of their wedding broke, Julianne’s brother had spun an elaborate tale of lost love to the media. Most people believed the marriage was real. But those closest to Will—Patricia and Gavin and a few select others—knew the truth. Both his mother and Patricia were as irritated as Julianne that he would not wear a ring. Not that it mattered to him. If Will ever put on a wedding band, it would be because he loved a woman enough to commit his life to her. His feelings for Julianne were a mix of lust, mistrust, and exasperation. Nothing close to love. And any commitment they might have was scheduled to end in a few months.
“Only if he wore it through his nose,” Brody interrupted, slipping from his admirers and joining them in the hallway.
Patricia laughed. “That I’d like to see!”
Will shot Brody a menacing look, but as usual, the tight end wasn’t fazed.
“Go pick on your other sons. Brody and I have work to do.” He turned to the ornate, curved staircase in the inn’s grand foyer, and Brody followed.
“Boys!” Patricia called to them as they climbed the stairs. Her tone was one Will had heard a thousand times in his lifetime, usually as he and the McAlister boys were off to their attic play space. “No roughhousing. This is a hotel, and I have guests.”
Brody winked at her. “Message received. If I want to clean his clock, I’ll take him to the gym.”
“As if that would ever happen,” Will mumbled.
Brody charged up the stairs, Will at his heels, and entered a large suite at the head of the stairs. Patricia had named the rooms after cities and towns in Scotland, decorating them with the colors of the clans who live there. Brody was in the Inverness room, a sunny suite with a king-sized four-poster bed and panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean just across the street from the inn.
Will moved to the center of the room as Brody closed and locked the door behind them.
“You can’t be too careful,” Brody said in answer to Will’s raised eyebrow. He opened the top drawer of the antique tallboy and pulled out a large envelope and two smaller ones, tossing them on the round table between two overstuffed chairs. Brody slouched in one of the chairs, one of his long legs dangling over the side. He grabbed the remote and dialed up SportsCenter on the television.
Will carefully picked up the envelopes.
“Dude, they’re perfectly safe. I had them checked out before I touched them.”
Will hadn’t considered that the letters wouldn’t be safe, but he felt a sheen of sweat break out on his back at Brody’s words. “Paranoid much?”
“Hey, one never knows. Besides, it gave me an excuse to call this FBI agent I know. You should see what she can do with a pair of handcuffs.” Brody winked at him.
He shook his head and sank down into the chair across from Brody, tearing open the first envelope.
“Hey!” Brody sat up in his chair. “You gonna open those here?”
“I thought you said they were safe,” Will said as he pulled the contents from the largest envelope.
“Dude, they are. That doesn’t mean I want to know what’s in them! I don’t want to be incriminated in this mess. You know, guilt by association?”
“Relax. I haven’t done anything wrong, so . . .” Will stared at a photo of him putting a punishing hit on Denver quarterback Mark Callahan. It was the play that cemented Will’s position in the NFL, the one that earned him a starting position. It had also ended Callahan’s career with a separated shoulder that never recovered despite two surgeries.
“Damn,” Brody said from over Will’s shoulder. “That was some hit.”
“It was a clean hit.”
“I’m guessing someone doesn’t think so.”
Will threw the photo onto the table and picked up one of the smaller envelopes. In it was a small wooden emblem, a seven-pointed star surrounded by a wreath, a symbol of the Aurelian Society, one of the secret societies at Yale University and an organization Will was a member of.
“Is that some voodoo good-luck charm?” Brody asked.
Will slid the piece into the pocket of his jeans. It wasn’t a good-luck charm. It was a message. One about honor and duty to the university to which he owed so much. One about keeping his mouth shut.
He didn’t want to open the last envelope, but he couldn’t wuss out in front of Brody. Will slid his finger through the seal and pulled out a single piece of paper. It contained one handwritten line:
SNITCHES DON’T LAST LONG IN THIS LEAGUE.
“Dude, you might want to think about getting a lawyer.”
• • •
Despite her resolve to stay hidden while she was living there with Will, the picturesque town of Chances Inlet—decked out in red, white, and blue bunting and American flags to commemorate the upcoming Memorial Day holiday—captivated Julianne. From the way Will had described his hometown, she’d expected the people there to be cold, perhaps even hostile. They were anything but, constantly regaling her with stories of Will’s escapades as a boy. The tales they told were more Norman Rockwell than Will’s abbreviated version of his childhood.
Meandering to the town square after her postpartum check-up with an OB-GYN Dr. Ling had recommended, Julianne sat on a blanket beneath one of the huge live oak trees lining the quaint park in the town’s center that featured an actual Civil War cannon. Children scrambled on top of the cannon as their parents snapped pictures. The ocean roared somewhere in the distance, but the noise didn’t diminish the peacefulness she felt. Owen slept quietly in his stroller, a Blaze baseball cap shielding his face.
The pencil had started moving slowly on the page at first. What started out as doodles was slowly turning into a stunning wedding gown. Julianne dared not breathe. It had been so long, she didn’t want to jinx it even by smiling. The lines of the dress were elegant, fit for the wife of a military doctor. She hoped she could hold on to the image until she’d completed the sketch.
Her iPhone buzzed on the blanket beside her, her brother’s face popping up on the screen. Crap! Just like that, the image of the dress vanished from her head.
Tossing the pencil into the grass, she picked up the phone. “What do you want?”
“My, such a pleasant greeting.” Her brother’s voice was its usual smug sound. “Can’t a brother check up on his sister once in a while?”
“You’ve called me every day since I got here. I don’t think you’ve called this many times in a year. Ever.”
“I just want to make sure everything is okay with you and the baby.”
“Owen. Your nephew’s name is Owen.”
Stephen let out an exasperated sigh. “Julianne, I know my nephew’s name. I know your name. I even know your husband’s name. How is William the Conqueror treating you, by the way?”
Stephen’s calls were the same every day. He asked about Owen, then how Will was treating her, as if he were suspicious that Will might be abusing her. He never asked about her, though. Of course, he never had before. Why should now be any different? She wondered what her pompous brother would say if she told him Will was beating her. Or subjecting her to humiliating sexual encounters. She blushed just thinking about the kiss they’d shared two days ago.
Instead, she answered as she did each day. “He’s treating us fine, Stephen.” Which was sort of true; Will was treating Owen fine. Julianne, however, was being treated with the chilly reserve Will was famous for. Ever since their encounter in the nursery, they’d gone back to being distant housemates, alternating caring for Owen. It was better this way, she kept telling herself. Easier to make the break when they had to.
Besides, Will’s accusation about her and Nicky hurt more than she wanted to admit. People were forever making false assumptions about their relationship. Julianne never spent much effort refuting them because she truly did love Nicky. He was the one constant in her life, the one person who’d always been there for her, especially when she needed him the most. She didn’t think her heart was big enough to love another person. Until she’d had Owen.
But Julianne was a realist. Nicky loved her, she knew, just not enough. He loved another more. At first, she’d been devastated by his decision to become a priest. As the years passed, she rationalized his choice by being thankful that at least he would never love another woman more than he loved her.
“He’s bonding with Owen, then? Actually helping take care of him?” her brother asked.
An image of Owen sleeping on Will’s chest popped into her head. Will had taken to getting up in the predawn hours with the baby, Julianne taking the middle-of-the-night shift. When Owen hadn’t been in his crib this morning, she’d panicked, racing down to Will’s study to find the baby nestled atop Will’s slumbering body, his big hand securely cradling their son. The scene was so tender it brought tears to Julianne’s eyes. She’d quietly retreated to the kitchen, trying to figure out why she was crying. The purpose of their stay in Chances Inlet had been for father and son to establish a bond. Julianne wasn’t sure why she’d felt so left out.
“Yeah, they’re bonding, Stephen. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”
“Julianne!” her brother called before she could hang up. “Wait! I need to ask you something.”
“I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with my life, if that’s what’s keeping you up at night. But don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by sleeping on street corners.”
Stephen sighed. “You and Owen are always welcome at my house. And I have no doubt you’ll figure something out. You’re a brilliant designer.”
Julianne nearly pinched herself. Her brother had barely acknowledged her career in fashion. A positive compliment from him was a shock.
“What I really want to know is what Will thinks about this whole mess with his former coach,” Stephen continued. “Has he said anything about it?”
Will hadn’t mentioned a problem with his coach, but then they’d hardly exchanged more than polite conversation these past few days. “What mess with his former coach?”
“It’s all over the sports media.”
Julianne rolled her eyes. She was more Project Runway and Chopped than ESPN, a fact her brother should know.
“It looks like he may be implicated in a bounty scheme where players are paid to hurt opposing players,” Stephen went on to say.
“Will? Or his coach?” Julianne asked.
Stephen took a long moment to answer. “Well, it could be both of them if the rumors are correct. Will is known for some pretty . . . aggressive play.”
Something within Stephen’s tone sent a chill down Julianne’s spine. The image of Will deliberately hurting someone else just didn’t fit. Sure, he was arrogant and bullheaded, but he was gentle with Owen and he’d been kind to her that night on Sea Island. Of course, did she really know the real Will Connelly? Could she trust him with her son?
Julianne quickly stood and folded up the blanket, shoving it and the forgotten sketch in the back of the stroller. “Well, Will must not be too worried about it. He hasn’t said a word about his coach or this scheme you’re talking about, and we talk about everything,” she lied. “I’ve got to go feed the baby now, Stephen. Thanks for the call.”
“Look, Julianne, things could get a little ugly. They’ll try to make him out to be a monster. If you need me, just call, okay?”
The more salacious her brother sounded, the more suspicious she got. She gave him a quick good-bye before hanging up. Clearly, he didn’t want his political career tainted by scandal brought on by his brother-in-law. He didn’t really care about the safety of his sister and his nephew. But Julianne wasn’t being fair. To Will, anyway. She’d never once felt threatened by him despite his strength and size. And she’d never seen him mistreat Owen. There had to be an explanation.
Julianne pushed the stroller toward the line of shops housed in refurbished warehouses lining the Cape Fear River. Clearly, she needed to talk to someone who’d know what was going on. She punched up Carly’s contact on her iPhone, but it went straight to voice mail. Not bothering to leave a message, she hung up and contemplated who else she could get information from. Annabeth? But Will’s mother was as aloof as her son, blending into the woodwork whenever she was in the house. Julianne still didn’t have a good read on her mother-in-law, and it seemed like the woman wanted to keep it that way.
The beat of a loud bass interrupted Julianne’s thoughts. She looked through the large picture window beside her and there stood Brody Janik, looking like he was posing for a deodorant ad inside the Ship’s Iron Gym. Brandi, the one-woman welcoming committee of Chances Inlet, was adoringly admiring his form as he hefted a dumbbell.
Brody was Will’s teammate, which meant they probably had some sort of locker room code about not snitching on the other, but if she kept her questions vague enough, she might be able to find out what exactly was going on and how it impacted Will. Believing it was worth a shot, she maneuvered the stroller into the lobby of the gym. The music was loud and Julianne worried it might wake Owen. She’d stay only a minute, she decided, pulling the blanket over his ears.
Being the wife of a celebrity had its perks. The college-aged kid at the desk let her in without having to produce proof of membership. He even asked if she’d need daycare for “the little guy.” Not without earplugs, she wanted to say. Instead, she shook her head and asked if he wouldn’t mind fetching Brody for her, gesturing to the sleeping baby in the stroller.
Brody was by her side instantly, wiping his concerned face with a towel. “Hey, what’s up?” He peeked at Owen, still asleep. “Do you need me to get Will?”
“Will’s here?”
Darn! Darn! Darn. Of course Will was here. He was a stickler for his routine and he always worked out this time of the morning. Suddenly, she felt ridiculous letting her brother’s comments get to her.
Will wasn’t a monster. He played an aggressive game, and sometimes people got hurt. Off the field, he was cool and composed. She only had to conjure up the picture of his big hand on Owen’s back this morning as the two slept to know Will was gentle and protective. That same hand had rubbed her back during Owen’s transfusion. Not to mention how he had comforted her during the storm that night of the wedding. She took a deep, calming breath. Her brother was being ridiculous; she and Owen were perfectly safe sharing a house with Will.
Brody cocked his head, his look quizzical. “Julianne?”
She had to think fast. Wistfully, she remembered the half-finished sketch in the stroller. Julianne wasn’t sure if she could finish the design, but she felt like the final image was just beyond her fingertips and she needed something to help her reach it.
“No, I don’t need Will. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind texting me the photo of your sister and her fiancé? I—I might have some ideas about a gown.”
“It’s okay, Julianne,” he said softly, his tone laced with empathy. “I have four older sisters. Two of them have kids. After each pregnancy, it took them a while to return to being . . . themselves again.” He put a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “Don’t push yourself. My sister understands.”
She felt the tears threatening. Her emotions were in such a tangle this morning. Maybe he was right and this was some sort of postpartum depression. But if she was going to get back to being herself—Julianne Marchione, fashion designer to the rich and famous—she needed to finish this design.
Something about the compassion on Brody’s face made her admit her deep secret. “I haven’t been able to sketch much of anything for a while, but I started something this morning and I’d like to see if I can finish it. It might not even be something your sister wants, but . . .”
Brody grinned at her, his cover-boy smile lighting up his face. “Atta girl! I won’t say anything to Tricia unless you tell me to. You just take your time.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “What’s your number?”
Julianne gave it to him, and within seconds her phone beeped in response. The emotional roller coaster she was riding was on the upswing, because she felt more optimistic than she had in a long time. Until, of course, her husband’s voice boomed behind her.
“Are you crazy? Owen will go deaf in this place! What’s he doing in here?”
If Brody was all-American gorgeous, Will was pure Norse gladiator. Despite the fact that both men were nearly the same height, Will’s presence loomed larger in the room, more commanding. His hair stood up on end from where he’d run sweaty fingers through it during his workout, and his perspiration-soaked shirt stuck to this body, outlining his well-muscled chest. He was the picture of a virile, conquering male. One who was also angry.
Julianne felt something stir inside her, something other than fear. It was more like desire. And relief that her instincts were not wrong about Will. If he were all the things her brother said he was, he wouldn’t be hovering over his sleeping son, worried about his exposure to loud noise.
“Seriously, dude, that kid will be able to play in any stadium if he can withstand this kind of noise.” Brody’s voice was filled with awe as he glanced into the stroller.
Will answered him with his patented glare. A crowd had started to gather, and Julianne wanted to avoid another argument like the one they’d had in the kitchen the other day.
“There you are,” she said, improvising as she went. “I just came to see if you would be home for lunch today.”
The befuddled look on Will’s face was amusing. True to her word, she hadn’t cooked a thing for anyone but herself since arriving in town. Any leftovers had suspiciously disappeared during the night, but she let that go since it was his kitchen.
Julianne took a step closer, whispering through her pasted-on smile. “Be nice, I’m playing the dutiful wife here.” Slowly, so everyone could glimpse her shiny, fake wedding band, she reached up and ran a hand over his well-defined pectoral muscle. Will’s body went rigid beneath her touch, but his eyes were blazing. She sucked in a breath, drawing her trembling hand back and placing it on the handle of the stroller to steady herself.
“I’ll see you at home then,” she called out as she hurriedly pushed the stroller out of the gym, not risking a glance back at her husband.