Chapter 27

Reed

“And on this page here,” Stacy says as she points to a place on the document. I scribble my signature and she flips the page, pointing to one last place I need to sign. “And right here.”

I scrawl my name for what seems like the hundredth time and she flips the thick contract back into place. Looking to me with a bright smile she exclaims, “Congratulations, Reed. You are now the primary spokesperson for Fast Advantage Sports Shakes.”

I grin back at her. “Why, thank you very much, Miss Nichols. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

Stacy throws back her head and her blond curls bounce as she laughs at me. “We make a good team.”

That we do. Stacy Nichols has been my agent since I entered the NHL. She’s brokered some amazing deals for me and has made me a very rich man. She’s also made a shit pot of money off of me too.

“What time do I have to take you to the airport?” I ask her.

She stands up from my kitchen table and rotates her neck until I can hear the bones cracking. Stacy was a college and professional women’s basketball player before she turned sports agent. While she has an athletic build, she is also quite voluptuous and drop-dead gorgeous to boot. Her sex appeal, though, hasn’t seemed to have hindered her playing in a man’s world of sports entertainment. She represents a few other Cold Fury members as well, and we all love her for what she’s done for us professionally.

“We’ve got about another hour before we need to leave. I’m flying to Pittsburgh to sign Arturo Rodriguez.”

“You’re kidding me,” I say with surprise as I push up out of my chair. I walk to my refrigerator and pull out two beers, knowing that Stacy won’t say no to one.

“Incredible, right?” she says with a laugh. I hand her her beer and she twists the top off, setting the cap on the counter.

Arturo Rodriguez is the most sought after center fielder in professional baseball. While Stacy does well by the handful of hockey players and few professional football players she represents, Arturo will definitely be the biggest feather in her cap. This pleases me, because it will give her more credibility in future negotiations on my behalf.

I twist the cap off my bottle and hold my beer out to her. She taps the neck against mine and I say, “Congratulations. That’s amazing.”

She offers a blasé shrug. “It helps that I used to date the cousin of his high school coach.”

“Bullshit,” I say with a stern look. “Your talent speaks for itself.”

Stacy puts her forearms on the counter, holding the beer bottle loosely. She looks up at me with a smile. “So, what’s new with you, Reed? Anything exciting going on in your life?”

I must hesitate too long before I say, “Not really,” because Stacy’s eyes narrow at me.

“But there’s a story there,” she says confidently.

She’s fucking right there’s a story there. I haven’t been able to think straight since Josie walked out of my house yesterday. My fucking big mouth goading her right into Aiden’s arms. I barely slept last night, and I must have looked out the front window a million times waiting for her car to come back. It never did, and it wasn’t there this morning either.

My gut says that Josie would never have betrayed me with Aiden. She was pissed when she walked out of here, but I can also tell she had not given up on me. She’s got far too much loyalty to let anger make her do something impulsive and stupid the way my doubts led me to push her out that door.

At least I hope that’s the Josie I know. And yet, I cannot pretend I am not bothered by the fact that fifteen minutes ago when I looked out the window again, her car still wasn’t outside.

“Spill it, Olson,” Stacy says with a pointed look. Then her voice turns soft and she says, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I tip my bottle of beer up and take a few hefty swallows, enjoying the respite of an ice-cold pale ale going down my throat. I’m so bent out of shape with all the stuff with Josie that I’d really like to get shit-faced drunk, but I know that would not be a good thing. No telling what I would do.

With a sigh, I admit to her dejectedly, “Girl trouble. The worst kind.”

Stacy nods at me knowingly. “You did something stupid, didn’t you?”

I give a tiny bark of humorless laughter and nod. “I pretty much screwed up yesterday and pushed away a woman I’m confident is my soul mate.”

Stacy tilts her head and says, “Awww. That may be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Fuck off,” I say with a chuckle. “I sort of pushed her away because I didn’t think I was good enough for her, and she hasn’t come back home all night.”

Stacy’s eyebrows jet sky high. “She was living with you? Because that is huge, Reed.”

I shake my head. “She lived next door. But I actually spent most of my time over at her place.”

“So, what’s the deal? What does she do? Where did you meet her? At what point did you fall in love? And finally, at what point did you screw it up?”

I nod to the counter stool indicating that she should take a seat, because this story will take a while. Plus, I figure it can’t hurt to get a woman’s perspective on how I might fix the problem. Stacy pulls the stool out, sits down, and looks at me expectantly.

“Okay, so I met Josie—”

“Oh my God, that’s such a cute name. I love it.”

I glare at Stacy. “You going to keep interrupting me? Because we don’t have long before we have to get you the airport.”

Stacy holds her hands up in apology and says, “My bad. Please continue.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay, so the thing is—”

At that moment, my front door opens and my gaze travels past Stacy’s shoulder to see Josie walking into my home. Immediate relief as well as fear overwhelms me. I’m beyond ecstatic to see her safe and sound, but I’m terrified she’s here to tell me that Aiden is now the love of her life and that we’re over.

But that’s not exactly what happens. Josie’s eyes lock with mine for only a moment before she looks at Stacy sitting across the kitchen counter from me. I wince as Josie’s eyes narrow and travel down the length of Stacy.

I wince because I know what she is seeing and thinking. A tall, busty, beautiful blonde, but more important, a woman who looks like every other woman I was with before meeting Josie. The fact that she’s wearing an expensive, expertly cut business suit that hugs every curve of her body doesn’t make her any less sexy. I stand straight and set my beer down on the counter.

I take a step to the side of the counter and try to dispel her preconceived notions that I see brewing in her hostile gaze. “Now, Josie…it’s not what you think—”

Josie’s eyes snap from Stacy to me, and after a brief flash of hurt they light on fire with fury. “Really, Reed? You waited all of twenty hours for me to be gone and now you’re hooking up with another Barbie? And by the looks of it, you are now onto Business Barbie. So fucking typical.”

Stacy’s head swivels to look at me and she mouths the words Business Barbie?

I don’t respond because Stacy can wait for an explanation. Josie can’t. By the time I move my attention back to the doorway I’m stunned to find it empty and Josie is gone.

“Shit,” I say as I scramble the rest of the way around the counter and fly toward my door. I call out over my shoulder, “I’ll be back, Stacy. Make yourself comfortable.”

By the time I make it down my steps, Josie’s door is slamming shut. I race up to her porch and fortunately find her door unlocked. I expect her anger made her forget to lock me out and I’m grateful for it.

I burst through, and as soon as I step over the threshold, a book comes flying at my head. Thank God for my catlike reflexes, because I manage to move my head to the right and the book goes sailing out her front door.

My eyes lock on to Josie and I see her grabbing another book off her coffee table. I glare at her and hold my hands out defensively. “Don’t you even fucking think about throwing that book. That was not what you thought it was.”

Thankfully she doesn’t throw the book, but she does snarl at me, “Oh really? I didn’t just find you in your home with another freaking Barbie doll?”

“She’s my sports agent,” I say blandly. “She brought me a new endorsement deal to sign.”

I have a small measure of satisfaction when I see the blood drain out of Josie’s face. Her mouth drops open and for a moment she’s speechless. If I wasn’t so intent on trying to rectify the mess I made yesterday, I would actually laugh at her, but I know that wouldn’t be well received.

“She’s your agent?”

I smile softly and step into her living room, closing the door behind me. “Since I got drafted in the NHL. Stacy Nichols. I’ll introduce you to her in a little bit.”

Josie groans and flops backward onto her couch. Laying her head on the cushion she stares up at the ceiling and says, “Oh God. I just made a fool of myself, didn’t I?”

“Just a little bit,” I tell her as I come to sit beside her on the couch. “But for what it’s worth, it was adorable.”

Josie’s head rolls on the cushion to look at me. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

I grin back at her. “Nope.”

Josie smiles wanly, then rolls her head away and stares at the ceiling again. Her silence I can handle, so I let her have at it. What I can’t handle is not being able to touch her for another minute, so I slide my hand over and take hers in mine.

I give her a squeeze and say, “Where were you all night?”

She squeezes my hand in return and lets her head roll back my way once again. Her eyes are clear and without any guilt, and that relieves me. Although my anxiety skyrockets when she says, “I stayed at Aiden’s last night.”

I start to pull my hand away involuntarily, but she won’t let me. She holds on tight and squeezes again. “It’s not what you think. I went over there, got drunk, and ranted. I couldn’t drive home, so I slept in his guest bedroom.”

“So you really went over there like I told you to?”

Josie cocks an eyebrow at me. “After you practically dared me to? Of course I went.”

I’m hesitant to ask, and I really don’t want to know the answer, but it must be asked. “And what happened?”

“I kissed him as soon as he opened the door,” she says matter-of-factly.

I push up off the couch and turn to face her with a glare. “Jesus fucking Christ, Josie. You actually kissed him?”

She smirks at me with dancing eyes. “You told me that’s who I should be with. That he’s what I needed. So how else was I supposed to know unless I tested whether or not there was still some chemistry there?”

“I can’t believe you actually kissed him,” I say in disbelief.

Her smile turns a little more mischievous. “If it helps, it was a terrible kiss. I knew right away he wasn’t it for me.”

Those words and the way in which she says them, knowing that she’s highly amused by my discomfort, causes all of my anxiety to melt away. Josie just said that Aiden was not the one for her. And if her lips had to touch his briefly to figure that out, I’ll be fucking thankful for it.

I drop to my knees in front of Josie and take both of her hands in mine. She stares at me with a yearning hopefulness over what I might say.

Therefore, I must make it good, since I don’t want to disappoint her. “I’m sorry, Josie. I should’ve never said those things to you. It was nothing but my insecurities getting the better of me.”

Josie sits up from the couch and leans forward so her face is close to mine. “Aiden had a different theory.”

“Oh yeah? What was that?”

Josie raises her hand and touches her palm to my cheek. Her thumb grazes the skin just outside the corner of my eye, and it might be the best feeling in the world.

She whispers sweetly, “He thinks you acted the way you did because you love me so much that you truly only wanted to make sure I had the best life has to offer me.”

And once again, her ex-boyfriend sort of comes through for me. “I don’t know if I can be everything to you, Josie. But I want to be everything that I can possibly be. I want to be exactly what you need.”

“Why would you ever think you couldn’t be enough?”

“I swear to you that I don’t think Aiden was causing trouble,” I say by way of explanation. “But he was telling me about you, and I was learning things that I had no clue about. Like the fact that you’re a plotter and a planner and you like your life to be orderly. And that you want a family and a white picket fence and you want it sooner rather than later. And hell, he told me that when a patient dies you don’t want to be hugged and you don’t want to cry. That you want to be pushed back into the fray again so you can get right back up on your horse, and I didn’t know that. I hugged you and I almost made you cry. There’s a lot of things I did wrong. A lot of stuff I just don’t know. I thought that I was wrong for you.”

Josie’s eyes turn warm as she gives me an empathetic smile. “Oh, Reed. Just because I’m a plotter and a planner doesn’t mean I can’t be spontaneous. You’re the one who showed me I can, and I love it. You’ve shown me how to have fun. And you know what? I adored it when you pulled me into your arms because I was upset that patient had died. I’m always expected to be so strong and not allowed to show emotion, and yet you were letting me do that in the safe environment of your arms without any judgment. It was very special that you provided that to me, and I want it again.”

I know the look on my face is utterly stupid as I take in her words and can’t help but be completely bowled over by them. “So you’re essentially saying I was giving you what you needed?”

She laughs softly while she nods her head. “Oh yeah. You were giving me exactly what I needed.”