CHAPTER TWELVE
Time fell away, tumbling like the severed bits of shrubbery left in the wake of Izzie’s topiary shears. Minutes shifted into hours as she trimmed the first in a row of modest spiral trees that stood at attention like foot soldiers on either side of the Tarantinos’ front door. It had passed perfection a while ago, but she couldn’t seem to stop obsessing about it and tend to the other trees waiting in line to be groomed.
Besides, if she moved, she would lose vantage of the driveway. When her fiancé finally came home, she wanted the first face he saw to be hers.
Snip.
Last night she’d dressed up in a brand-new dress, practically effervescent with excitement to see a Cirque du Soleil show with Luca. But after a half hour crept by with no response to her WHERE R U? texts, he’d responded with CALL YOU BACK but never followed through.
Snip. Snip.
Izzie edged to the side, stepping into the neighboring tree’s shade. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the stiffness that had settled there overnight as she slept slumped on a bench in Luca’s foyer, waiting for him. This morning she’d woken up irritable and had followed a trail of whispers to the kitchen, where the housekeeper, Nadia, entertained the part-time cleaning staff with gossip. At the master of the house’s request, while Izzie slept, Nadia had discreetly dropped off his shaving kit and a change of clothes to a hotel in Las Vegas.
Snip!
A chunk of delicate branches and rich green leaves hit the ground at Izzie’s feet. She stared at the destruction. It was ruined. The topiary, her engagement, her plans…
Luca was fucking someone else.
She dumped the shears into a wheelbarrow and wiped her quavering hands on the front of her sundress, wanting to berate herself for wasting time she didn’t have.
The producer who’d dangled in front of her the big break she’d been dreaming about was losing interest in her reality TV show. The concept was solid and she was attractive enough, but her fiancé didn’t have an NFL team anymore and Izzie didn’t have much of an engagement. Oh, and at the age of twenty-nine, she had only a few years of marketability left.
Visions of red-carpet events, of using communications skills from her unfinished hitch in college to branch out to hot networks with longevity, of showing her parents that losing their financial and emotional support hadn’t broken her, burst like bubbles.
Her phone chirped within her dress’s pocket and she glared at Toya Messa’s number on the display. As far as friends went, she was down to just Toya, who was weeks away from a fat divorce settlement that would set her for life.
The lucky bitch. Izzie pushed away from the shelter of the trees, ignoring the call and wishing she could ignore the tears that burned hotter than the summer sunshine.
How could she have let a man get the best of her again? No, she hadn’t given Luca Tarantino her body. But she’d given him her trust, trust that he’d let slip through his fingers along with the Las Vegas Villains.
Izzie had lost her leverage, risked her future. Entire nights away from the mansion meant Luca wasn’t spending those nights alone, wanting her. She wasn’t naive; of course, withholding was a gamble. But she’d hoped that he would stay true to his word and remain faithful to her for the duration of their engagement. All he’d had to do was show some integrity, marry her, and make good on his promise.
I’m going to help you, Izzie, as long as you need me. You’ll have the money you need to take care of yourself. You’ll never again have to sell yourself out for an old man like me. You deserve better.
His word had meant nothing. Neither had his son Jeremiah’s. At first Jeremiah had wanted to take the necessary measures to get the team back. Something…someone…had changed his mind.
The almost seductive growl of a car engine interrupted her bawl-fest, and Izzie clumsily dabbed at her wet eyes. When Luca quieted his Porsche in the driveway and got out clean shaven, wearing sunglasses and a suit different from the one she’d last seen him in, she was there to meet him. From head to toe he looked like a man who’d spent the night in comfort.
The comfort of slut—a brilliant slut who was richer today than she’d been yesterday.
“Trimming, were you?” Luca pointed his car key toward the spiral trees. “Let’s have a look.”
Izzie trailed him in silence across the lush lawn, watched him perform a cursory scan. Noticing the damage done to the first topiary, he turned to her for explanation. “You’re crying.” He shrugged, nudged her chin up gently. “It’ll grow back. It’s a temporary ugly.”
“I waited for you last night, Luca.”
Luca’s hand dropped. “Time got away from me. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t treat me like this. You lie as if you think I’m dumb enough to believe it. You keep me on hold, give me less respect than you do the household staff.”
Luca frowned at the animosity that shook her voice. “I’m providing for you.”
“A car and a few credit cards aren’t enough. I have plans for my life. You’re going to be my husband.”
“A wedding was reasonable before things got out of control, out of my hands.”
“What things?”
“Never mind. You want the Lamborghini? It’s yours. Take the clothes, too.”
“No!” She wasn’t some game-show contestant who could be pacified with a few consolation prizes. “What about the reality TV show? Chances like this don’t just fall into a woman’s lap. Without this shot, I’m sunk. No one wants me.”
“That can’t be my problem anymore.” Luca reached for her engagement ring, but she jerked away. “Take some time to come to terms.” Then he strode to his car and was gone again.
Izzie twisted the ring on her finger, almost shivering with panic. The tears reemerged, bringing up an angry sob from someplace down deep. She lunged for the nearest tree, gripping handfuls and yanking. Branches snapped and the tree quivered, but she couldn’t dislodge it from the ground. When her hands slipped, she staggered backward. What she’d put into this house was more deeply rooted than she thought.
“Izzie.”
She twisted around to find Milo at the top of the front steps, his tattooed arms crossed. He stood motionless but watchful, like a hawk considering its prey. Just fucking great. If he hadn’t seen what had just happened, surely he’d heard every mortifying word of it.
Not that she was obligated to acknowledge it—or the man surveying her now. If she could just hold it together long enough to get inside the mansion, she could pretend, for a while, that her fiancé hadn’t dumped her on the front lawn.
With tearstains and dirty hands, she took the steps swiftly. But at the precise moment that she put up a hand to warn him against speaking to her, Milo stopped her with a sudden grip on her wrist.
Her mind flew to the last time he’d touched her…where he’d touched her. For some inexplicable reason she could feel him there again—the scrape of his beard, the wet glide of his tongue, the demanding stroke of his fingers.
Skin prickling, nerves aroused, she glared at him through her tears. Because he didn’t grasp how cruel he genuinely was, and that made him dangerous.
Milo had taken liberty and authority and the kind of risk that might taunt Luca to have them both slain—if he didn’t take the honors himself.
But Milo didn’t want her. Touching her had been all part of a game—a battle of wits, a fight for dominance.
She straightened to her full height. True, she wasn’t a football warrior as he’d been not so long ago. But she was tough in other ways. And nothing could crush her fighting spirit. At the end of the day, it was all that remained.
“Sounds like he’s done.” Milo inclined his head, his dark hair sweeping his shoulders. “Whatever deal you had going with him—it’s over.”
“Cute, how you seem to think you have a say in my relationship with Luca.”
“You mean the relationship that was a fucking joke from the beginning? The one he ended just now? Yeah, that relationship.” His gaze followed a tear that trickled freely when she blinked, and his features seemed to tighten into a frown. “Walk away, Izzie.”
“Don’t break out the celebratory champagne yet.” He didn’t appear to be in a particularly celebratory mood, yet she never could gauge whether anything but resentment lived inside him. She flashed the engagement ring. “As long as I have this, I’m still in the picture.”
Fueled with desperation, she escaped to the guest room she’d chosen upon moving in, grabbed her phone, and committed to a decision without giving herself the chance to change her mind. Then, tossing the phone aside, she sank to the bed. Guilt, something she didn’t know she could still feel, swamped her.
It had taken a few phone calls, and more cash than she’d wanted to spend, to find dirt on Waverly Greer once she’d gotten an idea of what to search for. It had taken one night of following Jeremiah to catch him in a rendezvous with the woman and figure out why he’d defected to Waverly’s side.
Izzie had no loyalty to Waverly or Jeremiah or anyone else, yet she’d hesitated all the same. Now it was make it or break it, and she’d had only one real choice.
To save herself.
◆◆◆
With Villains Stadium in the final stages of its renovation, the perimeter of the place was crammed with trucks ranging from ordinary pickups to cherry pickers to cranes. If the building was J.T. and Joan’s oyster, then the owners’ suite was the pearl.
As one of the many assistants ushered Waverly inside, she was excited to get her first look at the refreshed space. Since being persuaded to distance herself from Omar Beckham, who had taken it personally just as she’d known he would, Waverly had been at best cordial to Veronica and their parents. It was past time to squash the tension between them. When her father had texted her at the top of the morning, summoning her from Mount Charleston for a long lunch at the stadium, she’d felt optimistic about finally putting all the hurt feelings and disappointment aside.
The details of the luxury suite stood out all at once: Parisian-influenced furniture, a wet bar, glass panels that showcased the heart of the stadium. Waverly’s favorite spot in the whole place—the field—was a mess. Would it be presentable, functional, for the next at-home exhibition game?
“We’re on schedule,” Joan said, sweeping into the room with her tablet. “The turf has taken well and the painting crew will be here at five sharp tomorrow morning to make over the seats.”
“You read my mind, Mom.” Waverly reached out to hug Joan but grasped the air as her mother breezed past to set the tablet on the bar.
“Then it’s nice to be tuned in to my daughters every once in a while. You accused me of not knowing Aly, and it was infuriating because your father and I like to think we know Aly, Veronica, and you quite well. But it turns out we don’t. You, for example. We knew you were stubborn, defiant. We didn’t know you were so reckless.”
“What does that mean?” Waverly’s skin prickled as Joan picked up the tablet and joined her at the glass panels. “Is this a bad time to have come? Dad invited me.”
“J.T. and your sisters will be here shortly. You’ll know everything then.”
“That sounds ominous.”
Joan said nothing more until Veronica and Aly entered the suite, followed by J.T.…who had whipped out a bottle of antacids.
Waverly was beginning to suspect she had too many secrets. She cleared her throat. “We haven’t all sat down to lunch together in months.”
“Getting our franchise in good shape is paramount, Waverly.” This from her father. “We’ve been busy blocking problem after problem. Joan.”
Joan swiped her finger across the tablet, tapped the screen and handed the device to Waverly. “This is one of those problems.”
Waverly stared at the tablet, at the image of her younger self. Naked except for a pair of thigh-high athletic socks, she was posed in a split with two fingers inside her. She looked into the camera through a forest of teased hair. There was attitude in her eyes.
It was a still from a sex tape.
Attitude, and purpose, had propelled her to perform in porn. When the production company had folded she’d assumed—prayed—that her role-play content had died in the ether. Twelve years ago, payment she’d received had been more than enough to fund the summer Eat & Run program in New England, combining nutrition education and marathon training, she’d wanted to participate in. In college on her parents’ money, she’d had to comply with their suggestions—demands—because the threat of them cutting her off hung over her head. That summer they’d wanted her home and had refused to pay for the program. So she’d found her own way.
After her next visit home she had felt ashamed, and in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, she’d contacted the producers who’d said they liked her and would kill her flicks as a favor. Then she’d left it in the past.
But it had come back on some celebrity gossip website. How? She’d told no one—not even her college roommate, Khloé McBride, who’d studied abroad that summer—about the tapes.
“Our attorney is on this, Waverly,” Aly said. “He’s having the stills taken off the website. How old were you when you did this?”
“Twenty.”
“You weren’t underage. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Aly looked to Veronica, then their parents. “And at least her vag is covered.” She bopped over to peer at the tablet. “Oh, nope, the fingers don’t quite hide it. Vag is on full display.”
“Seems you’ve had more Waverly Slipups than we know about,” Joan said. “Are you still filming porn?”
“No.”
“You had a duty to this franchise to warn us about something of this nature. You’re on probation till the start of the season. But tell me why. Why didn’t you consider how this would affect your future?”
“I did it for my future. You and Dad cut me off the summer I wanted to stay on campus for a fitness program. You didn’t believe I’d find my own money to pay for it, but I did. I took the dare.”
Veronica crossed her arms. “God, Waverly, you can’t take dares like that. Porn? Really?”
“It’s not dirty, the way you make it sound.”
“Strangers fucked you on tape so anonymous people would get off on it. Please say there was some STD screening protocol.”
“Veronica, can’t you see she’s upset enough?” Aly said. “Waverly, the publicity department is trying to minimize the damage. We’ll need to prep your statement and release that. There’s going to be some debate, you can count on that. After the Beckham issue, people are sort of supersensitive to your mistakes. They’re second-guessing you as a role model for young girls interested in male-dominated sports.”
“It was never about becoming a role model,” Waverly said. “Not for me. I’m sorry if that makes me look selfish, but it’s always been about sports. The game. The role-model thing is something that this family capitalized on. Can we all be honest enough to admit it?”
“Damn it, Waverly.” The boom of J.T.’s voice seemed powerful enough to fell an entire forest. “This should humble you!”
“You mean subdue me?” Waverly handed the tablet to her mother. “It hasn’t. Like Aly said, it’s upset me. I don’t know who could’ve leaked this.”
“Sam Pratt called me this morning,” Joan said. “A woman he said is acquainted with you contacted him for information. She said you’d mentioned to her that you hit a rough patch in college. He didn’t know what her angle was until now.”
Waverly hadn’t mentioned her college blunder to anyone…except Jeremiah. “The woman. What’s her name?”
“Izzie Phillips. She’s engaged to Luca Tarantino.”
The weight of the truth hit her hard, knocked the breath out of her even as she stood totally still with the eyes of her family centered on her. What she’d told Jeremiah ended up in the hands of his father’s fiancée and then on blast. Coincidental or deliberate?
Coincidental, my ass. Waverly started to rush out of the suite, but her mother’s grip on her arm tugged her back.
“Waverly, do you have no care about your image or your family?”
More like my family’s image. “Mom, I’m sorry that what I do and who I am hurts you. But you, and everyone else, need to consider that this photo isn’t much more provocative than what the mainstream media puts in front of society every day. You’re a product of the beauty-pageant circuit. Tell us how many times you were judged on how sexy you were.” At that her mother let her go and Waverly kept walking. “I regret that tapes shot years ago can start up a firestorm, but I’m also glad that I finally saw this. I never watched myself. I should’ve. The woman on that screen is okay with herself. Unafraid. Powerful. I miss her.”
Waverly marched out of the suite with Aly in close pursuit.
“Wait!” Aly flung her arms around Waverly, squeezing even as her Waverly’s arms remained loose at her sides. “What are you going to do?”
“Go back to camp. There are things that need to be done.” And people who need to be set straight.
◆◆◆
Waverly made it back to Desert Luck as the coaching staff was dispersing from a meeting and the players were gearing up for the second two-a-day. Glances. Frowns. Stares. Chuckles. They were all directed at her as she strode through the facility to the staff lounge. It was as if she’d shown up naked.
In a way she had. There were more tablets, phones, and computers in this place than an electronics store. In the age of internet and social media, all it took was one person to forward a link or repost. It was too bad that pornography taped long ago could throw her plans, career, image into a vortex.
What was worse? She didn’t hate that she’d had sex with strangers on camera. The experiences had been challenging, frightening, and liberating all at once. What she did hate was that she’d tried to sweep it under the rug rather than own it. She hated that she’d given Izzie Phillips—and Jeremiah Tarantino—the power to use her secret against her in some sort of revenge play.
Jeremiah. There he was, in a talk with Finn and Whittaker near the lounge’s kitchenette. As she went to her locker, she heard their quarterback’s name and exhaled in relief. It was refreshing that not everyone was distracted to stupidity about sex tape stills.
“Waverly, a word?”
Turning, she saw Finn advancing toward her and cast a narrowed-eyed glance beyond his shoulder at Jeremiah. “Coach.” Finn proffered a cold bottle of water, which she accepted with a nod of thanks. It didn’t matter if you were thirsty or not. If your coach offered you a water, you took it. “What’s the update on Brock’s shoulder?”
“Rehab therapy’s going good. Backup QB’s set for the rest of preseason. Then Brock will play game one. He wants to play. I trust him to know his body.” A beat later he said, “Word of the day is Waverly.”
“Considering it could be porn, I’m okay with that.” The sarcasm was met with a look of concern. “It won’t stop me from doing my job. Does it bother you?”
Finn’s face split into an uncomfortable half grimace, half laugh. “It’s sports. A woman’s physique shouldn’t matter so much, but our players are focusing more on your acting career than they’re focusing on handling the damn football.”
“Sounds more like a conversation you should have with them, Coach.”
Finn took a moment to consider. “I trust you to know yourself and what you can handle.” He clapped a hand to her shoulder, then eyed his watch. “Need you on the sidelines in fifteen.”
Grabbing a cotton tee and shorts from her duffel gave her comfort. What if she was no longer a part of this team, no longer welcome into this lounge and the lives of the young men whose overall well-being was as important to her as her own? She was supposed to be better than perfect. For her parents, she’d already fallen short. Training camp was meant to weed out the weak.
So would she be among those cut when the team finalized its roster?
The click of the door’s lock engaging had her turning to see that she was now alone in the lounge with Jeremiah.
“Really, Jeremiah? It’s fine to spill my secrets to Izzie Phillips, but let’s keep the door locked on yours?” When he made no move to open the door, she shrugged and yanked off the street clothes she’d worn to the stadium.
Heat flared in his eyes and she stiffened. What part of him…their relationship…had been a lie? Was the lust tumbling through her, even as she cursed the moment she agreed to join Meg for drinks at VooDoo, authentic?
“The general public has seen everything you’ve seen,” she gritted out, stepping into her mesh athletic shorts.
“Not everything, Waverly. They haven’t seen the look you get when I bury my cock inside you.”
Even then you were lying to me. “Guess that makes you special, huh?” She faced her locker and finished dressing, feeling his attention on her all the while.
“We have to talk about this, Waverly.”
“Gloat or apologize—it’s all the same. Either way we’re through.”
“Does the front office know about us?”
“No, Jeremiah. Sabotage is your thing. It actually didn’t occur to me to retaliate.” Don’t shake. Don’t show him that you fooled yourself and fell in love with him. “Targeting me. Was this to avenge some wrongdoing you think my father committed against yours? Or was this about me?”
“Both, at first. It killed to know your family stole this team from mine, that your parents could fire me on a whim. I was going out of my mind trying to make things right.”
“Why go after me? What did I do?” Waverly stopped. “Wait…I was your weapon. You wanted to get to my family through me. But you don’t get it, even now. I’m not the Greers’ Achilles’ heel. When you hurt me, I’m the only one who’s hurt.”
“Izzie didn’t tell me what she was planning.”
“Weren’t you plotting with her?”
“Yes—at first. After a while I was done with it.”
“Why?”
“It got out of hand. I wasn’t supposed to love—” Jeremiah swore, kneaded his forehead with his fingertips. “The porn? I had no idea it existed until I got here today and found some of the guys passing around a phone.”
Waverly shifted her weight to keep from falling into her nervous habit. “I heard what you didn’t say, Jeremiah. And I hope this got so out of hand that you ended up hurting yourself. It wouldn’t have worked out for us anyway. Great sex can’t change who we are.” She shut her locker. “Coach is expecting us. You go first.”
She waited ten minutes—long enough to dab away the tears that had caught her by surprise the moment Jeremiah left the room—before putting on her sunglasses and marching out.
“Waverly, wait.” Royce Davis, the wide-receivers coach, sprinted the short distance to where she stood outside the staff lounge.
“Royce.” Drained from her conversation with Jeremiah, she was anxious to get outside and start sweating out the heartache. Work was the salve she needed. It could distract her, tire her out, consume her. The only thing it wouldn’t do was make her forget. “Can we walk and talk? I need to be out there.”
“After you.”
With him trailing her she waited several beats for him to get to it, but at his continued silence she threw a glance over his shoulder to see his gaze attached to her ass. “What do you want, Royce?”
“Waverly,” he said on a low chuckle, “I can answer that with words or with action.”
To illustrate, he gave her a punishing squeeze and shoved his hand into her shorts. Protesting the assault of his fingers, she shrieked. He struck her face and she saw bursts of light.
“Shut the fuck up,” he warned.
“No.” She ripped his hand away and pinned it to his chest. “Touch me again and you’ll answer to Coach, with words, why I broke your wrist.”
Royce yanked free. “Not worth it, bitch.”
Waverly went onto the sunny field, straight to Finn, and rose up to whisper into his ear, “Royce Davis cornered me in the building and tried to take it further. I talked him out of it. It happened in the hall, so pull the security tape for proof. If you can handle this without involving administration, I’d appreciate not being called into a meeting with my parents again anytime soon.”
Flabbergasted at her cool, matter-of-fact demeanor, he asked, “What do you want to do now?”
“Do you really have to ask?” She was already jogging backward to the sidelines. “Work.”