CHAPTER TEN
Veronica hadn’t planned to skip work. The shrill beeping of Alarm Clock 1 woke her early on Saturday, and Alarm Clock 2 quickly joined in.
Her phone rested next to her tablet on the nightstand, along with a neglected bonsai tree and a heavy lamp, which she’d left glowing all through the night when she powered off the phone, tossed her stuff down, and collapsed on the four-poster bed in a state of stress-induced exhaustion.
With last night’s makeup smudging her sheets, and the day’s list of to-do items funneling through her mind, she emerged from her burrow under the covers at the foot of the bed to stare bleary-eyed at the clocks.
Motivated by the challenge to dress and hurry her out the door on schedule, Veronica showered, wrapped herself in a towel and, with her phone in tow, padded barefoot to her home office to coordinate her calendars.
But, leaning over her desk chair, confronted with calendars on the wall, on the desk, on her computer and her phone—square after square dictating where she was expected, dividing the precious moments of her life—she felt something inside her give way.
Dialing feverishly, she connected herself to the HR after-hours answering service. It wasn’t in her contract to regularly report to the admin building on Saturdays, but she’d stumbled into the routine of haunting the place, living like a recluse in her office. All because she’d rather be alone at the stadium than alone in this house.
For good measure, she texted her assistant.
UNAVAILABLE TODAY.
If necessary, Heather, who almost never worked on Saturdays, would report directly to J.T. and Joan.
Not once since accepting the GM position had Veronica made herself “unavailable.” Doing so filled her with a strange rush of giddiness that she knew was only temporary and would come crashing down in a matter of time.
So until that time came, there was only Veronica, and anyone else she let into her world. At six o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t a minute to waste.
With a daring intake of breath, she flicked open her towel and let it puddle at her feet. Naked, alone in her house with all its ghosts of memories that were quiet for now, she marched out of the office. Fixing an omelet and savoring each bite au naturel was paradise compared to her usually rushed muffin and coffee from Starbucks.
But as she ate standing at the counter with the television on mute, a plan pieced itself together. She would get dressed and meticulously clean the entire mansion.
But she had gotten only as far as the dressing part, throwing on a sweatshirt over jeans, before she’d spontaneously decided to contact her home security team.
Supervising the gate reset took the better part of an hour, and by the time the technician gave her a refresher walk-through of the cameras’ connections to the centralized computer, she was all but shaking with relief to send him on his merry way.
Veronica closed the front door behind the technician, then rested her forehead against the wood. No more of Chance Kershaw getting past the gate…or her defenses. It was another ending, another piece of finality tumbling into place. But this time, wistfulness didn’t take her by the shoulders and rattle her.
There were no tears. No hard feelings. Nothing but acceptance.
Treat yourself. Pushing away from the door and thundering upstairs in the palace of a house to ransack her walk-in for a change of clothes, Veronica promised herself she’d do just that. “I’m going home.”
◆◆◆
Home was on East Poplar Avenue, snuggled between the city’s housing authority and Hadland Park. Sprawled on a generous lot, garnished with professionally manicured grounds, Faith House’s two-year-old main building rose three stories into the sky. Cast in sunlight, the front lawn’s fountain glimmered even from the street. The youth outreach center was a beacon, a lighthouse calling to the soft side of Veronica’s heart.
Tucking her car between two trucks, she muscled three paper bags stuffed with groceries from the car and greeted the doorman. “Morning, Mr. Hawkins.”
“In all my days watchin’ this door, I’ve never seen you here on a Saturday morning,” he observed, allowing her into the lobby. “It sure is a nice treat.”
“The treats are in here.” She jiggled the bags as one of the volunteer tutors came forth to lighten the load. “I thought Raoul and I could offer the kids a baking lesson later. Cupcakes. A batch with the original recipe, and one that’s low carb. Don’t want to leave out anyone particularly wonderful.”
Mr. Hawkins’s face split into a smile. While most people Veronica knew made demands as effortlessly as they blinked, Mr. Hawkins dependably worked his shifts without ever requesting anything, not a raise or an extra break or time off. Even something as everyday as a cupcake he wouldn’t ask for, which was why Veronica had kept the fifty-something diabetic gentleman in mind as she’d shopped for ingredients.
As president of Faith House, Veronica often spent her visits to the center in the third-floor conference room, laboring over executive details with the board of directors. Veronica knew from the PR and financial departments, as well as volunteer staff, that children as young as eleven walked through Faith House’s doors in search of a hot meal, a person to listen, some possibility of escape from gangs, homelessness, drugs, prostitution, and violence.
Rarely did Veronica see those children’s faces. Since agreeing to head up her parents’ football team, she’d run the outreach center from a distance. It was a distance she resented. She’d rather spend more time on the first and second floors, working side by side with the staff, volunteers, and the people they were committed to rescuing.
In fractions of moments when Veronica stopped to just take a breath, she’d think about the teen who had slinked into her life with the intent to cause her harm. Instead, Veronica had saved her life—only for it to be cut short anyway.
When Faith Rivera, a sixteen-year-old dropout with a rap sheet, had died in an auto explosion, she’d been treated as a statistic. A blip in a news report of yet another Vegas degenerate youngster who’d met an early demise.
Until Veronica had devoted herself to changing that. Now anyone who discovered Faith House would know the girl’s story. They’d know Faith Rivera’s life mattered.
After putting away the groceries in the center’s industrial-style kitchen and charming Raoul, the cantankerous, set-in-his-ways chef, to let her invade his haven for a cupcake-baking extravaganza later, Veronica dug right in wherever she was needed. The morning was spent assisting in tutoring sessions, and then she was tugged away to meet with one of the crisis shelter execs, who’d gotten word of her presence at the chief building and insisted on meeting with her to iron out details about this year’s holiday fund-raiser.
On her way out of the crisis shelter’s executive building, she checked her cell.
Among voice mails from colleagues that all began with some variety of “I know you’re not working today, but…” and texts from friends inviting her out and private social media messages containing NSFW content, was a text message from Simon.
STILL MISSING ME?
Veronica stared at the phone until the display darkened. Finally, she pushed through the doors of the exit and dialed his number. When he picked up, she swiped a hand over her abdomen, as if the motion would net the butterflies taking flight in her stomach. “Calling you the other night, telling you that I touched myself thinking about you, was a crazy impulse—”
“Figured you’d try to take us a step back,” he murmured over the line. “Problem with that is, telling me or not telling me doesn’t change that it’s true.”
“So, are you going to let me finish saying what I was going to say?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
“I shouldn’t have called you,” she said, meandering to her car in the lot. The butterflies in her stomach had metamorphosed into a dangerous heat dipping low inside her, licking unforgivably at her flesh. “I should’ve told you to your face. Maybe even shown you.”
Simon groaned a curse, and the filthy word all but thrilled the Goth purple polish off her toes. “Veronica…”
“That can still happen, Simon. But not now.” She fished her key chain from her purse. “I’m at Faith House today. It’s sanity that I’ve really been missing lately.”
Ending the call and sliding behind the wheel of her car, Veronica sighed. She was free-falling, right into trouble. Should she trust Simon to catch her when she reached the bottom? And if he did, would she want him to ever let her go?
You and I are greedy, selfish people, and sex might not be enough.
Or would she only be setting herself up for another heartbreak?
She brushed that heap of complication from her thoughts like grains of sand and returned to the outreach center. The on-site counselors, tutors, and a sprinkle of potential sponsors all competed for her attention.
The first real snag came when she and one of the kitchen volunteers rounded up the teens for a lesson in food prep.
“Cooking? As in, home ec? That shit—I mean, that stuff—is for females,” a boy protested as the group trickled into the spacious dining room.
“Is that so?” a girl fired back. “Then I don’t want to see your caveman ass eating a cupcake. You’re just wimping out because for once you can’t show off.”
Veronica intervened. “Gentlemen. Ladies. Cupcakes shouldn’t be an emotionally charged subject. To be accurate, though, plenty of men are happy to cook—and extremely good at it.”
The boy twisted his mouth in a “Yeah, right” expression.
“Men like Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri,” the volunteer put in. “And all those YouTube chefs.”
“Naw, I’m talkin’ about real-world dudes.”
“Like me?” Raoul, in his signature head scarf, jeans, and the khaki uniform shirt that was strikingly plain in contrast to the colorful abstract tattoos on his thickly muscled arms, held open the kitchen’s double swinging doors.
Now, there was a “real-world dude,” and if the boy’s resigned sigh and sheepish look to his peers was anything to go by, he figured so, as well.
“Wash hands, everybody,” Raoul, captain of the kitchen, commanded, “and let’s get to it.”
A benign lesson in cupcakes turned into a fiercely competitive bake-off. Veronica couldn’t have wished for a better result. Batches of creatively frosted cupcakes beautified the center’s kitchen, before one by one the treats started disappearing as the kids rushed to eat their handiwork. No flaring tempers or injuries—just an entire pan of batter hitting the floor and decorating the shoes of the few teens standing close.
As five o’clock loomed, the demands began to thin. Closing time was in another hour. Veronica was passing the receptionist’s desk when she heard Nellie shriek, “Oh, my freaking God!”
Approaching the desk, Veronica looked through the glass interior doors toward the lobby…where Mr. Hawkins stood shaking hands with Simon Smith.
“Is he coming in?” Nellie asked hopefully, glancing at Veronica. “I want an autograph for my sister. Wait—uh, don’t the Villains people consider him persona non grata?”
“There are no hard feelings. Why don’t I see what I can do about getting you that autograph?”
Nellie nodded enthusiastically, but the ringing phone slapped her professionalism into place. “Good afternoon. Faith House.” The crisp, attentive tone was a stark difference to the infatuated-girl-on-the-prowl shrieking of a few moments before.
Veronica made it through the interior doors as Mr. Hawkins let Simon past the front entrance. They met in the middle of the atrium lobby. Fingers of late-afternoon sunlight penetrated the glass, streaking over his mussed hair and the shoulders of his simple yet exquisitely fitted dark shirt. In a romantic film, this would be the moment that they’d be wrapped up in each other. But since this was reality, and their reality included rules, expectations, and, of course, security guards scrutinizing them behind opaque sunglasses, Simon shook her hand in the same fashion that he’d greeted the doorman.
The contact jolted her, calling to life a billion little sensations that danced with anticipation. “I’m beginning to think you enjoy catching me off guard,” she whispered. “When I said that I’d be hanging out here today, it wasn’t a roundabout way of asking you to come see me.”
“Think about the place I care about and go there—that’s what you told me at the Bellagio. I want to see the place you care about.” His mouth—oh, God, his beautiful mouth—quirked into a private smile. “And hell, yes, I like you off guard.”
“What’s with that hungry look in your eyes?”
“I’m off guard, too, Veronica. I wasn’t expecting you to smell like dessert.”
And you’d devour me if I let you…. “We had a bake-off. Think Cupcake Wars, teen edition.”
He smiled, and her heart karate-chopped her ribs. “C’mon in,” she said, raising her voice for security’s benefit. “The receptionist tells me she’d like an autograph.” She escorted him inside, where a flock of gawking teenagers were already stationed around Nellie’s desk.
Veronica stood a safe distance from the mob of kids who were assailing Simon with praise for his athletic prowess and prying questions about the investigation. It wasn’t every day they met a professional athlete. The group trip to a Villains home game at the start of the season had been a onetime treat. Though she was the founder and president of Faith House, and the general manager of the Villains, they were still two entirely separate entities.
“There’s a football in the equipment locker,” Kiefer, a boy with a pierced eyebrow and impressive cupcake frosting techniques, said. A victim of physical abuse, he’d come to the center reserved and quiet, but now he was settled in a new foster home and more outspoken. “Can you give us some pointers?”
“Outside,” Nellie added, appearing a bit concerned at the thought of an indoor scrimmage.
“I’m always ready for football,” Simon said. Competing with the raucous cheers, he hollered to Veronica, “What about you? Want to get in on this?”
“Not in these shoes.” Valentino slim-heeled pumps weren’t made for loping in the grass. Neither were the tuxedo-style blazer and calf-length trousers she’d spiced up with Goth-inspired jewelry, smoky makeup, and a sheer pink top.
Veronica designated herself cheerleader on the makeshift sidelines while the others lost themselves in practicing passes. The hour rolled much too soon, and she was sorry to see Nellie trek out to announce closing time.
“I wish I could freeze this day, hang on to it, you know?” she confided in Nellie as the two brought up the rear of the group.
The receptionist nudged her companionably. “You’ll just have to come by more often. Will we see you at the free brunch the crisis center’s hosting? Oh, wait. Football time, isn’t it? Big game tomorrow.”
“If only I could add a few more days to the week.”
Nellie smiled, subtly pointing to Simon. “He was a nice surprise. Did you put him up to dropping in?”
“No, that was all on him. He’s exactly that. A surprise. Preconceptions, they trip us up.”
“Whoa, that’s heavy. What do you mean?”
Veronica spied Simon up ahead, handing the football to Kiefer, who jogged ahead to the main building. “Take Simon. Before I met him, I was sure I had him figured out. He’s more than the Blue-Eyed Badass. More than and his reputation. He’s…a good person.”
“I’ll say. To come here and play football with a bunch of kids on his birthday. If that’s not the mark of a good person, then—”
“Rewind.” Veronica stopped Nellie with a light grip on her wrist. “Today is his birthday?”
“Google seems to think so. When you headed out here, I called my sister to tell her about his visit, and she nearly punctured my eardrum with this cray-cray girl-meets-boy-band scream. She insisted that today’s his B-day, and I looked up his bio on my phone.”
Veronica met Simon’s eyes as she and Nellie stepped inside. In unspoken agreement he waited while the kids, then Raoul, then Nellie left. The cleaning crew had arrived and was flipping on lights until the entire main floor glowed. Outside, the sky was darkening into a wash of deep reds and purples as daylight wilted.
Once she’d retrieved her dessert—the neatly packed cupcake she’d decorated with a poor attempt at a calligraphy V—from the kitchen, she joined Simon at the reception desk.
“A ‘happy birthday’ is in order. Guess you’re going to celebrate Vegas-style?”
“No plans.”
“Shut. Up.” Veronica shook her head. “I mean, how can that be?”
“It’s not that. I’m more selective about who I roll with these days. Fair-weather friends serve a purpose, but it’s not to have my back. Real friends don’t take off when shit hits the fan. Hurley’s got an away game tomorrow, Shaw and his wife are still decompressing from their daughter’s birthday, the Samuel Adams Utopias from Samantha already arrived…and I’m with you now.”
She made the cut? The instant satisfaction was just as quickly doused with guilt. It was ironic that his birth date slipped her mind when she could recall so many small details from his employee file—such as he was a chess player and had completed community service for speeding when he was at LSU. “I should tell you, then, that I forgot your birthday. Nellie clued me in.”
“You’re on my side, Veronica. The rest isn’t important.”
“Your birthday is important. That sexy cavalier grin thing isn’t going to change my mind. Birthdays are miracles. They shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored. They should be shared with people who care about you.” She lifted the container. “I was going to save this for after dinner, but…um, I’d rather share it with you, Simon. The cupcake and your birthday.”
◆◆◆
Veronica had a talent for saying things without actually saying them. Tonight she’d insisted that his birthday should be shared with someone who cared about him—and then nominated herself. If she cared, he wanted her to just say it.
She was a woman of action, though. Words, promises, she didn’t trust.
Simon was transfixed by this woman as she led him into her house—if anyone could call the imposing structure that. More like an architect’s wet dream.
“Damn. A castle in Las Vegas,” he commented, drawing a rich chuckle from her.
“A castle? Not quite.” She deposited her purse on a fat club chair and dropped her keys into a crystal leaf-shaped dish on a side table. She hung on to the container that held her cupcake.
“There’s a turret, Veronica.”
Another laugh. “Well, okay. Castle-esque.” She fiddled with a bank of switches, and in moments the room was awash in light. The textured mahogany coffee table glowed as deeply and richly as a full-bodied wine.
“Bamboo stalks,” he said, recognizing the ripples in the high-glossed surface. “Where’d you get this?”
“A friend of a friend of a friend knows an artisan in Europe. It was a wedding gift that I didn’t send off to Christie’s for auction.” She neatened the fan of magazines atop the piece. “Become a music idol, and this, too, could be yours.”
Simon watched her scan the surroundings with a frown. Classic beauty and luxury—everything a woman who appreciated the finest things in life should want. Yet she looked disturbed.
“It’s haunted, you know.”
“Haunted?”
“Not literally.” She shrugged. “It was never exactly my vision of a home. It was made for entertaining. Now it doesn’t serve even that purpose, since I work so much.” She ran a finger over the top of a framed picture of a woman in a trench coat stepping out of a car, holding a gigantic umbrella against the rain. The shot looked as though it was pulled straight from an old Hollywood movie.
“Is that—” he stepped closer “—Joan? Your mother?”
“Give the man a prize,” Veronica said with a teasing smile. “Yes, it’s her. The car she’s getting out of? My sisters and I were in it. I remember this exact moment.” She traced her mother’s image lovingly. “I thought, if I could be so perfect, so adored…But I can’t. Too many flaws. Too much to juggle.”
“Faith House was started before the Greers bought the Villains franchise. Why put so much on your plate?”
“I don’t see it that way,” she said. “My parents insisted that my instincts and specific skill set made me a perfect fit for GM. It’s a position of power, and I’m not sorry I took it. My parents wouldn’t entrust this level of responsibility to just anyone, and they want the best. No one’s more committed to protecting my family’s interests than I am.”
What he wasn’t hearing was what she wanted.
Veronica patted the food container. “I’ll put this on a dish.” She vanished through an arched entryway. When she returned, she said, “Faith House is something I can call my own. It’s really taking off, with the college counseling and the crisis shelter. Good things ahead.”
There was pride in her voice, but sadness in her eyes.
“It helps me remember Faith.”
“Was she a friend?”
“She mugged me at knifepoint.”
Simon stilled, then crossed his arms. “I’m gonna need some help connecting the dots, Veronica.”
“She was a sixteen-year-old who was so desperate for a way out of a gang and prostitution that she tried to steal enough money to outrun her pimp. She said she’d slice my throat, I called her bluff, and it turned out that she was just a scared girl.
“I saw to it that Faith got help. An incredible difference it made, too. But a few months later, she was in a car that wasn’t safe. It blew up on the highway.” Veronica cast her gaze at the cupcake. “The news referred to her as just another unfortunate kid whose life jumped the rails. She was more than that, and I took a chance because I believed in her. I still do.”
Was that the same way she believed in him?
Veronica extended the plate to him. “Couldn’t find a candle small enough not to topple the cupcake. I figured since it’s your birthday I’d give you the whole thing. It’s a great, great sacrifice for a sweets addict such as myself.”
“Have some,” he said, and she didn’t hesitate before swiping her finger through the crooked calligraphy V and scooping the frosting into her mouth.
She sat on the sofa, putting the coffee table between them as she swirled her tongue around her finger. Simon couldn’t pry his stare from the slow, slick movement of her tongue curling around the digit. “Simon.”
“What?”
“Don’t forget to make a wish.”
He looked directly in her eyes and swept his tongue over the frosting.
Her eyelashes fluttered. “What’d you wish for?”
Simon set the dish on the table. “A cold beer.”
“Beer. I can do that. Fresh out of Utopias, though.” Her head tilted, and her gaze stroked him. “I thought you’d wish for a kiss.”
“If I had, would you have given it to me?”
Veronica didn’t blink for several heartbeats. Then she suddenly sprang off the sofa and vaulted herself onto the coffee table. Standing a few inches above him, she snaked one arm over his shoulder while the other hand cradled his jaw.
So many secrets swirled in her eyes, and he wanted to unlock every one.
Veronica’s body swayed into his, and as if on command his groin tightened. Another intimate gyration. Then an almost tortured moan sawed through her full lips before she brought them down to his.
He met her with his tongue, licking into her, savoring the sounds of their mouths tasting and taking. With a small sigh, Veronica closed her lips around his tongue, sucking him to the tip before she withdrew from the kiss.
Fluidly hopping off the table, she strutted from the room. “A cold beer. Coming up.”
Every centimeter of Simon’s body vibrated with need so intense it was audible, surging in his ears. The house was quiet except for the cadence of Veronica’s shoes striking the floor. The sound lured him to an expansive kitchen that was set in shadows except for the lone light pouring from the open refrigerator.
Veronica emerged, shutting the door with a bump of her hip and smoothly moving toward the entryway. She stopped when she saw him filling the space. “Hey.”
Accepting the drink, he turned the bottle up for a long swallow that quenched absolutely nothing. He set it down and twisted around.
When he banded an arm around her waist, she went willingly, pressing that taut body against his. One step backward. Then another. Then more. Like drumbeats, he felt them in his core as he walked her backward across the room.
Veronica’s back met the refrigerator, and he went for her mouth, taking her warm tongue in deep as he peeled away her jacket. Roughly he ridded her of shoes, top, bra, and pants, then grasped the crotch of her thong and stretched it so that the silky strip grazed her cunt. Finally, he slid it down her legs.
Veronica’s hand roamed down her body, and he almost came in his jeans at the sound of her finger exploring her wetness. Simon rolled his tongue over her nipples, learning their texture, before he took her hand and sucked her damp finger into his mouth. He let her taste coat his tongue, instantly addicted. “If you’re going to turn back and grab on to those rules, now’s the time to do it, Veronica.”
She shifted her hips forward to meet his, giving him an answer. He pulled a condom from his pocket and unzipped his jeans to free himself. Veronica gripped his shoulders as he grabbed her ass and boosted her high against the refrigerator. Magnets popped off the stainless steel, clattering onto the floor. Papers crumpled and floated down.
Simon speared her tight, wet heat. The answering moan she made against his lips almost unraveled what little restraint he had left.
She spoke, the words punctuated with the whimpers his thrusts pulled from her. “You can take me away.”
Then, in a wave of hard spasms, she broke. Deep inside her, he fed off her pleasure, and in moments he followed her orgasm with his own.
Eventually he was able to let her go, setting her gently on her feet. Simon got rid of the condom, then wandered to the counter where he’d left the beer. He damn near drained the bottle.
Not enough. Fucking her against a refrigerator wasn’t enough. Not by a goddamn long shot.
He heard a rustle of fabric as Veronica kicked her clothes across the floor and moved through the shadows. All of a sudden, light engulfed the room. Squinting to adjust his vision to the brightness, he whirled away from the counter.
Veronica waited near the entryway. Naked. Mouth swollen. Hair a sexy mess. White skin shimmering with sweat. “What now?”
“Now—” Simon wound his arms around her, sweeping her up slowly until they were eye to eye “—I take what’s mine.”