CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If fucking in secret didn’t push them past reckless, then beyond a doubt going to popular paparazzi haunt Joel Robuchon to share the sixteen-course tasting menu in the prime of night did.
No name existed for the territory Simon and Veronica were in now. Powerless was the only explanation he could give to the slam of desire he felt when Veronica had appeared in her friend’s driveway. After making up with apologies and sex, they’d met his sister for drinks at a casino where Erin had shown off photos of the Smith farmhouse, a timbered area and a forest of cherry fruit trees. Then he’d taken Veronica to the Strip for a spur-of-the-moment dinner that had every appearance of a real date.
Veronica refused to call it that. When people stopped to speak en route to their own tables, she told one creative lie after another. Anything to kill the suspicion that the Villains’ former quarterback and the current GM were dating.
When J.T. and Joan entered the restaurant, he was still deciding whether the edginess riding his system was out of concern that they’d get found out, or out of frustration that Veronica couldn’t be his.
Her back was to the entrance, so Simon leaned forward to warn her, “Want to know what your parents would say if they knew I was wining and dining you?”
“Um, no, actually, I don’t. Good news—they don’t suspect I’m having frequent filthy sex with you.”
“Yeah. Good news.”
If she heard the sardonic twinge in his voice, she didn’t show it. Under the table her foot roamed up his leg to rest against his crotch. “I’d rather know what you would say if I crawled under this table, unzipped your pants, and sucked your hard, hot—”
Fuck…hold that thought. “J.T. and Joan are walking this way.”
Veronica swore and managed to greet her parents with an offer to sit at the table. The offer was pointless, because J.T. was already tugging her arm so she would sit beside Simon while he and his wife occupied the opposite side of the table.
Then they were facing off again, as they had done at Villains Club Lounge last month. Except this time Veronica was on his side. It made more of a difference than it should. She meant more to him than she should. But it was his own fault that he’d allowed her to unlock his heart.
“Smith, I’ve been meaning to call you in for a word,” J.T. said.
“The league and the feds may be off my ass, but I’m still not passing out names—”
The man’s bark of laughter interrupted him. “The future of our ball club is most important to my wife and me. We never planned to wait until the eleventh hour for you to cooperate. Of course, the cooperation would’ve made things easier on the men we cleared off the team who didn’t have involvement with the shitstorm Luca Tarantino created, but folks say it’s better to be safe than sorry. Especially with money and the name Greer on the line.”
“Then why a word with him, Dad?” Veronica asked. “I cleaned the roster just as you and Mom instructed me to do. Now you can both let Simon move on with his career.”
Instinctively, Simon’s hand went to her knee. Barely even moving, she draped her hand over his, drawing it up her thigh to the lacy edge of her stocking. Then she just held him there, captured between the soft flesh of her thigh and the strength of her palm.
“Our Veronica takes everything seriously. Her clients. The kids at Faith House. You. That’s the lawyer in her,” Joan said mildly. “Simon, my husband and I simply want to acknowledge that we misjudged your commitment to this game. We know the next team to sign you up will have made a smart acquisition.”
Her smirk held a kaleidoscope of unspoken messages that Simon didn’t want to deal with now. There was already speculation that his name had come up in connection with a few possibly interested teams, but as his agent, Shaw, was always quick to remind him, an unsigned deal wasn’t a deal at all.
“I appreciate that,” Simon replied. “Whatever good comes next is a debt I’ll owe to Veronica. People don’t see how damn fortunate they are to have her on their side. I was one of them. But she showed me who she really is, who I really am.”
“Veronica has many friends.” Joan twisted around the half-empty bottle of wine to read the label. “J.T. and I would stay and give a toast to her dedication to these…projects…that she takes on. But we have a business dinner. In fact, Veronica, join us.”
“Can’t, Mom. I have a few things to finish up with Simon.”
“Then I will call you later. Be sure to answer that call.” Joan twirled off her chair, and her husband followed her deeper into the ritzy dining room.
“There’s something especially bitchy about Joan tonight,” Simon said to Veronica.
“Probably because Joan is a bitch. She and Dad think I’m an easy study. An open book.”
“That’s what you’ve been letting them think.”
“Always seemed easier that way, the best way to get what I want. Adapting to what they want me to do or say or be. Guess manipulation’s been my crutch for so long that I can’t make a clean break.”
“You don’t manipulate when you’re caught off guard, Veronica.”
“Shh,” she whispered playfully. “That’s our secret.”
You mean I’m your secret. Because you’re the one with everything left to lose.
For that reason, for her, he was willing to play the role she’d given him, while he waited for another NFL franchise in another city to give him a reason to let her go.
◆◆◆
“Are you alone?”
Veronica glanced at her phone, puzzled at the first words out of her mother’s mouth.
Without exactly lying, Veronica confirmed she was alone—at that moment Simon was in his living room and she was resting against the console table in the next room.
She, naturally, didn’t add that she was in a gorgeous house on a thickly wooded lot that offered the most authentic interpretation of autumn she’d ever happened upon in Las Vegas. Or that the property belonged to last season’s hottest NFL quarterback, and she wanted him to unzip her dress and inhibitions.
“Simon Smith’s changed. He’s not his usual angry self with reporters and paparazzi. What did you do to make him cooperate with the press?”
Joan’s question made her wish she had just ignored her phone. But Joan had sounded strangely somber when she’d said to Veronica in the restaurant, “Be sure to answer that call.”
“To go from lawless to a charmer in only weeks is a complete one-eighty. I’ll ask again. What did you do to make Simon Smith start cooperating with the press?”
Oh, just bartered my heart. Whatever it takes, right? If only it were as simple as that. “Convinced him.”
“Your father and I have sources that tell us his tide’s about to turn. Your…efforts…are about to pay off.”
“That’s what I was hoping for.”
“Is it, Veronica?”
Joan mercifully didn’t wait for a reaction. She hung up, and Veronica flipped the phone over and over in her hands.
Was this what she’d been hoping for? She and Simon had come together to get him onto another NFL team this season. If it happened, the easiest thing to do would be to let him go.
After all, he didn’t know that she’d broken her most important rule by falling in love with him. She’d never said the words, and likely never would. It was too big of a chance to take. Perhaps he didn’t feel the same way, and she’d misjudged him the way she had Chance. Maybe he’d decide she was too challenging to keep in his life, as Ollie had after only a few dates.
What if Simon had healed her heart only to break it all over again?
Was he too unpredictable to trust?
“Simon,” she said, setting aside the phone and retrieving his chessboard from a nearby table. “Up to taking me on, grandmaster?”
He rose from the sofa to effortlessly cart the coffee table out of the way. “Who told you about my chess skills?”
“Your Villains file.” Veronica set up the game on the floor, observing the play of muscle on his form as he sank down across from her on the rug.
“Why do I feel like this is going to decide something, Veronica?”
Because it is. I don’t know any other way to trust what I’m feeling.
They played, each move more strategic than the last. And in what seemed simultaneously like a blink and a thousand years, Veronica found herself stuck with nowhere to move her rook without inviting defeat. “You beat me.”
“The victory’s not official until I say checkmate.”
“Simon, it’s done. You outmatched me.”
Veronica made her final move, and he whispered, “Checkmate.”
She stuck out her hand for a sportsmanlike shake.
“What was on the line with that game, Veronica?”
“Us.” She got to her feet. “I can’t predict you, so it wouldn’t be smart to trust—”
Simon was in front of her before she could grab her purse from the sofa. His size, his strength, the soul that was revealed in his blazing eyes, stole her breath. “A fucking chess game doesn’t factor into us. I defeated you, but I can’t predict what you’ll do, Veronica. Sometimes it’s not all about knowing what’s going to happen next. It’s about risk. Instincts.”
“My instincts have been wrong before.”
“Then believe what I say. Believe what you feel when I touch you, Veronica.” Simon raised her hands to his mouth, and watching her face, he pressed a slow, openmouthed kiss on each palm. “Quit running. Playing games and setting rules can’t protect you.”
Veronica pulled back her hands and went for her purse. But she didn’t throw the strap over her shoulder and walk out. She reached in and drew out the pink-cellophane-wrapped pair of sex dice—the last of the party favors from her friend’s bachelorette party.
They’d used the entire travel-sized bottle of massage oil during “I’m sorry” sex earlier. “The plan was to use everything in the bag,” she said. “This is all that’s left.”
Simon unwrapped the dice and rolled each die to see the possibilities. “What I’m going to do to you isn’t on these. And we don’t need more games….”
He reached for her, and they tumbled onto the floor. If this was the end of the road, she wanted to take him greedily, enjoy him selfishly.
With her breath shallow, Veronica stared as he peeled off his clothes, revealing a body as hard and precisely cut as stone. She’d loved his body even before she had fantasized about being bold enough to touch him.
She reached for his hands, bringing him back down onto the floor. Hovering over him, she took inventory with her lips, kissing his biceps, his pecs, his abs, his pelvic bones. Lightly she ran her nails over his pubic hair, and then she welcomed him into her mouth. Each moment brought him deeper; each moan made her wetter. The memory of his taste and how his cock responded to her touch was what she wanted to take away.
So she took. Refusing to be denied when he tried to slip from her mouth, she gave him a meaningful look, and with tongue and heat and teeth and lips, she took from him. He fisted her hair, groaning roughly and rocking into her.
“Fuck. Fuck, you’re killing me, Veronica.”
I’m loving you. I love you. I want to trust that you won’t hurt me. But she couldn’t seem to say those words.
After he stripped her, he worked his cock and parted her thighs. “Now be real with me. I deserve that.”
It was no secret that she cared about him as a friend. She knew he appreciated her, trusted her.
But to tell him she loved him would be a mistake, wouldn’t it?
“No talking. Just touching,” she said.
“Is that a rule?”
“For tonight, yeah, it is.”
Relenting with a clipped incline of his head, as if to say, As you wish, then, he spread her folds and closed his mouth onto her clit.
Veronica’s ears rang under the attack of her own cries. She couldn’t twist away from the intensity. She bowed up to watch, only to throw her head back as the first orgasm vibrated through her. The next he lured from her with a single deep thrust.
She was so sensitive to him, so far gone already…and yet he wanted more.
Pulling her to her feet, he stared into her face. “I’m going to break that rule, Veronica.” He bent to kiss her. “I love you.”
“That’s the sex talking.” He’d never loved anyone. She would be an idiot to think she’d be the first.
“I’m fucking serious.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes. Now I know what it’s like to say that—to even have a reason to.”
“Simon…”
“It doesn’t have to change our lives.”
Except it fucking absolutely did. Because Veronica knew physically, emotionally, spiritually, and every other possible way that it was true. He’d never lied to her.
“You said you didn’t know if I liked you.” His mouth met hers. “I kind of do like you.”
Veronica grinned. “I kind of like you, too.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” She turned slowly to face the side of the sofa. Gripping the sofa’s arm, she pushed her ass to his crotch. Gyrating her hips, she bounced against him. She felt his teeth grazing her shoulder blade, and then he was spreading her cheeks pressing a finger against the tight entry.
“Fuck my ass,” she whispered.
“You need to be wetter than this.” Ready with a remedy, Simon flicked his tongue against her, rimming her. Licking, kissing, teasing, he demanded that she open to him.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. His fingers prodded slowly, firmly, and she bit her lip.
There would be pain, but no, he wouldn’t hurt her.
◆◆◆
Of his own volition, Chance checked up on Veronica. Confronting her was one way to do it, but she’d only become defensive. So he would tap another source for the information he wanted.
He swaggered into the visitors’ wing of the Silver Hills Estates senior-living compound, smoothing a hand over his necktie as he scanned the Wall of Friends photo collection in the lobby.
The woman he waited for was smiling brilliantly back at him from a photograph. People called her type quirky, but to a man whose family made its own luck and whose see-it-to-believe-it mentality had paved the way for all his successes, she was weird as fuck.
Not to say he didn’t love her. In spite of her eccentricities, she was trustworthy. That trustworthiness was what comforted him. She had what he wanted.
The nameplate beneath it had been updated: Grace Smart-Corrine.
He gave a cursory look at the rest of the images, tensing when he saw Veronica’s photo under the Benefactor Buddies section. She had a crinkly-eyed smile with a little-bit-naughty edge to her mouth. Beauty and sex appeal and sweetness and toughness combined. This photo had been updated, too, he realized. This had been taken after she’d grown her hair longer, after their divorce, and even after she’d started to change.
A few days ago she’d invited him to the mansion, the place that held all of their history, and had offered to give him the keys to the house.
Offered because he’d refused to take the keys or listen to her crazy talk about the place being haunted. Not with that woo-woo negative energy shit her friend believed in, but memories. A legal split wasn’t enough, and she wanted to give him back what she’d claimed had never belonged to her.
Chance had to know if getting rid of the house was just Veronica’s angry reaction to the shit he’d let her parents drag him into.
About ten minutes after the Silver Hills Estates receptionist paged her, Grace strolled into the lobby and escorted him to a main-floor office that looked as though all it was missing was a crystal ball and a cashbox.
“Did you and Mason get the wedding gift I sent?” he said, kissing her cheek, not directly saying he didn’t appreciate not being invited to the event.
“We did. Thanks. Platinum dinnerware is very generous, Chance.” Grace went to a fancy cage in the corner of the room and extracted a white rabbit with a gray front paw.
At his puzzled frown, she kissed the rabbit’s twitching nose. “This is Moon. I found her not too long ago and couldn’t let her go. Spending time with her is rather comforting to our residents. Fate at work, huh?”
Chance only continued to frown.
“About the dinnerware,” she said after a span of silence. “I don’t know if we should keep such an extravagant gift.”
“Keep it. It doesn’t seem right that when people get divorced they have to divide their friends like assets.”
“I’m Veronica’s closest friend, so I know that you were screwing other women behind her back.” Grace shrugged, cuddling the damn rabbit as she sat at her desk. “Plus, I’ve always had the impression that you only tolerate me.”
“Veronica tried to give me the keys to the house. She said it’s ‘haunted.’ What have you been filling her head with, Grace?”
“Notions that she should be happy. She hasn’t been happy living in that house. Chance, she’s moving on. That’s all.”
“Moving on?” Chance eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “To what?”
“To the life she wants to live.” She held the rabbit with one hand and rested the other on his thigh. “We can’t all change and expect her to stay the same. She’s finding out who she is and who she wants to be with. Right under our noses, Veronica fell in love with someone who’s a better man because he let her into his life.”
Chance searched her face. “Damn…That quarterback. Simon Smith.”
“Don’t get in the way. It’s okay to let her go now, Chance. It’s okay for you to take your life off pause, too. That’s why you’re here—to find validation.” Grace got up, rifled through a bowl of crystals and held one out to him. “Rhodonite, for forgiveness and banishing fear. It’ll give you the courage to let Veronica and yourself move on.”
“I don’t go for that woo-woo shit, Grace. As for courage, I already have it.”
Grace smiled, satisfied. “Then what are you still doing here?”