Chapter Eleven
Connor
Nothing smelled as good as Gia did. Sure, I loved her taste, and as for her looks—she was gorgeous. But her scent was what slayed me every time. Ever since she’d started working for the Bobcats, I often wandered the halls, hoping to catch a hint of her ginger spice scent. But that was mostly perfume. This, right here between her thighs, was pure, unadulterated Gia. I could have happily stayed here forever.
Though, that wasn’t exactly the best idea, given that the game was going to start soon. I should be in the locker room listening to the coaches or studying my notes on the other team’s players. But no, I was here with the scent of Gia on my skin and tongue. I didn’t know how I’d even think about baseball with her ambrosia on my uniform.
She was still sprawled in the most erotic way on her desk. It couldn’t be comfortable for her, but I was already hard again, looking at her. Those gorgeous dark curls of hers tumbled wildly about her face, and her eyes were still dazed. I might have worried that I’d gone too far, but the curve to her lips told me she was happy. And she was still open and wet in the most enticing way.
Until footsteps sounded down the hallway. We both tensed immediately, and I helped her sit up. Then I quietly put my foot on the door so no one could come in.
Fortunately, no one knocked. The steps receded down toward the locker room, and we each blew out a relieved breath. She was already cleaning up, knotting her hair into a sloppy bun that still looked amazing. Her clothes came next, and I hurried to adjust myself, too, annoyed that my fingers trembled as I put everything back in its place. It was bad enough to feel shaky from great sex, and worse to have weak hands during a game. But that’s what Gia did to me. She made me weak. She made me want. And it was going to screw with my career, big time.
“So, um,” she said, her voice tentative. “That happened.”
I looked at her flushed cheeks. “Do you regret it?”
“God, no! But I get the feeling you do.”
My chin jerked up so I could study her expression. She was calm and composed, her eyes steady, but there was a challenge there that I couldn’t deny. She was damned perceptive, and I had no idea how to explain.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said softly. “Did you stumble on me standing by the stadium door or did you come looking for me?”
I was always looking for her, whether or not I went to her side. But when I saw her body rigid like that—even from behind—I knew something was really wrong. And I had an ugly guess as to what it was.
“I was walking and saw you.” I shrugged. “And maybe I wanted to see you, you know, for luck. Before the game.” She didn’t know she was part of my pre-game ritual. I always caught a glimpse of her before we played. In the stadium, the press area, or just watching the warm-ups—I had to see her, and so I had come looking for her.
“For luck?” The doubt was clear in her voice.
My shoulders tensed, and my voice took on a defensive note. “Yes, for luck. You…bring me luck.”
She glanced back at the disaster that was her desk. Half of what had been there was on the floor. If there had been any organization, there wasn’t any now.
“Well, I suppose that’s one word for it. I hope you hit a dozen home runs.”
That would be a miracle. Still, hope sprung eternal. But rather than discuss my batting average or my pre-game Gia ritual, I pushed the conversation back to her. “Tell me what upset you.”
She shook her head, her mouth tightly shut.
“Was it my sister? Was she the one who took credit for your work?”
She grimaced, but at my hard look, she relented. “It’s no big deal—”
“The hell it’s not. You were crying!” God, I wanted to throttle Sophia for even coming to the ballpark today, but I always felt that way. Right now, I was extra angry because she was screwing with Gia.
Meanwhile, the woman in question was watching me closely, no doubt reading way too much in my face. “So…” she said slowly. “Sounds like you already know what she’s like.”
“She’s my sister. Of course, I know what she’s like.”
“Yeah, but…” She tilted her head as she studied me. Her eyes narrowed, and her hair slipped across her shoulder. I wanted to pull that sloppy bun apart and run my hands through her hair while we picked up where we’d left off. But she kept talking about my sister, which effectively killed my boner. “You understand that she’s a liar…professionally speaking.”
“She’s a predator. You need to stay away from her.”
She folded her arms, plumping her breasts and distracting me. “You’re not warning me away from her.”
“Yeah, I am! She’s dangerous—”
She waved her hand at me. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. You tell me to stay away from Cassie because you’re worried about her. But with Sophia—”
“She’ll fuck you up if she can.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I’d just said. And once spoken, I had to think about them and see the truth.
Sophia liked attention, and she’d done a number on Cassie for sure, but that had been just sibling rivalry. Or at least, that’s what I’d told myself. But I knew she’d hated Gia from the get-go, thinking I’d mess up my career with an office romance. That I’d take my eye off the baseball prize.
Except now I began to question that, too. I thought Sophia had been against Gia because she’d seen us kiss on New Year’s Eve. But what if she wasn’t so much against Gia…as against any woman who might get between me and her.
It was ridiculous. Sophia had lost me the moment I’d realized what she’d done to Cassie. She’d been the voice whispering in Cassie’s ear, telling her she was worthless and would never amount to anything. The idea that she was afraid of anyone coming between her and me was almost sad. Because I didn’t feel anything for Sophia. I just wanted her to stay away from Cassie.
But what if Sophia didn’t realize that? What if she confused working as my publicist as a real relationship? Then she’d do whatever it took to cut Gia out of my life.
Was she that messed up? I didn’t want to think so. She was aggressive and greedy, but we’d had hard years when Mom got sick. It made sense that she needed financial security. And aggression wasn’t necessarily bad, assuming it didn’t run rampant.
But was it running rampant in Sophia?
I was still fighting with that thought when Gia leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “So why is she your publicist if you know she can be vicious?”
I ground my teeth, trying to think of a way out of this conversation. I could leave. I really ought to be in the locker room anyway, so that was an easy excuse. But the truth was that I didn’t want to run away. I wanted to work out the truth with Gia, even if it was ugly.
“Sophia is my older sister. When my mom got sick, my dad was in no shape to deal with us. Sophia took care of us, saw that we studied, had clothes and food, and didn’t get into trouble.”
Gia frowned. “What about the rest of your family? Ellie’s your cousin, and her parents are great.”
“They were in Chicago, and Dad was in denial for a really long time. He kept saying that we were okay and got really angry when we suggested anything else. We learned early on just to pretend that everything would be fine.”
She nodded, her expression sad. “How old were you?”
“Eleven. Cassie was eight, Sophia was fourteen, which is way too young to become a mom of two kids.” I swallowed. “I owe her a lot.”
“Except I don’t hear gratitude in your voice. And you look like you want to punch something. So I’m guessing she wasn’t a good parent.”
“She was better than nothing.” At least, I tried to believe that. But one look at Gia told me she wasn’t buying that.
“I didn’t have parents, remember? That sucked, but there are worse things.” She touched my arm, her fingertips like coals of heat when my entire body felt icy. “What did she do to you?”
I shook my head. “Not me.”
“Cassie.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded as if it was.
“Sophia played mind games on her all the time. You’re beautiful, you’re ugly. You’re smart, you’re useless. Mixed signals, outright lies, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention at the time.”
“You were a little boy.”
“One who played baseball really well and was kind of adopted by my coach.” If half of what Cassie said was true—and I believed her 100 percent—then I owed my sanity to my little league coach.
I watched understanding fill Gia’s expression. “That was why Cassie broke down. Why she started college so late.”
“She hit a crisis and tried to kill herself.” I still thanked God that I had been the one to find her that day. That I’d had the money to get her into therapy. And that I had seen enough of my older sister’s dark side to realize that Cassie wasn’t lying about any of it.
“You got her through?”
“She got herself through. I helped as much as I could.”
“And Sophia?”
“She went crazy and started to say things about Cassie—that she was a drug addict, that her boyfriends had raped her, or that Cassie had been part of a pornography ring. She offered enough details to even make Cassie’s therapist believe her, at least for a little bit.”
She nodded slowly. “But you didn’t buy it. You’d seen the mess Cassie was in.”
“I didn’t want to believe either side. It was too twisted. Did I accept that Cassie could be a troubled drug addict? Or that my substitute mother, Sophia, was responsible for making Cassie want to take her own life? Why? What could she gain from it?”
“Attention. Sympathy. Power.”
I looked at Gia and saw the darkness in her eyes. She usually hid it beneath her perky exterior, but I could see that she had no problem believing the evil inside my older sister. But it hadn’t been that simple. So I told her the one thing that kept me from walking away from Sophia outright.
“Back then, we wouldn’t have gotten through without Sophia. You don’t understand what it was like when my mom got sick. My dad spent every moment he could at the hospital. It was like he wasn’t even here. And after Mom’s death, he didn’t get out of bed. We had no one—no one but Sophia.”
Gia squeezed my fingers. When had I taken her hand? It didn’t matter. I gripped it tightly. “She could have done a good thing back then and still be poisonous now.”
I looked past Gia to the wall. “I thought it was just a sibling thing. That she had it in for Cassie.”
“And now she’s focused on me. Because she knows about us.”
“No!” But then I forced myself to admit the truth. “She saw us kiss.”
“New Year’s Eve.” And I saw the same wistfully happy expression on her face that I always got when I thought of that night. “She was the one who interrupted us.”
“Yeah.” And she’d told me that Gia wasn’t for me, that I had to focus on baseball. I touched Gia’s face. “You need to stay away from her. At least until I talk with her.”
Gia shrugged as if to let me know she could handle Sophia, but that wasn’t her job. It was mine. Meanwhile, Gia shifted her legs. The feel of her there against me—solid and womanly—made my dick throb. But more than that, she soothed the ragged edges inside me.
“Gia, I’m going to talk to Joe. He’ll know the ideas were yours. I’ll make sure—”
“Why are you letting Sophia do this to you? Why would you have her represent you?” Suddenly her eyes widened. “You hated doing that calendar, didn’t you? But you let her take those pictures. You let her sell them. You’ve let her—”
I slapped my hand over her mouth. It wasn’t a hard movement, but it was quick, and it startled her enough that she stopped talking. More importantly, she stopped figuring things out.
“You need to hear me, Gia. You need to listen, okay?”
She nodded, and I pulled my hand back. There were so many other things I wanted to do to her mouth that covering it like that had felt like sacrilege. But she needed to hear me, and so I stressed every word to make my position very clear.
“Sophia is my publicist. She makes a lot of money off of me. Her entire firm trades off my fame.”
“So she’s using you.”
I winced, but it was the truth. “And I’m letting her so that I can control her. If she pisses me off, she’ll lose everything, and she knows it.”
“And so, while she destroys your career…”
I arched a brow. Sophia wasn’t a nice person, but she definitely had skill in publicity. She might lie and manipulate, but that was marketing and she did it for my benefit. Sure, I hated the way she did things. I was definitely going to have words with her about taking credit for things she hadn’t done. But no one could say she was destroying my career. In fact, she’d done quite a bit to boost it.
And even Gia knew it. She grimaced.
“She’s damaging your reputation. Every time she’s a bitch, it reflects badly on you.”
“She isn’t usually a bitch.” Just around Gia.
“It still isn’t worth it.” I didn’t answer, but damn it, Gia was smart. I didn’t have to explain because she got it in one logical step. “You’re keeping her away from Cassie.”
I nodded. That was the tightrope I walked every day. “As long as Sophia’s company makes money off of me, she’ll stay away from Cassie. No visits, no calls or texts, not even third party communication passed on through an agent. I’ve got it in writing.”
“You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “My agent set me up with a lawyer who has written up weirder things.”
“What if she violates the contract?”
I grinned. “Then she owes me two million dollars. Cash. That’s more than enough to keep her in line.”
“Unless the money stops. How much does she have to make?”
Trust Gia to see the flaw in my system. “A hundred thousand a year, which I can cover from my salary alone. I don’t mind paying if it keeps Cassie safe.”
“You know this can’t last, right?” Gia said. “Eventually she’s going to want more. Hell, eventually you’ll retire and—”
“And every day, Cassie gets stronger. Every day, things get a little brighter.” Did she understand the waiting game? That life took careful planning and patience?
“You’re her brother. She’s going to try to keep you in her life, however she can.”
Who did crazy shit like that? Who screwed with a sister or a brother, just to keep control of them? God, I was furious. Which was totally fucked up, because a part of me still loved her for how she’d made sure I did my homework back when I was fifteen, how she’d gotten me to baseball practice every day. That she’d been the first to cheer when I made it into the minors.
And while I was still twisted up inside over that, Gia was stroking my jaw and soothing my tight muscles.
“I’d say Cassie is pretty damned strong already,” she said. “And I bet that’s all thanks to you.” Then she sighed. “Does Cassie know? Does she have a clue what you’re doing for her?”
“No. And you—”
“I won’t tell her. I swear. But you know you ought to, right? At some point, this whole arrangement is going to crumble around your ears, and Sophia will come at her hard.”
I shook my head. “Not today, it won’t. And not tomorrow.” I stroked my fingers along the curve of Gia’s jaw and rolled my thumb over her lips. “I can protect my sister,” I said firmly. “But you have to keep out of Sophia’s way. At least until I find out what she’s doing. If she’s really that messed up.”
Gia snorted. “She can’t hurt me unless Joe’s an idiot. And if he believes her over me, I need a different job anyway.”
That wasn’t what I meant, but I didn’t take the time to explain. Especially since I’d just realized that all my previous girlfriends had been exposed as cheaters. By Sophia. I had no trouble believing my sister, since I’d had rotten taste in women back then. But after Sophia had shown me proof that my last girlfriend had messed around on me four years ago, I’d taken her advice and focused completely on baseball. And then on Cassie. Since then, no other woman had gotten close to me. Not until Gia.
Could Sophia have been manipulating me all along? I didn’t think she was capable of lying to me like that. She’d been so supportive after the breakups. But now, I wasn’t sure what had actually happened. And I certainly didn’t want to take the chance with Gia.
“Stay away from Sophia,” I repeated. “At least until I talk to her. Please.”
Gia held up her hands in surrender. “I won’t interfere with her. I’m just going to do my job.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t leave it at that. “And you can’t let her think we’re in a relationship.”
Her expression shuttered, and her lips pressed closed. Her gaze skittered away, but my hand was on her chin. I didn’t let her move her head.
“Gia—”
“Are we in a relationship?” She gestured to her desk. “What did this mean?”
Hell, if I knew. That I couldn’t stay away from her? That I dreamed about her all the time? That my boners were interfering with batting practice? But I didn’t say that. Instead, I told her what I wanted, and I said it so quietly that even I wasn’t sure I’d spoken it aloud.
“Come over tonight. Late. We’ll decide then.”
Hope sparked in her eyes, and damn if I didn’t want to grab hold of that light and keep it safe forever.
“How late? Nine? Ten?”
I shook my head. That was when Cassie was coming over. “Eleven?”
“I’ll be there.”