TWENTY-TWO
“Violet.”
She jerked awake, and for a hellish moment thought she was back in Rusty’s Biker Emporium in Reno. This reaction might have had something to do with the scary-looking beard leaning over her. Quickly, she sat up, realizing that she had fallen asleep on the sofa. Yep, that was drool dampening the plush pillow beneath her head.
Bearded Biker Dude looked annoyed, but she set that aside because he also looked hot. A smart blue button-down shirt contrasted nicely with a charcoal sports jacket and dark wash jeans. Some sort of styling goo had structured his hair.
“Bren?”
“You left the door open,” he said sternly. “Anyone could have walked in.”
“It just seemed easier. Everyone wants to visit, so why not let them in without me answering the door all the time?” She stretched, then winced at the tug to the two-day-old-and-still-healing wound under her arm. “What time is it?”
“Seven in the evening.” He plunked down on the sofa beside her, his big body taking up a ton of space. “How are you?”
“A little sore, but just glad it’s out. The doctor called this afternoon with the pathology results. Completely benign.”
He exhaled and nodded, clasped her hand, and remained silent. The quiet stretched for a while—not unpleasant. She loved how easy it was with him. She usually felt a need to fill gaps, entertain the masses, be “on,” but not with Bren.
“I’m sorry I got pushy the other day,” he finally said. “About attending the surgery. I just don’t like the idea of sitting around, not helping.”
“You’ve helped.” He had no idea how much. She was trying her best not to confuse either of them, and in the process, she might have come down on him too hard. “I should have let you hang with me, but I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.” Especially me.
He stared at her, into her. She suspected it would be best for her mental well-being to look away, but it seemed she had no idea what was good for her.
“If you’re up for going out, I’d like to take you to dinner, Violet.”
Dinner? Had he not heard a word she just said?
“It’s only dinner, not a marriage proposal. While I’m crazy about my kids, right now I’d love some adult conversation with a funny, sexy, beautiful woman. And wouldn’t you like to get away from everyone for a bit?”
He had a point. He had also called her funny, sexy, and beautiful. “Where are the girls?”
“With Skylar. I gave that Jeremy kid the stink eye for a good thirty seconds. Pretty sure he won’t try anything.”
“He’s twelve.”
“He’s male.”
She let it go, because Bren in protective papa-bear mode was both adorable and sexy.
“Current ensemble working for you?” She gestured to her oversized Rebels tee and tube socks. No need to gesture toward her three-days-without-washing hair and her lack of makeup. Best not to overwhelm him with too much hotness.
“It’s working far too well.”
“You silver-tongued devil.” Heart thumping madly, she blinked at the Bren-grade intensity waving off him. “Can I shower?”
“Uh, please do.”
He got a Harper-fluffed pillow in the face for that one.
Bren drove them to the West Loop in downtown Chicago, where they ended up in a fancy hipster restaurant called Smith & Jones. The Scot’s hand on her hip guiding her through the dense crowd waiting for a table felt acutely possessive and wholly magnificent.
Murmurs of recognition buzzed around them, yet no one approached the unapproachable captain of the Rebels. After Bren gave his name to the hostess, they were told their table would take a moment to be ready. In that several-second stretch, Bren drank her in.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have worn this magenta jersey dress, but it was draped loosely enough so as not to aggravate her wound, and that looseness created a little gap in the cleavage area. Her date didn’t seem to mind. His gaze was molten fire over her skin, taking an exacting inventory of her breasts, hips, thighs, all the way down to her high heels. While her fashion sense was considered “unique” according to Harper, tonight’s outfit was conventionally sexy.
“Stop staring,” she muttered.
Evidently encouraged by her self-consciousness, he dug his fingers into her waist. “Why?”
“People are taking notice. You’re sort of famous, y’know?”
Those dominant fingers slid to her ass, a move hidden from the view of those around them. Bren’s appreciation for her booty knew no end.
“You look gorgeous tonight, Violet.”
She loved how her name sounded on his lips, like a mini aria. Vi-oh-let.
“And you look very pretty, too.”
His smile reached all the way to his eyes, and he leaned in to graze his lips against her ear. “Maybe we should skip dinner. I spotted a dark alley near where we parked the car.”
That sounded lovely and dangerous and she wasn’t all that hungry anyway.
“Your table’s ready!”
On their way to being seated, a surly, tatted badass in a chef’s jacket saluted Bren from the kitchen’s entrance. Bren saluted him right back. The place was packed to the gills, and soon they found themselves in a cozy spot far enough away from the bar to feel private. The perks of being a famous hockey player, she supposed.
Bren held out her chair. She might have swooned, which is why she sat quickly.
Once Bren had seated himself, a shadow entered her peripheral vision. She looked up, expecting a server, but was instead confronted with a movie-star-handsome man, about one notch above Moretti, which was saying something, because their GM was a gift to men and women the world over.
This guy sported a designer suit, flawless bone structure, and a charming smirk. Beside him stood a smiling pregnant woman with a shock of red-brown hair. Around her upper arms, tattooed Celtic bands celebrated—or venerated—the names SEAN and LOGAN.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she gushed to Bren, taking Violet in with her blinding grin. “But I’m a huge fan and I just wanted to wish you guys luck in LA.”
Bren stood, holding out his hand. “Mrs. Dempsey-Cooper, it’s a pleasure to meet you. This is my—Violet.”
Violet’s heart jumped into her throat and barely stuck the landing. My—Violet.
“Oh, call me Alex,” the woman said, shaking Violet’s hand with a firm grip. “And this is my husband, Eli.”
Violet recognized them now. The mayor and the firefighter, a couple who had blown up the Internet a couple of years ago when she saved his life in a fire and he tanked a mayoral election to prove he loved her. To have someone adore you that much . . . Violet couldn’t begin to imagine a guy making a sacrifice that major for her.
“Great to meet you. When are you due?”
“Two months and a week, give or take,” Eli said, his pride evident. He slung an arm around his wife’s hip. “And then it’ll be a battle to keep her off the fire truck.”
“It’s where I’m meant to be.” Alex smiled at Violet. “I expect you hear stuff like that all the time, being a woman in a male-dominated profession.”
“My sisters hear it more. I’m not that involved with running the team.” But she liked Alex’s sentiment all the same. It’s where I’m meant to be. Violet’s contribution to the Rebels might be minimal, but she was starting to think she might have found her place.
“We’ll let you get back to your evening,” Eli said, tugging gently on his wife. “The whole town is rooting for you, Captain. Good luck.”
Bren nodded again, and they both watched as the most perfect couple in the history of perfect couples walked away.
“You know their story?” Bren asked as he re-took his seat.
“I read all about it when it happened. The kind of tale that keeps a city enthralled.” Sort of like a luckless NHL franchise run by three women, a gay guy, and a reformed alcoholic who were now on the cusp of the biggest moment of their lives.
The waiter stopped by and asked about drinks.
“Just water, thanks,” Violet said.
“You’d like wine,” Bren stated. “Unless you’re still on pain meds.”
“I’m not, but—” She wanted to be respectful of his struggle.
“She’ll have a glass of Malbec.”
The waiter nodded and left.
“How did you know that’s my favorite wine?”
“I know.”
The notion that this man had watched her long enough to file away her wine preferences took her breath away. But then Bren St. James had been stealing life-giving oxygen from the moment she saw him.
“And you don’t need to think of me when you order a drink. I’ve been resisting temptation for a long time. A total of nine months, one week, three days, and seven hours, in fact, give or take a few minutes.”
That didn’t sound right. “I thought you were sober for almost a year.”
“Aye, a year today.”
Her chest flushed with pride. “Congratulations. That’s quite an achievement.”
“Thanks.” He smiled, a little shyly, and she melted into a puddle in the seat.
“But if you’re sober for a year, what did you mean about resisting temptation for nine months . . . ?”
“One week, three days, and seven hours? That refers to a different temptation. That commemorates the day I left rehab and happened to be in the Empty Net when three ‘fans’ decided I needed to hear their opinion on my shortcomings.”
The day she came across him in that near bar fight.
The day she found out about Clifford’s will.
The day she made a very unsubtle pass at Bren.
The temptation he spoke of was her.
And he’d counted down to the moment when he finally succumbed.
Luckily she didn’t have to respond immediately, because the waiter appeared with her Malbec and launched into a recitation of the restaurant’s specials. It all sounded amazing.
Once he’d left, she could have glossed over what Bren had said, but she didn’t want to. It was too important and she was tired of eliding the big stuff.
“The day I met you, you’d just left rehab, and you ordered a drink. As a test?”
“Yes.” He chuckled as if it was the most amusing thing in the world. At catching her serious expression, he stopped. “I can joke about it now. Back then, I wanted to see how far I’d come. I had no idea that the real temptation would appear before me in the guise of a woman.” He said woman like it rhymed with devil.
“I’m not some biblical temptress.”
His eyebrow disagreed.
“Okay, maybe a little. I mean, look at me.” Preening a touch, she fluttered her eyelashes and drew his rough chuckle. “I just saw something I wanted. I didn’t even know who you were until you started banging on about whether I recognized you. Then I just thought you were some overpaid, entitled asshole—who I happened to own, by the way.”
Both of them met in that bar, at a crossroads in their lives, only he didn’t respond to her overture.
“Seems my dick-raising powers were having an off day.”
“I’d spent a couple of years making bad decisions, and fucking some stranger in a bar restroom wasn’t really how I wanted to start over. Yet I’m guessing that this was how you wanted to start over.”
“Perhaps. I’d just left the lawyer’s office, where he told me I was part owner of the Rebels. Clifford had given me nothing but a few tuition checks when he was alive, but now he’d decided to throw me into the deep end with running his beloved team. I was going to sell, get out of there, run away, but I saw you. And—” What was she thinking, telling him all this?
“And?”
“I thought a quick, anonymous hookup would be a good way to exorcise some demons, I suppose. The first time since my surgery. Don’t worry, I realize your rejecting me wasn’t personal.”
Not even a hint of a smile. After a moment, he spoke, as if forced to summon the words from some deep, dank pit. “Violet, it was immensely personal.”
“Okay, no need to drill it home.”
“No, listen. Choosing not to screw an engaging and gorgeous woman I’d just met was a personal decision to respect you and myself. I had no legitimate hopes of seeing you again, but if it had happened, I wouldn’t have wanted some quick rut in the bathroom of the Empty Net to be the abiding memory of how we first connected. Turning you down in that way was personal because sex for me, and I think for you, is very personal. Despite your pretending otherwise.”
This isn’t what she wanted to hear, yet somehow it was exactly what she needed to hear. Why couldn’t Bren St. James keep things flirty and sexy? Why did everything with the Scot have to be intense to the nth degree?
She changed the subject. “So you knew Clifford. What was he like?” Out of the frying pan, perhaps, but something she could handle.
“Your sisters haven’t told you?”
“I haven’t asked them, to be honest. They each have their own biases. Harper hated him, Isobel loved him. Of course, Iz recognizes now that he was an asshole, but she worshipped him for a long time so it’s hardest for her. She’s incredibly conflicted.”
“Cliff was the kind of man who produced polarizing opinions across the board. Great player, decent coach, terrible manager.”
“And how did he fare as a man?”
He tore off a piece of bread in a basket. “Not the best. But it’s hard to be a good man in this day and age.”
So not true. Bren St. James was one of the best men she knew, his effort all the more astonishing given the struggle he went through every day.
“Why are you making excuses for him?”
“We all have faults. The man was an asshole, but he was still your father. I’ll respect that, because without him you wouldn’t be here.” He followed this up with some top-notch eye-fucking of the Scottish variety. “When did you find out Cliff was your father?”
“When I was thirteen. My grandmother was ill and had just been moved into a nursing home. My mom was working double shifts at a diner just to make ends meet. But I was going to a private Catholic school and I started asking questions about how we could afford it. I’d visit my grandmother, and one day, she told me.”
“You’d never asked your mom?”
“I had, but she always said he’d never wanted to know us. That part was true, but . . .”
“But?”
She inhaled a quick breath. “What I didn’t realize was that my mother had known who he was the night she met him in Caesar’s in Vegas. She’d targeted him. Saw a way out of her hand-to-mouth existence and got herself knocked up. On purpose.”
Not unlike that story she’d heard from Skylar about Kendra. She assessed his expression, waiting for judgment. None came.
She rushed on. “He knew from Day One. Pre–Day One, actually. He agreed to child support, but for my schooling, he paid the bills directly to St. Ita’s so my mom couldn’t use it for something else.”
“Once you knew who he was, what did you do?”
She smiled, loving that he understood she’d not be the kind of girl who sat on that kind of knowledge. “I wrote him a letter because I thought there was no way he wouldn’t want to see me. If he paid for my schooling, it was because he wanted me raised a certain way. To give me the advantages befitting a daughter of Clifford Chase, and he was just biding his time until I was ready. Until I was molded to his liking.”
Bren’s eyes on her were as hot as a dragon’s breath. She’d never told anyone this before. Not the whole story, straight through.
“I wanted to meet him. I wanted to know if I was like him. If I had his temper or his sense of humor. If he was the reason my eyes are green with little flecks of gold. I wanted—I—” She got stuck. She felt stuck.
He grasped her hand, rubbed a thumb along her pulse. Soothing. Inciting. “You wanted.”
“Yes.” Relief that he understood bolted through her. “I loved my mom, my gran, my aunts, but a piece of me needed to know. His lawyer called and said Clifford would come see me. While I waited for him to show up in a big black town car and whisk me away to afternoon tea, I did my research. I watched clips of his games. I even went to a hockey match—that’s what I used to call them because I hadn’t a clue—just so I could say I’d done that when we met. Isn’t that nuts?”
Her voice had emerged high, unrecognizable, in an uncontrollable gush.
“I looked for pictures of his wives, and especially his daughters, online. These sisters I didn’t know. These sisters I wanted to know.”
She couldn’t stop talking now. Bren said nothing while she babbled like a fool. She swiped at her eyes, unable to force out the hurtful truth.
Finally Bren spoke it for her: “He didn’t show.”
“No,” she whispered, the shock of it still a slice through her heart. “Sounds like I was better off. How he treated Harper and Iz, the pressure they both lived under being his daughters—well, I had a lucky escape.”
She told herself this every day. Clifford Chase had stayed away. Lucky. Her boobs were scooped out and replaced. Lucky. Denny had revealed his true colors and she’d kicked his Jag-driving ass to the curb. Lucky. These days, she made her own luck, and she didn’t rely on anyone.
But she could so easily rely on someone. Her sisters. Her new friends.
This man.
How could she have let herself get caught up in this temporary life that felt more real and permanent than anything she’d ever experienced?
“He was a fool,” Bren said. “About a lot of things, but mostly about his daughters. However, he made up for it with that will. Best thing he could have ever done.”
“Forcing us to jump through hoops to run the team?”
“Bringing you all together. You stayed to get to know them.”
No, she didn’t. She stayed because Bren St. James piqued her interest that day in the Empty Net. Because he still drew her like a magnet to his metal.
And she would eventually leave for the same reason.