Dirty Play (The Ferrari Family Book 1)

by Hazel Parker

  I texted Layla, who had gotten back in town, and asked her to arrange someone to grab the flowers so they could deliver them to Izzy’s apartment. Brett probably would have finished my request faster, but let’s just say I had no desire or interest right now in some brotherly shit-talking. That could come tomorrow; today was about taking care of the woman I lo…

  I almost dropped the l-word, but I had to remind myself it was way too early. But it was certainly true that my feelings for her were unbelievably stronger than for almost any other woman I had known.

  Finally, it came time for her to leave.

  In a sense, I no longer cared if the world knew that I was dating Izzy Saunders. A part of me kind of wanted the world to know, especially if it got back to her ex in jail; I wanted him squirming knowing that she had done much, much, much better than him and that he would never live up to the standards that I had set.

  But I could tell that Izzy was just so exhausted that the last thing she wanted was someone gawking at us as we walked out. Though I had driven to the hospital, I made the decision to just get us a luxury Uber back to her place and to pick us up on the side of the hospital; the cost was sincerely negligible for me to take her home and then take a ride back to the hospital, and it gave the added benefit of me being able to cuddle with her.

  I ordered the Uber just as we got downstairs, where Izzy signed some documentation and paperwork. The flowers had already been picked up thanks to Layla’s apparent instantaneous connections, and as soon as Izzy said she was set, I escorted her out one of the side entrances to our Uber.

  “You didn’t drive here?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said. “I just didn’t want to take you out front. Last thing we need is some more pap.”

  She didn’t say anything, but the relief that melted from her face was palpable. It was, to some extent, a risk we’d have to manage for as long as I played baseball and perhaps a little bit beyond, but there were better times to be photographed than not, and this was obviously not one of them.

  I opened the door to the black limo—yes, we actually got a limo—and let her get inside. I closed the door behind me, put my arm around her, and closed my eyes.

  It was, in a strange way, one of the most peaceful rides that I had ever had in my life. Izzy didn’t say a word, and neither did I, but both of us felt at such ease with each other it was like we said a thousand words with our bodies. I looked out the window occasionally to see the NorCal landscape, but for the most part, it didn’t matter what I looked out at; what mattered was the beauty of the woman by my side. Nothing could compare to that.

  I didn’t even mean her physical beauty, though she still had that, scars and bruises and all. Rather, I was just referring to her spirit and her vigor; even three days after suffering one of the worst fates outside of death a woman could suffer, she was here smiling, laughing, and cuddling on me. I felt a certain level of honor and responsibility to treat her well; there was almost no way that I could end it with her now, not that I was even close to considering it, let alone doing it.

  We arrived at her apartment about twenty minutes later. I held her hand as she guided me to her apartment. It was only here that it occurred to me this was the first time I was visiting her at her place.

  “Forgive me if it’s a little messy,” she said. “Being a single mother is not the most conducive to having a clean environment.”

  “The only reason my place looked as clean as it did was because I have people who take care of that for me,” I said. “If you saw my college dorm, I’m not sure you would have ever so much as looked at me.”

  “Boys,” Izzy said playfully under her breath as she opened the door.

  I didn’t know what to expect, but it occurred to me how, for as often as I had to explain to people or think about the fact that she had a kid, in some ways, I still hadn’t fully understood it. For starters, this place was not so much the home of a mother with a child as it was the home of a child with a mother. Toys littered the floor, toddler snacks were near the kitchen table, and the occasional carpet stain defined the place.

  “You learn very quickly what matters and what doesn’t when you’re a mother,” she said. “Especially when you’re a single mother who has no interest in bringing Dad back in the picture.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  The sight didn’t scare me. Actually, quite the opposite—it sort of humbled me. It made me think about all of the extraneous things I had in my place, like a weight room, a man cave, a gaming room, a pool, and how none of that really mattered, not compared to providing a space for my loved ones to grow and feel comfortable in.

  Of course, I was in no rush to have any kids, but the more I was around Izzy, the less I came to fear fatherhood and the more I came to see its positive aspects. I had never seen it as bad as my grandmother had made it out to be at the last family dinner, but I had also probably never seen it in the light Izzy had no choice but to.

  “Hopefully, you’re not scared off,” she said as she went about cleaning.

  “Not at all, I—”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked at it and groaned.

  “You can answer. Just don’t leave.”

  “I know, but I don’t want to,” I said with a laugh. “It’s my agent, Scott.”

  “What’s he calling about?”

  “Probably my new contract.”

  Izzy literally dropped the dish she was wiping. Thankfully, it only fell into the kitchen sink, not on the floor.

  “Answer that or I will kick you out!”

  Well, that was not subtle. I went into a spare room and answered.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Nick Ferrari, you are a hard man to get a hold of, especially when you are about to be richer than you ever imagined,” Scott said with a laugh. “How are you? Is the girlfriend OK?”

  I tried to ignore the fact that he’d put the money before the girlfriend; he was my agent, not my priest.

  “She’s fine, we’re all safe now,” I said. “But what’s this about richer than what?”

  I was playing dumb. I knew full well about Scott’s negotiations.

  “Well, the reason we called you into our office a few days ago was to tell you that we have reached a deal with the Giants to make you one of their own for life. And we have the numbers that’ll be read in the headline. Are you ready for this?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  At the risk of sounding spoiled, money never concerned me. I had more than enough—

  “Ten years, three hundred million.”

  What?

  “Can you,” I said, my mouth suddenly running very dry. “Can you repeat that one more time?”

  “Just think ten and three hundred,” Scott said. “Ten years, three hundred million dollars. Thirty million a year. Unfortunately, after taxes, you might only take home about twelve million a year, but—”

  But nothing.

  Sweet heavens.

  The Ferrari family and our vineyard had done extraordinarily well, and even before this contract, I was pulling in millions of dollars a year. Finances were never a problem for me.

  But…

  Three hundred fucking million dollars?

  “Nick? Are you still there?”

  “Somehow,” I said, drawing a client-like laugh from Scott. “Fuck me, three hundred million?”

  “I would not have called you to make up a number or give you something that hasn’t been finalized,” Scott said emphatically. “That is it. You are going to become one of the best-paid players in baseball.”

  I just stared blankly at the white wall before me. It seemed too good to be true.

  “Now, the Giants have made one request, and that is that we save the announcement for the day before opening day, so that means we wouldn’t officially sign this until a little over week from now. Obviously, we can push back and just say do it now, but I think it’ll be an attention-grabbing—”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s fin
e,” I said. “I know they’re good for it. It won’t make any difference when the contract kicks in, does it?”

  “Nope. You’ll play this year out on your current deal, and then starting next year, a cool thirty million before taxes every single year.”

  I didn’t even want to compute how much more money than the Ferrari Wines business that brought in. I didn’t actually know the amount, but I knew it was a fuckton more. And, more importantly, I knew it meant everyone around me would be secure for generations to come.

  “Then let’s wait,” I said. “Thanks, Scott, thanks for planning this out.”

  “No problem, sorry it took us a few days to get the news to you.”

  Yeah, something tells me that’s not a big deal.

  I hung up with Scott, went into the kitchen where Izzy was, and wrapped my arms around her. When she winced in pain, I pulled back, apologizing profusely, my excitement and eagerness to share the news having made me forget about the condition she was in.

  “You’re fine, no worries,” she said when she saw the sorrowful look on my face. “I heard some big numbers in there. Is that—”

  “An extension to set me up for life.”

  Izzy beamed wide, dropped the dishes into the sink she was working on, and threw her arms around me for a big kiss. I was very careful to put my hands on her gingerly, but my kiss came at full force—it was a kiss to celebrate what this meant for…

  Yes.

  For us. Not just me.

  Crazy? Probably. But well worth the euphoria. I could always change my mind later, but something told me that I wouldn’t.

  “Congratulations!” she said as she kissed me again. “We’re going to have to celebrate.”

  “Voltaire’s, perhaps?” I said. “But only on one condition. You ride with me this time. I don’t want you to have to walk back to your car and make me give you an awkward kiss on the cheek like before.”

  “Oh, stop, you know I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I’d just get valet and make you walk.”

  Oh, this woman was something else.

  I looked into her eyes for a long, long time, feeling an incredible urge to say what I had almost thought earlier. The rational part of me was telling me I was insane for thinking this way about a woman I had slept with once and only gone on a couple of dates with, but the emotional side of me…

  “You know, Izzy…”

  I gulped.

  “I—”

  And then my fucking phone buzzed!

  “You sure you want to allow me to answer this damn thing?” I said. “I’m more than happy to chuck this piece of shit out so we can…well, um, kiss?”

  “You’re ridiculous. Go answer the phone. If it’s a telemarketer, say something before you hang up so I can laugh.”

  “OK, OK, you win,” I said, stepping back to pull my phone out.

  It was Uncle Nick.

  That…

  Was good news actually good news in this spot? Did I want to know what the call was about?

  “One second,” I said, stepping back into an empty room. “Hello?”

  “Nick?” my uncle said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I got your order on Amazon. It’s all taken care of.”

  I didn’t even need a second to know he was speaking in code. And I knew…

  Well, actually, I didn’t know. I didn’t know exactly what the details were. And that was what made it so fucking scary. I had an idea of what was going to happen to Izzy’s ex, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more details.

  “OK, thanks, Uncle Nick.”

  “No problem.”

  With that, he hung up a few seconds later. I dropped my phone and stared at it. It was too late to turn the clock back now, too late to change anything.

  I still felt I had made the right choice, but the fact my fucking uncle was speaking in fucking code told me I might not have understood the full weight of what I had done. If this somehow resulted in catastrophe…if this somehow tied back to the Ferrari name, to me…even if I was exonerated in court, even if my uncle didn’t say anything about me, the media would have a field day about how Izzy’s ex had gotten hurt on the orders of the Ferrari family. It was a conspiracy that would actually be fucking true.

  I suddenly felt very sick, like I’d opened the Pandora’s Box of Pandora’s Boxes. I’d thought I was righting a wrong, but I had a sick feeling I’d only produced a thousand more wrongs to cover up that one in particular. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t, but I had probably vastly underestimated the extent to which things were about to be fucked up.

  Or, maybe, I was just a completely paranoid idiot and this kind of shit would either never catch up to me or it would be so far out into the future that it wouldn’t matter.

  I walked back out to Izzy, who had resumed washing dishes.

  “Everything OK?” she said.

  I smiled politely, but I couldn’t muster a sincere response.

  “It will be,” I said. “I’ll stay here for a bit and make sure it will be.”

  “But your games, your practice—”

  “I won’t skip it. But for tonight and for the next few days…you wouldn’t mind having me around, would you?”

  The grin on her face said it all.

  Chapter 20: Izzy

  When I saw Nick disappear to take a second phone call, as the lust and affection that I felt for him naturally momentarily subsided, I suddenly found myself going through something of a withdrawal.

  I missed work. I didn’t like to think of myself as a workaholic, but I really did love my job. I missed hanging out with Jordan and Rachel, even if the latter could sometimes be a little overwhelming.

  I wouldn’t miss the emails and the work that had piled up, but I knew the two of them would do their best to stay on top of the assignments as they came in. They didn’t leave me out to dry.

  I missed some of the smaller parts of my daily routine. The comfort of going for a lunch-time jog. The thoughts of being able to go out and not have to worry about “the possibility” but instead now “the repeat” of awful events.

  But most of all, I missed Ryan.

  I missed having him around the house.

  I missed holding him in my arms. There was just nothing that mattered to me more than my son, and as good as Nick and I were together to date, if anything made me choose between him or my little boy, there was no doubt which I would pick. It was of pretty good fortune that not only was that not likely, but Nick actually seemed to take a liking to Ryan, or at least the idea of him.

  But then I thought about how I had lost some things that I would never get back.

  I would never get back my normalcy, especially at work. Everyone in that office had either seen me wheeled out or had heard about it, and it wasn’t like all of the swelling and bruises had come because I had fallen down in the shower. Even some of my vendors and clients would likely hear about it. I didn’t want to think at all about what they would say.

  If it didn’t work out with Nick—something I wasn’t really worried about, but something that was by no means impossible—I would never be able to go on a normal date again without worrying that Malcolm would ruin it somehow. I got really lucky with Nick that he was understanding and willing to fight back. Most men would have justifiably thought I wasn’t worth the trouble.

  And what of Nick and me? The secret was anything but now. On the one hand, that had made my feelings for him pretty clear and easy. But on the other, what happened now? We hadn’t even had a talk about being together, or—

  Then he came back into view, and even though he looked a little frazzled by what had happened on the phone, all of those worries just sort of disappeared, went right out the window. I didn’t have a good logical explanation as to why; if I had to take the witness stand in court to explain why seeing Nick put me at ease, I couldn’t give a coherent answer.

  All I knew was that my body felt light, my blood pressure dropped, and a smile naturally curled my lips at h
is presence. And then, when he asked if he could spend the next few nights with me, it was like my own guardian angel had promised to keep full watch.

  “Of course you can stay,” I said. “I am going to have to bring Ryan home at some point, anyway. It might be a good chance for you two to get acquainted.”

  “Oh, I didn’t even think of that,” he said. “I can stay away while he’s around if you want, I know most parents don’t—”

  But I put a finger to his lips. He was different.

  “The fact that you’re here now, after what Malcolm did, tells me I can trust you with him.”

  And that I have a gut feeling you’ll be around for a long, long time.

  “Well, that makes me feel so…thank you, Izzy,” he said, pulling me in for a kiss. “By the way, I can’t believe you’re washing these dishes right now. You should be settling in for a bath or something.”

  “It’s fine, it’s—”

  “No, no, I insist, in fact…”

  He let the words hang as he walked into my room. Seconds later, I heard the bathwater running. OK, I had to admit, the idea of a long bath did have an enormous amount of appeal…

  “So, am I supposed to assume that you’re going to wash the dishes?” I said with a hint of sarcasm. “Mr. Ferrari, reduced to washing his lady’s dishes?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I’m a rich villain who makes my butler do everything,” he said as he, in fact, took a dish out of my hand. “You go and get in the bathtub. You let the hot water soothe your body. It will do you some good. I’ll clean up in here.”

  I could see there was no arguing—not that I really wanted to per se, but even if I felt like putting up a fight, Nick Ferrari just wouldn’t have it.

  “Fine,” I said with a playful eye roll. “But make sure you put all the dishes in the right place. I’m very used to having things done my way, and it’s going to drive me insane if I do not have that set up right. Ask my father about it sometime.”

  “I’m sure I will at some point. Now, go.”

  He kissed me on the forehead and gently, almost as if I were made of glass, nudged me in the direction of the bathroom. I was sort of impressed with the audacity with which he spoke as if he just assumed that he would get the chance to meet my father at some point. He wasn’t wrong—if he was going to meet Ryan, he was definitely going to meet my father—but damn.