Worth the Fall

by Mara Jacobs

  Published by 2012 Mara Jacobs

  Copyright 2012 Mara Jacobs

  Cover design by Kim Killion of Hot Damn Designs

  Interior layout: www.formatting4U.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at Mara@MaraJacobs.com. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For more information on the author and her works, please see www.MaraJacobs.com

  ISBN: 978-0-985258-62-7

  For Holli

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek: Broken Wings

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances;

  if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

  ~ Carl Gustav Jung

  Alison Jukuri pulled the pillow over her face, trying to block out the rising sun. Wait a minute. Her bedroom window didn’t face the east.

  She slowly drew the pillow back and opened her eyes to a blinding light. Oh yeah, the hotel room. She’d booked a room at the hotel where Katie and Darío were having their wedding reception. She hadn’t wanted to drive home after what would definitely be a fun night of partying. Even if she was the only one in the bridal party not knocked up and therefore able to drink. She smiled thinking about co-maid of honor Lizzie’s water breaking just as the dancing got started.

  Good God, how could smiling hurt so much? Why did her head feel as if it had been chopped off and sewn back on to her neck with a rusty needle and barbed wire for thread?

  Hangover. Right, of course. She wasn’t twenty-one anymore. She was a respected professor and therapist who had the occasional Scorpion at the Commodore. Not the crazy wild woman she’d become last night.

  What exactly happened? She remembered Lizzie and Finn leaving to rush to the hospital. The rest of the wedding guests had been kind of on standby until Finn had texted that it was going to be a long night and all was well, so everybody should just stay and enjoy themselves.

  She headed straight to the bar after getting Finn’s text. Holding that cold glass in her hand was basically the last coherent memory Alison had.

  Rough, stubbled cheeks scratching her face as hot lips sought hers.

  Huh? She gingerly moved an arm—God, even her fingers hurt—and felt her cheek. There was a small tingle of pain and definite abrasion. But there was also a little frisson of pleasure with the pain.

  Deep, wet kisses that stole her breath away. Her tongue being sucked on.

  Her fingers slid down her cheek to her lips. Her puffy, well-used lips. What the hell happened last night? She tried to get her muddled brain to concentrate, but all she saw were flashes of memory. And flashes of lovely male flesh.

  Her nails scratching down a broad, muscular back as she peaked. Grabbing hold of a sculpted-from-granite ass as she peaked. Again.

  She must have had one doozy of a sex dream. The aftershocks were still vibrating through her body. But that didn’t explain the puffy lips and stubble-burned cheeks. She shifted her legs slightly. Or her stubble-burned thighs. And other nicely aching things down there.

  So, not a dream. She’d had a drunken hook-up. Alison started to berate herself, but a total of two in her thirty-six years didn’t make her a slut. And given the last one had been eighteen years ago, it—

  No. No way. It couldn’t have been. There was no way she would have been so stupid. She slowly moved her arm behind her, more afraid of what she might touch than of the pain that moving brought. She came into contact with hard washboard abs. She slid her hand up to feel a wonderfully muscled and hairy chest.

  A warm hand clamped down on her wrist and brought her hand and arm forward, a strong arm covering her, holding on to her wrist and pulling her back into said washboard abs. Alison looked down at the arm. If she’d had any doubt—not that she did—it was put to rest when she recognized the watch on his wrist.

  She remembered years ago when he’d shown them all that watch, bragging about buying the crazy expensive thing with part of his signing bonus from the Red Wings. Alison had cracked something about it being too bad it wasn’t digital so he’d be able tell the time instead of it just being a pretty bracelet. They’d all laughed.

  Except him. He’d called her a name. She’d called him one back. Just their typical night out with the gang when he came home.

  She started to move from his grasp but he only pulled her tighter against him. She held very still, trying to figure out how this conversation was going to go. Just as she was about to turn in his arms and face the proverbial music, he let out a snore.

  Asleep. He was still asleep. Of course it would be second nature to him to pull the naked body he was with against him, even when unconscious. Muscle memory they called it when an action was repeated so often that the body took over for the mind.

  Alison waited a moment, then tried again. This time his grip loosened and she slowly—oh, so slowly—eased out of the bed. She quickly grabbed her discarded bridesmaid’s dress from the floor to hold in front of her in case he woke. She was relieved to see the condom wrappers (plural?!) on the nightstand.

  And on he slept. Dreamt? Of last night? Of her? Or all the others?

  She looked down at that glorious body and shook her head.

  Alison Jukuri. Valedictorian. Summa cum laude. Genius IQ. Freaking Mensa member.

  Or, as she was known all through school, the Smart One. The label was doing her about as much good in adulthood as it did then, which was none at all. Because the actions Alison displayed last night were not smart. They were downright idiotic.

  She’d slept with the man she least respected in the world.

  Again.

  One

  A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

  ~ Author Unknown

  Two months later

  “Just leave it, honey, I’ll get it.” Petey Ryan’s mom waved him back in his seat as he stood to help her clear the table.

  Petey reluctantly sat back down at the dining room table with his father, not relishing the conversation to come. “Thanks for dinner, Mom. It was great.”

  “Anytime, honey, you know that. We love having you, even if it’s only for a day or two,” she replied as she made her way into the kitchen. His parents were young compared to his friends’ parents—Petey’d been a shotgun baby. His mother was still trim, with just a touch of gray in her hair, and she moved quickly, efficiently, and with more ease than he did these days.<
br />
  “Next time it’ll be longer. I’ll be here once a week for your cooking if you’ll have me.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. For a couple of reasons.

  “Oh, that would be wonderful. I’ll plan on every Sunday,” she said, popping her head around the corner from the kitchen, a look of delight on her familiar face. That was one of the reasons he regretted saying it. He didn’t want to disappoint his mother, even though he loved her cooking and would like nothing better to be fed by her on a regular basis.

  “You’ll have nothing better to do. Probably need a free meal, too,” his father said.

  And that was the other reason.

  He loved both his parents. He really did. And he had no doubt they loved him. And were proud of him. Even if his father didn’t always know how to show it.

  “I think I’ll be able to handle my grocery bill, Dad.”

  His father gave a small snort, a signal to Petey to gird his loins—tape his ankles and strap on his pads, in his vernacular—for what was about to come.

  “It just doesn’t make sense. You’ve got three, maybe four good years left in you. Why would you hang up your skates now?”

  Petey was already shaking his head. “I’ve got—maybe—two or three of those years in me, but they wouldn’t be good ones.” He sighed, smoothing the linen tablecloth. On the rare occasions that he made it home during the season, his mother always served dinner in the dining room with tablecloths and the fancy dishes. When he was in his own house over the summer, if he came for dinner, they would eat in the kitchen, or on the back deck. “I’m old, Dad. In the NHL, I’m ancient.”

  It was a full-fledged snort this time. “You’re thirty-seven. Gordie Howe played until he was fifty-two.”

  He gave his father a leveling glance. “Come on, Dad. I’m no Gordie Howe.”

  Dan Ryan seemed to accept that—sadly, a little too easily. But Petey’s father always was a realist, and most times he appreciated that. So why couldn’t he be that realist now?

  “Messier. Lemieux. They were well into their forties.”

  “Wings and centers. You won’t find any defensemen playing that long.” And before his father could pull out a name —and Petey just bet he had one waiting—he continued, “Dad. I’m done after this season. If I want to have any kind of life after hockey, I have to stop doing this to my body.” There was a little bit of pleading in his voice. Was he pleading for his father to understand? Or to give his permission?

  The thought that maybe he still needed his father’s permission to make a life decision pissed Petey off. But he couldn’t put that on his father—that was on him.

  And time for him to blow the whistle and call the play dead. “Dad,” he said, raising his hand in a “stop” motion as he saw his father about to argue with him. “Stop. Really. I’m slower on the ice now. The younger guys are getting bigger and are faster. I do not want to go out on a low note. The decision’s been made. I’ve told my coaches and the front office. Come May, or hopefully June, I’ll have played my last game.” He waited for a moment. When his father didn’t make a comeback, Petey looked him in the eye and gave his shit-eating grin. “And I’ll have my retirement drink out of the Stanley Cup.”

  After a moment, his father returned his grin. “Damn straight you’ll be drinking out of the Cup!”

  And that would help ease the sting for his father—Petey finally winning the trophy that had eluded him his whole career. Hell, it’d take the sting out of his body crying uncle for Petey, too.

  “Now,” he said, rising from the table, “I’ve got to go see that screaming, snotty brat of a baby or Lizzie will hand me my ass.”

  His mother, with her innate sense of knowing when any storm between Petey and his father was over, came back into the dining room. “You don’t fool me. You’re going to be a big pile of mush holding that baby. It’s going to make you want one of your own. I guess I’m ready to be a grandmother.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Petey and his father said simultaneously. They grinned at each other, the tension from their “talk” gone. They ran hot and cold, he and his father, but they always quickly found their way back to common ground.

  He kissed his mother. “Thanks again, Mom.” Making his way out of the dining room, across the living room and to the foyer to get his heavy winter coat, he added, “I shouldn’t be too late. I doubt Lizzie’s going to want to stay up late, drink some beers and shoot the shit.”

  “She will. You know she will Petey, just because she’ll think you want to,” his mother accurately stated. “Make sure you don’t keep her up too late. I can’t imagine she’s getting much sleep.”

  She was right. His best friend Lizzie would sense he wanted to talk. She’d hide any yawn and have her husband Finn put the baby to bed—and anything else that needed to be done—and be totally there for Petey. Just like she’d been for years.

  And he’d feel like a douche, but he’d totally take advantage of her friendship.

  Just like he’d done for years.

  She had to know something was up anyway. Petey rarely came home during the season, as there just wasn’t enough time for the ten-hour drive from Detroit to their Upper Peninsula hometown when you were playing a game nearly every night. And these few days he had now—during the All-Star Game break—were days he usually stayed in Detroit, giving his body a much-needed rest.

  But even though he’d just defended his decision to retire at the end of the season to his father, Petey was freaking out over the idea of giving up the only thing he did well.

  Hell, the only thing he did period.

  He needed Lizzie’s calm perspective on it all to keep him from running to the front office and ripping up the paperwork. Not that he knew if there was actually any paperwork or not. See? He didn’t even know how businesses worked.

  All he knew was the ice. The glide, the cool, the feel of nothingness under his skates. And now he was going to give that all up because he wanted to be able to walk in an upright position when he was fifty.

  He shut the front door behind him and stepped out onto the front porch. The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees from when he’d gone inside hours ago to watch the All-Star Game with his dad. He’d been shoveling the front steps and walk, trying to prolong the task because he did not want to endure the torture of watching two of his teammates play in the elite game that Petey’d only played in once in his fifteen years in the league.

  But his father had insisted Petey come in and watch the game with him and so he did, feeling a sense of doom, melancholy and pride for the game he loved all at the same time.

  He shook off the game, the dinner and the conversation with his father. He’d always been remarkably good at not thinking too much. It’d served him well on the ice. Burrowing deeper into his parka, he made his way down the steps only to feel his feet go out from beneath him.

  The ice. The substance on which he made his living. The hard surface he knew as home.

  The cool glide betrayed him, and as he heard something in his knee pop he instinctively knew he wouldn’t have several months to come to terms with retirement. No farewell games. No last wave to the cheering crowd at the Joe.

  Petey Ryan lay at the bottom of the steps in a crumpled heap.

  Retired.

  ***

  “And this is all of us last Fourth of July. See? That’s you, there. And that’s Mom.” Alison pointed to the various faces in the family portrait she’d blown up, framed and placed in her father’s room in the long-term care section of the hospital. “Do you remember that day, Dad?”

  “Yes, of course, Alison. It was only months ago,” her father answered with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

  Good. That was good. He remembered, and he was pissed that she questioned his memory. A good day, then.

  “It was the day before we shipped out to Korea. God, that was a fun day. Do you remember how Jimmy chased after you that day? But you weren’t having any of it, were you? Playing hard to
get, even then.”

  Not a good day. But not one of his worst, either.

  “Not playing hard to get. Just not interested in Jimmy.” She’d tried different tactics when her father was like this—lucid, but in a distant place. She’d corrected him, changed the topic, and pleaded with him to remember. She’d read up on the proper course of action, and there didn’t seem to be a clear consensus on the topic. In the end, the kindest thing seemed to be to just go along with him.

  “Why not? Jimmy was a great guy. A great guy,” her father said. His attention drifted from the photo to a blank spot on the wall where he seemed to see the old gang because a smile lit up his wrinkled face.

  Her father was eighty-five, and, up until a few years ago, had always looked a decade younger than his age. But the ravages of severe Alzheimer’s had taken a toll on more than just his mind. He’d never been a big man, but now he was a shadow of his former self. Small and weak, a recurring lung infection had left him barely able to do the small tasks that would allow him to leave the hospital and enter an assisted-living facility.

  That’s what they’d been hoping for. An assisted-living place that could keep him safe, sheltered, and in comfort. They’d all discussed it—Alison, her mother Nora, and Charles, her father—years ago, back when he’d first been diagnosed. He didn’t want the burden of his care to fall to Nora and they’d gone along with him.

  But behind his back, Alison and her mother had formed an alliance of their own. They would do all they could to keep Charles in the family home as his disease progressed. And they were succeeding, until Nora became ill herself.

  At first the doctors thought Alzheimer’s for Nora too. Alison had just about lost it that day. She’d called her friend Katie, who was in Spain with her guy, Darío, and unloaded. She just didn’t see how she was going to be able to handle it all. But it turned out not to be Alzheimer’s but a slow-growth dementia of another kind.