Undefeated

by C. D. Gill

  Her ball bounced and stopped a few feet from the flag. Channeling her aggression usually wasn’t quite so profitable for her. Xander’s hand covered hers on the club’s grip as she stood staring. The warmth of his touch startled her from her trance. His tongue darted out to wet his lips that were surrounded by the dark beginnings of a full beard. He continued to pull the club from her hand in spite of her perusal, if he registered it at all. “You invited me to a slaughterfest. You forgot to mention you are a semi-pro.”

  She flashed him a quick smile. The praise spread heat from her chest to her cheeks. The silence lingered between them. Her focus zone was where she felt the most in control, where only a ball and stick absorbed the brunt of her ever-present frustrations.

  “You owe me for not disclosing your prowess.” He folded his arms across his chest and raised his chin in that one hundred percent alpha dog way. “I want a favor from you this time.”

  Gia opened her arms, inviting him to ask. She’d give him at least that for tolerating her demand that he accompany her to the course.

  “I was found guilty of a host of trumped-up charges. The most serious offense was that an envelope of cash, addresses, and shipping labels were found alongside steroids and syringes in my locked work desk, thus making me guilty of selling steroids.”

  Leaning forward, she waited for the punch line.

  “According to investigations, I drugged my entire soccer team with steroids for almost a year. An expert from Salguod, the seller of the specific steroid they found, testified during my trial as to the effects and destruction I caused in those boys’ lives during sustained drugging.”

  Salguod—Daddy’s lucky roll of the dice, the investment Ma had adamantly disapproved of but now agreed was a good gamble.

  “I’d like for you to connect me with someone in Salguod who could help me figure out how so many kilos of steroids ended up in my drawer. Surely, someone at that company is a watchdog for sales and amounts and would point me in the right direction for finding who set me up.”

  Gia’s heart hammered a steady beat in her ears as she wrestled with the urge to flip him on his head. “Gutsy move. You think after living over my garage for three days that you can ask me to go waltzing back into the life I chose to leave to find out the names of the biggest buyers without a warrant? As if that would lead you to answers of how they get sold on the black market? There are significant repercussions in my personal life for opening that portal again. Sorry, not happening. You played your hand too soon.”

  “Gia, the sooner I clear my name of this massive black hole, the sooner I get my life and family back, a decent job, a place to live. I quit being a burden to you and your generosity.”

  “Yeah, you have nothing to lose.” Prison hadn’t done his logic any favors. She stalked toward the cart. The man could add insane to those charges.

  He jogged up beside her. “Let’s make a deal.” The plea in his tone had her attention. “I help you find whoever is targeting you and deal with them and you ask a contact for information. You don’t have to return to that life, but perhaps ask someone who you’ve gone to before who keeps his ear to the ground to watch your back. In order to do these things, we have to trust each other and at least hear each other out. Deal?”

  This trade-off felt a little like trading her birthright for a bowl of porridge. Gosh, she was a sucker for the underdog. She could use the help in finding out who had put the media on her scent. Staring him down, she dared him to shift his eyes, to give her one reason to call his bluff and send him packing. His gaze didn’t waver.

  Against every red flag, warning bell, and caution light firing in her brain, she said, “Deal.”

  Chapter 7

  In the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, Xander tiptoed around a motionless Gia who appeared to have slept a couple of hours or none at all. It’s possible she hadn’t remembered to lock the door. Facedown on the island’s granite top, her fingers lay slack around the handle of a mug filled with brownish liquid. Wisps, free of their ponytail bond, sprung skyward. Papers littered the space around her on the counter. All carnage from a night of reputation control.

  Xander’s ability to cook diminished over the years of no use, but tough mornings like this called for a warm breakfast. And Gia was in no shape to make that happen. As a kid, Mom had made him special items like Eggs Benedict, French toast, or a breakfast burrito with hot sauce to scorch his taste buds and clear his sinuses before the start of a challenging day. Today’s menu would consist of cheesy scrambled eggs and buttered toast. The intent of starting the day off well remained the same, but the ingenuity left much to be desired. He might have even lost a few pieces of shell in there which he couldn’t find.

  He laid a full plate just shy of her mug. “Eat it while it’s warm.”

  A muffled moan answered him.

  When she didn’t budge, he retrieved the plate. “I guess I’ll eat it then.”

  Gia’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist as she stiffened into an upright position. Grasping her plate, she tossed his wrist aside. The bright pink imprint on her forehead and wrinkles on her cheeks negated the scowl curving her lips. She was rather cute when disgruntled.

  “Did you finish your press release?” Xander said over the scraping of Gia’s fork against her plate.

  “About an hour ago. Took me all night. Every five minutes I picked up my phone to call my parents and beg them for their help. Their public relations manager, Annabelle, is the best. She could make all my problems disappear at the snap of her manicured fingers. I’m a big girl though. I can do this on my own.”

  “If I were into empty platitudes, I’d say ‘it’s Saturday. I’m sure no one will remember after the weekend.’ But my cynicism of the press is extensive, so I’ll spare you.”

  Gia stepped off the barstool and snatched a piece of paper off the top of her pile. “I’m sending it before I get cold feet.”

  Xander finished his own food and cleaned up the dishes before Gia returned freshened and ready for the day.

  “Thanks for breakfast.” She grabbed her keys and purse. “Want to come with me to a work site? Get some fresh air before being glued to a computer all day.”

  “Meet you at the car.” Xander dashed to his room to grab his wallet and phone. The blinking notification light stopped his exit. He unlocked his phone and played the voicemail. It was his lawyer, Quinn. Lincoln hadn’t agreed to meeting with Xander but now had Xander’s phone number to connect. Quinn made it clear he refused to be the middleman between brothers.

  Xander drove his fist into the mattress with a growl. Loyal, trusting, forgiving Lincoln wasn’t jumping at the chance for a renewed relationship. At one point in prison, Xander thought bearing the labels of guilty and criminal were the worst things to happen to him. Now, reaching for reconciliation and getting the brutal brush-off took the prize.

  Closing the door behind him, Xander sauntered down the stairs, willing the fire raging in his chest to dull to a glowing ember so Gia wouldn’t prod. His efforts impacted the situation little, because as soon as his car door sealed Gia tore out of the driveway in reverse. He barely fastened his seatbelt in time for the car to bump into the main road. When he glanced at her profile, her attention didn’t waver. Instead her thumb pressed the volume button on the steering wheel as if louder music would block out his stare. Her pace and posture relaxed as the trees thickened around them and the black top twisted with aggression. She seemed to enjoy it when his face pressed against the car window on the curves.

  At Gia’s work site, Xander stayed right beside her. Let the guys stare. He’d pound them into the ground if he needed to. They strolled up to the construction single-wide and into the trailer. A kitchenette separated the drawing room from the desk. Johnnie balanced on two legs of a chair with his feet propped up and a phone sandwiched between his shoulder and cheek. When he noticed them, he held up a finger with a frown, so Gia headed for the drawings. Xander studied them over her shoulder. Her signature
on the bottom was willowy and straight out of a calligraphy book.

  At last, Johnnie’s clomping footsteps approached behind them. “This lawsuit may well be the end of me. Never in all my years have I seen a lawyer slicker than water off a duck’s feathers come poking around a job site claiming to be an interested neighbor when he was only searching for evidence of waste that’s recyclable and all that nonsense. Couldn’t understand half of what the lawyer said of who is charging whom for what. Since when was throwing trash in a trash bin a crime against humanity?”

  Gia folded her arms in front of her. “How much are we supposed to reduce waste by?”

  “Twelve percent. But if we give them eight to ten percent reduction, our lawyer thinks we’ll be in good enough shape to settle or get the lawsuit dropped altogether. Slimy little tree huggers are making everyone’s lives miserable. Anyways, let’s get to the details.”

  Heads together, Gia and Johnnie hunched over the plans talking shop, leaving Xander to wander outside. With two houses framed and wrapped, the area was starting to look like a community. The house to be built on this foundation hadn’t been started yet, but the trailer was home base for the four immigrant housing units going up in the developing neighborhood. According to his eavesdropping, a nonprofit housing organization funded the project. The governor got all the credit since his people helped choose the designers and builders. Building for a nonprofit didn’t bring in much money for the construction companies, but it generated goodwill and warm feelings for potential clients who found value in having been chosen for a worthy cause.

  The gravel path led him to the main dirt road which would run through the subdivision. Once paved, it’d be a place for kids to learn to ride bicycles and play street ball and where adults could catch up on their new lives. What was dirt now would serve to be the entrance of a new life for all the families that moved in. Across the road, he approached a house which appeared nearly complete but still had an eyesore of a metal dumpster out front.

  Johnnie said twelve percent of the waste needed to be recycled which didn’t seem plausible given the nature of building waste. Xander hauled himself onto the ledge of the dumpster and peeked over the side. Foam, metal and wood scraps, gallon mixing buckets, and a random assortment of other building materials filled almost three-fourths of the space. When he and Lincoln were kids, they built forts and race cars out of all the scraps they could manage to sneak into the back yard. They would’ve given all their baseball cards away for a chance at these materials.

  Mom insisted that they quit before they hurt themselves, but after a little sweet talking she agreed that some type of fort was better than no fort at all. Even stray cats found the forts to be secure enough to trust with their newborn kittens. Funny how he barely remembered any hard times from those years. The white pillowy dreams of someday were so much more beautiful than the dark ashes now blackening his hands and heart.

  “See anything in there to take as a memoir from our little field trip?” Gia hollered from across the street.

  He stepped off the ledge and brushed his hands against his jeans as Gia strode over. “I was thinking how I’d have shaved both my eyebrows to have access to those materials as a kid. My brother and I made some pretty sweet forts out of scraps.”

  “No girls allowed?”

  Xander chuckled. “In the world of a nine-year-old, proving your status as a real man never involved girls. And the guys in the neighborhood had to buy their way into our favor. We were the little dictators of the street.”

  “If I had known you, I’d have insisted you build me a Barbie mansion to house all the parties for the shunned neighborhood girls, but I’d have designed it for you.” Gia sighed and stared at the house. “What do you think?”

  “I think there is no way you could have bribed me to build you a silly Barbie house.” He smirked at her withering glare. “But I think if it looked anything like this house, it would’ve been incredible. And neither of my sisters would have never left your side.” The thought of liking her as one of his sisters’ friends made him snort.

  “Johnnie said they’ll be putting the finishing touches on the outside all at the same time so they only have to get the landscapers out once.”

  Xander trailed her to the house’s garage door and browsed the finer details up close while she bent to examine the foundation. Gia stood to face him. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  They meandered around the house, peeking inside windows as she explained her vision for designing the home the way she did. She seemed pleased with the outcome. Her earlier funk was gone almost as if she’d forgotten her current public relations crisis.

  “I designed these corbels with Middle Eastern influence so the families could feel a small piece of—” Her eyes grew wide alarm. Or was that surprise? Xander switched between Gia’s face and the corbels. Was she expecting him to comment on their beauty?

  “Something wrong?”

  She grabbed his hand and yanked him toward the front of the house. “Xander, I had a stroke of genius.”

  Xander tugged back slowing her steps. “Fill me in any time.”

  They stopped in front of the dumpster, Gia’s giddiness bubbling over as she clapped. “Repeat what you said to me.”

  “Fill me in?”

  Her hand waved in his face. “Before that. When we were standing here, you said you would have used the materials in that dumpster.” Her body leaned forward urging him to finish her sentence.

  “...to make forts.”

  Gia squealed and hugged him. Her curly hair tickled his face, but—dang—it smelled so good. He almost groaned. “Alexander Reinerman, you are my hero. If you use all this junk to make playhouses for kids, we’d be eliminating twelve percent of the waste, if not more. You need a way to make money. You could start a business or nonprofit building forts. You could add to your collection of what you make from the materials, but I could help you design them. I would bet construction companies would be more than happy to give you their trash if it meant preventing a lawsuit like what Johnnie’s fielding. And if you pull it off, you could offer classes for kids allowing them a safe environment to experiment with creating things like forts or doll houses. It would be a long-term commitment in order to satisfy the terms.”

  He wasn’t qualified for this. Perhaps Gia was forgetting that he was a coach, not a DIYer or builder of any kind. But then again, he and Lincoln had been pretty good at building forts that the neighbors envied. No, kids were different these days. Did they play outside anymore? He sighed. “Where would I build them?”

  “To start with, you could build here on-site. The construction guys have all the tools necessary to get started. Johnnie’s team would let you as long as you stayed out of the way. Or you could haul everything off-site to my backyard,” she shrugged, “but I don’t have any of the right tools.”

  “Don’t kids play in plastic playhouses where they can’t get splinters or lead poisoning?”

  Gia’s curls bounced as she shook her head. “Not all of them, especially not out here in Colorado.” She whipped out her phone and called Johnnie who hadn’t left the trailer across the street. When she hung up, she broke into a dance with her slim hips rocking from side to side and her hands in the air. He grinned as she moved to music only she could hear. Gosh, she was gorgeous and feisty.

  As she turned on her heel, she let loose some fancy footwork and froze a couple of inches from his face. Her eyes narrowed and her smile disappeared. “What kind of man makes a woman dance alone?” She pushed at his chest and took a step back as he did the same. Then her smile lit up her features once more. “I’m kidding. Johnnie agreed to let you work. I’ll come back with you tomorrow morning. We’ll sketch some designs and see what we have material for.” With a hop in her step, Gia skipped across the street towards the car. “No, no. Don’t thank me. How about you make dinner?”

  She blew him a kiss and winked. Xander laughed as he watched her disappear. What was he getting himself into? The w
orld would take one look at his work and run. He’d embarrass himself and his family again. His parents would scorn him for working with trash instead of having a real job. Lady A wrapped her icy fingers into his chest around his lungs. Who would want a kid’s playhouse from a criminal soccer coach?

  His vision blurred as his lungs constricted. Would a respectable job be too much to ask? Something his sisters could say without scrunching their faces or shrugging him off as the disappointment of the family. He straightened his posture as Gia’s car rolled into view and slid into the front seat when she pulled to a stop.

  Gia poked his leg. “Did your legs quit working, chief? Or do you prefer to be picked up like royalty?”

  At her words, anxiety released him, so he offered Gia a half bow. “It’s you who should be treated like royalty after your brilliant idea. And I think we should name the business Carter’s Kids Creations and keep it as a subset of your nonprofit since it’s already set up.”

  “We can put it under my nonprofit, but that name doesn’t ring true.” Gia’s phone sang a haunting melody as the screen lit with an incoming call. “Hi, Grant.” Pause. “Oh tonight, yeah six-thirty works.” Pause. “See you then.”

  “Bad news.” Gia plopped the phone into the cup holder. “Your gourmet meal is going to have to wait. I promised a friend I’d go out with him to dinner if he helped me with a project, so he’s calling to collect on one tonight.”

  “I’ll have to eat the whole mac ‘n cheese box on my own then.”

  Gia barked out a laugh. “Maybe I should get a rain check on this dinner date. I could stand to eat some carbs and ice cream after yesterday. Grant is more of a salad and sushi type of guy.” Her nose crinkled.

  After a quick lunch, they spent the afternoon doing yard work in an oddly domestic sort of way. Gia insisted on weeding but refused to touch the trimmer. Regardless of a few bald patches on the edges, Xander was proud of the trim work after not having operated one for so long. He cleaned up and let himself into the kitchen where Gia was setting out a saucepan and the box of macaroni and cheese. She had a flowy sundress on that hugged her figure in all the right places and made her legs look endless. When his gaze made it to her face, her eyebrows arched in the air with a hint of humor tugging at her lips.