The Brawler

by Piper Westbrook

  Blame it on the season of giving, but she’d been in particularly generous spirits when she’d gifted her parents and sisters with spare keys on Cartier key chains. Over Pinot Grigio and shrimp appetizers that she’d prepared with her own two flawlessly manicured hands—after she’d ruined the first couple of attempts and had resorted to phoning a chef friend who’d talked her through the recipe, because come hell or high water she’d prove that she could accomplish something—she’d shared with her family the new entry code to the mansion’s security gate and with a big, fat grin had encouraged, “Visit any time you’d like!”

  Oh, how she wished she’d choked on the Pinot Grigio…an appetizer…her own spit. Anything to intercept the words she had instantly regretted. After twenty-three years of crawling through life beneath her parents’ power, reputation, and intimidating existence, she should know exactly how J.T. and Joan Greer operated.

  An unlimited, unrestricted invitation to her house had been a way to soften the impact of living on her own. But like a Band-Aid placed atop the carnage of nuclear destruction, what good did it serve?

  Baby steps toward independence, they might be. But declining a private wing in a crème-de-la-crème Las Vegas mansion in favor of her sister’s hand-me-down divorce settlement property plus a position as a youth crisis center volunteer was the perfect route to rescue.

  When a girl needed to save herself, she couldn’t always be choosy. Even Aly, who’d enjoyed the world’s finest delights, had come to grips with that. She had numbed herself to insults that rolled off her satin-smooth back as easily as she rolled off her favorite silk sheets. A party girl whom the American media slut-shamed while obsessively tracking the clubs she frequented, the trends she set, the booze she drank, and the men she fucked, she was aware that life—no matter how trussed up in glamor—was never perfect.

  She did appreciate that her sister’s place was beyond spacious and had a turret just perfect for Aly, who’d proudly brought along her beloved fairy tale collection to college in New York.

  For someone who screwed up as often as Aly, it helped to have a happy ending lying around.

  Of course, there wasn’t a fairy tale within reach now, as she scrambled for something to adequately cover her ass. Partially sleep-addled, partially hung-over, and partially pissed off that she’d managed only two gulps of steaming caffeine before her mother had barged into the house at such a cruelly early hour, she was struggling to get her brain to function.

  It didn’t help that Joan’s anger was rising to impressive heights with each shriek.

  Joan aimed the business end of her spare key at Aly. “What in God’s name is this? You’re standing around naked with some man I’ve never met—and I’m sure J.T. hasn’t met him, either.”

  Aly climbed onto the sofa, sinking her feet into the cushions, peering behind the leather beast for her shoes. She’d kicked them off last night and couldn’t recall where they’d landed. As for her jeans, this morning she’d spilled bourbon on them while transporting the remnants of last night’s refreshments into the kitchen and had peeled them off and dropped them in the sink to soak. “I’m not naked, Mom. Just pants-less, if you will.”

  “I won’t.”

  Aly’s already paper-thin patience dissolved. In deliberate, serpentlike movements, she whipped off her sweater, shoved her undies down, and draped herself over the cushions, slithering her slim body across the cognac-brown leather. “Now I’m naked.”

  The lone man in the room—poor, unsuspecting, drag-into-the-middle-of-Greer-family-dysfunction Gideon Crane—stared.

  What else could he do, with his nude ex and her pissed off mother fighting in front of him?

  “How disgusting, Aly,” Joan condemned. “Put your clothes on this minute, damn it.”

  “Whatever.” But for Gideon’s sake she stepped into the panties and dragged the baggy sweater on again. She was reasonably covered except for her exposed legs and feet—which were, in fact, the physical assets she most admired.

  Attractive, they were. But Aly was grateful for their strength…that her legs’ length could make her always stand tall even when she shrank beneath feelings of insignificance, that her feet carried her to freedom, whether she was dancing from one club to another on a sleepless Vegas night or running away from conflict.

  Joan was normally a gust of refreshing, perfumed air. Only family, or people acquainted with her inside the proprietary walls of the Greers’ NFL franchise’s front office, were aware of the hell storm that slumbered in the shadows of her personality. A thoroughly angry Joan was not someone to bait.

  She had graduated from pointing the house key to viciously jabbing it in the air. In the direction of the six-foot slab of good-looking testosterone standing between Joan and her youngest daughter.

  Clearly, Gideon Crane, who’d still been sprawled across the sofa asleep when her mother had come charging into the house, had no clue what was going on. He knew only the truth—that he, Aly, and the others had spent a platonic drunken night together, drifting to sleep after the second helping of bourbon ice cream and Candyman’s first kill.

  The night had wound up an effective distraction for Aly, who’d wanted to distance herself from the messy feelings that had resurfaced when she’d walked into Pax Batiste’s gym yesterday.

  Sports media pursued the next-to-perfect Las Vegas Villains, but it also pursued Jackson. To the press, he was perfect.

  To Aly, he was anything but. And seeing him again yesterday in his arena, identifying the damage beneath his rough beauty, only confirmed that.

  Overnight, Aly’s party of four had been reduced by half, but she hadn’t minded that the others had slipped away. She’d woken up where she’d fallen asleep, deep in the suppleness of a club chair, and had been relieved that someone had turned off the television and made at least a half-assed effort to clear away their mess.

  What she hadn’t wanted to wake up to was an image of blood and gore—already her dreams had been spooked, thanks to the Ouija board she’d discovered in storage, too much liquor, and old horror movies of the Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre variety.

  But she’d prefer even that to the look of untainted rage on her mother’s face. Joan had burst through Aly’s doors unannounced, and, from the looks of the high-end retailers’ bags she’d set down at her feet, had been raring to start decorating Aly’s place for Christmas. Now she looked as though she’d rather do more damage than Freddy Krueger’s most depraved fantasies could conjure.

  Better get you on your way, Gideon. In college, Gideon, then an aspiring model and a shitty barista, had earned his stripes as a friend—the strong shoulder to cry on, the guy who called her on her crap when she deserved it and stayed out of her way when she needed space. They’d fucked during a week of skinny-dipping and smoking weed in Nantucket last summer. And when Aly had told him it wouldn’t happen again, he’d accepted it.

  The very least she could do now was make sure he returned to Los Angeles in one piece and lived long enough to see his big-deal national cologne commercial premiere.

  Aly sat up, trying for nonchalance. Not fear—never that. J.T. and Joan Greer fed off fear.

  Joan’s designer high heels stabbed the floor as she approached Aly and her friend. “Aly Chastity Greer—”

  A male snort had daughter and mother snapping their attention to Gideon.

  “Your middle name’s Chastity?” Another snort of laughter.

  Before Aly could warn him to shut the hell up, her mother intervened. “Yes, that’s her middle name. Her father and I didn’t foresee the irony.”

  That stung. A lot. Aly cast her gaze downward, to her poinsettia-red toenails. “C’mon, guy.” She entwined her arm with Gideon’s and steered him to the kitchen, gracing her mother with a neutral glance as they passed. “I’ll pour you a cup of joe.”

  Once they cleared the threshold, she dropped his arm. “Done laughing, ass wipe?”

 
“Sorry.” He pressed his palms together and bowed his head. “Were you serious about that coffee, ’cause…”

  Aly’s incredulous glare had him trailing off and scanning the granite countertops for any contraption that might provide his morning caffeine fix. “It’s fine,” she said after a moment. Taking pity—after all, what fault was it of his that he had the Y chromosome and was incapable of understanding a woman’s emotional plumbing?—she grabbed a mug from the tree on the island and filled it halfway with hazelnut-flavored salvation. “I suppose Chastity is ironic. The only name that would be more ironic is Virgin.” She tried to smile, make light of her mother’s words, but a snap of embarrassment killed the effort.

  “She hurt your feelings.” Gideon set down his mug. “Call her on her shit.”

  “No.”

  “Want me to? I’ll fuck up anyone who hurts you, including your mother.”

  “You will not.” But it was sort of sweet that he seemed so passionate about it. He was too rational, too gentle, and had no idea who her parents knew in this world. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Aly—”

  “Get going.” She punched his arm, without any genuine force behind the gesture. “Don’t want you to be a casualty of Joan the Impossible.”

  Gideon took a final gulp of coffee, then left Aly alone with her mother.

  “You spent the night with a man who didn’t even know your middle name?” Joan inquired, gliding into the kitchen, picking up the attack where it had left off. “What’s his name, by the way?”

  “Gideon Crane.”

  Joan eyed the room with transparent distaste. “Your sister never used this space to its potential, but at least it was always clean. Am I seeing three empty bourbon bottles?”

  “Bourbon ice cream requires bourbon.”

  “Based on the fact that the liquor bottles outnumber the ice cream containers three to one, I’d say your recipe was heavier on the bourbon.”

  Not exactly. When we ran out of ice cream, we drank straight bourbon while trying to make contact with the otherworld using a Ouija board. The retort was sliding around on Aly’s tongue, but she kept her mouth shut as she carried her friend’s mug to the sink.

  “Is that hazelnut coffee in the brewer?” Joan inquired. “I’d like a cup.”

  “Got plenty of clean mugs on the tree.” After a beat of silence, Aly turned away from the sink to find her mother ogling the array of mismatched mugs with a narrow-eyed, twisted-mouth expression. “Problem, Mom?”

  “The Pillivuyt porcelain mugs I bought when you moved out of the Bellagio. Where are they?”

  “Put away.” Be patient. She’s your mother. She gave you life a full ten years after she thought she was done with breastfeeding and potty training. “Why don’t I fetch one?”

  “Quickly.” Joan cast a subtle glance at her wristwatch. “Then get yourself dressed.”

  Aly scanned the chef-style room. As gorgeous as the custom-made white cabinetry, stainless steel appliances, and abundant windows were, the kitchen could be blinding when sunlight hit it just right. And the immediate problem was that the cabinets rose high up the walls, practically kissing the coffered ceiling.

  Of course, the mug her mother wanted was one Aly had given a home on the highest shelf.

  Easing her bum onto the counter, she gave a little gasp at the granite’s chilled temperature on her skin. Undeterred, she carefully got to her knees.

  “What the hell, Aly?” Joan whispered, frozen on the safety of a modest stool at the island counter. “I didn’t tell you to climb—”

  “Climbing’s good exercise.”

  “Prancing around on a countertop is an ER visit in the making.” Joan’s footsteps sounded on the floor. “These cabinets are tall, which is why Veronica kept a stepladder handy.”

  “Veronica doesn’t have a pair of stems like mine.” Aly rose up on her tiptoes, reaching.

  “Be careful—Oh, God, my eyes!”

  “What?”

  “The knickers you’re wearing belong in a sex shop.”

  “Or a lingerie convention, which is where I bought them.”

  “That’s not lingerie. I can see your asshole.”

  What a drama queen. “Got a visual on the mugs.”

  “About your gentleman. Crane. Is it serious?”

  Aly pivoted to face her mother. “If you call plans to get hitched and name our firstborn child Ichabod serious, then yes.”

  “Want the kid gloves off? We can do it that way. I’m done forcing myself to be polite. You’re the one who was caught naked with a strange man in her house.”

  “I wasn’t naked, Gideon’s not strange, and he isn’t the only person who spent the night. My friend Leigh Bridges stayed, as well. Get the Post-it off that bourbon bottle on the end of the row there.”

  Joan touched a finger to each of her dainty pearl teardrop earrings. Always so elegant, so regal, in designer fashions and a flattering hairstyle that made her appear refined rather than distinctly middle-aged, she was nothing short of classic beauty perfected. A “style icon,” a red-carpet fashion critic had declared her.

  That had been a few years ago—before the Greer family had immersed itself in professional sports—but the assessment still held true. Joan’s ability to remain timelessly lovely through the strains of beauty pageantry, the stress of bringing up three daughters, and the pressure of acquiring and cultivating an NFL team was a marvelous mystery.

  “What happened here last night?” Joan asked, ignoring the bottles altogether.

  “If you won’t read the note for yourself, I’ll recite it verbatim. ‘Bart has an early morning. We’re taking off. FYI, a Ouija and horror flick cocktail is terrifying. Let’s do it again soon. Kisses.’”

  “Who’s Bart?”

  “Leigh’s boyfriend.”

  “Then you were hosting an orgy?”

  “Maybe Leigh and Bart fucked after I fell asleep. Maybe they didn’t. I don’t know or care.”

  “Honestly, Aly.”

  “Relax. I’m not turning this house into a sex dungeon.” Aly returned to her task, retrieving one of the basket-weave mugs.

  Joan sighed, and it sounded almost anxious. “Please get some real clothes on. An NFL team publicist should care that people might see her indecent.” Another sigh, though this one was heavy with weariness. “Quit shutting your eyes and ears to the truth. Everything counts. Your reputation counts. It counts, Aly, whether or not a young woman must depend on a spreadsheet to keep track of the men she’s had sex with.”

  Aly was relieved to have her face half buried in shelves and dishes. She wiggled her nose to ease the prickly forewarning of tears. “A spreadsheet. Is that what you recommend? Maybe there’s a phone app for that.”

  Joan’s voice was softer, perhaps with regret, as she said, “What you do today, the people you let get close to you today, affects your tomorrow. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “But it’s my today. It’s my tomorrow. This is my kitchen now, and if I choose not to use a stepladder to reach a high shelf, then damn it, that’s my choice.”

  “Um—”

  “And if I want to turn this house into the nastiest, most hard-core sex dungeon Las Vegas has ever seen, then that’s my choice, too.”

  As though the room had been trapped in a chokehold, the oxygen seemed to vanish. There were no sounds except for the rush of Aly’s pulse in her ears. The atmosphere had changed.

  Turning her back to the cabinets, she saw Joan in her French fashion-doll getup with her gaze averted. No, not simply averted, but pinned on Jackson Batiste.

  The man whose hard, angry sexiness ate up the air in the room. The man whose vicious rejection had once sank into her as savagely as attraction did now.

  The man whose dark-eyed stare—she knew with untainted certainty—had been fixed on Aly’s ass.

  Chapter Three

  A gentleman, Jackson was not. Anyone who’d ever thought h
e was didn’t make the mistake twice. Confronted with a worm’s-eye view of Aly’s ass dressed in a candy-cane thong, a gentleman would’ve looked elsewhere. A decent man wouldn’t be hit with the urge to yank aside the candy cane stripes and fuck her bent over the counter.

  A man who wasn’t hunting for trouble would convince his cock to stay at ease.

  If I want to turn this house into the nastiest, most hard-core sex dungeon Las Vegas has ever seen, then that’s my choice, too.

  Whatever argument he’d walked in on, it had Joan Greer on the losing end. Belatedly he remembered that Aly’s mother stood within slapping distance of him. He sent a shallow prayer that redirecting his thoughts would ease his hard-on.

  As Aly turned to face them, he dragged his stare from her plump ass cheeks to the diamond ring that circled one of her toes.

  Damn. Even her feet were beautiful.

  Too slow to detect the danger of standing in her house, of reinserting himself into her life to help J.T. and Joan while assuaging his own guilt, Jackson realized he was against the ropes again.

  He didn’t like that—to be pushed to desperation. Part of the glory of fighting was that every risk he took was on his terms.

  “Charming, Aly,” Joan said.

  “I wasn’t expecting a first-thing-in-the-morning ambush.” Aly pointed down at Jackson with a pearly white mug. “Catch.” When he cupped his hands, she scoffed. “Sharp, broken things and I don’t get along. And I’m not taking a chance on dropping the mug I flashed my derriere to get from this cabinet. I meant catch me.”

  Jackson’s brain stayed stuck on flashed my derriere until she said, “You’re tall, strong, and in my way for a reason, aren’t you?” Softly arched brows rose a millimeter over gray eyes.

  Not giving her the satisfaction of his agitation, he held out his arms. She jumped without hesitation, landing securely in his grip with a whisper of a sigh.

  Aly and Jackson were white and black, entwined again. Privately he relished the vanilla scent on her hair, the gentle sleep-puffiness of her eyelids, the jiggle of her tits, and her subtle curves and angles.