by Stacey Keith
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“It’s Parker.”
He waited for an explanation, an, “Oh, Parker just stopped by to see Lexie,” but Cassidy didn’t offer one. Mason clenched his teeth to keep from saying something even worse than how he felt right now. She’d had a kid with that sweet-talking sonofabitch. Mason knew he had a thousand perfectly good reasons to want Parker Nolen to wander out in front of a bus, but now those reasons felt a lot more personal. The guy blew into town, saw Cassidy and remembered how much he liked screwing her the first time. Why wouldn’t he try to do it again?
“Did Parker drop by to receive his Dad of the Year award?” he sneered.
“We can talk about it later,” she said.
Great. Now he had pissed her off. Mason flapped the hem of his T-shirt to get some air circulating. Damn shirt kept sticking to his chest. Seemed like a lot of things kept sticking to his chest. “How will I get in touch with you?”
“Call the house, I guess.”
“You’re never home and you don’t have an answering machine. It’s like living in 1955.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Mason, but I’ve really got to go.”
Yeah, so you can listen to more of Parker’s bullshit, he wanted to say. “Okay, talk to you later.”
When Mason clicked off, he had an insane urge to throw his cell phone across the courtyard. He wanted to hear the thing fucking crack against his stupid Italian fountain and burst into a thousand pieces of glass and wire and plastic. First his dad took off and now this?
No way Parker went to Cuervo to play daddy. Parker was hell-bent on sleeping with Cassidy again. And who wouldn’t want to sleep with her? She defined the word “hot.”
He pictured smashing Parker’s nose with his fist and a feeling of sharp, glorious satisfaction came over him. Then he remembered that Parker was Lexie’s father. There could be no smashing of any kind. Why was he even thinking like such a Neanderthal? When was the last time he even felt this… well, possessive?
The door to the kitchen swung open and Ruth said, “The detectives are here. I put them in the sunroom with your mother. Shall I have Keiko bring the coffee?”
Mason pocketed his cellphone. Later he would fix things with Cassidy. Later seemed like months from now. A wave of unusual weariness swept over him, but he pushed it aside. “Sure, whatever they want.”
He went around to the entrance on the north side of the house. It was peaceful on this part of the estate, hung with Chinese paper lanterns and filled with the soft sounds of water music. But there were times, like now, when his house felt less like a retreat and more like a prison. Money bought this house, his father told him once. Just make sure money don’t tear it apart.
When Mason put his hand on the door handle, he took a deep breath. He squared his shoulders and then opened it, seeing the carved oak table where his mom sat between Ruth and the two police detectives. And with a crushing sense of regret, Mason knew then how much of this was his fault. If he hadn’t been so driven to make it in the NFL, he would have seen what was going on. He would have stopped it. If he’d been paying as much attention to his own family as he did his career, his father never would have disappeared.
* * * *
“Honey, what are you doing in here?”
Cassidy opened one eye. Even though it was her mother who’d spoken, both parents stood in the doorway to the study. Her dad wore his cracked leather tool belt with all the tools hanging from it, which said he meant business. She’d almost forgotten calling him this morning about her broken garbage disposal.
His blue eyes regarded her kindly. “You look all done up, Sprout.”
Sprout. The nickname made her yearn for simpler times when she was Lexie’s age and had nothing to worry about. This morning, Muffins had batted Lexie’s cardboard Alamo off the kitchen table. Frilly toothpick trees went flying, Lexie collapsed in tears and then they’d missed the bus. Again.
Life had been trampling them both underfoot lately.
“Doak, you go on now,” her mother said. “Cassidy and I are going to have ourselves a girl talk.”
Her dad grunted the way he always did when someone was having a problem he couldn’t fix with tools. After he stamped off to the kitchen, Priscilla turned a shrewd eye on her daughter, which made Cassidy feel as though she were nine years old again and woefully transparent.
“What’s going on, sweetie?” her mother said. “I can’t remember the last time you looked this pale.”
Cassidy pushed herself to a sitting position on the sofa and rubbed her forehead. Her usual habit was to say nothing and just handle problems herself, but her mother would wheedle the truth out of her sooner or later.
“Parker showed up yesterday,” she said. “Out of nowhere.”
Priscilla sat beside her on the couch. “What did he want?”
“I don’t know. Not the truth anyway.” Cassidy bit her lip, remembering. “He said he wants to take me and Lexie to Disney World.”
“Disney World? What on earth… Does that boy think taking you to Disney World is going to make up for ten years of nothing?” Priscilla picked up a magazine and leafed through it, a gesture Cassidy had long come to recognize as a sign of annoyance. “What’s he thinking, showing up after all this time? I swear, Parker Nolen’s got bugs for brains.”
“I’m worried,” Cassidy admitted. “What if he takes me to court? What if he wants visitation?”
Priscilla licked her finger and leafed through page after page of glossy fashion photos, hardly bothering to look at what was on them, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Parker doesn’t want visitation,” she said crisply. “That boy wouldn’t know what to do with a child, especially a high-spirited girl like Lexie. All he wants is credit for having tried.”
Cassidy stood up and went to the window. “You mean so Kayla will stop accusing him of being a deadbeat dad?”
“Exactly. And he’s here because Mason’s here.”
“Mason cancelled our date yesterday,” Cassidy said heavily. “He said he had family problems.”
Priscilla looked up from the magazine. “Don’t you believe him?”
“I don’t… I’m not sure what to believe,” Cassidy replied.
“Has Mason ever lied to you?”
“No.”
“Does he have a reputation for being a liar?”
“No.”
Mason had never lied to her, but he had just slipped away. He’d abandoned her without knowing just how much it hurt.
“Then have a little faith, Cassidy Dawn. Think of how much responsibility that man has on his shoulders before you go deciding he’s no longer interested.”
Cassidy winced, feeling the words no longer interested pick at an old scab. She hated worrying about whether Mason still liked her. Besides, what if he was telling the truth? What if there really were family problems? And here she was fretting over herself, fretting over Parker, fretting over things she had no way of even knowing were true yet.
A van pulled up in front of her house, and a man in a collared shirt with a logo on it got out. He carried a clipboard and a small box. A sudden smothering fear came over her. It’s a court summons, she thought wildly. Parker is suing for joint custody. She watched the man climb the steps to her porch and knock on her door.
Her mother said, “Do you want me to get that?”
“I’ll get it.” Heart pounding, Cassidy made her way to the door and opened it. The man standing there kicked up his smile a notch or two when he saw her.
“I’m Lionel Mills from Tech World in San Antonio,” he said, fumbling to adjust his glasses. “I have a new phone for you and I’m here to teach you how to use it.”
Cassidy gaped at him. She heard her mother come up behind her. “Tech World?” Priscilla echoed. “Is that the company Parker Nolen works for?”
C
onfused, Cassidy asked him, “I’m sorry, but who sent you?”
“Mason Hannigan.”
Chapter Ten
Third down, deep in the pocket, Mason looked downfield for running back Jerome Bloski. Around him he could hear the grunting of his offensive line being sacked by Philadelphia’s monster defense. The glare of the stadium lights made it hard to see, but then Bloski appeared, wide open with maybe ten seconds left before impact by Philly’s Andre Tanner, fastest safety in the NFL.
Mason launched the ball in a tight spiral and tracked it as it soared up, up, constellated by the twinkle of flash cameras, and then Bloski caught the ball, tucked it under his arm and ran like hell toward the goal posts.
Even as one of Philly’s three-hundred-pound linebackers clawed his way toward him, Mason kept his eyes fixed on Bloski. Andre also stayed focused on Bloski, legs whipping across the field. Mason dug his cleats into the turf and braced for the sack he knew was coming, just as he saw Bloski go down at the thirty yard line.
The beefy linebacker broke free and tackled Mason head first. Together they crashed to the ground right as the ref’s whistle ended the play.
Winded and hurting, Mason got up and scanned the field for penalty flags. Coach Lemery stood next to the bench, growling orders into his headset. About fifty feet behind him, the dancing Philadelphia mascot incited a roaring crowd.
Temple loped over, helmet in hand, sweat sheeting his face. “Fuck. Are they going to let us run it in?”
Mason doubted it. He glanced over at special teams kicker Franklin Hoff, who was already warming up, and his frustration mounted. The score shouldn’t have been this close. It shouldn’t be the middle of the goddamn fourth quarter, 13 Lone Stars, 14 Philadelphia. And the truth was, the team had him to blame for it. Coach Lemery was right when he’d shouted at him during halftime, “Get your head in the game, Hannigan. No one paid money to come here and watch you fuck this up.”
The signal came for offense to leave the field. Hoff trotted out to the thirty yard line with the rest of special teams. Now it was Mason’s turn to sit and watch. He burned to get back out there and make this right.
Temple muttered, “If Hoff misses, we’re screwed.”
“A game is never over ’til it’s over,” Mason said.
“Unless defense recovers the ball, we aren’t going back out there and you know it. Look at the clock, man.”
Mason didn’t have to look at the clock. Every second that ticked by scraped his nerves. “Let’s just wait and see what happens, okay?”
The Philly crowd went wild, booing while Hoff made a few practice kicks. The holder, Mahmet Khan, knelt behind the line of scrimmage. Mason gripped the edge of the bench and waited for the snap. There it was—the ball arced up and the holder caught it, placing it squarely in front of the kicker. Hoff drilled it hard and the ball soared, hanging suspended between the uprights for what seemed like eternity before dropping between them.
Everybody leaped off the bench at once, yelling and hugging, while the Philadelphia team stared glumly at the field. The score now: Dallas 16, Philadelphia 14.
“That only puts us two points ahead,” Temple said, ever the optimist. “Let’s hope defense doesn’t drop the ball.”
Defense didn’t drop the ball. Mason mentally cheered them on to victory, but it killed him how close they’d come to losing the game. As he entered the tunnel where a phalanx of sports reporters waited with their video crews, Mason knew he’d have to answer a shit-ton of questions about his performance. Win or lose, there were always people you had to explain yourself to, people who had theories and ideas, who were quick to criticize a weakness.
He put on his other game face, the one he wore for reporters, and said nothing about his missing father or the fact that the girl he liked had a douche-y ex-boyfriend. “Half a quarterback’s job is learning how to deal with the press,” Coach Lemery had told him the day he’d signed with Dallas. “Speak in generalities, talk about goals met, and always thank the rest of the team, even if they had their dicks out the whole game, jerking off.”
A young reporter from one of the local cable affiliates shoved a microphone in Mason’s face. “Do you feel like you delivered your best performance tonight?”
“Any failure to advance the ball was on me,” he said. “I take full responsibility. But the team itself is stronger and better than ever. We won tonight because our offense played a great game and our defense did a good job of stopping the other team.”
The reporter clearly had more questions, but Mason kept moving, surrounded by flashbulbs and teammates and the dimming roar of the crowd.
After showers came debriefing. Mason heard every accusing word that Coach Lemery didn’t say. Self-reproach beat him down like a fist.
“Hannigan, a word, please,” Coach Lemery said while the rest of the team filed out of the meeting room.
Mason followed him into an office flanked on all four sides by glass. Cheap metal blinds covered the windows but the blinds were slanted open, which meant everyone could see inside the fishbowl.
Experience taught Mason that when coaches closed blinds, invited you to sit down or glared at you from across a desk, you were pretty much fucked. To his surprise and relief, Coach did none of that.
“You were off your game tonight, Hannigan,” Lemery said, not a silver hair out of place despite all the yelling and gesturing. “You damn near cost us the game, son.”
Mason swallowed hard. “It’s true, sir. I’m real sorry about that.”
“We can’t afford another goat fuck like what I saw out there tonight, understand?”
Mason nodded. God knew he didn’t want to see one either, not if he was the one responsible for it.
“You’re the best quarterback on the NFL. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m talking to you now. But when you’re the best, people expect the best from you all the time.”
“And they’ll get it. What happened tonight was a one-off, sir.”
Coach Lemery squinted at him. Mason knew that look. It was the one Coach used to reduce rookies to tears. “Is there something going on, Hannigan? Something you want to talk to me about?”
And there it was—the chance to explain himself. Mason looked Coach Lemery in the eye and wondered if he could. But the reality was, no matter what he said, excuses would sound a lot like whining, and he hated whining just as much as Coach did.
“Nothing a little face time with my girl won’t fix,” Mason said.
Coach Lemery’s face broke into a thousand creases when he smiled. “Go be with your girl. See you on Monday at practice.”
“Thank you, Coach.”
“But if you don’t get it together, I’m going to bench you. It’s Super Bowl or die, Hannigan. Remember that.”
* * * *
“Omigod, what’s that?” Darlene said when Cassidy showed her the smartphone. They were hiding around the corner, away from Artie’s sharp eye.
“It’s a gift from Mason.” Cassidy smoothed one thumb over its shiny black surface and marveled at the fact of her holding it. “He sent a guy over to show me how to use it.” What she didn’t tell Darlene was that after he left, she still didn’t know how to use it. Lexie had to show her, even though Lexie didn’t have a cell phone either. Which was weird. Did kids come out of the womb knowing how to work these things?
Darlene stuck her head out to check for customers and for Artie. “Do you have any idea what a phone like that costs? I saw one like that at the mall in San Antonio last week. You’re going to die when I tell you.”
Cassidy widened her eyes in alarm. “How much?”
“With your own private tech tutor? At least thirteen, fourteen hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Now do you believe me when I say Mason’s totally into you?”
Cassidy smiled. Holding t
he phone gave her a warm glow because it felt like Mason was saying, “I want to talk to you. I miss you.” But as impressive as it was, a phone was still a thing. It wasn’t Mason. And it felt as though she hadn’t seen him in months instead of ten days.
“Did you thank him yet?” Darlene asked.
“I didn’t want to bother him, so I texted. We’re going to videochat tonight.”
“Videochat?” Darlene’s brown eyes softened in apparent wonder at the romantic possibilities. “Whatever you do, don’t let him talk you into taking your clothes off.”
“What, are you crazy?” Cassidy tried to laugh it off, but now she was worried. “Is that what people do with these things?”
“What century are you from? Seriously.”
Cassidy thought about Mason naked. So far, she’d only touched him through his clothes. Maybe it was inappropriate to think about sex all the time, but just the idea of seeing him aroused and waiting for her with that smile on his face brought wave after wave of heat. She tried to bank them down, but they just burned hotter. Any second now she’d start sweating again, and she’d been sweating a lot lately.
But she didn’t want to have phone sex. She wanted the real deal—with the hardness of his muscles in her hands and that intoxicating male scent of his. She wanted to taste him, all of him, even though imagining it brought a furious blush to her cheeks that Darlene was sure to notice. But what was the point of seeing someone if you didn’t actually see them?
“You might want to wait a minute before you go help those people who just pulled up,” Darlene said. “You look like one of those red-bottomed baboons.”
Cassidy pressed both hands to her face. She straightened up, tugged her uniform into place and then shoved the phone into an apron pocket. “All I can think about is phone sex now, thanks to you.”
“High time you got your naughty on.”
Oh, God. Cassidy swallowed hard. Was it possible? Ten years was a long time to wait for something… or someone. She’d only had sex one other time in her entire life and it hadn’t exactly been enjoyable. What if she didn’t know how?