ONLY ONE TOUCH

by Madison, Natasha

  “We need to hire a private investigator to follow her and snap the pictures,” I say, getting up to get my phone.

  “You have one of those on speed dial?” he asks, and I look at him.

  “What do you think?” I send the private eye a message. “I have everyone screened before I sign them.” He just stares at me. “If there is anything out there, this guy is going to find it.”

  “I trust you,” he says, and I nod at him.

  “What are you going to do with the evidence?” The question is a loaded one.

  “I’m going to get my life back.” The struggle in his voice is apparent.

  “Well, Manning, I hope you got your gear on because we are about to go to war,” I say. “And I’m not about to lose to that bitch.”

  Chapter 6

  Nico

  “We leave tomorrow,” Lizzie says from across the desk. “The team is in Buffalo.” We’ve been in my office all day going over contracts since I walked in at ten this morning. The only thing I’ve done is taken off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves.

  “How long are we in Buffalo?” I ask, not sure anymore of the travel schedule. I go to every single away game and make sure to work my schedule around it. I don’t go when the team goes. Instead, I fly out for the game, and sometimes I’ll fly back with them if they are coming right back. There have been times when I follow the team, and Lizzie hates every second of it.

  “For two days,” she says. “Then we go on the road with them to New York.” I lean back in my big leather chair and rock. The office I’m in was never used before. It was my father’s office, but he never stepped foot in it. When I got the team, I changed almost everything to get rid of the coldness and the emptiness of the office. I had the team sign a jersey, and I had it framed and hung on the wall in here. I then started adding pictures here and there. One from the time we played in the Winter Classic. There is a picture of me standing in the middle of the owner's box with my back to the camera as I looked out at the crowd. It was the first time the arena ever sold out, and it’s my most prized possession.

  “You can opt out if you want,” I say, and she looks at me with her eyebrows raised.

  “You know damn well that I would never say no to going to New York.” She taps her pen. “What’s wrong with you?” She leans back in her chair, and I just look at her. “You’ve been strange this week.”

  “It’s Wednesday,” I say, “so technically, it hasn’t been a week.” She eyes me, and I can see all her questions. She’s legit my best friend, but I don’t even know how to say what I’m feeling. Even I have to admit it’s been a weird fucking week. I’m thinking of Becca more and more, and I have no fucking reason. I’m about to say something when my receptionist comes into the room with a box.

  “You got a package.” She walks to me with the big white box in her hands and sets it on my desk. “And it’s heavy.”

  “You know what they say about heavy packages,” Lizzie says, and I look over at her as she looks at the box. “Not worth the hype.”

  “I’ve heard and seen that before,” my receptionist says, then walks out of the room.

  “Are you going to open the package, or are you going to make me spend the day guessing what is inside and who sent it?” I look down at the white box with the big red silk bow. “That looks like a sex box.” I look up at her, shaking my head.

  “What?” I ask, shocked. “How?”

  “Red means sex,” she says as if it’s actually a thing.

  “Who said that, and how do you even know this?” I look back down at the big white box and pick up the end of the red silk ribbon.

  “A bunch of reasons.” She holds her hand up to count off the reasons. “One, the red room. It was legit a room for kinky sex,” she says, putting up one finger. “Two, red bottom shoes. You think those shoes were created for anything but sex? No woman in the universe will tell you those shoes were made for comfort.” I sit here, my mouth hanging open in shock, wondering what the fuck she is talking about. “Three, wearing red lipstick.”

  “That means sex?” I ask, pinching my eyebrows together.

  “Put your red lipstick on my dipstick.” She shakes her head, laughing. “Now, can you please show me what the heck is in the box?” She gets up and comes over to my big desk.

  I slip the red bow off and slowly open the top of the box. I don’t know why I’m suddenly scared of what is inside. A white envelope sits on top, and folded white tissue paper means you can’t see what is underneath it. My name’s written on the front in neat handwriting.

  “That’s a woman’s writing,” Lizzie says. “A woman sent you a gift?” She gasps and puts her hand to her mouth. “You hooked up with someone.” She puts her hands on her hips, and she doesn’t give me a chance to answer her. “Why didn’t you tell me? When was this? Where was this? The only place you went all weekend was to Candace’s birthday party.” She glares. “Did you have sex with a waitress?”

  “Would you simmer down. It could be the clerk who wrote it,” I inform her. “It doesn’t mean that a woman sent me this.”

  “Okay, so what does it say?” She folds her arms over her chest. When I open the letter, I could swear it smells like Becca. The smell of citrus and a hint of something else.

  Turning it over, I slip the envelope flap open and pull the note out. I read the note, and I throw my head back and laugh. Putting the note on top of the envelope, I place it right beside the white box. I open the white tissue paper, and the bottle of scotch is in the middle of the box with two glasses. Items all around it are wrapped in white tissue paper.

  “Nico, I thought this would make you smile. Enjoy the scotch. Thanks for the laughs.” I look up and see Lizzie’s face. “Becca?” She looks at me. “Like Becca Becca?”

  “Can you relax, please,” I say, opening another white tissue and seeing a Celine Dion calendar.

  “Like the Becca who is supermodel beautiful with perfect hair and a kick-ass body? That Becca?” I look at her, trying to hide the fact that I think of her as all that and just a bit more. “Oh, come on, you had to have noticed how beautiful she is. This is not new information to anyone. Last time she was here, the valet guy tripped and brought her the wrong car.”

  “She is beautiful,” I admit out loud to Lizzie, and I wonder why I haven’t noticed before this weekend. Maybe I did notice, but I didn’t want to admit it. It might have just been the fact we were just sitting together as two people at a friend’s party without the stress of going toe-to-toe.

  “Celine Dion.” She takes the calendar out of my hand, turning it over to check the pictures on the back. I pick up a wrapped roll, and when I peel the tissue off, it’s a Celine T-shirt. The laughter escapes me. “Do you even like Celine?” Lizzie asks when she spots the T-shirt with Celine’s face.

  “I mean, I never really thought about it,” I answer honestly. I take out the last wrapped package, and this time, I throw my head back and belly laugh.

  “That’s a whole lot of bling,” Lizzie says of the boss hat in my hand. “You can’t wear that outside in the sun.” I can’t stop laughing at the hat.

  It really was a bad decision. I’m about to pick up my phone and call her when it rings. “Hello?” I say in the phone, and I hear the team trainer, Richard.

  “Nico.” His voice is low. “There was an accident on the ice.”

  I sit up, the hat falling from my hands back into the white box. “What type of injury and who?”

  I get up and look over at Lizzie, who is already on her phone, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She grabs her leather folder and zips it closed as she follows me out of my office. “It’s Brendan.” I stop walking. Brendan is one of the top scorers on the team. I got him in a trade with Washington two years ago.

  “How bad?” I walk out of the office with Lizzie behind me. I can hear her murmuring to someone on her phone.

  “Bad,” he says. “We are on our way to the hospital.”

  “What the fuck happened
?” I ask, my voice tense.

  “He was moving up the ice, and I don’t know what the fuck happened. He must have moved bad or something. He said he heard a pop.”

  Pressing the button to the elevator, I ask, “What do you think it is?”

  “One of the doctors here thinks it’s his ACL,” he says, and I close my eyes. An ACL can have you out anywhere from six months to a year.

  “The plane will be ready in thirty,” Lizzie says from beside me.

  “I’ll be flying out in thirty minutes,” I say and rush home to pick up my packed bag. You only have to be stuck without clothes once to always have a bag ready to leave. It takes me ten minutes to get home, and I park right outside the door. I take the elevator up to the third floor instead of the stairs. It might not be faster, but my nerves are all over the place.

  Walking into my walk-in closet, I grab the packed black bag and head back downstairs. “I’m ready,” Lizzie says, meeting me in the foyer. My house is huge. It has three floors with a walkway connecting the main house to the two-bedroom apartment over the three-car garage on the other side of the property, which is where she lives. “Any news?”

  “He’s getting an MRI right now,” I tell Lizzie as we get into the car taking us to the airport.

  We take off as soon as I’m buckled in, and my phone beeps that he is still in with the doctor. We land in Buffalo three hours later, and a SUV is waiting to take us to the hospital.

  My finger taps my phone, waiting for it to ring. “No news is good news,” Lizzie says from beside me.

  “I hope to fuck it’s not bad news,” I say once we pull up to the hospital. I get out and find Patrick, the team doctor, in the waiting room. “So what’s the verdict?” I ask, and I can see from his eyes it’s not fucking good.

  Chapter 7

  Becca

  I step out of the elevator just after nine in the morning with a Starbucks in one hand and my tan Hermes bag in the other. “Good morning,” I tell the receptionist, who smiles at me.

  “I love your look today,” she says. “Very casual chic.”

  “That’s what I was going for,” I say of the light pink tight pants that reach just to my ankles and a silk flowy long-sleeved leopard print top tucked in. My shoes match the color of my pants. “Anything for me?” I ask, and she hands me my mail.

  I smile at her and pretend it doesn’t bother me that Nico hasn’t acknowledged the gift I sent him yesterday. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting radio silence. What do you want from him? I don’t know, maybe I thought Saturday meant something. I thought I felt something, but maybe it was all in my head.

  “Good morning,” I tell everyone I see when I walk in. “Hey,” I say to Erika my assistant. “How are you?”

  “Good,” she says, looking up at me and standing to follow me into my office. “I don’t want to say anything to jinx us,” she says, and I look at her when I get to my desk, “but nothing is happening.”

  I put down my coffee and mail. “I don’t even know how to handle that.”

  “I know, I came in this morning, and there were four emails. Four.”

  “Is the server down?” I ask and then yell for Francis. He comes into my office, smirking at Erika. “How many emails did you have this morning?” I ask, and he looks at me confused. “Just answer the question.”

  He puts his hands in his pockets and looks over at Erika, who just smiles. “I don’t know. Maybe ten.”

  “I had four,” I say. “Do you think something is wrong with the server?”

  “What time did you go home last night?” he asks, and I just look at him. “Just answer the question.”

  “A little after seven,” I say.

  “Well, it could be that you answered everything before you left. You don’t have to be busy all the time, Becca,” he says, and I gasp.

  “Don’t jinx me. And to answer your question, yes, I have to be busy all the time. It’s how I function.” He shakes his head and walks out of my office.

  “What do you need me to do?” Erika asks. “I can start on a list of things that we need to tackle next month and see if I can get it going now.”

  “Yes.” I point at her, and she smiles and walks out of my office. I pull out my chair when my phone rings, and my eyes light up. I pick it up and see that it’s Nico. My heart speeds up just a bit, and the smile doesn’t leave my face. “Well, well, well.” I turn in my chair and lean back, looking outside. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”

  “Well,” he says, his voice coming out gruff. “For one, I’m calling to thank you for the care package.” When he laughs, I hear the rustling of sheets, and I wonder if he’s still in bed. I wonder if he’s dating anyone. Oh my God, he’s probably dating someone. I’m going over everything in my head, and I’m not liking any of it.

  “Well, you are more than welcome,” I say, sitting up. My stomach flips and flops at the thought of him with someone else. “I figured the hat was going to a good home.”

  “That fucking hat,” he says, laughing. “You were not joking.”

  I grab my coffee, taking a sip. “I told you.”

  “I would have called you yesterday, but something came up.” He sounds tired.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, and I sit up even straighter. “Is everyone okay? What happened?”

  “We had an injury,” he says, and my heart sinks. “None of your guys.”

  “I mean, thank God but …” I shake my head. “How bad?”

  “Bad enough I’m calling you for a favor.” His voice is soft. “Definitely not the reason I wanted to have to call you,” he says, and I wonder what he means by that, “but I need help.”

  “I mean, I can try,” I say. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I need a right-winger,” he says, and I look up at the ceiling.

  “It’s November,” I say. “You know that teams are just starting to get into their groove in November.”

  “There has to be someone somewhere who isn’t happy,” he says. “Don’t tell me you can’t do this.”

  I laugh. “Are you trying to get me fired up?” I ask. It’s his turn to chuckle, and I can picture what color his eyes are now.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” he says.

  “I can reach out to a couple of my guys to see, and we can go from there,” I say. “I know of two who would love to get traded but—”

  “From where?” he asks, and without telling him who, I name the team. It doesn’t really matter because I have at least one client on each team.

  “Tampa and Detroit,” I say. “Let me make a few calls and then you do the rest. But you have to know that I have no say in any of these. I deal with the contracts, not the trading.”

  “I know the GM for both those teams, and we are on good terms, so you never know. You just get me the names of the players who are interested in trading, and I’ll do the rest from here.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Give me a couple of hours.” I disconnect from him and call Graham, who plays for Detroit.

  “Hey,” he says, answering right away. “What’s up?”

  “Not much.” I play it cool. “You know me, just calling to check in. How is everything?”

  “Meh,” he says. “My game is stuck at a standstill when I’m playing on the fourth line.” He starts to complain, and this is what I need.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask. “I can talk to Martin," I mention the team general manager, “and see what he says.”

  “I don’t want him to get pissed at me and send me down to the farm team,” he says, and I shake my head.

  “If he wants to send a five-million-dollar player down to the farm team when his team is going on a six-game losing streak …” I laugh. “I’ll call you back.” I pick up the phone and call Martin, who answers after four rings.

  “Hello?” he says, and I almost roll my eyes. I know damn fucking well he has my number stored in his phone. Last year, he wanted one of my players, a free
agent, and he called me nonstop for two months.

  “Martin”—I tap my nail on the desk—“it’s Becca.”

  “Hey, Becca, what can I do for you?” he asks.

  “Well, I’m calling to ask you a couple of things,” I say. “I was just talking to Graham, and we were wondering where you think it’s going.”

  He huffs out, and I don’t give him a chance to speak. “I’m just asking. He’s going to be a free agent at the end of the year, and if you keep him on the fourth line, chances are his numbers are going to go down.”

  “You telling me how to run my team?” he says with a tone I don’t care for. It’s the tone all men use for I have a bigger penis than everyone. It’s also a tone that I know means I’m right.

  “I’m just worried about my client,” I say. “At the end of the day, I don’t care if you play your goalie as a forward.” I sit up. “I care that if you aren’t going to play him, then why don’t we look at getting him on another team, and you can both be winner?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” he says.

  “Martin, his contract is for five million a year,” I say, something he already knows. “When he becomes a free agent, I’m going for more. I mean, that isn’t a surprise. His numbers have always been good. He’s always been the top scorer even when he was with Pittsburgh.” Something else he already knows. “But if you are looking for a fourth-line player, you can get two players for the price of that one contract.”

  “You have brass balls, Becca,” he says, and I smirk, knowing that I have him right where I want him.

  “I heard some talk out of Dallas that they would like him,” I say, cutting to the chase.

  “Have Nico call me,” he says. I throw my hands in the air and smirk, but he disconnects before I have a chance to thank him. I couldn't care less how hurt his ego is.

  I dial Nico, who answers right away. “It’s been less than an hour.”