Madeline limped away, glaring at Hara.
Hara was disgusted by the people and their blood and snot and evil actions. She was also disgusted by the heavy body odor coming off Charles. He had his arms wrapped around her like steel bands, holding her firmly against him.
Time seemed to pause, everyone silent, when Derek groggily got to his feet. “Let her go,” he said to his teammate.
“I’ll take you down again, man. Stay down.” Charles’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
“You fucking backstabber. Think you can take me if I don’t have my back turned?” Derek didn’t give anyone time to react, leaping onto Charles, knocking Hara out of the way. Unfortunately, right back into O’Donnell’s path.
She swung around, fists up, and planted her feet. I’m gonna beat down this asshole myself.
But the old man faced her calmly, his arm outstretched, a small silver pistol held in a steady grip. Aimed at her.
Derek and Charles, unaware of the new development, fought furiously. They traded punches and kicks, tossing each other around. Two bears, brawling.
“Hara. You did this, you know,” O’Donnell said, shaking a finger. He stepped close, his breath hot and moist on Hara’s cheek, offering a stench of rotting leaves. “You and your father just couldn’t leave well enough alone. You think a couple of blackmailers are going to outsmart me?”
“I didn’t know anything! I didn’t know the contest was rigged. And I didn’t know your games were rigged until an hour ago. I was simply doing my job.”
“Rigged?” A deep, loud voice vibrated the air around them.
It was then Hara realized Derek had Charles in a headlock and they had stopped fighting. He was staring at the gun in O’Donnell’s hand. He flexed the arm around Charles’s neck, his blood vessels and muscles bulging. “What do you mean the games were rigged? Charles?” Derek asked, confusion and anger darkening his eyes.
“You don’t understand.” His teammate slumped, limp in Derek’s grip.
Derek shoved Charles down to the ground in disgust and scooped up the pipe. “What? What don’t I understand?”
“Easy does it, son.” O’Donnell cocked the trigger, the gun remaining on Hara. He took a few steps away from her. “This little girl would bleed out quickly, I’m guessing.”
“I had to do it,” said Charles, ignoring O’Donnell. The big man was on his hands and knees, his head swinging back and forth. “He had me over a barrel. He’s been making me tank shots. Either that or he was turning me and Ma in for accepting the bribe. He’d bet against the team, knowing we were going to lose.”
“Last year, the championships. We lost by two points.”
It was hard for Hara to watch the hurt that ran across Derek’s face.
“Yes. But it was because of him.” Charles got up slowly, pointing to O’Donnell.
Derek swung back to Hara and O’Donnell, keeping Charles in his sight, while gripping the pipe, holding it at his side.
O’Donnell kept Hara between himself and Derek. “Well, let’s not blame this all on me, Mr. Butler. You liked the money. You agreed to tank early this season so the house would bet against the Fishers. We’d just barely make the playoffs, and then win as the dark horse, taking another huge pot. With Darcy here, a win was guaranteed. We just had to slow him up a bit in the beginning.”
Hara felt cold sweat pour down her back. If O’Donnell was admitting to all this, then he wasn’t worried they’d get away.
A car pulled up behind them. Hara turned to see Madeline, her white face a big O of surprise and fear, staring through the windshield at the now-awake Derek holding the pipe, while Charles was down on his hands and knees and O’Donnell held everyone at bay with a pistol.
The assistant threw it into first, stepped on the gas, and screeched past them.
“You cunt!” O’Donnell howled.
They watched as Madeline skidded around a corner and shot out of sight. The bitch isn’t stupid, anyway. What are the chances she’ll send help? But Hara knew it was absurd to hope the assistant had suddenly grown a moral compass.
O’Donnell waved the gun at them, refocusing quickly on Hara. “Now, I could shoot you all right here, but I’d rather not. Dragging bodies around is hard work. Charles, I’m assuming you’ll play and keep quiet. You have the right attitude. But you two…” He took a step toward Hara.
Derek jumped in front of her.
Everything happening here was her fault. Hara didn’t want this. She didn’t want Derek to get hurt because she’d been stupid enough to leave the basketball court with Madeline, and stupid enough to believe she’d be safe even while knowing the owner had her father badly beaten. Hara started to edge around him, hoping to maybe draw O’Donnell’s attention back to her.
Derek moved with her, used to shadowing other’s movements. But then he broke contact and moved a step closer to the old man. “Give me the gun,” she heard him growl.
O’Donnell seemed unfazed, pointing the gun at Derek now. “Dead bodies may be inevitable.”
This is not happening. She started again to dart out from behind the brave basketball player when there was a blur of motion in her periphery.
Charles landed in front of O’Donnell, grabbing for the gun.
The gun went off. Charles took a few stutter steps and then fell.
Hara froze, confused, terrified. Before she knew how to react, Derek moved, quick as a lion, this time grabbing O’Donnell by the hair and yanking him off his feet. At the same time, he knocked the gun out of his hand.
“Charles! Charles, are you okay?” Derek yelled, though not turning his attention from O’Donnell. He threw the team’s owner roughly to the ground and put a knee in the middle of his back. “Stop squirming or I’m going to smash your fucking head into the concrete.” He tapped the pipe next to his head, making the owner flinch.
Hara ran to get the pistol and came to a stop a few feet from them, just out of reach, while training the gun on O’Donnell’s head. Her hands were steady, though slightly sweaty. “It’s okay, Derek, I got this.” A grin stretched tightly across her face, which was weird because she felt only terror and despair. “I grew up on a farm, shooting rodents. Hear that, O’Donnell? I fucking love shooting rats.”
Just behind them, Charles groaned. He lay on the ground, holding his chest, in the same fetal position Hara had found Naomi in yesterday. The blood pooling around him was just as dark and disturbing, as was the cloying smell of iron.
Derek removed his knee from O’Donnell and slowly stood. “I’d listen to her, jackass. Though I wouldn’t mind seeing you get shot.”
“Derek! You don’t have to do this,” gasped O’Donnell, one cheek pressed to the concrete, a smear of dirt across his forehead. “You’ve got a lot to lose if you let this go down. Instead, we clean up the mess and we all come out winners. Even this little cunt, if she can keep her mouth shut.”
The air around Hara blurred as she moved, fast. In a split second, the bloated old man was writhing on the ground, spitting out blood and howling, a rabid animal. It took a second for her mind to catch up with her actions. She’d kicked O’Donnell in the teeth.
Breathing hard, she moved back to a safe distance, the gun still on him. “I’d like to say I feel bad about kicking a man while he’s down, but I don’t. My karma will probably survive.”
* * *
Derek thought he might suffocate, his lungs refusing to take in a full breath of air. His body felt stuffed with mud and his mind was sluggish. The stadium security, police, and emergency medical personnel did a delicate dance around him and around Hara. She sat next to him; they were not far from the chalk outline and the large bloodstain that had seeped into the garage’s concrete floor.
Charles Butler was dead.
My friend.
He’d bled out before the medics could reach him.
My friend.
Derek’s thoughts refused to coalesce. He stared at his friend’s blood on his hands. How much o
f this was his fault? The basketball player was surprised when droplets of water splashed onto the dark red pigmentation streaking his skin.
“I’m so sorry, Derek.”
Hara. Her voice spread a soothing balm. He closed his eyes in gratitude when she reached up to his face and brushed her fingertips over his cheeks. It was then that Derek could feel the wetness. The drops of water diluting the blood on his hands had been tears. His tears.
He hadn’t cried since he was a child. The ability to remain stoic and emotionally walled off had saved his sanity, as he’d grown up in the cold, toxic culture of his narcissistic and entitled parents. It had also helped him to strive to succeed on his own, no matter the battles he had to fight, no matter how sealed off from the world he became.
But right now, he felt busted open and wounded. He wasn’t even embarrassed that Hara was here to witness it. Instead, alongside the endless waves of intense electric shocks of grief, he was deeply relieved to have a good-hearted, strong woman at his side, to willingly hold his hand as he stumbled through this dark moment.
This was such a profound shift in his approach to the world; he could do nothing but wonder at it. People he admired had the ability to alter themselves, to grow, so much so that there was something new to be observed in them every time they met. Derek had not known until now that he himself had the same capacity for change. If only Charles had discovered that quality in time.
The loss of Charles left a raw-edged hole, the sides crumbling away painfully. Charles had died, both literally and figuratively. Derek didn’t have his friend now, and he had also lost the friend he’d thought he’d had, the man he’d thought he’d known. What was he going to do? Charles had been the only person he’d ever really let in.
Hara’s hand was warm and real in his.
He knew then. Derek wasn’t alone, not as he’d feared.
Basketball meant nothing. Money meant nothing. Fame and recognition meant nothing. His heart was still beating, and that was because of Hara. He wanted to see what it would be like to embrace love instead of pushing it away, and he felt like Hara might be the one. She was the only thing that felt right. That felt good.
* * *
Watching the gurney wheel away Charles’s dead body, Hara felt a chill travel from the base of her spine to the top of her head. She’d believed his hype, that he was a decent guy. Charles was running in the wrong crowd and Hara had not sensed it at all. She was so stubborn she’d stuck with her first impression of him until it was too late.
And then O’Donnell killed him. That could have been her father. Hara sucked in a shuddering breath. Did Charles die because of her?
As she breathed in and out, comforted by the warmth emanating from Derek pressed against her side, her mind settled. No, she had not done this. Each of these men had made their own choices. Choices based in selfishness, even evil.
O’Donnell had been handcuffed and taken away in the back of a squad car. His weak cries of false arrest were quickly shut down, thanks to surveillance cameras in the garage. CCTV footage had also led to the quick apprehension of Madeline, who apparently sang like a canary when asked about her boss and his nefarious dealings. Karma. It had come around and bit these people in the ass.
It was hard to celebrate the justice of their demise, however, since her own father was part of this, and now he was in the hospital. The world wasn’t black-and-white. Her father, a man she loved, also had made his choices and he’d chosen wrong, but he’d wanted what was best for her. He’d used morally challenged shortcuts to get there, to be sure. Thomas Isari was almost killed because he thought blackmailing O’Donnell would somehow have a positive outcome. He almost got Hara killed, too.
But at least her daddy had love in his heart. O’Donnell was a black-hearted monster. As a wealthy, white-collar criminal unused to adapting to others’ rules, he’d suffer in prison and she had zero empathy.
The one person whom she’d initially judged as unworthy was the one who, in the end, turned out to be courageous, giving, and a worthwhile human. She squeezed Derek’s hand, gently, and he gave her a grateful look that melted her heart. Here is the one guy willing to literally throw himself in front of a bullet for me. She had been going to walk away from him without trying to see if there was something there, just because she was afraid of rejection or looking stupid. From the beginning, she had told herself that Derek Darcy wasn’t worth her time and then clung to that stupid impression despite all the evidence to the contrary. She’d desperately wanted love and companionship in her life but had used negative judgments of others to keep them at bay and protect her heart.
Hara realized then exactly how insecure and afraid of being hurt she was. Until that moment, she had not known herself.
Right now, though, it was Derek who was in pain.
“I’m so sorry.” She enfolded his hand in both of hers, using her presence to comfort as best she could. He leaned against her and sighed, swiping at his eyes occasionally. After a few minutes, a detective approached and asked them to come to the station to give their statements.
Derek stood and helped her to her feet. His hands on her shoulders, he said, “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life. And thank you for still being here.”
“Where else would I be?” Hara pressed against him, and Derek pulled her tighter, bending down to give her a kiss. His beautiful copper eyes had her hooked even before his lips met hers, and the jolt was instantaneous. No matter the circumstances, no matter the history or the news stories, his energy was good and his heart was noble. She wanted more.
CHAPTER 21
My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could,
whether I might ever hope to make you love me.
—Pride and Prejudice
“Daddy? Can you hear me?”
Hara bent over Thomas Isari’s inert body, hooked up to tubes and monitors on a bed at Salem Hospital. The guard at the door watched closely as she touched his face, wiping his brow. But he didn’t stop her.
She kissed his forehead, trying to keep her tears in.
“Baby girl,” came his whisper, his eyes still closed. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, Daddy. Open your eyes.”
His eyes opened. Whatever else might be wrong with him, his gaze was sharp and clear.
“The doctors say you are doing better, that they stopped the bleeding. How do you feel?”
“You don’t want to know.” He sighed uncomfortably. “But, my God, I am so glad you are okay.”
Hara had already called ahead and told her father that he didn’t have to worry about O’Donnell anymore. She’d also filled her mother in on all the details of the past week, so that both of her parents would get over the shock by the time she got home. Now, Willa sat in the corner of the room, a book at her side. She watched her daughter and her estranged husband with a smile. “Okay, Hara, don’t wear him out. Come here.” She held out her arms for a hug.
As Hara folded herself into her mother’s embrace, the guard cleared his throat.
Seriously?
But he wasn’t trying to stop them. Instead, the officer said, “Excuse me. You have another visitor.”
Derek stood next to the guard at the door, a bouquet of flowers in his hand. The guard gave the flowers a cursory glance and then let the ballplayer through.
Hara’s parents looked at him in surprise, as did Hara.
“Derek! Don’t you have a game?”
“The franchise has me on suspension until they make sure I didn’t have anything to do with throwing the games.” He shifted back and forth uncomfortably. “I’m not worried, I’ll be cleared.”
Hara took the flowers and then paused awkwardly. Should she kiss him? They’d spent the night before together, after leaving the police station, and shared hours filled with tenderness and intimate conversation. And after Derek admitted that he was the one who put Naomi into private care and that he’d hired a lawyer for Charles’s mother, there were also hours filled with amazi
ng sex. She had flown out this morning, still not sure where they stood exactly, but very sure they would see each other again. Just not this soon. “I didn’t think I’d see you for a few weeks.”
Willa nudged up to Hara and put an arm around her daughter’s waist. “So! You’re Derek Darcy. I am Willa Isari, Hara’s mother.” The tiny woman formally shook hands with the much taller man. “You’ll be back on the team, then? For sure?”
“Mom…” Hara rolled her eyes. She thrust the bouquet into Willa’s arms. “Here. Do you mind putting these in water?” Only her mother would take this moment to make sure Derek would be a suitable prospect, set up to take care of her daughter’s financial needs … Little did she know, Derek didn’t need to be playing ball to make money. More important, Derek didn’t need to have any money at all in order for him to be a suitable prospect for Hara.
Her father coughed. She remembered herself and said, “Derek, this is my father, Thomas Isari.”
Derek strode over to the side of the bed. “Nice to meet you, sir. I’m sorry it’s under these conditions.”
“We both know I helped create the conditions.” Thomas paused and then held out his hand. “I’m the one who’s sorry. My actions caused so much pain. I thought I was doing the right thing, trying to help Hara.”
Hara had been afraid that Derek wouldn’t shake with her father, the infamous criminal. But she needn’t have worried. They shook, both eyeing each other carefully but respectfully.
“I can understand wanting to do what you can for your daughter, sir. And Hara is a special girl.” Derek flushed when he said it and ducked his head, making Hara grin. It was so surreal, this six-foot-five man made of muscle acting like a shy little boy. Hara was relieved that Derek could be deferential, even to a felon who didn’t really deserve it. Thomas had problems but he was her father and she loved him.
Willa gaped at Derek, no doubt stunned and delighted to hear a man “of means” give Hara a compliment. Coyly, Hara elbowed her in the stomach, and then stepped up to the ballplayer’s side, holding her hand out. But he surprised her by stepping back.
The Wrong Mr. Darcy Page 23