by Sybil Bartel
Oh my God. “Leave.” Gulping for air, I turned my back. A thousand emotions flew through my head, but all I kept thinking was that I’d gained and lost a grandfather in two sentences. Jed Burrows died last night. Jed was your grandfather.
“Come on, baby.” Dan wrapped his arms around me like he had a right to touch me. “We’ll get through this. Just put my ring back on and we’ll do this together, you and me.”
Shocked, infuriated, I shoved his arms off me and spun. “Together?” Was he insane? “There is no us. There will never be an us. You’re a lying, cheating bastard and you can take your ring and shove it!”
“You’re upset right now. I get it.” He glanced at André as André moved to my side. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He half laughed. “Come on, you don’t need protection. It’s just me, babe.”
“Get out of my house,” I ground out, furious.
His hand on the gun in his holster, André stared Dan down. “She told you to leave. I’m not as polite.” He tipped his chin toward the door. “You have two seconds.”
Dan’s face twisted into a sneer. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” He dropped the fake caring voice. “You screwing her now too?”
Dan didn’t even get the last word out.
André moved lightning fast. Drawing his weapon, getting in Dan’s face, he grabbed his shoulder and aimed his gun point-blank on Dan’s balls. “Apologize,” André demanded.
Like the coward he was, Dan threw his hands up. “Relax.”
“In case you’re wondering, the safety’s off. Your next breath better be an apology.”
Dan scoffed. “She knows I didn’t mean it.”
André’s voice went lethally quiet. “All she knew was a man who has a hundred pounds on her grabbed her from behind after she told him to leave. From where I’m standing, that’s aggravated assault.”
Dan’s face paled but his tone was belligerent. “And a gun to my balls isn’t?”
“Two choices. Apologize and walk out.” André paused for half a second. “Or don’t.”
Dan ground his jaw then spoke without an ounce of remorse. “My apologies.”
“Step back, two paces, turn and walk out. You ever return, I’ll be waiting.” André let go of Dan’s shoulder only to hold his gun with both hands and raise his aim to Dan’s chest.
Dan smirked at André then glared at me. “This isn’t over.” He stormed to the door then slammed it shut behind him.
André glanced at me as he holstered his weapon. “You okay, chica?”
My heart in my throat, I could only nod.
My personal cell phone rang as I watched the carnage of my work cell fall seventeen stories. It stopped and three seconds later it started ringing again. I didn’t look at the display. With my head fucked up, the letters would’ve been jumbled anyway. I didn’t think for one second it would be her. If I did, I would’ve answered it immediately.
In a fucking war with myself, I was half a second from driving to Luna’s to see her. But the last ounce of rational thought I still had told me to wait until the lawyer resolved the lawsuit.
The phone rang again and I picked it up. “What?”
“I’ve been calling you,” Luna barked.
My chest tightened. “She okay?”
“Now you care?”
Adrenaline kicked in. “Goddamn it, what happened?”
“Something’s going down at her house. The coach is here, so are your punching bags and their sidekick.”
“What the fuck, Luna?” I growled, grabbing my keys. “You let them into her house? And why the hell is she home? You were supposed to keep her safe.” I’d sent Tyler away because Red wasn’t here anymore, but the media was still camped out in front of my place. I couldn’t imagine what kind of shit show was going down at her place.
“Calm down, she’s secure, but she wanted to go home this morning. Only the coach and your boyfriend are inside.”
I didn’t bother with the elevator. “If that fucking pussy touches her, kill him.”
“You kicked her out, bro.”
I ground my teeth, barely refraining from telling him off. “What are they saying to her?”
“Don’t know, but the team’s general manager scheduled a press conference for nine o’clock.”
Jesus Christ. “What the fuck for?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Get over here.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up and jogged down seventeen flights. I was sweating the fucking alcohol I’d drunk last night by the time I hit the garage level.
Gunning the engine, I peeled out of my garage and sped past two news vans still parked by the front of the building. I didn’t know if they knew which car was mine and I didn’t care. I was only intent on getting to Red.
If her asshole ex was trying to drag her into the lawsuit, or if her fucking uncle was going to fire her, or worse, make an example out of her, I was going to level them both.
Breaking every speed limit, I made it to her neighborhood in record time, but when I gunned it around a corner and turned onto her street, my stomach bottomed out. There weren’t a few news vans on her street, there was a fucking parade of them.
Braking so I didn’t plow into one, I glanced at her house in time to see the coach getting behind the wheel of an SUV. I swerved around a news van blocking the street and was contemplating driving across her neighbor’s lawn when I saw her asshole ex walk out of her house. Ahlstrom got in the front passenger seat of Coach’s SUV as Luna stepped out her front door and scanned the street.
Seeing me, Luna glanced at the SUV then nodded at the driveway. I fucking got it. Wait till they pulled out then drive into their spot. One of Luna’s company SUVs that was parked behind their vehicle backed up and the coach pulled out.
I waited in the street to fucking glare at the asshole quarterback as they passed then I gunned it into Red’s driveway.
Luna met me at my car, but the second I got out, the cameras were going off and my name was being shouted. I ignored all of it and aimed for Red’s house as Luna shadowed me. “What’s going on?”
He didn’t respond as he walked me to the front door. Right before he opened it, he quietly answered. “Team’s owner died last night. Your girlfriend was his only living heir.” He pushed her front door open, shoved my shocked ass inside and closed the door behind me.
The silence of her house was deafening compared to the fucking circus outside, but neither that nor Luna’s bomb could compare to the hit my chest took seeing her. Standing next to her dining table, her head down, her arms curled around herself, she swept at her face, but she didn’t turn around.
“Thank you for getting rid of them, André.” Her voice shook. “You can go now.”
I stepped up to her back and her scent washed over me like a fucking drug. It took every ounce of self-control not to pull her into my arms. “Red,” I said quietly.
She sucked in a sharp breath, and backed up as she turned. “What are you doing here?” Tears running down her face, her makeup a mess, she wasn’t asking the question, she was throwing out an accusation.
I forced my feet to stay put. “What happened?”
“Did André call you? Is that why you’re here? You wanted to get in on the spectacle?”
She looked so fucking hurt, I wanted to kill someone. I’d get to what was going on, but first I needed to address the shit that went down between us last night. “I thought I was doing the right thing last night.”
She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s rich. Now that I might have something to offer, you’re interested, is that it?”
I refrained from snapping back at her. “I don’t know what happened.” I wasn’t going to assume shit.
“Right,” she scoffed. “Like your Marine buddy didn’t tell you everything.” She moved toward the kitchen with none of her usual grace.
“Yeah, he called me, but that only sped up the timeline. I was coming to you no matter what.” I sounded like a f
ucking pussy, but I didn’t give a shit. It was the truth.
“Why, so you could screw me on my kitchen counter then leave without an explanation?” Her hand shook as she reached for a kettle on her stove.
The acidity in her tone left a bitter taste in my mouth because I was the one who put it there. I knew I’d fuck her up, but I stupidly didn’t think I’d do it in such a short amount of time. My only saving grace was she hadn’t kicked me out yet. “I wasn’t coming here to fuck you.” I was coming to apologize. Again. Because deep down I knew what she was. I’d known it the second I’d laid eyes on her. It wasn’t her designer purse or fucking Mercedes, it wasn’t the cost of the shit she wore, or anything you could buy. It was her. Gracious and kind, her manners weren’t a fucking act, she simply didn’t have an agenda. You couldn’t fake what she had. I’d known enough women who tried. But Sienna Montclair wasn’t one of them. She was the real deal, and she was too damn good for me.
She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh I wanted to hear. “Even better. A male prostitute who doesn’t want to sleep with me.” She filled the kettle with water and dropped it on the stove. “You can leave now.” She grabbed a box of tea bags then she went on her toes to reach for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s high up in her cupboard.
I stepped behind her small frame and grabbed the whiskey. “No.”
“This is my house.”
She was so fucking defiant, I wanted to do exactly what she accused me of intending to do. I wanted to bend her over the counter and fuck, finger and spank her until her tears were from an orgasm I’d given her and not the fucked-up shit Luna had thrown at me.
I held the bottle just out of her reach. “You don’t strike me as the type of woman to drink at nine o’clock in the morning.”
“You don’t strike me as the type of man who cares.” She made a play for the whiskey.
I pulled back and she fell into my chest. “I fucking care.”
“Give me that!”
Jesus, she smelled incredible. “Talk to me.”
“Screw you!”
I couldn’t stop myself. My arm curved around her back and I fucking held her for all I was worth. “You wanna hit me? Do it. I’ll take it. You wanna fuck this out, fine. I’ll make you come so hard it’ll be tears from me you’re crying and not whatever the fuck just happened. But know this.” I moved my arm up her back and cupped the back of her neck. “You’ll still tell me what happened and I’ll still care about you.”
“You don’t even know me.” She spat the words out, but her face wasn’t angry, it was hurt.
I dropped my voice. “I know how to make you blush. I know how to make you smile. I know how to make your eyes flutter shut. You’re smart and pure and so fucking gorgeous, I don’t deserve you.” I laid it all out. “You’re right, I don’t know everything about you. But I know enough that walking away from my life just to have a single chance to wake up next to you is the best fucking decision I ever made.”
“You threw that away last night,” she accused.
“You didn’t deny loving him.” I shot right back.
Her eyes widened with shock. “I walked away.”
I didn’t say shit. I just stared at her. If she didn’t know what the fuck that looked like, then I was in the wrong fucking house.
Her face fell. “That’s why you sent me away? Because you think I love him? You’re blaming last night on me?”
I’d never said those three words to anyone, but she’d said them to that fucking asshole, and not years ago, weeks ago. “I’m not blaming you, but you have his ring and he was your first. What the hell was I supposed to think?”
She blanched. “That’s what he told you?”
“You denying it?”
She pulled away and I let her go. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“I offered you something I’ve never offered to another woman.” I might as well have been standing there with my fucking dick hanging out. “An hour later, your ex is on my doorstep professing his love and you’re not denying him. That makes it my business.”
She dropped her head and the attitude in her tone disappeared. “I didn’t know how serious you were.”
“Dead fucking serious.” I wasn’t playing games.
The kettle whistled and she turned her back to me. “You know that’s not normal?”
Neither was the complete mindfuck that happened the second I laid eyes on her. “Do you think I give a shit?”
“No.” She took two mugs out.
“You’re right.” She might be getting to know me after all. I watched her put tea bags in the mugs and my hands went to my hips. “I don’t drink tea.”
She filled the mugs halfway with hot water. “And I don’t jump into relationships five minutes after meeting someone.”
“Neither do I.” I didn’t fucking do relationships, period. She was either mine or she wasn’t. “Why were the coach and that asshole here?”
She ignored my question and put her manners back on like a fucking shield. “May I have the whiskey, please.”
I’d forgotten I was still holding it. I set the bottle on the counter next to her. “Luna said the owner of the team died.”
Her back stiffened. “Jed Burrows passed away last night.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Apparently he was my grandfather.”
If Burrows was her grandfather and the coach was her uncle… Christ. “DeMarco’s his son.”
“Stepson.”
“And you never knew?” Un-fucking-believable.
She shook her head and poured three fingers of whiskey into each mug.
Jesus, her family was fucked. I waited until she set the whiskey down then I turned her to face me. “Red.”
Her head bent, her arms at her sides, she wouldn’t look at me.
“Hey.” I tipped her chin and her eyes welled. “How did you not know?”
A fresh tear slid down her cheek. “My daddy never told me.”
Hearing the despair in her voice, seeing the hurt in her eyes, it made me want to fucking pound her dead father and grandfather and her uncle. “Where’s your mom?”
“She had Huntington’s Disease. She passed away when I was ten.”
Jesus fuck. I couldn’t not touch her anymore. I pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry, baby.”
She choked on a sob then pushed me away. “I’m not some forlorn orphan.” She swept at her face.
Seeing her sad was fucking killing me. “No, you’re not. You’ve got a shit uncle who lies to you.” I was going to have words with the fucker when I saw him. “Who else?”
She fished the tea bags out of the mugs, put them in the sink and inhaled. “Who else what?”
“Who else knew about this?”
She picked the mugs up and walked into the living room. “I don’t know. I have no living relatives left to ask besides Coach. Well, any that I know of.” She perched on the edge of the couch and set one of the mugs on the coffee table.
I sat down beside her and went for practical. “So in reality, what’s changed since yesterday?”
She gave me side-eye.
I was just fucking thankful she wasn’t still crying. “I’m not talking about us. I’m asking how this information changes anything from yesterday or last week or last month for you.”
She sipped her drink. “There’s an us?”
“You really want me to answer that?” Because I’d lay it all out. I didn’t give a shit. I knew it was fucking crazy, but I wanted this woman. My past would come between us, someway, somehow, but right then, just being next to her after missing the hell out of her last night, I didn’t give two fucks. I’d figure it out.
“No. And nothing’s changed except everyone I ever loved lied to me.”
“Maybe there was a reason for it.” And I was going to do what I could to find out for her.
She looked at me like I had two heads. “It’s family. You may have a big family with a mess of siblings, but I grew up with no one except
my daddy. If I knew I had other family, I wouldn’t have taken that for granted.” She took a big swallow of her tea-flavored whiskey like she was intent on getting shitty.
The fucking crazy truth, we weren’t that different. “It’s just me and my dad.” But the second I was old enough, I’d enlisted.
She cupped her mug in her lap. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
I shrugged. “Life is what you make it, Red.”
She took another huge swallow. “Then what were you making it when you decided to sleep with women for money?”
“You drunk yet?” She’d poured a triple into that mug.
“Why? You gonna lie to me too?” She tipped her drink back again.
“I never lied to you.”
“Give it time.”
I gripped her chin and she sucked in a shocked breath. “I have not, nor will I ever outright lie to you. You want to throw insults, make it count.”
Her face crumbled. “What if I inherit the team?”
I stroked her cheek then cupped her face. “Then you’ll be the quarterback’s boss and you can trade the fucker.” I didn’t know jack shit about how the league operated, but I wasn’t above planting the seed.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You won’t have to work for DeMarco.” That prick would work for her.
Her voice went whisper quiet. “I’m scared.”
I held her gaze. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“That kind of money changes everything. People will want things from me. I won’t know who to trust.”
“First, you have no idea how this is going to play out, so don’t worry about it yet. Second, trust is a bullshit relative term outside the military. Don’t trust anyone. And third, sell the fucking team if you don’t want the headache.” I didn’t care what she did as long as she was happy.
She stared at me for two heartbeats. “You don’t care about money, do you?”
I brushed her soft hair from her face. “If I had none, I probably would.”
“You make everything seem so easy.”
I tipped the corner of my mouth up. “You overthink shit.”
“Are you insulting me?”
“No, stating fact. It’s part of who you are.” And I wouldn’t change a damn thing about her.