Brian shakes my hand then kisses it. “Well done, Aldrich. If I’m going to get my ass kicked, it might as well be by someone as stunning as you.”
I kiss his cheek. “Good luck tomorrow. Don’t let this sideshow act mess with your head tonight, okay? You have to remember I’m a ringer. ”
The quarterback chuckles. “I’m choosing to believe that I was too distracted by your legs to put my best foot forward.”
I believe him too. Brian hasn’t tried to hide his ogling, and both Daddy and Chase have been sending him death glares.
Chase clears his throat. “How’s your wife, Brian? Is she here for the game?”
He smirks. “We’re divorced, but thanks for asking.” Brian looks me in the eye. “I’m just now getting back into the swing of dating life.” Chase releases a low growl, which only makes Brian smirk more. “Speaking of which, how’s your fiancée, Chase? Since we’re taking inventory of everyone’s relationship status. Looks like you’re the only one who’s tied down.”
Chase clenches his fists and sets his jaw. Before he has the chance to say anything, the Saints coaches call Brian back to the locker room. I take that as my cue to exit.
“I demand a rematch, Aldrich,” Chase calls to me as I walk away.
“Still throwing off that back foot, Brennan,” I shout over my shoulder. “Might want to work on that before the game tomorrow.”
Daddy cleaned up, probably taking ten grand off the coaches.
I whisper to him as we walk off the field, “You’re buying me a new skirt with your winnings.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Anything for you, Snickerdoodle. You’ve always had the best arm of any player I’ve worked with.”
“Nah. I just had the best teacher.” I kiss his cheek. “Now get your ass in the car and get home. Now.”
While I go home to change, Daddy goes straight to the Brennans’ and returns to the party. It’s not the nap I wanted him to take, but it’s better than the alternative. When nine o’clock rolls around, I drag him home and put him to bed. Once the house is still, I become ansty. Chase is only twenty minutes away. One very quick car ride, and I could be with him. But strolling into his bedroom at midnight the night before the NFC Championship would be the worst thing I could do to him. He wouldn’t get an ounce of sleep. On the other hand, not sleeping has proven to be a good luck charm in the past.
Chapter Seven
Arianna
After checking on Daddy, I sneak off to Atherton. When I pull onto his street, I panic, a feeling I’m unaccustomed to. Did he live here with Jenna? What if her stuff is still here? I’m not ready to see that. What if he’s not alone? He has no idea I know where he lives. In his mind, this little love shack of his is completely safe from my prying eyes. I should have called. I’m not ready for what I might walk in on.
I pull my car up in front of his house. I’m surprised this is the house he chose. It’s a stone-and-glass contemporary that’s so much more my style than his, and it’s in a city that allows for anonymity, something that was always more important to me than to him. I always imagined he’d buy a condo in the city so he could stumble home from the bars at night. Atherton’s beautiful, but it’s not exactly a mecca of nightlife.
After killing the ignition, I sit and listen to my car settle while I debate my next move. Potential outcomes run through my mind, each one worse than the last.
What am I doing? I don’t sit in fear in a car like some pathetic stalker. I’m Arianna Aldrich, for Christ’s sake. If he’s doing something I don’t want to see, it’s better I know now. I hope for the Niners fans he’s not, because he’ll have a hard time winning the game if he’s bleeding out on the floor after I chop off his penis.
Gathering up my confidence, I walk from my car and knock on the door. The midnight air sweeps a chill over my body. I’m still in the outfit I wore to dinner, a chunky charcoal Tory Burch sweater with a shiny, silver pleated skirt. I should have changed into pants. I ring the doorbell and wait. And wait. Ring again and wait. There’re lights on upstairs, so it’s reasonable to assume that he’s home, but why won’t he open the damn door? The options in front of me are leave with my tail between my legs and my imagination running wild, call and see if he answers, or set his house on fire and smoke out anyone who might be fornicating inside. Or option D—I lay on the doorbell.
Less than a minute later, I hear heavy footsteps clopping down the stairs. The door flies open as he screams, “Whoever the fuck this is better run!”
I remove my hand from the doorbell and put my hands on my hips. “Psht. As if that’s a threat. We both know I kill you in a sprint.”
The fury on his face transforms into a bright smile. Chase scoops me up and kisses me breathless. When he finally pulls away, both of us gasping for air, he says, “You have no idea how badly I wanted to do that today.”
“You looked about ready to dismember Brian,” I reply.
“If he looked at your legs one more time…” he growls. “That skirt-slitting move you pulled was practically indecent. You gave all of my teammates a lovely view of the promised land.” Chase steps back and threads his fingers behind his neck. “I swear to you I almost laid Brian out. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this act up.”
“You heard him,” I respond. “He thinks you’re engaged to someone else. The whole world does. I just came out of a very public breakup, and I refuse to look like the other woman.”
He rocks back on his heels. “No. Of course not. I’d never let anyone try to cheapen what we have by spewing that shit. I know what we have to do and why we have to do it, and I will, but it fucking sucks.”
I pull his arms toward me and wrap them around my back. “Yes, it does.”
He releases a long breath then kisses the tip of my nose. “What are we doing on my stoop? Come in. It’s freezing out here.”
I tentatively walk into the house. I’m barely in the three-story open foyer and I can tell this place is Chase through and through, with the greys and blues, stone accent walls, and the contemporary art. The style of house may not be his type, but he’s put his mark on the interior. “It’s beautiful.”
He points toward the sunken living room. “I bought it for you.”
That stops me in my tracks. I spin around and see a look of regret on his face.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Cat’s out of the bag now,” I reply. “You might as well explain.”
He sits on his charcoal leather sofa and pats the cushion next to him. “I bought it after the draft. The second I saw it, I thought of you. I had to have it. For you. For… us.”
If I had all the houses in the world to choose from, this may have been the one I’d select. What I don’t understand is why he bought me a house if he was going to screw around with someone else a few weeks later at Charlie’s wedding. Chase was never a monk, and while he’d used other women to hurt me, I always believed when he settled down, he’d be fully committed. Moving in together would have been a serious commitment. We would have told our families, gone public. Screwing around with that golfer just makes no sense. Maybe one last hurrah before he took the plunge?
We’ve never discussed what happened that morning. I try to block out memories of the wedding as much as possible. It’s the only way I could stop hating him. But now that the thought’s crossed my mind, it’s smothering the love that motivated me to come over here in the first place.
Chase puts his hand on my thigh. “Hey. Where’d you go just now? You were scoping out my Leonid Afremov, then you checked out.”
I bite my tongue before I open Pandora’s box. He has the biggest game of his life in fourteen hours. I’ve gone two years without asking about his behavior at the wedding, and now isn’t the time.
He crosses the room to the painting that caught my eye earlier. It’s a stunning oil painting that, at first glance, looks like a wild swirl of colors and brush strokes, but upon closer examination, it’s clear it’s a couple in a
gas-lamp-lit park, kissing in the rain.
“It’s called Farewell to Anger,” he says. “I was in Miami, meeting with the Dolphins before the draft, and Mom dragged to me one of those art shows she loves so much. I saw it, and it reminded me of that time we were Paris after your first French Open. I’d gotten mad at you because I thought you were flirting with…” His eyes look up as if he’s trying to recall the name.
“Sven Lundberg,” I offer. “And I wasn’t flirting.”
He points at me. “That’s him, and yes, you were!” His fists clench and he shakes them, still fuming from the seven-year-old memory. “God, I hated that smug Swedish prick. He wanted in your pants so bad.” His eyes dart in my direction. “He never got in your pants, did he?” Before I can answer, he says, “You know what? I don’t want to know. Anyway, back to the story. I was mad at you for flirting with Sven, but the family was with us, so we didn’t get a chance to talk.”
“You showed up at my room at three in the morning and dragged me out the park next to our hotel so we could clear the air,” I reply. I walk over to the painting to get a closer look at it. “We were screaming at each other in the rain like two lunatics until I tried to storm back to the hotel, and I slipped and fell in a puddle. You tried to pick me up, and I just pulled you down with me. God, I don’t think we’ve ever laughed that hard.”
He takes my hand. “Then we kissed till the cops told us to go back to the hotel. Paris is for lovers, my ass. Anyway, when I saw this painting, the gas lights reminded me of that park.”
I don’t understand. The house, the painting. It just doesn’t make sense. He’s staring at me with wide eyes filled with love and promise, and it hurts to look at him. All I see is the love I lost two years ago. Not wanting to spark a fight, I gently pull my hand back and return to the sofa. “You shock me with your sentimentality, Brennan.”
“I’m incredibly sentimental. I still have a box of our life together. Ticket stubs, hotel key cards, stuff like that. I have every postcard you sent me. I kept everything.”
I sent him postcards from every city I went to. Even when we were off, I still sent him a postcard. Often with a death threat written on it, but it was the thought that counted. I can’t believe he saved them. Suddenly, my throat feels like a barren wasteland, making me cough. “Could I get some water?”
“Of course,” he answers. He points toward the back of the house. “Want the tour?”
I look at my watch and see how late it’s become. This is the perfect time for me to dash out of here, avoiding all the feelings threatening to boil over. I turn toward to door, and I’m about to make a quick excuse when he puts his hands on my shoulders.
“Don’t even think about it, Aldrich. I can see you plotting your escape strategy.” He guides me to the sofa. “I’m going to get you some water, and when I get back, you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on in that head of yours.”
While he’s gone, I try to come up with a reasonable explanation, but I come up empty. So much for the girl who’s so quick on her feet.
He returns and hands me a glass of water. “Don’t even think of bullshitting me. Just lay it on me, whatever it is. Unless you’re ending things. If that’s the case, please bullshit me until after the game tomorrow.”
I take a few gulps, put the water on the glass coffee table, and place my hand on his knee. “No, nothing like that. I’m just overwhelmed and perplexed. It’s nothing major. Certainly not something we need to go into now.”
“Yes now. You think I’ll be able to sleep knowing there’s something on your mind? Spill. It.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine. None of this makes sense. On one hand, you bought me my dream house and paintings that reminded you of us, and then you pulled the shit you did at the wedding. I can’t wrap my head around the contradiction.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Finally! Can we finally talk about the wedding? I’ve spent two years trying to understand your one-eighty, and I’ve never been able to piece it together.”
The emotions I’ve been stifling erupt. I jolt off the sofa as though it’s given me an electric shock. “My one-eighty! Are you serious?”
“Whoa. Let’s slow down. Just like everything with us, I’m sure there are two sides to this. Before you go nuclear, just tell me what happened on your end.”
He’s so calm I don’t even recognize him. This is the point where insults and anything that’s not nailed down start getting thrown, but Chase is so composed and reverent. I wonder if he’s on Xanex or something.
He pats the sofa cushion next to him. “Please just sit and talk to me.”
I look at him as if he’s a stranger. “You never mentioned you were abducted by aliens. Was it just your crazy temperament they sucked out of your brain, or did they probe anything else?”
He chuckles. “I lost you for so long, I’m not about to waste more time fighting with you. All this shit with Aiden has made me realize how precious each second is and how they can slip through our fingers if we aren’t careful. Here, I’ll start if that makes it easier. When I left your room that morning, I was on cloud nine. I thought we were finally in the right place.” He fans his hands, indicating the house. “Obviously I had big plans for us. I never saw that voicemail coming.”
“Did your big plans include Stacy? Your date who I saw you making out with? The one who spent all night sending you naked pictures?”
He drops his head in his hands. “Of all the things to come back and bite me in the ass… I thought she was a lesbian.”
“What?”
He picks his head up. “Mom said I needed a date to keep all the gold diggers at bay, and I couldn’t tell her about you, so I asked a friend who I thought was a lesbian. She wanted to get to know some agents who were coming to the wedding. I figured it was a safe bet. Then on the way to brunch, she corners me and kisses me. Of course you had to walk by then. I’m guessing you didn’t stay long enough to see me push her away?” He looks at me for an answer that I don’t have. “Of course you didn’t. You had to think the worst of me. What else is new?” He stands up and pours himself a drink from the bar in the corner of the room.
“You’re playing tomorrow. Don’t drink. You’ll dehydrate,” I say softly.
“How’d you know about the pictures?” he asks without acknowledging my request.
“You left your phone in my room. After you left, it went off constantly. I checked it to see if it was an emergency.”
He leaves his untouched drink and crosses the room to me. He pulls me into his arms and kisses the top of my head. “If the roles had been reversed, I would have killed the guy and you and then killed the guy again. I’m so sorry you’ve spent all this time thinking I would do that to you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I reply.
His thumbs rub tender circles on my lower back. “I’ve pulled some horrible stunts in the past, especially when it comes to you, but I’m man enough to own up to them. There’s a lot of stuff that I just led you to believe happened because I wanted to hurt you like I was hurting. But by the wedding, I’d changed. All I wanted was for us to be together. I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize that, and I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat while I think about all time we’ve wasted.
“Enough of this,” he says. He scoops his arms under my legs and carries me upstairs. “There’s so much we need to talk about, but tonight, I just need you in my arms. Our history isn’t changing, and it will still be there tomorrow. Can tonight be about you and me, here and now?” He places me gently on his large, soft bed.
Chase turns off the lights and slides back onto bed. With feather-light touches, he slides his hands up my legs until he finds the zipper on the side of my skirt. He slowly pulls the zipper down then lightly taps my bottom, silently asking me to lift so he can remove my skirt. After pulling off my skirt, he gently pulls my sweater up and tosses both articles
of clothing onto an armchair across the room. His attention returns to me as he takes my hand and places tiny kisses, starting at the tips of my fingers, down my arm to my neck.
When I turn my head to give him access, I see the clock. “Chase, it’s so late. What time do you need to be at the field?”
He turns my chin so that I’m facing him. “Doesn’t matter. This will be better for me than sleep.”
I can’t argue with him there. Every time we’ve stayed up all night in the throes of passion before a match, I’ve played the best tennis of my life. I like to take credit for each of his national championship wins in college as I got him properly motivated.
“Now stop worrying. Would you rather spend this time debating the merits of sex on game day or actually having sex on game day?”
“With logic like that,” I say before I kiss him.
I pull at the bottom hem of his shirt then break our kiss long enough to pull it over his head. After tossing his shirt on the floor, he resumes our kiss. Running my hands down his back, I’m shocked by how different he feels from the last time he was in my arms. Three years in the NFL will do that. We’ve spent the last week in bathing suits and I’ve seen how much bigger he’s gotten, but seeing and feeling are two very different things. My fingers glide over the smooth curvature of the muscles in his back. When I reach the top of his sweats, his breath hitches.
I slide my hand between us and tug on the drawstring. Once the knot is untied, I push his pants down over his firm ass. Chase breaks our kiss to kick off his pants. As he returns to the bed, I get a full view of him: taut, lean, toned, and well-endowed. My mouth waters at the sight. After having a cock like that, no wonder no one else has been able to satisfy me. I lean forward to kiss him, but he gently pushes me back.
“Not yet,” he whispers in my ear then kisses the spot on my neck that sets my body on fire.
“Tease.”
In the past, our pre-game sex was always fast and intense, a physical manifestation of his competitive mood. He’d be commanding, powerful, sometimes a little daring. But as he tenderly kisses my collarbone, I realize tonight is different. Tonight, he’s slow, deliberate. Chase explores my body with his mouth and hands, caressing every square inch of me as though he’s making up for lost time, and occasionally nips me as though to mark me as his.
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