Stone stopped writing. He placed the pen next to his pancakes. “This isn’t about Tom Felt’s kids. I appreciate that you’re trying to protect them. But this is about the women who have reported his misconduct in the organization. This is about the league’s commitment to combatting abuse of power. Things are changing. You can’t sit on the bench if you know something, Jack.”
“I don’t know those details. I don’t have the information you were hoping for,” I argued. The investigator was pushing me, and I didn’t like it. I was willing to fight back. I didn’t have to speak on Coach Felt’s behalf. He was the kind of man who could stand up for himself, but those kids didn’t need to know their dad was a man whore. No kid should have that kind of information shoved in their faces.
“Are you protecting him? It sounds like your relationship was personal, almost paternal.” His tone became accusatory.
I clenched my jaw. “Sure, he was like a father-figure for a long time. But I never could get past how he cheated on Randi. I kept him at a distance sometimes. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel for his children. That I don’t feel for her.” I pushed back in my chair. “I can’t help you with anything else. There were women. Lots of women. But I never saw anything in the front office. And I never saw anything that looked like harassment. You have my statement. Have a good trip back to New York.”
Stone called after me, but I strolled out of the restaurant, through the hotel, and past the lobby doors. The wind smacked me in the face. I slid my sunglasses on just as I looked toward the sun overhead. It was a cold but bright. Babcock Industries.
I saw the name splattered on the building across the street. Mother Fucker.
It had to be the headquarters of Charlie Babcock’s company. This city wasn’t big enough to spawn more than one successful Babcock.
I marched across the street, dodging a car and a truck that blew its horn. I was surprised when I yanked on the door and it opened. I didn’t expect to walk through on a Sunday afternoon. The lobby was quiet. The floors were shiny, and the brass fixtures looked as if they had recently been polished. I tapped the gold button.
The elevator doors retracted and I stepped in.
31
Noelle
I eyed my brothers suspiciously. I could only see half of Cal’s body on the kitchen floor. His torso was wedged under the kitchen sink. Daniel held the box for the new garbage disposal.
“I need that screwdriver,” Cal directed.
Daniel rattled a few tools in the toolbox before handing it to him.
“This is great, but I’ve gotten by this long without a garbage disposal.”
Daniel shrugged. “But now you don’t have to.”
“What are you going to bring next weekend? A new dishwasher?”
Cal kicked his leg out and sat forward, clear of the cabinet. “That’s not a bad idea since you have the garbage disposal. We should get the same brand and match them up.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t need a dishwasher. This one works.”
Daniel shoved the installation instructions in the trashcan. “What can we do? What would help you the most?” he asked. I saw the earnestness in his eyes.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Hey, is this leftover pot pie?” Cal rummaged through the fridge.
“Yes, Jack and I made it last night,” I responded.
“Jack?” Daniel and Cal exchanged a look. A look that was protective and apprehensive.
Cal tugged open the lid on the container. “Can I eat this?”
I nodded. “Sure.” I was going to make something for dinner tonight when Jack returned from the arena.
“About Jack?” Daniel prompted. “Is it serious? Are you seeing him more? What’s going on there?”
“I don’t bug you about your love life.” I peered at him. “Which needs way more attention than mine does.”
Cal burst out laughing. “Or yours.” I turned my attention on him.
“Simple question,” Danny argued. “Seems like a good guy, but it can’t be easy in the middle of hockey season to start dating.”
“That’s why we decided to skip over that part.”
Shit. The looks they gave me. Confusion. Concern. Unease.
“I skip dates just to get to the end,” Cal teased. “I get it.”
Danny punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up. I don’t think that’s what Noelle is saying. Is it?”
I sat at the kitchen table. “We told Phoebe last night.”
“Told her what?”
I had to choose my words carefully. Daniel would dissect our decision from every angle. Cal would want to slug Jack.
“It’s been a month of us trying to take things slow. We’ve talked for hours and hours and hours.” My eyes darted back and forth between them. “We’ve gone on dates. We’ve included Phoebe. He knows about Andrei.” I blushed thinking about how every confession I made to Jack only brought us closer. How every time I bared my soul, we became stronger. “He’s it. He’s my future. He’s my life. I love him.”
“He’s it?”
I nodded at Cal. “He is. I know there are a lot of details and logistics. But honestly, I don’t care about all of that and neither does Jack. We’ve decided we want to be together.”
“Huh.” Cal leaned against the counter. He had stopped forking the pot pie on a plate. “So did he propose?”
“He doesn’t have to propose,” I responded.
“Is he moving in here?” Daniel asked.
“That’s part of the logistical stuff. He’s going to be here for dinner, and we’ll talk about it. But I have a lot going on at work and he’s going to help me figure that out first. He’s in Denver a few days this week. There’s a lot going on. Okay? We’re happy. We’ll figure this small shit out.” I wasn’t going to mention the tiny chance that I was pregnant or Jack’s promises to give us a Christmas baby. I could hold off on that until my brother’s absorbed round one of the news.
“It seems like you’re moving fast. What about Phoebe?” Danny prodded. “This could tear her apart if you two don’t stay together.”
My brow furrowed. “We’re going to stay together. Phoebe loves Jack. I wouldn’t have gotten here if I wasn’t completely certain he was all in too.”
It was getting later. I started to worry Jack would walk in on the conversation with my brothers. I wanted them to wrap up the visit before he opened the door.
My phone buzzed. “Hold on, that’s Jack,” I announced. I turned my back to them. “Hey, how’s everything going at the arena?” I was happy to hear his voice. It calmed me.
“Noelle.” He didn’t sound normal.
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t usually jump to conclusions, but I could hear it.
“I-um-I need some help.”
I crept out of the kitchen, down the hall, and sat on my bed. I wanted to be out of Cal and Danny’s earshot.
“What is it?” I tried to keep my voice steady even though there was a gnawing sensation in my belly.
“I’m at the courthouse.”
“Courthouse?”
He breathed loudly into the phone. “I was arrested, Noelle. Can you come bail me out? I don’t want to call the team. I don’t want this to get out.”
I pressed the phone securely to my ear. “J-Jack, why were you arrested.”
“Shit. I fucked up.”
“Just tell me.” I had a horrible feeling.
“It was assault.”
“Assault?” That didn’t sound like Jack. As many times as he offered to clock Andrei on the ice, I knew it was bluster. “You hit someone?”
The phone crackled with silence.
“Jack? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Who was it?” I tried to imagine how something like this could happen.
“Charlie Babcock.”
Suddenly, it made sense.
“I’m on my way.” He hung up and I ran to the
kitchen to search for my keys.
“So, where’s Mr. NHL?” Cal asked.
“I need to go help him with something. Can you watch Phoebe for me? Please,” I begged. “You can have your garbage disposal back if you’ll just watch her.”
“We’ve got her,” Daniel offered. “You go.” He must have seen how frantic I was to get to Jack. Thank God they didn’t ask any questions.
I hurried out the side door and ran to my car. What in the hell was Jack doing punching Charlie Babcock?
I started the ignition and my tires squealed as I peeled out of the driveway toward downtown.
* * *
The last time I had been in the local holding facility was when Cal was in college and he thought it would be fun to drag race. He didn’t call Dad or Danny when he was arrested. He called me, the kid sister because he knew I wouldn’t lecture him.
My hands shook as I walked through the metal detector. I couldn’t believe this.
“Right this way.” The attendant ushered me to a counter illuminated with fluorescent lighting. I wanted to shield my eyes. “You’ll need to sign where I’ve highlighted in yellow.” She pointed to the form. “And how are you going to pay?”
“Oh. Right.” I dug through my wallet for a credit card. It was the emergency card. I hadn’t put anything on it since I had to replace my tires last year. “Here.” I slid it toward her.
“I’ll be right back.” She carried the form and the credit card into a small office.
I fidgeted with my coat, buttoning and unbuttoning continuously until the clerk reappeared. She handed me a receipt and my card.
“I’ve asked an officer to escort Mr. Novak into the release room. You can wait for him there.”
“Where is the room?” I asked.
“On your way out. There’s a big sign on the door. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I wondered how long it would take for Jack to be brought into the release room. I waited almost forty minutes before the door opened and an officer deposited him inside.
I rushed to him and threw my arms around his neck. “Are you okay?” I searched his eyes for more answers. I wanted to know how things had gone horribly wrong. I wanted to know how he had found Charlie. I wanted to know if we could make sense out of it together.
His hands flattened against my back. “I’m fine. I want to get out of here.”
I nodded. “I’m parked out front. Come on.”
“Is Lucy watching Phoebe?” he asked when I pulled away from the curb.
“No. My brothers were at the house when you called.”
“Shit,” he murmured. “Did you tell them you had to come here?”
“No.” I stopped at a red light. “I didn’t say anything. I was just trying to get out the door. I couldn’t process it. I still don’t know if I can process it.”
He hung his head. “I don’t know what happened. He started saying all kinds of shit about you and I lost my damn mind.”
“How did you even know what Charlie looked like? How did you run into him?” I had a thousand questions equally as important.
“I went to his office.”
“How did you get in?”
Jack shrugged “It was open. But I took the elevator up and it stopped. There’s some kind of security code. I tried to find a way up from that level, but I gave up when all the stairwells had security codes. I was headed down. I was walking away. I was.” He paused. “That’s when the elevator opened to take me down to the lobby. When I stepped back on, it wasn’t empty. Charlie was in it.”
I gasped. I had to pull over. I couldn’t drive and listen to Jack tell me what happened at the same time. I put the car in park in an empty playground parking lot. The sun had set, and it was dinner time.
“So, you just punched him?”
“No.” He shook his head. We both moved to unbuckle out seat belts to face each other. “I knew it was him, but I wanted to make sure. I asked if he was Charlie Babcock. When he said that he was, I told him who I was. I was there to unchain you from him.”
“He didn’t go for it?” I whispered.
“He told me he had given you a generous new position at the museum. He said the endowment would do good things. He said a bunch of other shit. But I didn’t want to hear any of it. I wanted him to pay for hurting you. I knocked his jaw and he fell in the elevator. It was a hard hit.”
I gasped. “Oh my God.”
“He couldn’t let that end it.” Jack’s jaw clenched. He was angry recalling the fight. “I was okay walking away from that. I’d made my point. But he’s a real dick. When I walked into the lobby he stood back up. I was done. I really was done, Noelle. But then he told me how much he paid for you. He told me he owned you. He added up how much a minute cost him. An hour. A day. There was nothing I could do to shut him up. So I went straight for the nose.”
“Jack.” I felt my body trying to be absorbed by the cushions of the driver’s seat. If I could disappear I would. It was my fault. All of it was my fault.
“That’s when the security guard came back from his lunch break. He called the cops, and an ambulance.”
“An ambulance?”
He groaned. “For Charlie. He screamed he was going to press charges, while they tried to mop up the blood. Sue me for the blood on the floor. The hospital bill. His suit, which apparently you chose for him in a really intimate way.”
My mouth opened and then closed.
He exhaled. “I wanted to hurt him for what he did to you.”
“You can’t go around punching people, especially not billionaires who have control over my career,” I squeaked. “He’s a powerful man.”
Jack’s head fell backward on the headrest. “He doesn’t scare me. His money means nothing. I’ve got money. Plenty of money.”
I looked at him sideways. We’d never talked about money before. I respected that he didn’t press me the way my brothers did about bills or replacing my part-time job. He didn’t try to slip me cash or take over expenses. He didn’t drop by with unannounced appliances.
“What happens next?” I asked.
“I need to get in touch with the Dires legal team. I’ll probably have to hire my own attorney, but I’ll start with the team, and see where I go from there.”
I reached across the console and ran my fingertips over his knuckles.
“Can I take you home and make dinner? It doesn’t solve Charlie or work tomorrow. I know that. We could be together. We can talk it out. Just us.”
Jack tangled his hand in the back of my hair and urged me close to his lips.
“It solves it for me, baby.” His mouth took mine with hungry gulps and our tongues stirred with desperate need. “I don’t know how much longer I could have stayed behind bars.”
I giggled quietly. “Such a hardened criminal.” My hand ran over his thigh, sneaking between his legs. Jack groaned at the contact.
“That is dangerous.”
I sighed, withdrawing my hand. I did know how dangerous his cock was to me. It made me lose my sanity and my breath. This was the park I took Phoebe to play. I was not about to defile it by giving Jack a blowjob in the front seat.
“I’m sure you want to take a shower now that you’re out of jail.” I refastened my seatbelt. I put the car in reverse.
“Can I fit in your shower?” he joked.
“You fit in my bed last night.”
“I plan to fit there again tonight.” He squeezed the top of my thigh. I didn’t know how we were going to get through this. I didn’t know how to go to work tomorrow. I didn’t know how much Charlie would make Jack pay for his broken nose.
I drove home, wondering if we were strong enough to make it to the other side.
32
Jack
I’d heard about meetings like this one. I never thought I’d be in one.
The attorney for the Dires cleared his throat. “Let me make sure I have the order of events right. You’re saying you walked into Charlie Babcock�
��s office and punched him?”
“I was leaving his office. I ran into him in the elevator. Then I punched him,” I corrected Woody. It was a minor detail.
The attorney rubbed his forefinger and thumb across his brow. “You did this unprovoked?”
“I was provoked,” I stressed. “The man is a monster.”
Woody sighed. “He of course doesn’t see it that way. People tend to have a different perspective when their nose is broken. I can see if he’ll drop the charges.”
“I don’t care about the charges.” I stared at Woody. “He’s blackmailing my girlfriend.” Girlfriend wasn’t a strong enough of a word, but labels weren’t my biggest problem right now. “I have to get her out of there. Somehow.” I shook my head. “I lost my shit when I saw him. Is there something we can do about the money he’s holding hostage? He has put her job on the chopping block. He ruined her reputation. You’re the attorney. What can we do?”
I waited for an answer. I had led the team assembled at the table through the series of events that resulted in my arrest yesterday.
“How far are you willing to go to stand up for her?” he asked.
“I’d do anything for her. Tell me there’s something I can do.” Noelle and I had stayed up most of the night working on a plan that didn’t involve her resignation from the museum. I even offered to pay for my own endowment toward a building fund, but I couldn’t match the ten million, Charlie put up as collateral for her. We came up short on a decent plan.
“I think it’s best to handle this in-house if we can contain it,” Rick from Human Resources suggested. “But you have our support, Jack. We take care of each other here. That includes Noelle and her daughter. Charlie Babcock isn’t an adversary any of us want. Going public is only going to piss him off more.”
Woody pushed back in his chair, rocking up and down. “Do you think there might be some other witnesses? Maybe some other women or men who would make statements about his behavior? People who had seen something at Millers when Noelle was with him? Anyone willing to come forward to held her?”
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