Celi-Bet (Solomon Brothers #2)

by Leslie North

  “Sorry, Coach.”

  “Holbrook is too busy checking out the mascot to tell us our mismatch. We turned over the ball six times in the last three minutes. You got to communicate and pay attention.” Perkins fired those last words like an arrow between Chase’s eyes. “I can’t do it all from here.”

  He gave a surrender gesture with his clipboard and walked away. At the break in the huddle, a handful of rookies glanced at Chase as if he had just committed the crime of the century. Coach called a line-up change. Five fresh guys took the court.

  Chase dropped into the padded, courtside chair. His blood ran toxic. How in God’s name had he allowed Willow to hijack his focus?

  Tarek dropped beside him.

  “Man, you already hurtin’ if you’re looking at a blue muskrat like that.”

  Chase hadn’t yet had a chance to confront Tarek for the morning prank. When they hadn’t been part of team-orchestrated warm ups, Chase had ticked the time alone on the practice court. And when the game’s announcer commented on the uptick in female fans at the game and asked for a shout-out from the ladies only—deafening in pitch and intensity—Chase had avoided eye contact with Tarek. He had been waiting until after the game, but Tarek’s smart-ass smile nearly put Chase over the edge.

  Tarek’s mother would find the fake positive pregnancy test Chase planted soon enough.

  6

  Chase’s Hummer carved fresh ruts into the snow outside the arena. He had wasted a good half hour searching for Willow—not because he particularly wanted to find her, but because it was as important as ever to win the bet against Tarek after his morning stunt. Part of Chase felt a slight tug toward the prospect of delivering leftover vendor food to the south side. Most of him just wanted his terrace hot tub and his favorite barbeque take-out.

  Willow, however, was not on the court or in the laundry room. No one had seen her, and she wasn’t answering her cell.

  He decided she had taken advantage of the extra key he had left on the island. As off-kilter as she was, he trusted her. She was a steward of so many, putting others first at every turn. He just hoped she extended that same courtesy with his possessions.

  Flurries blew in circular eddies against his windshield. His wipers swiped away the accumulation, lighter now than the measurable amount squeaking beneath his tires. He drove past the robotic arm of the secured lot and glanced out at the sea of white.

  And the lone hump of a car, dusted in snow, with its hood raised.

  Chase squinted through the flakes. From the angle of the car, he could tell someone was buried beneath the hood. He slowed to a crawl while he contemplated his next move. Best case: he helps someone out. Worst case: he gets robbed at gunpoint.

  Even worse case: it was Willow.

  Everything with her was ten times more involved than he bargained for. The woman didn’t know the definition of simple. But stranger, criminal, or Willow, he knew he couldn’t enjoy his brisket with special sauce until he offered to help.

  He navigated his SUV closer. A parking lot lamp cast an eerie orange glow on the distressed vehicle and something blue. Closer, he saw the furry rump of a costume wiggle under the hood.

  Chase braked and shifted into park. He tipped his head back against the headrest and sighed. Willow wouldn’t do a simple lift back to his place and call for roadside. His stomach growled, one final plead before it kissed a warm, spicy, post-game dinner goodbye.

  The Hummer’s high headlights illuminated the area beneath the Vega’s hood. Neck up and one costume-free naked arm, she was Willow in pigtails. Neck down, she was a blue muskrat turned abominable snow monster. Her free right hand worked something beneath the hood.

  He popped out of his toasty vehicle. Before he had a chance to ask her the problem, she straightened and fired off a question only Willow could have at that moment.

  “Got any pantyhose?”

  Chase patted his ass and thighs and reloaded his voice with heavy sarcasm. “Damn. I left my control-top fishnets in the locker room.”

  “Cute.” She flashed him a patronizing smile. “None of your supermodel dates left any in the back of that overpriced tank?”

  “You’re hardly in a position to be casting stones at my ride.” He ducked his head under the hood, mostly to block the icy north wind. He knew shit about broken-down cars. Less than shit. “What’s the problem?”

  “Broken alternator belt. If I had pantyhose I could wrap it around the pulleys and tie it off.”

  “How do you know so much about cars?”

  “I dated a grease monkey once. How do you know so much about pantyhose?”

  “I dated a Lakers girl once.”

  She rolled her eyes, this time accompanied by a half-grin. His gaze trailed to her bare arm, so strangely out of place in this setting, in this cold. So completely fit, the slight contours cast shadows.

  “Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “I’m not going back to your place.”

  This news did not hit him as he’d expected. He had been waiting to hear her say those words since this absurd bet began. Now that she had uttered them, his lungs took in less frigid air and his body tinged with an odd vacancy.

  “You’re not?” Crap. His question came out anything but unaffected.

  “Nope.”

  “Let me guess—another of your Girl Scout missions?”

  “Girl Scouts kicked me out. I was too…”

  “Wild?”

  “Unconventional. I gave away all my cookies.”

  His laugh came out on a cloud-burst. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “You up for it?”

  “Actually, I’m starving.”

  “I can get you mashed potatoes. That’s all I can promise. And not even very good ones.”

  “Tempting.”

  “I can’t disappoint, Chase. People are depending on me.”

  Her tone had sobered, left him behind—again. She attacked this philanthropy thing like he attacked basketball. One look past her flake-covered lashes to the hope beyond, and he couldn’t say no.

  “Mashed potatoes it is.”

  Willow squealed and bounced and filled his arms with a fifty-pound, damp muskrat pelt and one semi-warm arm slinked around his bare neck before she caught herself. The unexpected touch skipped heat down his spine and awakened his frozen sub-waist parts, groin to toes. He dismissed the sensation away as the rush that came from helping someone else. Deep down, he knew that rush wouldn’t have come from helping just anyone. Helping someone who did nothing but help others carried a special weight.

  They secured the Vega and climbed into his SUV. The smell of sweaty, damp balls eclipsed the new leather of his current-model-year Hummer. Bolt’s head filled his backseat, glaring at him in the rear view mirror with psycho eyes. Somehow, he didn’t care. Clearly, the mascot was part of the mission.

  “Where to?”

  “Pearson Children’s Hospital.”

  Chase glanced at his dash readout: 11:58. “This time of night?”

  “Always.”

  At the emergency room doors to the hospital, the only entrance open this late, Willow placed Bolt’s head on her shoulders and turned to Chase. She didn’t know why she cared what he thought, but she asked anyway.

  “How do I look?”

  “Hideous.”

  She marched through the emergency wing, waving at staff members on her way to the elevators. Willow took the vow of mascot silence very seriously.

  Well, mostly. “What do you have against Bolt?”

  “Nothing personal, really. I don’t like any mascots.”

  They reached the deserted lobby, and she punched the up arrow.

  “That’s un-sportsmanlike, un-fandom, un-American,” she said.

  “Too much like clowns. I don’t like them, either.”

  Bolt’s head sweltered from her labored exhales. Sweat squeezed from her pores. “That’s just wrong. Clowns get a bad rap. Their sole purpose is bringing joy. The world could use a
little more of that.”

  “I don’t disagree. I just don’t need mascots and clowns bringing joy into my world.”

  Chase was so closed-minded, so elite, he couldn’t even access that part of his soul that housed innocent fun. When he wasn’t chasing the net in search of glory, his world was plastered all over the nightly entertainment shows with photos of L.A. beach parties and French Riviera yachts. Every time his diamond-encrusted fortress crumbled a bit, she was reminded why he was the worst role model for Dylan.

  “Right. You have Hollywood actresses for that.”

  “You say that like they’re all snakes. They’re good people. Most of them. You don’t have the market cornered on kindness, you know.” Though his words were muffled through the mutant-sized mask on her head, his tone contained enough armor to forge the Rutgers Scarlet Knight costume.

  Since she couldn’t fire back what she really wanted to say—how absurd the notion that she somehow did any of this to gratify some self-stroking agenda—she reared back, Bolt’s paw fanned to his muskrat nose, and wiggled her hairy digits.

  “Nice. Very mature.”

  They entered an open elevator and rode up to the third floor in silence. Willow planned to seek out Loretta first. She was the RN on night duty this week who had called Willow to let her know Javier had asked about Bolt. He was a ten-year-old who wanted to be the first Latino American president. Javier could name all forty-three U.S. presidents and their vice-presidents sworn into office–Grover Cleveland being the notable exception that had messed with the consecutive numbers—and one little-known fact about each one. Her personal favorite was Herbert Hoover, who donated his entire executive office salary to charity. Javier also had end-stage leukemia.

  Loretta lit up when she saw Bolt coming. Or maybe it was Chase standing beside her. Willow had never heard the woman so tongue-tied in her greeting.

  Willow pointed at Javier’s room.

  “Up watching a rerun of the game, as usual.”

  More hospital staff gathered. For midnight, the floor sure was hopping. Then Willow noticed they were all women. She grabbed Chase’s hand and dragged him into a snack room for families and visitors. The door suctioned closed behind them.

  She lifted off Bolt’s head.

  “What?”

  “You never asked me why I visit here at night.”

  “Why do you visit here at night?”

  “Because at this time of day, it’s all about the kids. There aren’t parents around wanting me to pose for photos with healthy siblings or hospital PR execs pulling me away from the patients. It’s just a few staff members and the kids here who need the kind of happiness Bolt brings.”

  “So…?”

  “So you being here in all your blazing hot…Gordon Ramsay glory has unearthed every female staff member in this wing of the hospital.”

  Chase laughed, a show of impeccable teeth and lips that would have caused mass cardiac arrest had they been in the hallway. “Gordon Ramsay does it for you, huh?”

  “He’s passionate and…” She squeezed her eyes closed, her frustration bubbling to the surface. “Totally irrelevant to my point.”

  “What do you want me to do, hide?”

  “Better. You’ll be Bolt tonight.”

  “No.” His no was so swift, she knew he hadn’t considered the beauty of being inside a costume, sweaty ball smell or not.

  “Wearing a costume means you don’t have to pretend to be anyone else. No expectations of how Chase Holbrook, power forward for the Pittsburgh Alloys, would behave.”

  “I’m six-foot-eight, Willow.”

  “There’s plenty of room in here. Bolt just won’t be so…saggy.”

  “You’re forgetting my strong dislike of mascots.”

  “You shouldn’t knock something until you’ve tried it. Afterward, if you still dislike mascots, I will respect your opinion on the matter because it comes from a place of authority.”

  “I don’t know…” He did that thing he often did where he scrubbed his face with his palm, eyes pleading toward the ceiling.

  “There’s a boy out there in room 3042 who wants a blue muskrat all to himself. Don’t make him share Bolt with twenty horny nurses.”

  God’s truth, Chase blushed. Magnum underwear man blushed. It was glorious.

  “One kid. If I hate it, we swap back.”

  Willow crossed her fuzzy heart with Bolt’s paw.

  “All right.”

  She rocked out a jazzy dance move and wiggled out of the costume, firefighter-style. All Chase had to do was step inside.

  Except Chase didn’t move.

  She followed his stare, thinking she had been outed with massive sweat stains or something, but all she saw was her usual under-Bolt clothes—a sports bra and boy shorts. “What?”

  If he had blushed before, he was certifiably apple-colored now—hairline to neck. She realized what had him so freaked and turned so her back was to him.

  “I won’t look.”

  “I’m not stripping.”

  “You’ll bake.”

  “It’s snowing outside.”

  “And it’s Phoenix in July inside Bolt. Besides, I need something to cover.”

  He released a dramatic sigh like a teenaged girl deprived of her cell phone and seeing her crush, all on the same day. She really thought she had the whole Chase Holbrook-nearly-naked thing down, but the sound of his warm-up pants unfastening—snap, snap-snap—had his late-night commercial flashing through her brain. She couldn’t become another one of those simpering females who basked in his nearness. Even if he had Gordon Ramsay beat. By a mile—or kilometer, depending on the continent. She was the one keeping him on the straight and narrow. Tarek trusted her character.

  His jacket and pants draped her shoulder. With them came his freshly-showered scent—clean and sophisticated and far richer than the Irish Spring that always occupied Estelle’s shower because she had once fallen in love with a married Irishman. Willow focused on snack-sized chocolate cookies in the vending machine because it kept her from worrying about her own stench after occupying the costume all evening, and it kept her mind off of a treat of a very different variety. And because, well, chocolate.

  The unmistakable zzzzrup of the closure at Bolt’s side seam was her cue to turn. She took in the muskrat body and the GQ head.

  And laughed. Classic. Like one of those flip games for kids.

  “I’m done.” He reached near his neck to unzip.

  “Don’t. I’m sorry.” She brought her hand down over his. Her touch lingered far longer than she intended, which made everything in that room as awkward as if she’d had sweat stains from the get-go. He broke the tension first.

  “I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “It isn’t sweaty balls. It’s Nunzio’s feet.”

  Willow giggled. “Lean forward.”

  Chase complied. She dropped Bolt’s head over Chase’s with an unceremonious plop.

  “You look amazing. Get ready to make someone’s day.”

  “I can’t see in this thing.” His voice was muffled but amused.

  “Bolt doesn’t talk.”

  She slipped on his jacket, still warm from his body, then gathered his paw and led him out into the hallway. Women in scrubs gave them strange looks then went about their business.

  “What do I do?” he whispered.

  “Just be you.”

  7

  Willow and Chase-dressed-as-blue-muskrat entered Javier’s room. The little boy’s eyes widened when he looked past her at his other more exotic guest.

  “Bolt!”

  Had Javier not been tethered by IVs and medicine drips, he would have ambushed the mascot. Bolt drew close to the bed and gave an awkward wave.

  So it wasn’t Broadway, but it did take some practice to get into character.

  Javier waved back then hugged Willow. He wore a blue Alloys jersey with Tarek’s number on it and pajama bottoms patterned with basketballs.

&nbs
p; “Hi, Wil.”

  “Hey, champ. Looking good. You’re wearing my favorite player’s jersey.”

  Bolt went all paws-on-hips. She imagined Chase’s expression in contrast to Bolt’s open-mouth OOOOh face.

  “Dad says they were sold out of Holbrook ones. He has one on backorder.”

  At this newsy tidbit, Bolt did a triumphant victory squirm complete with we-are-the-champion fist pumps. This sent Javier in to a fit of giggles, which, in turn, egged Bolt on to more moves.

  Willow laughed. She swiped Javier’s phone off the nightstand and captured a few choice moves so he could show the other kids in the cancer wing. Never in a million years would she have expected Chase Holbrook to Hit the Quan in a blue muskrat costume. She picked up Javier’s bedside phone and dialed the hospital kitchen.

  “Food services. Alex speaking.”

  “Hey, Alex, it’s Willow.”

  “Finally decided to grace us with your presence, eh?” he teased.

  “You know how busy the season gets,” said Willow. “How’s that cute little Malamute puppy of yours?”

  “Chewing on everything.”

  “Text me pictures. I’m sure he’s so much bigger now than when I last saw him.”

  Javier snagged her attention with a perfectly-executed dab. Bolt dabbed, too.

  “Thanks for the vet recommendation. She’s great. What can I send up tonight?”

  “I promised mashed potatoes. A lot of them. And lime Jell-O.”

  “Got you covered, love.”

  “You’re the best, Alex.”

  By the time she hung up with Alex, Javier had conned Bolt into sitting beside him in bed. The contrast in size was staggering. Javier looked a little like a flesh wound on the elbow of a blue muskrat. They watched the rerun of Chase juking a star Charlotte player and sailing past for an easy layup. To say Javier and Bolt celebrated was an understatement.

  The final few minutes of the game played out. Javier reached for the remote and turned off the television. When Bolt tried to give him more room to settle back into bed, the boy grabbed Bolt’s furry elbow and held him in place. Bolt stretched out again beside him.