Draw Play: The Originals (Seattle Steelheads Book 4)

by Jami Davenport

  “You think that’s all this is? Do you think I’m too shallow to have deep feelings?” Her accusations hurt more than he’d ever imagined, yet he’d been accused of being shallow all his life. Why should it bother him now?

  “I think you’re too selfish to see how important this is to me.” Mac fisted her hands and stood up straight, looking taller and a bit like an enraged mama bear when someone was messing with her cubs.

  “I’m selfish?” Bruiser laughed, a hollow sound that echoed off the walls of the room. “Take a look around you; then let’s talk about selfish. Maybe it’s easier to live your life in limbo. You never take risks. Hell, you never have to take a chance on anyone but yourself, and you can always come up with a bullshit reason why you aren’t available emotionally and physically.”

  “Finding my brother is not bullshit.” Mac’s voice rose a few decibels short of shrieking.

  “It is if you devote your entire life to it and have nothing left to show for it but regrets. What if you never find him? That’s highly possible. How long do you plan on doing this? Another year? Another five years? Another ten years? Another twenty years?”

  “However long it takes.” Mac walked to the door, holding it open for him.

  “Then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other.”

  “I guess not.” He heard a note of regret in her voice, as if someone had let the air out of her anger.

  Bruiser walked to the door and paused. “Be careful.”

  “I will. Good luck at your game.” She refused to meet his gaze.

  “Thanks.”

  Bruiser walked to his car. This time he wouldn’t be coming back in a few minutes to apologize. He was done.

  They’d sung their last song together, and there wouldn’t be an encore.

  Chapter 20—Stopping the Play

  Bruiser glanced at the game clock: 6:32 left in the game. It was twenty-one to fourteen, Steelheads ahead and in possession of the ball. He lined up in the backfield and sprinted past Harris toward the sideline. Harris faked a handoff, then tossed the ball on a slant route for a ten-yard gain. Seven plays later, Bruiser took the handoff from Harris, kept his legs churning, and powered five yards into the end zone, taking a couple defenders with him. The rowdy crowd in the stadium went wild. Bruiser grinned, over the hundred-yard mark for the game. Damn good way to start the new season. Helluva lot better than last year. But then, last year, the team hadn’t been running on all cylinders.

  Bruiser jogged off the field, pausing long enough to salute the skybox where Elliot sat with Rachel, Kelsie, and Lavender. He sank down on the bench, chest heaving, lungs screaming for oxygen. It was a fucking hot day, and he downed a couple cups of Gatorade, not giving a shit that the sticky liquid ran down his face.

  Brett slid next to him on the bench and elbowed him in the side. “Good job.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Bruiser couldn’t stop grinning. Damn, he loved this game.

  “Is Mac up there?”

  “Uh, no, Elliot is.” What a way to deflate his good mood. Mac’s absence weighed heavily on him. He’d hoped she’d have a change of heart and show up to surprise him, but she hadn’t. He’d put her cute face and sexy little body out of his mind on the field, but elsewhere, he just wasn’t that strong. As soon as he jogged off the field, thoughts of her flooded his brain, which pissed him off—a little. Women did not affect him like this. But Mac did.

  Brett studied him for a moment, nodded, and joined Harris and the coach huddled over a clipboard while poring over the next set of offensive plays. Bruiser rubbed his face with a towel and guzzled another cup of Gatorade.

  On the next play, Murphy nailed San Diego’s running back for a loss. The veteran linebacker fell on the fumbled ball. Bruiser leaped to his feet, yelling along with the sold-out crowd. Game over. The Steelheads won it, twenty-eight to fourteen.

  Absolutely damn good way to start a season.

  Except for this business with Mac.

  Bruiser jogged down the tunnel to the locker room, accepting his teammates’ praise with a nod or a high five. A bevy of reporters converged on him as soon as entered. They loved his interviews. Bruiser fielded their questions with his usual charm, even as he engaged in a fantasy of shoving their microphones down their throats. That in itself gave him pause. In the past, he’d basked in the attention, yet today it irritated him, just like the modeling gigs had lost their luster too.

  They asked the same damn questions over and over, stupid questions, not the questions he’d ask if he’d been in their shoes, and not the questions that he would assume the average viewer would want answered.

  Bruiser glanced over their heads to Harris, surrounded by a similar group. The guy soaked up the attention like a sponge, grinning and giving the reporters the amusing, blunt responses they’d come to expect from him. Bruiser used to rival Harris in the quick comebacks department. Not today. His answers sounded stilted and disinterested, especially to his own ears, and even a little impatient.

  “Bruiser!” One of the most annoying local reporters shouted at him and brought him back to the present.

  “Uh, sorry. What was the question?”

  “How did you feel about the fourth and one play where you were dropped for a loss?”

  That tight rubber band of control inside Bruiser snapped. “How the fuck did you think I felt? Happy? Pleased? You fucking idiot. The team trusted me to get a first down, and I missed the hole. And you’re asking me how I felt? I felt fucking pissed.” Bruiser snapped a towel in the direction of the reporters, and they quickly backed up.

  “I’m done answering questions. Get these fucking things out of my face.” The words spewed from his mouth like an evangelist preaching hellfire and brimstone. Instead of carefully measuring his responses and always being the perfect interviewee, he’d shocked them all by saying what he thought for once.

  The reporters scurried away. The news stories wouldn’t be singing his praises for his hundred-yard day but instead chastising him for losing his temper. They’d blow it all out of proportion, and rumors would fly. He’d either be on drugs, ready to quit the game, or having a fight with his girlfriend.

  Bruiser froze. Well, shit, maybe he was having a fight with his girlfriend.

  He escaped to the privacy of the showers. So far, the assholes didn’t follow the team into the showers, though he expected that day would come. He stood under the warm water, waiting for it to wash away his frustration and anger. But it didn’t. When he finally returned to the locker room, only a few of the guys lingered, one of whom was Harris, and his laser-blue eyes were trained on Bruiser like a stinger missile homing in on its target. Bruiser buried his head in his locker.

  “A little testy for a guy who’s predicted to have a record-breaking season,” Harris said in his ear.

  “Yeah.” Bruiser stood and toweled off his wet hair.

  “It’s not like you to lose it with those assholes. Something pissing you off?”

  “Just them.”

  Harris studied him with eyes that made rookies pee their pants and veterans take a step back. “Bullshit. You’ve been on edge all day. Not your businesslike self.”

  “I got the job done, didn’t I?” Bruiser snapped.

  Harris blinked a few times, almost smiled. “Yeah. Can’t complain.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Harris’s eyes grew bigger and a sly smiled crawled across his face. “It’s Mac.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because the only person who can tie me in the knots like that is Lavender. It’s always a woman. But not just any woman. The woman.”

  “I’ve got a lot of stuff on my mind.”

  “Take my advice. Make it easy on yourself and her. Admit defeat, quit making excuses, and go after her.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s been there.”

  “Definitely a man who’s been there.” Harris grinned, pulled his shirt on and buttoned it, and slapped Bruiser on the back. “Good game.”


  The quarterback sauntered from the locker room, looking every inch like a man in control of his destiny. Yet he’d admitted defeat and given in to a woman. Only Bruiser’s problem wasn’t like that.

  This wasn’t a battle of wills with Mac. This was a matter of her misplaced priorities and strong guilt overriding her life. And Bruiser knew all about those two things, which made them kindred spirits and an impossible match.

  * * * * *

  The Steelheads won their first game, and Mac missed it. And for what? Another wild goose chase that came to nothing. Ben’s former employee admitted he’d just been trying to cause trouble for Ben. Mac wasted a weekend on another dead-end lead. Now she was back at work and glad to be away from her father’s scheming and obsessing for at least a day.

  She put away the gardening tools in the storage shed. She glanced up as Jed approached. His guarded, businesslike expression scared the crap out of her.

  “Mac, I need to see you in my office when you’re finished here.” Jed refused to look her in the eye.

  “If this is about the scholarship, I already know.”

  “It’s not.” Jed walked away.

  “Okay, I’ll be right there.” Mac’s internal emergency broadcast system slammed into full disaster mode. After running to the bathroom, she washed her hands, splashed water on her face, and walked to the gallows of her boss’s office filled with more dread than a free agent with a poor training camp performance. Call it a sixth sense; she knew the news wasn’t good, not even close. Mac ran through the scenarios in her mind. Finally, she bit the bullet and knocked on Jed’s door in the maintenance area.

  “Come in,” he called.

  Mac entered the room and sat in the folding chair next to Jed’s messy desk. One pile of paper leaned precariously, just waiting for the air conditioner to kick on and send it fluttering across the room like birds scattering when a hungry tomcat shows up.

  “So, what’s up?” Mac clutched her hands in her lap and faked a casual smile.

  Jed didn’t smile. In fact, he squirmed like a man about to deliver some very distasteful news, and Mac was the recipient.

  “Jed?” Her smile stuck on her face, almost painfully.

  “Mac, this is hard for me.” God, he still wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Then just do it.” Mac ground her teeth together and waited for the worst.

  “We have to cut a full-time person.”

  She dug her fingernails into her hands. “No,” she whispered.

  “You’re our newest hire.”

  “But I need this job. I really like working here. It’s my dream job.”

  “Mac, don’t make this any harder than it is.” He shuffled some papers on the desk, looked at them as if he were reading them. Mac suspected he didn’t see them at all.

  “You think it’s hard on you? I have bills to pay.”

  “Mac, calm down. You’ll get unemployment, of course.” Finally, the coward glanced up, regret and sadness etched into every line on his craggy face. This wasn’t much easier for him.

  “But you guys need me. I take care of the gardens in front of the building. I make sure the inside plants are healthy. Remember the philodendron? It almost died until I came along and nursed it back to health.”

  Jed pursed his lips and said nothing.

  “Jed, tell me the truth.”

  “Well, we’re hiring some temp staff, interns from the college.” He tried to smile. “I’m so sorry, Mac.”

  Mac forced another smile when all she wanted to do was cry—which had become way too much of a habit lately. “It’s okay, Jed. I’ll be fine.”

  He stood, dismissing her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m certain.” Mac bolted out the door before he saw how fine she wasn’t. Avoiding a group of players jaw-jacking at the end of the hall, she took a detour and ran like hell for her car.

  Once inside the metal sanctuary, she gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, gulping in deep breaths of air and fighting back the panic. She couldn’t pay her bills on unemployment. She’d lose her house. Her father would expect her to do detective work twenty-four seven. She’d probably be able to get a job on a landscaping crew, but most of those jobs ended in the fall, and fall would be here in another month.

  Mac drove home, fighting back the lump in her throat every step of the way.

  She was so screwed. And worst of all, she didn’t even have Bruiser’s broad shoulder to cry on.

  * * * * *

  Bruiser was just about to leave Steelheads’ HQ when Brett waved him down. He rolled down his window. “Miss me already? We just spent the last several hours together.”

  “Fuck you.” Brett glanced behind him then leaned in the window. “I just heard that Mac got laid off.”

  “What? Why would they do that? She works her ass off for this place.” Anger and guilt spread through Bruiser like a wildfire in a dry grass field. This had to do with him. He knew it did.

  “Uh, can we say Veronica?”

  “Well, shit.” When Bruiser got his hands on that woman, he’d have more than a few words with her.

  Brett straightened. “Exactly. Well, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Shaking his head, Bruiser rubbed his chest with one hand, the other rested on the steering wheel. The tightness in his chest gripped him harder.

  As Brett nodded and backed away, Bruiser peeled out, leaving his friend eating his dust. This was partially his fault, and he knew it, making Mac one more person in his life he’d let down. Determination squeezed out the guilt because guilt did no one any good at this point. One way or another, he was going to fix this and keep his promise to Elliot. He would not disappoint the two most important people in his life.

  Most important? Elliot, yes, he could honestly say that. But Mac? He sucked in a quick breath and shook his head, but denial wasn’t working so well for him right now.

  Bruiser took the exit to Mac’s house. He might not be welcome, but hell, he’d do it anyway. Her father certainly didn’t pay attention to his daughter, and she’d need a friend right about now. He ignored the small fact that they were through, he told her he’d never come back, and that he was a major wuss where she was concerned.

  Craig’s truck sat in her driveway, but he didn’t see Mac’s F-150. Bruiser jogged up to the front door and knocked. Her father came to the door, binoculars in one hand and looking worse than ever.

  “Is Mac here?”

  “I haven’t seen her. I’ve been here all day.”

  “Have you talked to her?” Bruiser couldn’t keep the annoyance out of his voice. This guy needed to be her father for once.

  “No, not since last night.”

  “She lost her job today. I’m trying to find her.”

  “Damn, what happened?” To his credit, Craig put down the binoculars and actually pulled off a concerned-father expression. Whether it was genuine or not, Bruiser didn’t have a fucking clue.

  “Layoffs. They’re cutting back on permanent staff and hiring college interns for half the price.”

  Craig rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. He dropped into a chair and gazed up at Bruiser, his eyes bloodshot. The sadness etched into his face made him look much older than his years. “I hope I didn’t cause this.”

  Time to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Mr. Hernandez. “I’m sure it didn’t help with you calling her at work, expecting her to leave at a moment’s notice to chase after some red herring.”

  “I need her help.”

  “You need to let her have a life.” Bruiser crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Mac’s father, not cutting the man any slack.

  “I have to find out what happened to Will.”

  Bruiser glanced out the window, across the lawn to the neighbors’ house. “And if you never do, how long will you keep this up?”

  Craig frowned and stared at his hands clasped around the binoculars. “I don’t know.”

  “Look, Craig, I u
nderstand how it feels to lose someone you love. In your case, it’s even worse because you don’t know what happened, but at some point, Mac has a right to a life, rather than dedicating it to chasing every rumor and using every spare minute looking for a ghost. What about college? What about a family? Would Will have wanted her to give up everything for him?”

  “No,” Craig said so quietly that Bruiser barely heard him. “I just don’t think I can do it alone.” The man’s voice cracked, and Bruiser’s irritation subsided. He wished like hell he could heal this poor man’s life and Mac’s. Only he couldn’t.

  Unless—

  Trudy.

  Bruiser shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind.

  “Is that fair to her? You’re using guilt to manipulate her into helping you.”

  Craig shrugged. “I guess I have been.”

  “If you want to dedicate your life to the search, that’s up to you, but you shouldn’t expect Mac to do it. Hell, be a father for once and think about your daughter’s well-being instead of fixating on a son who is no longer here. Do what’s best for Mac.”

  Craig said nothing. His shoulders sagged, his entire body that of a broken man.

  “Do you have any idea where Mac might have gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Of course Craig wouldn’t know. He didn’t know anything about Mac because he hadn’t paid any attention to her these past three years. “Well, thanks. I’ll find her.”

  “If you do, would you have her call me?”

  “Yeah, I will.” Bruiser glanced back out the window again. “Why don’t you go home and get something to eat? You’re not going to see anything they don’t want you to see.”

  Craig shrugged but made no attempt to move.

  “And start being the father Mac needs. Get some professional help if you can’t do it on your own.”

  Craig nodded.

  Bruiser hoped like hell that Craig considered his words.

  * * * * *

  Mac stood in front of the nondescript condo in Kirkland near Lake Washington. She’d never been to his place before, which was a little weird considering how long they’d been seeing each other, but he’d never invited her. She expected Bruiser to live in that sleek new high-rise on the water, but it was an older condo, still nice, still with a view, but definitely not high-end. It shouldn’t surprise her after what his sister had said.