by Lily Kate
“I’m so happy for you. Enjoy it.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling as the baby smiles back at me. “What about you? Does it ever fade?”
“It doesn’t fade,” she says, again tossing a grin over her shoulder. “It just changes. No glamorous weekends in New York for us, at least not now. But that’s okay because we have something more important than ever... don’t we, Charlie?”
“His name is Charlie?” I ask, sticking out a finger until he latches on. “He’s so sweet.”
“We think so too!” She uses a high-pitched baby voice. “Six months tomorrow, isn’t that right, buddy?”
“I can’t imagine how you do it all. Do you stay home with him?”
“Nope, I’m a teacher.”
My eyes widen in surprise. “How?!”
She laughs. “You sort of just do it. Priorities fall in order—sometimes they change or adjust, but it’s doable. Plenty of women do it. Do you want kids?”
My smile grows fainter. “I’m not actually sure.”
“They’re great. A lot of work, but we think we’ll keep this guy, don’t we, Charlie?”
The baby giggles, as if he understands the joke.
We gear up for landing, and the mother becomes engrossed in keeping the baby from crying. I can’t help but wonder if I’d be any good at it—if that’s even the life for me.
Boxer already has a child. I love Boxer, and if we stay in love, the next logical step—sometime in the future—is marriage. That would make me a mother of sorts, and the thought sends a shiver down my spine.
I want to be good at it—to have the soft touches like the woman next to me, the goofy voices that make her son smile, but it doesn’t come natural to me. Charli deserves the best mother the world can provide, but what if I’m not good enough for her?
“How’d you know when you were ready?” I ask the woman as we land. “To have kids.”
“You’re never ready,” she says. “You just jump in and figure it out from there. Don’t overthink it too much. Things fall into place.”
“Thanks,” I say, gathering my things as the doors to the plane open. “It was really nice meeting you and Charlie. You have a beautiful family.”
“Enjoy your young love,” she calls, winking after me. “He’s a lucky guy.”
I’m so distracted by this family, my new friend who’s name I’ll never know, that I forget to turn my phone on until I hop into a taxi. Once there, I finally power up my cell, give the driver my home address, and sit back as the messages roll in.
The first one is from Lindsay.
Scratch that, the first three are from my assistant.
Lindsay: Nice weekend?! Deets, please!
Lindsay: What happened with Boxer?!
Lindsay: Boss! Are you flying? What happened with Rumpert?
Lindsay: Call me, boss.
Boxer: Joss, I miss you. Please call me tonight. Would love to chat.
Confused, I hit speed dial to Lindsay. “What’s going on?” I say the second she answers. “Why all the urgent texts?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lindsay says, her voice high pitched. “Boxer signed with Rumpert?!”
“What?”
She hesitates. “You didn’t know.”
“That can’t be,” I tell her, sounding more confident than I feel. “Trust me, this weekend was... incredible.”
“That’s great, boss, but I think you should swing by.”
“Your apartment?”
“You remember the address?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Seriously,” she says. “Swing by.”
I update the address to the driver, who makes a sharp left at the next light. Meanwhile, I hover my finger over Boxer’s message, but I don’t click into it. He’s still flying, so it’d do no good to respond. And there’s the small fact that I don’t even know what I’m responding about.
All I know is that my pink dress seems suddenly pale, and I feel like an idiot for wearing it. It’d seemed like such a fun idea this morning, so new and fresh, marking the start of something just as new and fresh between Boxer and myself.
But now Rumpert... of course Rumpert weaseled his way into this.
I just need to find out what stunt he pulled this time.
Chapter 39
Jocelyn
“Got any plans tonight?” Lindsay opens the door to her apartment with a bottle of wine in hand. “Because this is for you.”
She pushes it into my arms before relieving me of my suitcase and pulling it inside behind me.
“That bad, huh?” I ask, taking a look around her apartment. I’ve been here a few times, not so much for socializing, but for late night conferences or tough decisions made easier over a glass of wine.
Her place is cute and adorable—all things my expensive, somewhat cold condo will never be. She’s got throw pillows the color of Skittles decorating her couch and warm glowing lights lining her living area. It’s the grown up version of a college dorm room, and one can’t help but feel warm and welcomed inside.
“I’ll drive you home,” Lindsay says. She leaves the suitcase and my carry-on in the middle of the entryway and stalks toward the kitchen. The ankle-length skirt she’s wearing swishes around her bare feet, and she’s got somewhat of a flower-child vibe going on. “In exchange, you can pay me in news. Tell me about your weekend.”
“Why did you call me over here?” I slide off my heels and plod, also barefoot, into the kitchen. “Sounds urgent.”
“Tell me about your weekend, first. Because there’s a chance I’m dumb and confused.”
“Nope.” We slide onto bar stools, and I clink my glass against hers. “You’re definitely not dumb.”
“Confused, then.”
“Probably not that either, but I am,” I admit. “I can’t figure out what happened between my taking off and my landing that has everyone in an uproar.”
“Everyone?” She raises her eyebrows.
I shrug. “Okay, you are everyone.”
She lets out a laugh, shaking her head as she takes a healthy sip of wine. “Just one glass for me, then I’m driving. What happened? I’m not asking again, so ‘fess up.”
“It was...” I feel a rush of excitement returning as the memories flood back. The hot kiss in his dressing room, the feel of his body against mine, soft sheets shrouding us, the bursts of laughter that made even the most tender, sensual moments something filled with happiness. “Amazing.”
“So, you slept with him?”
I hold up a few fingers to demonstrate exactly how many times.
Her jaw falls open. “Damn, woman! You were only in town, what—twenty-four hours? You’ve been busy.”
“But he’s so...” I pause, debating which word to use first. He’s so many things, and I can’t possibly pick between generous, kind, sexy, romantic. “He’s incredible. God, I sound like a teenager over here.”
“You’re in love! Did you tell each other?!”
I grin, wait for a suspended second, and then nod.
“Ohmigod.”
“I know! I didn’t plan on it. I most certainly didn’t prepare anything, and I never dreamed it would happen—especially not this weekend, so soon. But everything just felt right. I wasn’t an idiot, was I?”
“No, you’re not.”
I frown. “That doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as I hoped it would. What did I do wrong? Is there some dating taboo I’m not aware of that I broke? He said it first, so I figured it wasn’t too soon.”
“I’m just confused at one piece of the equation,” Lindsay says, eyebrows furrowing. Her glass of wine is forgotten on the counter as she leans in nearer to me. “If you both are madly in love, then why the hell did Boxer sign a contract with Andy Rumpert?”
I blink. “He didn’t.”
She sits back, fingernails tapping against the counter. “Then color me confused.”
“Who did you hear this from?”
“Andy.”
/> “What?!”
“He called my cell—my cell phone, and I don’t even know how he has that number—to congratulate you. Through me. It was bizarre.”
“Congratulate me on what?”
She clears her throat. “Your relationship.”
“Why would he do that without telling me, without saying anything?”
“You had no clue about this whole thing?”
My face colors, and it doesn’t escape Lindsay.
“What am I missing?” she says. “Tell me what you left out.”
“Andy showed up in New York,” I tell her. “Out of the blue. From what I can tell, Boxer was completely surprised too. At least, it seemed like it—I’m not so sure anymore. We never talked about it.”
“Where? Why?”
The details here are all hot and fuzzy, and a flush of warmth to my stomach has me blushing again as I recall the details. “Rumpert visited the shoot Saturday afternoon and surprised us both.”
Lindsay’s barely holding back a smile. “And?”
I roll my eyes and lower my voice, as if someone’s listening. “We were making out in Boxer’s dressing room, and things were getting all steamy when Rumpert knocked on the door and interrupted everything.”
Lindsay leans forward, her face in her arms, clearly stifling laughter. “I’m trying not to be insensitive.”
I groan, the images coming back to me in droves. Boxer pressed against me, his hand on the mirror, holding me in his arms as we spiraled into an abyss of desire. “The fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints?”
I explain a few more of the details and Lindsay eats it right up, wearing a look of surprise and an odd smile on her face.
“I didn’t give you enough credit, boss,” she says. “That sounds like a fantastic make out session.”
“It was,” I tell her. Even at a time like this, I can’t deny it, nor can I wipe the satisfied smirk off my face. Until I remember the evidence. “But I’ll bet you anything Rumpert connected the dots. It’s not like Boxer was wearing a ton of clothes, and I was probably all flustered, and with everything else...”
“What does it matter if he put everything together or not?” Lindsay shrugs. “It’s your business who you make out with and where.”
I give her a look. “It’s Andy.”
“Right.”
“Where there’s a will, he’ll find a way to ruin things.”
“Boxer didn’t say anything about meeting with him?”
“No, he...” I pause, flicking through memories of this morning when he’d begun to say something about meeting someone, and I’d filled in Charli. “He didn’t volunteer anything.”
“Maybe he was trying to keep you out of it?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Any thoughts on where Rumpert is now?”
She shrugs. “I’ve got his number, since he just phoned.”
“What do you say about calling him back?”
She clicks dial. “Should I talk, or do you want to?”
I push the wine glass away. “I’ll handle this one.”
Chapter 40
Jocelyn
“I’ll wait here,” Lindsay says as she pulls up in front of Andy’s office building. “I figure you want privacy on this one.”
“Probably best,” I say, climbing out of the car. “Thanks again for the ride. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Me neither,” she says on a laugh. “But I guess you’ve been hiding some things from me.”
“Hiding things?” I frown, turning back to glance through the window. “What do you mean?”
“Here I thought you were all buttoned up and proper, and it turns out you’re macking on hockey stars in their dressing rooms!”
I roll my eyes, standing and waving her off with my free hand.
“Show him who’s boss in there, alright?”
I give her a thumbs up and hike my purse higher onto my arm before striding inside. He’s working on a Sunday—go figure. My phone call with him had been brief, and I’d all but demanded an invitation to wherever he was hiding out.
It wasn’t a far jaunt to reach him. In fact, he’d sounded prepared for my phone call, even though it’d come from Lindsay’s number. Clearly, he’d been coaxing me on, planting the breadcrumbs I’d been eating up every step of the way.
Even as I can’t bring myself to regret a moment of my weekend with Boxer, I feel soft, vulnerable and exposed as I march into Andy’s building. I summon a faux cloud of confidence around me, but it’s weakened; I’m weakened. Because now I have something that’s more important than my job, and that puts me at a disadvantage.
Despite the mask of confidence, I’m aching inside. Hurt by Boxer’s hesitation to confide in me, to give me even the slightest inkling what he was thinking on the matter of an agent. Whether or not he signed with me, it didn’t matter. What hurt worse is that he hadn’t talked to me about his decision at all, not a word. Not even a text to let me know before Rumpert blindsided me with his shiny news that’d be sure to make the rounds by tomorrow morning.
“Ah, lovely seeing you here,” Andy says, as I bypass the lobby and open his office door without knocking. “It’s been so long.”
“What’s going on?” I don’t mince words even as he scans me, head to toe. “Rumpert, eyes on my face.”
His gaze lingers at the hem of my dress, a bit of curiosity there, more than anything. As if wondering what’s underneath, what’s behind the curtain.
The stupid pink curtain.
I shouldn’t have worn pink—this is why I never veer from my standard black uniform. On the one day that I do, I have to face my nemesis down wearing cotton candy colors and flushed cheeks from a night spent thinking about everything but work.
A wave of stupidity rolls over me. All these years of hardening myself, preparing myself for the worst—never letting a crack, a fissure weaken my spine of steel. So what if I’d earned horrid nicknames? At least I’d been consistent. Stable. Reliable.
Now, it feels as if everything I’ve worked for all of these years has faded to nothing. A wave of embarrassment racks over me as I stand before the one man I desire more than anything to beat. To win. I don’t even know the game we’re playing, but I hate that I’m losing.
“Nice color,” Rumpert says. “It looks good on you.”
“What’d you pull on Boxer?”
“Pull? Nothing. We had a lovely chat.”
“When?”
“Oh, he didn’t share?” Rumpert sits back in his chair, arms folded behind his head. “We set up our little meeting on Saturday afternoon. We had a nice breakfast today.”
“What makes you think he’d tell me that?” I shake off the jolt of surprise—it had been pre-planned? I’d been assuming that something had happened behind Boxer’s back, or last minute, or that there is some logical explanation for everything. “We’re acquaintances. He’s allowed to meet with whomever he wants.”
“Don’t play that game with me.”
“I don’t know what game we’re playing here, Andy. I’d love a little clarity.”
“Love, funny word, isn’t it?” Rumpert eases forward and pushes a small stack of papers near me. “Boxer signed with me for a year this morning in New York.”
I blink, staring down at the papers. Sure enough, there’s a signature scribbled on the lines, and the rest of the contract looks to be standard and in order.
I wish I had a smart retort, a comeback of sorts, but I have nothing. My energy is draining slowly, surely through my limbs, seeping out every pore. In seconds, I fear I’ll collapse.
“He loves you, I’ll give him that.” Rumpert raises an eyebrow. “So, if we’re playing the game of love, sure, you win. But the rest of the game, the most important game of all... I win.”
“Your priorities are not in order,” I tell him as he taps Boxer’s name on the signature line. “If you think that’s what’s most important.”
“You wouldn’t be so upset if it didn’
t bother you.”
“I’m upset because you’re playing dirty. How did you get him to agree to this?”
“I’m persuasive.” He waves his hand, then returns it behind his head. The room is filled with flashy, showy bits of trophies, plaques, and other paraphernalia blaring his name. “I’m good at my job.”
“Humor me. How’d you do it?”
“Let’s just say I gave Boxer a keepsake of his stay in New York.”
“Keepsake?”
“Don’t worry, I saved one for you.” He reaches into his desk drawer and removes a photograph, then slides it across to me. “This is the last copy. I promised him I’d handed them all over, but I kept this one for you.”
The photograph has a startling effect on me, causing my throat to swell up, my heart to beat faster and faster until my fingers come to rest on the edge of the photo, my legs pressing into the front of his desk as I sway.
“When did you take this?” I shake my head, and rephrase. The photo is of Boxer and I locked in a sensual kiss, his hands on my lower back, my fingers entwined through his hair. “I realize when, but... never mind. It doesn’t matter. You blackmailed him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I merely showed him these images and explained what it might look like to the rest of the community should these get out and about.”
“You threatened to ruin my reputation,” I say quietly. “And he did whatever you asked of him to spare me the repercussions.”
“Love makes a man do strange things. Though, I really think it will be a great partnership between the two of us. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
I pick up the contract, reading it over. It’s firm, locked in solid, and my heart sinks with each paragraph.
“Looks pretty, doesn’t it?” Andy says.
My throat is too tight to speak. I gaze over the rest of it, my eyes coming to land on his name down below. I stutter, cough, and then cover it up by clasping a hand to my forehead. “I don’t want to see this anymore.”
Andy clucks sympathetically. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart.”