“You’re already working,” she pointed out. The look on her face, sweet and a little sad, made my heart turn over. She wasn’t wrong. I was at our team facilities every day to train, and we had team meetings every week. Not to mention practices taking up my days. It wasn’t the rigorous, exhausting schedule of the regular season, but it was still work.
“When did you get so smart?”
She smiled and snuggled in deeper. “In first grade. I’ll be even smarter in second.”
The directness of her answer, so literal, made me smile and close my eyes. At moments like this, I could pretend I was a regular dad who made crappy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, who did lopsided braids because my fingers were too big to be nimble when faced with all her hair. I could pretend I didn’t worry about whether the media would sensationalize my absence at Robert’s funeral, or if the bombshell on the deck was a random groupie trying to get a closer look.
My phone buzzed on the counter where I’d left it, and I dropped a kiss on Faith’s head before I went to grab it.
Randall: Turn on ESPN, you asshole. You owe me $100. Let me know when you want to make your statement.
Instantly, it was like someone dropped a steel beam over my shoulder blades. I could feel the weight of it so clearly that it made my back ache. Aiming the remote at the TV mounted on the wall opposite the couch, I flipped to ESPN. The familiar desk and studio background of SportsCenter came into view. When I saw my picture in the graphic on the upper left of the screen, I scowled.
“Yesterday, friends, family, and members gathered to honor the life of Robert Sutton the Third, longtime owner of the Washington Wolves, who passed away suddenly last week from a massive heart attack. Noticeably absent, however, was the team’s longtime quarterback, Luke Pierson. A source close to the Wolves organization told ESPN that there was tension between Sutton and Pierson over the past year, stemming from Pierson’s inability to make it to the Super Bowl for the second time in his career. His time with the Wolves has been plagued by injury and disappointed hopes from one post-season to the next.”
Her co-anchor glanced to the side with a sly smile. “Would you miss your boss’s funeral?”
She took on a shocked face, and I wanted to punch someone again. Preferably Randall. “Of course not. I love my bosses.”
Off-screen, you could hear the muted laughter of the camera crew.
Her co-anchor lifted his hands in a what are you gonna do? gesture. “Maybe it’s nothing, but when the leader on the field can’t show up to pay his respects to the guy leading off the field, I think there’s something wrong with that.”
She nodded. “Agreed. There’s definitely a story here, and it can’t bode well for the Wolves heading into the regular season.” Her smile was bright and practiced as she faced another camera. “We’ll be right back, so stay tuned.”
I punched the off button on the remote harder than necessary and braced my hands on my hips. “Son of a bitch.”
“Daddy.” Faith giggled.
After scratching the back of my neck, I fished a dollar bill out of my wallet and dropped it on her lap as I walked past. “Sorry, turbo.” Frustration made my skin feel hot, my hands restless and tingly. “I’m going to go downstairs and work out for a little bit, okay? Yell if you need anything.”
On the way down to my home gym, I grabbed my black boxing gloves and hand tape. And I kept my eyes off the slider when I saw movement on the deck again.
There was absolutely nothing there that I needed to see.
2
Allie
Honestly, I’m not sure what I was thinking. Baking was not my thing. In fact, as I stared down at the mess in front of me, I couldn’t think of a time that I’d ever attempted to make cupcakes before. But something about the current season of my life was making me want to try new things. Try things I used to think I couldn’t do.
A blob of bright pink frosting slid off the cupcake and onto the granite counters. Like putting frosting on homemade cupcakes, apparently. I knew the cake itself didn’t taste bad, but when you bought a box with only like, four instructions, it was hard to mess that up. Even for me.
As the frosting slowly melted off each cupcake, I picked up my phone and pressed the home button.
“Siri, why is the frosting melting off my cupcakes?”
Oh, saying it out loud somehow made it worse. What twenty-six-year-old didn’t know how to frost cupcakes?
After scrolling through a few links, I winced at the realization that you’re supposed to let the cupcakes cool first before adding the frosting. Very carefully, I scraped the pink blobs off each cake and then set them in the empty fridge to cool off a bit.
Once they were in there, I turned and looked around the house, which was just as empty as the fridge. It had been years since anyone in my family had been to this place.
That made me blink for a second, the stifling weight of repressed grief making my lungs into cement until I could breathe through it.
My family. My family was just me now.
Okay, nope. I hadn’t cried yet, and I was not going to start now. Not going to travel that path when I had cupcakes to worry about.
In the healthiest possible way, I would actively deny that I’d buried my father the day before, whom I hadn’t seen in three years, and that I was standing in the house left to me when my mother died more than twenty years earlier and had been sitting empty for the past five.
Since I’d last been here, some things had been updated, maybe because my father held some tenuous hope that I’d come back from Milan and live here. New kitchen counters and appliances. Flooring in the bathroom that I’d never seen before. But still, there was barely any furniture. A single chair facing out toward Lake Washington. A bed with a massive gray headboard in the master suite covered with a plush light pink quilt. Some stools pushed up against the kitchen island.
It was a blank canvas on which to start a new life.
Blank was just a nice word for empty, wasn’t it? The silence around me was deafening, and instead of diving into it like I maybe should have, I turned and found my Bluetooth speaker, cranked up some Kesha, and started a new batch of frosting. It was certainly preferable to wading into my emotions.
Just as I had that mentally healthy thought, my phone started ringing, and I used the side of my pinky, the only part of my fingers not covered with frosting, to answer the call.
“‘Lo?” I said, breathless from dancing around the kitchen.
“Miss Sutton? It’s Miles Kuyper from the offices of DeHaan, Kuyper, and Marston.”
I sighed. My dad’s attorneys. I’d already met one of the suits when he sat across a sterile desk and told me I was the sole beneficiary of my father’s estate, outside of the charities he mentioned, which would receive healthy checks. “Hi, what can I do for you?”
He cleared his throat. “Is it possible for you to come into the offices again this afternoon? We have a slight addendum to your father’s will that we need to inform you of.”
My brows bent in as I swirled some frosting over the next cupcake. “Umm, sure. Is everything okay?”
“Oh, it’s fine. Everything is fine. Just an additional bequest that we weren’t aware of last week.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Sure. I can be downtown in about an hour if that works for you.”
“Excellent. See you soon.”
He hung up first, so I left my phone on the counter and got back to frosting.
Twenty minutes later, I stepped back and nodded in satisfaction.
They weren’t beautiful, but at least they wouldn’t appear in a Buzzfeed article of epic Pinterest fails like my earlier disaster. But now I had two dozen pink-frosted cupcakes and no one to share them with.
My mouth twisted in a frown as I stared out at the sun-soaked lake.
To my right, I saw a flash of movement. The blue house next door to mine had a massive sliding door overlooking the lake and framed in it was a little girl staring at me
with her hands pressed against the glass. When she noticed me looking, her face spread into a huge smile, and she waved frantically.
Unbidden, my lips tugged up on the sides in a grin. I waved my fingers in her direction, and impossibly, her smile grew like I’d just thrown her a glitter-covered pony.
Like the house I was standing in, hers was large and immaculately kept. I couldn’t see much past her, but she had her nose against the window like I was her only entertainment. She moved to the right, and I saw a flash of pink, the exact color of the cupcakes on the counter. A cast covered her arm, and the fabric was so bright, I almost pulled out my sunglasses.
The idea sprang into my head like a flash, and I decided not to consider the complete foreignness of what I was about to do.
People brought baked goods to new neighbors, right? Wasn’t that what normal people did?
As I set a few on a paper plate—a perfect circle of imperfectly frosted cupcakes—I had a moment when I wondered if they’d recognize me. Would her mom answer the door and know that I was Alexandra Sutton, daughter of a rich man, famous only because of his money and my ability to pose well in nice clothes and post shit to Instagram?
Okay fine, I’d done a few spreads in lesser-known magazines, but it was enough that I’d earned money on my own.
But maybe she wouldn’t recognize me. Maybe she’d be friendly and open the door with a smile and invite me in for coffee, or even better, a glass of wine.
I felt better about that. Maybe we could be friends.
Before I walked out the door to find the small stretch of road that connected our houses, both on the end of the street, I slipped my flip-flops on my feet and shrugged a white cover-up on over my bikini. In the mirror hanging on the wall next to me, I gave myself a quick once-over. My hair was insane from sitting out on the deck, but my face held enough color from the sun that I didn’t need any makeup. For a second, the fresh-faced woman looking back at me looked so much like my mother that I paused and stared.
Everything about me, from the heart-shaped face to my full pink lips, was directly from her. Well, not my eyes. I got my ocean blue eyes from my dad. Getting good genes was like winning the lottery because I’d learned in twenty-six years that even if you were born with money, some people had no trouble being assholes to you. But smile prettily at them, and it was a sad fact of life that if they liked what they saw, they’d be more willing to give you a chance.
So with my cupcakes clutched carefully in both hands, I walked over to my neighbor’s with a smile on my face.
The garage doors were closed, and the covered front door was shadowed since it was angled away from the sun. If I hadn’t seen the girl in the slider, I would’ve thought the house was empty. Because of the way the street curved around with large trees and hedges, our houses were fairly protected from the traffic of the road. Making friends with them would be good.
Not that I struggled with being alone.
Nope. Definitely not.
My smile wavered a little bit as I came up the concrete steps to the large front porch. Two tall potted plants flanked the glossy white door, and the windows stretched up along either side of it were frosted for privacy. I was about to knock when my hand froze. Balancing the cupcakes carefully in one hand, I finger combed my hair with the other.
“Allie,” I whispered, “she won’t care if your hair is perfect. Just be yourself.”
With my smile stretched wide, I took a fortifying breath and knocked firmly on the door, stepping back slightly so I wasn’t creepy close to her when she opened it.
There was no answer, so I swallowed down the feeling that I was making a mistake and knocked again, a little bit louder this time. In the frosted window, I saw a flash of pink and then it was gone.
“Hang on a second,” a small voice yelled through the door, and then I heard the unmistakable sounds of her feet running in the opposite direction.
I blew out a hard puff of air and shifted on my feet. “Don’t chicken out, don’t chicken out, don’t chicken out,” I chanted. Meeting strangers was the worst. Because you had that moment where their reaction to meeting you was completely unfiltered. It was usually in their eyes and the set of their mouth.
While I breathed through the nerves and anticipation, I could hear her little voice again, coupled with heavier footsteps. My smile spread again, as genuine as it was practiced. The door swept open, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
Maybe it was because he was so tall, easily four inches past six feet, with broad shoulders and strong arms covered in ink. Maybe it was because his dark eyes were devoid of any sign of welcome, and his hard mouth was set in a straight line, framed by a jaw that would make Annie Leibovitz weep if given the chance to capture it on film. Definitely, definitely not the smiling mom I expected, the one who’d invite me in for wine and conversation overlooking the lake.
“Can I help you?” he asked evenly, but there was zero warmth in the low tone.
I swallowed and kept my smile wide and friendly.
“I, umm, I came to bring you these.” I held out the plate of cupcakes, and he stared at them for a weighty second. If it were possible, his eyes got even flintier. His chest was heaving, and the white T-shirt he wore was soaked in sweat as if he’d been working out. His hands were wrapped in boxing tape, and it made my stomach curl, but not in the good way that you want your stomach to curl when standing in front of a gorgeous, sweaty man. “I just wanted to introduce myself.”
“Why?”
My smile dropped a fraction. “Why did I bring cupcakes?”
His eyes met mine, and one dark brow lifted slowly. The cold, icy flush of embarrassment slipped down my spine, which I straightened stubbornly.
“Why did you want to introduce yourself?”
“Because I thought it would be a nice thing to do,” I told him, pushing brightness into my voice and refusing to drop my smile further. Asshole. That was the unspoken addition to the end of my sentence.
“I don’t eat sugar.” He folded his arms over his chest.
“Okay, fine.” I pulled the plate closer to me like it was my very sugary, cupcakey shield. Rational, I know. “Sorry I was trying to be neighborly.”
“Neighborly?” he repeated, and his mouth twisted like he had just sucked on a lemon.
I lifted my chin and smiled again, determined to salvage this. “Yes. Neighborly. Your ... daughter waved at me, and I thought I’d be nice and come say hi.”
If I thought he looked cold before, it was nothing compared to the way his face transformed at the mention of the little girl.
His eyes narrowed and pinned me with enough ice that I actually stepped back. “So you’re as smart as you are original? That’s good to know.”
My mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
“I have a list of reasons used by women prettier than you, blondie, and that’s on the flimsy side when it comes to reasons you show up on my doorstep.”
The absolute freaking nerve of him made my jaw pop open. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
One side of his lips curved up, but it was cold. “Uh-huh. Can we be done now?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” I gasped. It was amazing how the body could switch from cold to hot without changing the shape of your skin and bones because now I was on fire.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” He flicked his eyes up and down my body, and my sugary shield was no match from the derision I saw on his face. “You can go back next door now. We’re set on baked goods for the foreseeable future.”
You know, there were moments when I prided myself on my even temper. My ability to stuff my immediate reaction and keep a pleasant expression on my face, honed by years of practice of being marginally well-known and judged for every single piece of my life—from my face to my body to my upbringing and my parents’ money.
This wasn’t one of them.
Everything I’d been shoving down for the past week since I got the call about my dad’s heart
attack, all the silence that I’d ignored because it was hiding too much, the empty house, my empty family tree, the shitty cupcakes, and the fact that it was difficult enough for me to lift my hand to knock on the door in the first place, oh, it all came roaring through my body in an ugly, messy rush of anger.
That was the only reason I had to explain why I shoved the plate of cupcakes at his chest.
The pink frosting stuck to his shirt for one horrifying, sluggish moment while he gaped at me, and I gaped at the plate like it hadn’t come from my hands.
But I closed my mouth and took a calm step backward. The plate fell, and so did the cupcakes when he swept his hand down his chest. The sloppy pile at his feet made me gulp with a whole different set of nerves.
But I lifted my chin and give him a smile as sweet as fresh lemonade, the kind that usually garnered me a few hundred thousand likes.
“Enjoy the cupcakes, asshole.”
I turned on my heel and walked back to my empty house with my head high, my face hot, and my hands shaking. Behind me, a door slammed, but I didn’t hesitate. Not until I was back in the safety of my empty house, slumped against the firmly closed front door.
If this was my fresh start, it was off to a fabulous start, I thought miserably. Then I caught the time on the clock and groaned. I had less than thirty minutes to freshen up and get downtown to meet with the lawyers.
Whatever it was that my father had left me, in addition to oh, millions and millions of dollars, had better be good because all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a giant bottle of chardonnay.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Can you please repeat that?”
Underneath my hands, the surface of the desk was ice cold. Or maybe that was my hands. Miles Kuyper had enough grace to look embarrassed, and he cleared his throat before pushing a pile of papers toward me over the glossy surface of his desk.
The Bombshell Effect Page 2