“Everyone’s watching, Charlotte. You can’t risk making a mistake.”
No kidding, she thought as Tem sauntered off, all poise and pride and perfection.
Charlotte was too gritty, too mistake prone, too real to truly be any of those things.
*
“Accidental sex with a coworker is impossible.”
Charlotte’s ballet flats scraped the pavement as she abruptly stopped in front of the entrance to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace and discreetly glanced around to gauge whether any passersby had overheard Joey’s declaration.
Muddled after realizing Nate’s identity, she’d gone through the motions for the rest of last night and had lain awake through most of the early-morning hours until she could slip out of the villa for a hard run in scenic Mount Charleston without being subjected to a Blue-style inquisition.
But by the close of the night, when Charlotte, out of desperation to leave her family behind, had claimed fatigue, her sister Martha had zeroed in on her and lightly commented, “You say you’re all tuckered out but you seem wide-awake to me.”
At least Charlotte had effectively avoided Danica, the woman who was happily “the most stable of the Blue daughters”—until her recent split with a music mogul, that is—and now owned prime Las Vegas real estate thanks to her generous divorce settlement. This morning Danica had sent her a “What the hell?” text because they’d agreed to meet at Danica’s place for a 5:00 a.m. eight-mile run together, and Charlotte had taken off at four. When afternoon had rolled around and Joey had called from her Bluetooth saying she’d left the Las Vegas field office for the day and was up for some shopping, Charlotte had leaped at the chance to vent about her latest Charlotte Slipup.
“Correction—it was almost-sex.” Charlotte let her friend precede her into the crowded world of expensive upmarket finery. Over a hundred stores rolled out before her in gilded extravagance, and though she usually considered herself a marathon shopper, her zest for it had taken a hit. She was nervous—no, terrified—about repercussions. “Haven’t you ever made a mistake like this? An office romance that was a baaaad idea?”
“Dozens,” Joey admitted with a wanton little grin, pausing outside of Marc Jacobs. Still in her work outfit, a perfectly pressed dark pantsuit—and red-soled high heels—she appeared the picture of control and composure. But over the course of their friendship Charlotte had learned that Josephine de la Peña was a die-hard risk taker on and off the clock. “They were unwise, fun and very deliberate. Never accidental.”
“Well, this one was.”
“You didn’t mean to go to his hotel suite for what was going to be full-blown S-E-X?”
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “You can say the word, Jo. Just not so loudly that it ricochets off every statue in this place. Are we going in?” She gestured to the store’s entrance.
“Nah, I’m moseying my way to Louis Vuitton and the Cheesecake Factory.” Joey set off with her cane. “So, do enlighten me about this thing you call accidental almost-sex.”
Charlotte struggled to put words to what she’d experienced with Nate before reality’s invasion. It would be so easy to be swept away reliving everything from her first glimpse of him in her compact mirror to how close they’d stood without even touching on VooDoo’s balcony to that first kiss in his suite. “Last night I didn’t know how much I wanted to get away from myself—you know, the expectations and the pressure and the reporters and my family—until this man was in front of me, offering me a way out. I didn’t know he was the old owner’s son…Santino Franco’s brother. God, he even looks like him.” She snorted. “I got lost in wanting to do something I wasn’t supposed to do.”
“Boy, did you ever.” Joey ambled to the base of a spiral staircase and rested her backside against the thick wall, easing the tension off her injured hip. She lifted her face, her gaze drifting up, up, up to the magnificently intricate ceiling. It was a wonder that many locals eventually took for granted. “Charlotte, perhaps he didn’t follow you to the party, but…”
“What?” Charlotte waited until Joey met her eyes before she pressed, “Out with it, seriously. Don’t try that ‘protect her by keeping quiet’ thing.” Her college roommate, Krissy O’Claire, had chosen that route when she’d found out that Charlotte’s then-boyfriend was a serial cheater, and after the truth finally erupted, Charlotte and Krissy had wound up going an entire semester without speaking. Charlotte didn’t want to be “handled” again and needed her closest friends—Krissy and Joey—to never forget that.
“There are angles to this situation you’re not really seeing here, amiga,” Joey said carefully. “The man was behind the bar at VooDoo, managed to say exactly the right things to get you off guard and then you did something ‘accidental.’ Now you’re in a situation that might have severe fallout…because he’s a Franco. Didn’t Santino Franco—that tight end who got messed up early last season, right?—make a public statement suggesting your father threatened his father to get him to sell the team?”
Not suggesting. He’d outright accused, right after the transaction had been completed, but he hadn’t followed up on the accusation, so there hadn’t been further need for the Blues to defend themselves or go into damage-control mode. Her parents had made a singular response—that the sale was fair and final—and that had been the end of it. Charlotte, figuring it was a nonissue, had turned her attention to other matters.
Like finding a way to be a part of her parents’ most substantial acquisition.
“That was bogus, though, Joey. The owner himself never publicly said Pop bullied him, and yeah, Marshall ‘The Body’ Blue isn’t a man anybody would be smart to mess with, but he doesn’t bully to get his way. Plus, Santino hasn’t said anything more about it.”
“Not publicly, but can you be so sure he dropped his vendetta?” Joey gripped her cane with one hand and used the other to drum her French-manicured nails against her thigh. “Okay, follow me on this, Lottie, and let me talk. This is how I put things together.”
An agent at work, Joey’s expression drained of any humor and sunniness, her brows knit and she focused on a spot on the gleaming floor as people moved around them. Charlotte waited, pretty sure she had figured out the destination of her friend’s train of thought.
“Your family’s in the limelight, Lottie,” she said quietly. “Your mother practically knows by name the paparazzi who follow her. Any Tom, Dick or Harry could’ve paid one of those buzzards to keep an eye on you. So you’re being watched, all right, and opportunity knocks when you show up at the Rio after being put through the media wringer. Then he’s there—Adonis, a gorgeous guy with beautiful skin and a cast-iron body who droves of women likely find attractive.
“Please don’t look ashamed of yourself, Charlotte,” Joey barreled on with a firm shake of her head. “You’re not a fool. You’re human. Hell, if I’d gotten to him first, I would’ve thrown my panties in the ring. But he wouldn’t have wanted me…or anyone else at VooDoo. His endgame was to get under your armor, and where does that put him now? In prime position to exploit what happened between the two of you in his room. It may have been ‘almost-sex’ and it may have been accidental because you didn’t know who he was. But what if he knew from the get-go who you were and what would happen if the two of you crossed the line?”
Charlotte hated every word of the speculation—every damn logical word of it. It had fallen too conveniently into place with Nate last night. If her phone hadn’t beeped, if duty hadn’t called, she wouldn’t have left his suite until they were both spent and satisfied.
“Besides a scandal, what are the potential ramifications?” Joey asked.
“I don’t exactly know. Suspension? Firing?”
Joey averted her eyes, chewing the inside of her cheek. She didn’t bother protesting the idea that Charlotte’s parents and sister would fire her, because she knew they would in a heartbeat.
“Nate would lose his job, too,” Charlotte said, thinking out loud.
“His father sold the team. His brother doesn’t play anymore. Maybe he’s got nothing to lose, and damaging your credibility is worth it. Maybe hurting you is his way of giving the Blues something to remember the Francos by.”
“I trusted myself with him,” Charlotte said on a sigh. “I trusted a stranger.”
“These hiccups happen, Lottie. I was on an undercover job a few years ago and opened myself up to a guy. He was black ops, didn’t necessarily go by the same rules that I did. Long story short, he was playing me and he was dirty. It didn’t end well, but what I got out of it was this. I don’t trust strangers completely, but I always trust myself.”
Charlotte nodded, and though she and Krissy from college were still close friends even as Krissy spent her sabbatical from UNLV in California as a visiting facial plastic surgeon, Charlotte was glad that Joey was the friend she could lean on in this moment. Joey didn’t normally go deeper than vague when talking about her life as a DEA agent. Charlotte always figured it had a lot to do with the sensitive nature of her career, but clearly there was a level of emotional distance Joey needed to maintain in order to remain in such a dark line of work.
“What I’ve just unrolled for you is my theory, Lottie. Find out if it’s the truth. And in the meanwhile, how about some Godiva chocolate cheesecake? I’ll treat you, seeing as you’re going through all this and only got almost-sex out of it.”
A smile broke and Joey’s throaty laughter was contagious as she steadied her cane and took off walking again. It went without saying that betrayal had tarnished Nate Franco in Charlotte’s eyes. Plus, there was bad blood between the Francos and the Blues, and Charlotte didn’t want to be a part of any drama that took her attention away from football.
It was all about respecting and protecting the shield. The landscape of the game was changing—the fact that she even had a spot on the Las Vegas Slayers’ training staff attested to that. But at the core of it all, football was a sacred sport.
To her, anyway.
Jeopardizing her career for a good time went against her code.
*
“Hey, roadrunner.” Danica’s voice echoed off the high ceilings and empty rooms of her Architectural Digest three-story showcase home when Charlotte, weighed down with shopping bags despite her intention to purchase only a new charm for her Tiffany & Co. charm bracelet, let herself in sometime after sundown. “Next time you wanna bail on a run, give me a heads-up. I could’ve used that extra couple hours of sleep.”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Charlotte kicked off her shoes, set her loot on the Crema Marfil marble floor and moseyed barefoot into the kitchen to see her sister had turned the room into a chef-style minioffice. Surrounded by folders and papers and pens and sticky notes, Danica sat at the island counter in jeans and a cutoff sweatshirt with her laptop in front of her.
As if thrilled to be interrupted, Danica pulled off her reading glasses, pinched the bridge of her nose and waved Charlotte over for a quick one-armed hug as if they hadn’t just seen one another less than twenty-four hours ago. “Whaddup, sis.”
“Hey.” Charlotte lightly tugged her sister’s flatironed ponytail. “Tough day?”
“Oh, your average contract drama. We’ve got a guy who’s holding out. But it is what it is.”
“Danica? I detest when people say that. What does that mean, it is what it is? It’s the equivalent of the word whatever, only less succinct.” As she spoke, Charlotte moved about the kitchen, sprinkling tap water into the pot of a sickly looking plant near the massive windows over the granite sink, putting out-of-place cooking utensils where they belonged, arranging pot holders and oven mitts.
“Lottie?” Danica offered a sweet grin. “I can’t stand when people micromanage in my house.”
“But it’s a beautiful mess.”
“My beautiful mess. That’s the awesomeness of owning my own place.”
Charlotte frowned, turning to her sister, who’d all but added, “You should try it yourself sometime.” After bunking with Krissy in a college dorm for four years and renting a studio apartment in New England during grad school, she’d moved back home because there hadn’t been a need to buy a place of her own once she’d started training college athletes in Nevada. Her parents had had plenty of room…and they’d insisted that she stay with them until she “got things together.”
Danica had exchanged Marion Reeves’s ring for a house key. Martha, on the other hand, had returned to her cozy childhood bedroom within a week of getting her hot little hands on her college diploma. She was a far cry from getting things together.
“Step away from the oven mitts, big sis.”
“Fine. Whose pimped out Oldsmobile is that out front?”
“Marion’s. He left his weight bench in the workout room, had to come for it tonight.”
“This shouldn’t be news to you,” Charlotte said, picking up the remote to the small flat-screen mounted in one corner of the kitchen and selecting ESPN from the Favorites list, “but Marion has enough dough to own a few hauling companies of his own. Not to mention all the loyal fans who’d jump at the chance to help him move free of charge. My question for you? Why haven’t you put a stop to this? Every time he ‘remembers’ that he left something behind, he ends up hanging out here for hours and staying for dinner and—”
“And nothing else,” her sister interrupted emphatically. “We’re not divorced with benefits. Make no mistake.”
“Fine,” Charlotte said again, though she wasn’t completely convinced. But neither was Danica convinced that the division of marital assets was all that remained between her and her ex-husband, if the hesitation in her eyes and the nervous way she pushed her hair behind her ears was any indication.
“Why the impromptu sleepover?” Danica asked. “Finally sick of Martha’s snoring?”
“No. I mean, of course I’m sick of our lovely baby sister’s snoring, but that’s not it. I could use some personal space.”
“You’ll get plenty of that here.” Danica began shuffling folders in earnest, then muttered an expletive. “Matter of fact, it looks like I’ll be taking off in a bit. Left something at the office. Don’t bother waiting up.”
Charlotte didn’t care for the exhaustion and touch of loneliness in her sister’s voice. She’d always figured Danica had gotten used to being defined as music god Marion Reeves’s wife, and calling it quits to her marriage had forced her to accept someone she didn’t yet know how to be: Danica Blue, a woman who deserved a life free of lies and mistrust and heartbreak.
Charlotte loved her sisters but didn’t want what they’d gotten into—Danica’s marriage, which apparently had more downs than ups, and Martha’s gossip-fodder hard-partying lifestyle.
“Anything I can do to help?” Charlotte offered.
“Team-lift a weight bench,” Marion cut in, swaggering into the kitchen in a silk shirt and designer slacks with a diamond buckle. The man was all about wearing his success. “You got the guns for it, Charlotte, so don’t pretend you can’t.”
“Yes, I can, but I choose to instead put my feet up and watch your ass haul it out.”
Marion rubbed a hand over his bald pate and scratched the back of his neck. “One of these days I’m going to win you over.” Perhaps he thought he’d start by grinning that dimpled Mr. Personality grin that made his eyes crinkle at the corners—just one of his qualities that had roped Danica into a whirlwind relationship neither of them had been ready to commit to. At Charlotte’s blank expression, he edged closer to Danica and peered over her shoulder.
“Buzz off. If you can’t pull that bench out of here, I’m surrounded by muscle-bound men who’re able and available.”
“Quit tryin’ to make me jealous. Aren’t you seeing someone? What—he’s not treating you right?”
“Ollie. He treated me much better than you did, and I still ended it.” Danica blinked at him. “Weight bench?”
Marion squeezed her shoulder, but she didn’t respond. “I’ll come—”
“Come back for it,” Charlotte and Danica finished in unison. Rolling her eyes, Charlotte stepped in, hoping her sister would forgive her for micromanaging this one last time. “Let me show you the way out, Marion.”
“Nobody knows this house better than I do,” he said, but walked with her anyway.
“Thought you wouldn’t recognize it without all your Grammys and BET awards and NAACP—” Marion’s shoulders stiffened and Charlotte stopped talking, resolving to give the man a break and walk him out without another word. It was difficult to remember that the man who’d cheated on her sister was still a person. For Charlotte, sometimes it was easier to forget that—easier to hold the grudge that truthfully wasn’t her grudge to hold.
Shutting the massive door behind Marion, Charlotte returned to the kitchen with purpose. “Two things. Marion Reeves intended to lug a weight bench from the second floor in a silk shirt? And he also intended to haul away said bench in an Oldsmobile?”
Danica sighed, dragging a hand up her face and into her straight hair. “Didn’t think about all that.” She slid off the stool and gathered papers. “Oh, Charlotte, please don’t start with me. When you’ve been married for a decade and suddenly you’re not, it’s tough to get used to it. Hopefully you won’t ever experience that firsthand.”
No, I probably won’t. I can’t even manage a successful one-night stand. Charlotte coughed at the thought. “Okay.” Pitching in, she grabbed a stack of files and noticed one labeled Active Roster.
“Danica…you know what you said to Marion about being surrounded by available men? Well, that was just something you threw out there just to irk him, right?”
“Of course.”
“So even if you wanted to pursue something—not implying at all that I think you do—could you?”
“What are you talking about?” Danica paused as she bent to retrieve her briefcase. “Pursue what? Like date one of our players or something?”
Night Games Page 5