The Irishman's Christmas Gamble: A Wager of Hearts Novella

by Nancy Herkness

  Liam raised his eyebrows. “Everyone knows it’s the coach who turns a team into champions.”

  She snorted. “You told me it was the center midfielder who won championships.”

  “And it was…when I was the center midfielder.”

  Frankie relaxed. As long as she didn’t touch him, she could settle into their old, easy dynamic, and let the physical pull of him recede to just a simmer in her veins. It felt good to spar with him, to hear the lilt of their home in his voice, and even to let the Irish filter into her own. She hadn’t called anyone a gobdaw in years.

  After she’d complimented the chef on the clever chocolate soccer balls filled with spice-infused chocolate mousse, Liam brought out her coat. “Let’s step into the outside box and get some fresh air.”

  He held open the glass door leading to the rows of cushioned outdoor seats that looked out on the silent, snow-covered baseball field. She could see the outline of the diamond under the coating of white. She drew in a lungful of crisp, winter air and blew it out in a cloud of vapor.

  Liam stood with his hands shoved deep into his overcoat pockets, his gaze on the huge expanse of the empty arena. “I’m going to make the New York Challenge so exciting to watch that we’ll fill every one of those 50,000 seats by the end of the season.”

  “You’re playing the wrong kind of football to do that in the U.S.,” Frankie said. “If you sell 30,000 tickets you’ll be doing well.”

  He shook his head. “New York loves winners, and I promise you we’re going to make the playoffs.”

  This was a Liam she hadn’t seen before. A man forged and tested in the fiery competition of the top tier of professional sports. His confidence was born of being a champion many times over.

  Suddenly, she felt a shift in their relationship. He was her equal now. And that was a dangerous thing.

  Liam held the limousine door for Frankie while he inwardly cursed himself. He’d screwed up somehow. He’d felt Frankie soften through dinner, but then he’d taken her outside to impress her with his new kingdom, and all the walls had come back up again.

  He should have realized that fancy locations wouldn’t win her over. After all, she was so rich that she had access to almost any venue she wanted. The chocolate dessert had been a point for him, though. And the candle. He hadn’t seen Frankie cry more than twice in the years he’d known her.

  As he slid onto the back seat beside her, he sifted through other options. Frankie was the one who’d told him that there were many paths to the goal, and he needed to have his eye on the whole field to see them all. He’d put her advice to work in becoming the best center midfielder in the premier league. But he’d known even then that she was talking about more than just soccer.

  The limo had gone about three blocks before he formulated a new approach.

  “You’ve gone quiet. Planning your strategy for filling all those seats?” Frankie asked with a smile.

  “No,” he said. She had moved into the corner of the limo, half-turning so she could look directly at him. He hated every inch of the space between them. “I’m planning our day out tomorrow.”

  She raised her finely arched eyebrows at him. “I have a club to run.”

  “It’s Sunday, the day of rest.”

  “Ha! When you’re in the hospitality business, there is no rest.”

  Donal had told him that Sundays were quiet at the Bellwether Club. Most of the high achievers who frequented it did so during the business week. “Surely, you trust your staff to handle things for a few hours.” His tone was a deliberate challenge.

  “Why tomorrow?” she asked with her usual brutal directness.

  Because it was her voice he had heard encouraging him when the coach reamed him out and he wanted to quit the academy. It was her face he saw when his aching body kept him awake after a long, miserable practice or a dirty, hard-fought game. And nowadays, it was her toughness he channeled when coaching a prima donna of a player who forgot there was no “I” in “team”. Sometimes he would close his eyes and imagine he could even feel the way her body had fit against him their last day together. The time she’d kissed him with a desperate longing that had matched his.

  “Because I’m new here, and I want some company to go exploring with,” he said. “Who better than my oldest mate?”

  “I’m sure you could round up plenty of company,” she said, her tone dry. Then her face softened and she rested her hand on his forearm. “It’s so good to see you again, Liam.”

  “I’m going to be staying here in the city.” He didn’t like that she looked at him as though he were a ghost or a memory, not a living, breathing man. “So I expect to see you often.”

  She just shook her head and started to pull her hand away. He covered it, holding it in place, savoring the feel of her delicate bones against his palm. “It’s the Christmas season, Frankie. I want to spend it with someone who’s like family to me.”

  Her fingertips pressed into his arm. “Would I be your sister or a favorite aunt?”

  “More like a very distant cousin, the kissing kind. There’s mistletoe aplenty this time of year.”

  She leaned toward him and lifted her free hand to brush a hank of his hair back, the feel of her fingers against the skin of his temple sending a rope of heat straight down to his groin.

  “I can’t decide if seeing you makes me feel old or young,” she said.

  He gave her his best roguish grin. “You’ll find out tomorrow, I promise you.”

  Chapter Four

  Pure lust flashed through Frankie when she saw Liam standing in her office’s anteroom the next morning, his long legs wrapped in worn jeans that showed every contour of his powerful thigh muscles, and a cream Aran sweater that hugged the curves of his wide shoulders. His gaze skimmed over her, leaving a trail of heat. “You can’t wear that to go sledding,” he said.

  “Sledding!” Frankie had expected a trip to see the tree at Rockefeller Center at worst, so she’d worn tailored wool trousers and a cashmere sweater. “I’m not twelve years old.”

  He grinned at her, a flash of straight, white teeth. “When I saw the fresh snow this morning, it brought out the kid in me. So the kid in you is coming along too.”

  She considered refusing. But his smile pulled at something buried deep within her. “If I break a bone, you have to nurse me back to health.”

  The blue of his eyes turned incandescent. “Gladly,” he said, his voice taking on a husky edge. “I imagine you’ll need lots of sponge baths.”

  A vision of his hand wrapped around a wet, soapy sponge as he ran it over her bare breasts sent a ribbon of arousal twisting into her belly. “I’ll hire a nurse.”

  Liam slanted a glinting smile at her. “And I was planning such a nice sled crash for us. Now, off you go to dress properly.”

  It would be rude to leave him alone downstairs while she went up to her apartment to change, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to let him into her private sanctuary. However, he was Liam. “Come up with me in case you have further opinions on my attire.”

  He nodded and followed her to the private elevator. His big athlete’s body took up more than half the space, so their shoulders and arms bumped together.

  “Good thing I’m not claustrophobic,” he said, snaking his arm around her shoulders before he winked down at her. “We take up less space closer together.”

  Oh dear God, she was pressed against him from knee to shoulder, his body a solid wall of heat and muscle, while the band of his arm fell strong and weighty across her shoulders. Through the thin cashmere of her sweater, his fingers seemed to burn their outline onto the skin of her upper arm.

  She nearly gasped in relief when the doors opened onto her foyer. She stepped forward, but Liam kept his arm around her, matching her stride with his before he brought them both to a halt just inside the living room.

  As he looked around her home, he exploded into laughter so uproarious she felt the vibration of it through her body.

 
; She’d built her apartment on top of the ornate old brownstone that housed the Bellwether Club, but her place was all clean, modern lines, walls of glass, and soaring ceilings with skylights, so light poured in no matter what time of day it was.

  “And here I was thinking that you had bought into all that English nob’s decorating downstairs, but no, you’re just making fun of it.” Liam squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the snow drifting on her rooftop terrace. “You always hated the grayness of Dublin.”

  “Control, shades on half,” Frankie barked. The glass windows rippled into a tinted gray, cutting the glare of the winter sun.

  Liam whistled and released her, strolling over to the quilted maple shelves that lined one wall. He stopped in front of a grouping of photographs, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans. For a long moment, he surveyed the pictures. Then he pulled his hands free and picked up one framed photo.

  When he lifted his head to meet her gaze, he had a strange, arrested look on his face that made her stomach twist. This was why she shouldn’t have brought him up here.

  “I have the other half of this,” he said. “I didn’t think…didn’t expect…. You kept them.” He traced a finger over the two small photos of them, their faces pressed cheek to cheek, taken in a photo booth in Dublin the day he’d left for the soccer training academy in England.

  “I’ve got a streak of the Irish sentimentality. I just keep it under control,” she said. In fact, she had an enlarged version of the photos in her bedroom, but he didn’t need to know that.

  He set the frame down. “Bundle up. It’s going to be cold and windy beside the Hudson.”

  “The Hudson? I thought people went sledding in Central Park.”

  “Serious sliders go to Riverside Park at 91st Street.”

  “I think I need a bunny slope.”

  “We’re headed for Suicide Hill.”

  His challenging smile made it hard to decide if he was joking or not, so she ignored him and headed into her bedroom. She hauled a pair of jeans out of a far corner of her closet and added a cotton thermal turtleneck layered under a heavy cashmere sweater. Her winter boots all had high heels, so she settled on a pair of pull-on paddock boots, left over from the days she’d ridden horseback in Central Park. She chortled with satisfaction over the fancy fur-trimmed ski jacket she’d bought before she realized she had no interest in skiing. She’d get some use out of it at last.

  When she walked out of the bedroom, Liam was standing in front of the sliding glass door that led onto the terrace. He pivoted on his heel. “You’ve got a nice setup here.” He grinned. “Want to rent it to me?”

  “You don’t have a place yet?”

  “I’m staying at the Brownstone Inn on 82nd while I look for something.” He shrugged. “It’s got working fireplaces and a lobby with a Christmas tree. Speaking of which, where is your tree? You’ve got garlands and wreaths strung up all over the place in the club, but not a sprig of holiday cheer up here.”

  “I don’t like clutter.” She hadn’t put up a Christmas tree in years. It seemed like too much work when the only person who saw it was herself.

  “Now I know what else we’ll be doing today.” He let his eyes roam over her again, but this time she knew it was just to inspect her sledding ensemble, so she quelled any reaction.

  “You’ll do,” he said, sweeping them into the elevator and through the club to the limousine waiting outside the front door.

  “A limo to go sledding? That seems wrong.”

  “It gets crowded at Suicide Hill so we don’t want to worry about parking.”

  She slid into the car to discover a long Flexible Flyer sled resting upside down across the leather seat behind the driver. The incongruity of it made her laugh.

  “You’re enjoying yourself already.” Liam sounded pleased.

  “There’s only one sled. Are we taking turns?”

  He scooted close to her on the seat. “We’re in this together. We’ll go faster that way.”

  The limo driver found a spot by a fire hydrant so they could unload the sled. Liam carried it across the sidewalk to the top of the hill, where a bundled-up crowd of mostly teenagers stood waiting for an opening to head down the slope. As she and Liam joined them, Frankie looked downward to discover a steep incline dotted with trees and speeding sliders whose shrieks and laughter rang through the ice-clear air. At the bottom a line of hay bales cushioned the metal fence that guarded them from a plunge into the frigid gray waters of the Hudson River. While she watched, a sled slammed into a bare tree, spilling its rider off into the snow and dumping the snow from the tree’s branches on top of him.

  “This looks dangerous,” she said, releasing her breath only when the rider stood up and brushed at the splotches of white on his clothes.

  “It looks like a helluva good run.” His face was lit with excitement and he rubbed his gloved hands together in anticipation. “I think it’s best if I lie down on my stomach and you lie on top of me. That will keep our center of gravity lower, so the steering is better.”

  “I’d say that you’ll give me a soft cushion to land on, but there’s not much soft about your body.” And she’d be lying full-length against it. Luckily, there would be many layers of fabric between them.

  His eyes blazed, but he turned back to the slope. “Ah, I think we have an opening.” He positioned the sled on the flat space at the top of the park. “I’ll get on the sled. You give us a push and then jump on top of me.”

  With that he dropped to his knees and stretched out on his belly on the Flexible Flyer, his shoulders jutting out over the sides and his legs extending far beyond its end. She almost sent him down without her, but the truth was that she wanted to feel the long, solid length of him against her. “Ready?” she asked, stooping to set her hands on his waist.

  “Do it!”

  She dug her toes into the snow, giving Liam a sharp shove forward. Then she hurled herself on top of his back as the sled tilted its nose downward and began to move.

  The runners hissed over the well-packed snow and the wind drew tears from the corners of her eyes as the sled picked up speed. But her awareness was focused on the way his hair tickled her cheeks as it blew back, the way his shoulders bunched under her hands when he yanked the sled’s steering bar right to avoid a fallen sledder, and how delicious it was to have her breasts crushed against the warm, solid wall of his back.

  And then he was rolling, taking her off the sled with him just before it slammed into the protective hay bales. Now he was on top of her, braced on his forearms and laughing, while their legs tangled in the churned up snow. “A good first run, but we can do better,” he said, leaping up and hauling her to her feet before they got taken out by less controlled sliders.

  He grabbed the sled’s rope and then her hand, pulling both of them over to the side for the trudge back up the slope. By the time they reached the top, she was gasping for breath.

  “I see I’m going to have to get you to the gym more often,” Liam said, as she bent over, her hands on her knees.

  “It’s just that you have longer legs than I do.”

  When she straightened, there was no laughter on his face. “Frankie, you have to take care of yourself.”

  “Do you call this mad hurtle down a slope filled with crazed teenagers taking care of yourself?”

  He looked at the people launching themselves down the hill with wild enthusiasm. “Yeah, I do. Because this is the kind of pure fun I couldn’t allow myself when I was on a team. I couldn’t ice skate or ski or play basketball or rugby, for fear of getting injured. Golf was about as rough-and-tumble as it got, and even then I took care with my back. I missed playing something, anything, just for the pleasure of it.” His gaze returned to her. “What kind of fun did you get up to when you were building your empire?”

  Frankie snorted. “My idea of a good time was dreaming up new kinds of chocolate bars, experimenting with flavors, fighting my way into new markets. Watching my b
ank account go up and up and up until I knew I would never have to return to Finglas.”

  “But you did return to Finglas. You built that cooking school that’s free to kids like us.”

  “I never set foot in it. I sent people I trusted to make it happen. When I got on the plane to Philadelphia, I made myself a promise that I would leave that life behind me. Even for a good cause, I wasn’t going back again.”

  He dropped the sled’s rope and cupped her shoulders in his big hands. “I know it was hard for you. Your da was a right bastard, and your ma had all those kids to take care of. But we had some good times there in Finglas, you and I.”

  “Once you got the scholarship for the training academy, you were gone, and I hoped to God you wouldn’t be coming back.” She hadn’t realized how hard it would be without Liam there. Not only because he always had her back, but because he had never once laughed at her dreams. “I missed the hell out of you.”

  He pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his chest. “Ah, God, I would lie on my hard cot in the academy digs at night, aching to see you, to hear your voice. It was like my heart had been ripped out and left behind.”

  She did it again. Allowed herself to lean into his strength before she lifted her head out of his supporting hand and looked him in the eye with a wry smile. “A pathetic pair we were, then.”

  Instead of laughing, his mouth went thin with anger. “Don’t dismiss what we felt for each other. It was a powerful thing for the good, not a weakness in us.”

  “It hurt so badly that I wasn’t sure I would live through it.” She’d never told another soul how close she’d been to giving up in the months after Liam had gone off to seek his bright future. She’d walked the dirty, cracked sidewalks beside the walls covered in obscene graffiti and wondered if she would ever claw her way out.

  “I never wanted to cause you pain, a stór. Never.”

  That little hitch vibrated in her chest, scaring her, but she refused to flinch. “You didn’t hurt me. Our grim, stingy life did. Because I cared about you I had to let you go. We didn’t deserve to be that poor. No one does.”