by Lexi Wilson
And then, as soon as we established that business was looking good, my buddy changed the subject.
“So, speaking of prospects,” he started, knowing me as well as he did, “how are things looking in Denver – you know, with the female population? Anyone you might be going back to visit after your gig there is done? Or, anyone you might be thinking of inviting back to Dallas?”
As I said, Cole knew me about as well as it was possible for anyone to know me. Which was why he was asking about my extracurricular activities in the Mile High City. And while I knew this was just one friend inquiring of another as to whether I happened to be getting any while I was here and I knew he didn’t mean any harm, his harmless question brought me right back to where I’d been when I woke up. Bama.
My buddy didn’t know what he was doing, but he just had to go unintentionally reminding me of Bama. My dick nagged at me under the covers when she showed up in my head again.
Feeling awkward about discussing my spur-of-the-moment meeting with Bama at the cafe, I just said, “Nah. Lots of women here, but too busy with the gig to do anything about ‘em. Anything like that’ll probably have to wait ‘til I get home.”
“Well,” said Cole, “I know you never really have a dry spell. You’ll be wetting the old dipstick soon enough.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, flashing once again on the night I wet it with the woman that I now found myself working with. “I’ll be back in action soon.”
And no sooner had I finished saying that than there was a knock at my door. An old song, “Who Can It Be Now?” started playing in my head.
“Listen, there’s somebody at the door,” I said to Cole. “Gotta go.”
I could hear the grin in his voice when he suggested, “Maybe the little dry spell’s about to be over sooner than you thought?”
“Maybe,” I chuckled, flinging the covers off and throwing my legs over the side of the bed as the knock at the door repeated. “Talk to you soon.” I ended the call and put down the phone, heading to the closet for a pair of pants as the knock at the door sounded for a third time. “I hear you,” I called to whoever it was. “Hang on.”
For some reason, I’d packed a pair of sweatpants, thinking I might get in some time at the hotel gym while I was here. I found them in the closet and pulled them on; then, ruffling my fingers through my hair with the last of my sleepiness, I went to the door and opened it...and there she was.
God damnit – Kim! Talk about the last person I wanted to see, first thing in the morning or any other time.
I half-groaned and half-growled at her, “Kim, for the love of God, what are you doing back here? Didn’t I say nothing was going to-”
With a flinching look, she cut me off. “I’m not here for myself, Barrett. I wouldn’t put myself through that again.”
Sighing, I asked, “Then what the hell are you here for?”
“I’m here for Daddy.”
For Daddy? For her father? Shit! What was I in for now? Were the Remingtons about to team up on me now? What would it take to ditch these two?
Accusingly, I asked her, “Your father? Are you serious? Did you go and tell your father what happened here yesterday? I swear, Kim, if you went running to Daddy about what I said-”
“No,” she interrupted, setting her jaw and stiffening her back. “I most certainly did not tell Daddy anything about that. I couldn’t bear to see the look on his face if I told him about any of that scene that took place here yesterday. And, I couldn’t bear the thought of what Daddy might do. No, Daddy wants to see you. He wants to talk to you about something else. He’s waiting downstairs in the hotel restaurant.”
I rolled my eyes and slumped one shoulder against the wall. “Your father’s here? Now? Well, if it’s not about any of that, what does he want to talk about?”
“He’d rather tell you in person,” she said. “Will you just get dressed and come down to the restaurant, please? I promise I won’t mention anything about...you know.” When she said that last part, the you know, I couldn’t help noticing the stung look in her eyes. I refused to feel guilty about it, but all the same, I noticed.
“Can’t he just email me or something?”
“He wants to do this in person,” said Kim. “Please.”
Letting out another groan, I said, “All right, all right. Go on back down there and tell him I’m getting dressed.” Before I shut the door I added very pointedly, “And, Kim...this had better be good.”
So, leaving her stung look on the other side of the door, I ruffled my hair again and turned my thoughts to what I was about to be in for. If Bo Remington didn’t want to talk about my nonexistent relationship with his daughter, what was on his mind?
I started coming up with ideas, and my natural first guess was that since Cole and Bo were both in town at the same time, with Cole asking around for potential investors in our business, maybe Bo had gotten wind of it and wanted to see if he could get in. I didn’t necessarily like the idea of being tangled up in business with Bo when his daughter wanted to be tangled up with me in bed, but I thought maybe I’d better hear him out.
_______________
“Morning, son,” said Bo Remington, gesturing for me to sit down across from him and Kim at the table in the hotel restaurant. “Have a seat.”
I was dressed casually, since no sense putting on a suit right now. I pulled up a chair opposite the Remingtons and prepared myself for whatever I’d be having to deal with. There were plates of bacon and toast, pitchers of juice and glasses, and a pot of coffee and some cups on the table. Bo and Kim had already had themselves a bit of breakfast before I got there.
Touching Kim on the arm, Bo said to his daughter, “Honey, would you mind excusing Barrett and me for a while? You already know what this is about, and I’m sure the two of you will want to do some catching up a little later.”
Giving me a sad little look that reminded me of how little her father knew, Kim said, “Yes, Daddy. Excuse me, Barrett…”
Like a gentleman, I rose from my chair as she left. Then I sat myself down, alone with Bo Remington again. In my mind echoed the words I’d said to Kim earlier. This had better be good…
“So...what did you need to talk to me about, Bo?” I began. I’d remembered this time to call him Bo.
“Well, it’s something a little personal, son,” he replied.
“Not about me and Kim?” I asked, a little suspiciously in spite of what Kim had assured me.
He shook his head. “No, not about you and Kim. This is something else personal. Barrett, I’ve been talking to your Daddy. He told me he wrote you, even sent you a card, to congratulate you about the Super Bowl. And, he said you never answered him, never got back to him, at all.
“Barrett...your Daddy’s disappointed. You should have heard him talking to me; I’ve never heard a man sound so downcast. He told me how much he misses having his son in his life. He misses you, Barrett. He wishes you’d call or write. Your Daddy misses you.”
Hearing this, I frowned so hard until I thought my face would crack. My father had actually gone to Bo Remington, his old friend whose daughter was desperate for my dick, to try to finagle his way back into my life. I wanted to tell Bo, You tell my Daddy I said THIS!, and crack him one in the jaw. But with this being a public place, and with me being who I was and remembering what I was here for, I refrained.
Instead, I said to Bo Remington, “Daddy misses me, does he? Tell me something. Did he say he misses Momma, too?”
Looking a little sad now himself, Bo replied, “No, son, your Momma’s name didn’t come up. Your Daddy only talked about you – and how he feels, never seeing you and never hearing from you.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” I said. “Because I miss my mother. Because I wish I could have gotten a call, and a hug and a kiss and an ‘I’m proud of you, son’ from my mother. But I’ll never get that, will I? Momma would have wanted to throw a big dinner for me and invite everybody we knew after I won the Super Bowl. Mom
ma would have had a cake half as big as Dallas to celebrate; that’s what she would have done. And I’ll never get any damn bit of that.
“You know what I did the night I won the big game? I went home and looked at Momma’s picture and told her how much I wished she was there.” That moment I was remembering, and this moment now, were among the few times in my life that I ever felt like crying.
“So the next time you talk to my Daddy, you tell him that and see what he says,” I told Bo Remington, leaning across the table at him. “But don’t bother bringing any of that to me. And, don’t you bother sending Kim with any more messages, either. And, you can have your breakfast; I’ll get something up in my room.”
I didn’t give Bo a chance to say anything to that. I just left him sitting there, speechless for one of the few times in his life, and got up, not bothering to excuse myself.
How dare that man come to me like an errand boy from my father? That man had torn his ticket with me for good when Momma died – because I had a damn good inkling of how and why she died.
Chapter 13
Bama
As long as I was going to be there in Denver and as long as the PowerShot company was picking up the tab for it, I decided I wanted to go to the hotel spa for one more session of pampering. I was walking through the lobby on my way to the turn-off that led to the restaurant, spa, and boutique, thinking about nothing but being worked over by a bunch of stylists for a while. And right when I was turning the corner, I ran smack into something big, tall, and hard that knocked me back on my heels with a gasp of alarm.
Before I could fall backwards on my butt right there in the lobby, a hand had grabbed onto my arm, stopping me from toppling over and giving me a chance to get my footing again. Getting over being stunned and startled, gathering my senses and my wits again, I looked up the big, strong arm that belonged to that big, strong hand, then into the face of who had grabbed me.
“Barrett!” I exclaimed.
“Bama,” he said, holding on to me to make sure I had my feet under me. When he was satisfied that our little collision had knocked me over, he let go and said, seeming distracted somehow, “Sorry. Guess I wasn’t looking where I was going. Didn’t mean to run into you like that.”
Still just a wee bit flustered, I shrugged the whole thing off. “I suppose I wasn’t paying too much attention, either, seeing as I couldn’t get around something so big in my way…” I wasn’t sure how that sounded to him, so I added, “Excuse me.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said, with a dismissing wave of his hand. “What were you, on your way to breakfast?”
“The spa, actually,” I replied.
“Okay, don’t let me keep you,” said Barrett. “We’ve still got another public engagement ahead of us.”
“Right,” I said. “Well...I’ll see you later.”
I stepped around him and continued on my way to the spa, where I would have the experience of colliding with that mass of incredible hunkitude fresh in my mind while I got my massage and facial. Then, from behind me, I heard him call, “Unless…”
Curious, I spun around to find Barrett facing me. “Excuse me?” I said again.
“Unless…” he repeated, sounding a bit tentative. “I don’t know. Um...I haven’t eaten anything yet this morning. You want to go back to the cafe and get something?” There was still this odd kind of distraction about him. “I mean, if you’ve really got your heart set on another spa date, you can go and I’ll just get something for myself. But...um…”
Now this made me really curious. Barrett never did seconds with a girl that he’d been intimate with, let alone ask a girl out to breakfast months after the fact. What on Earth would make him invite me to breakfast now? I wondered. Suddenly, on instinct, I decided the spa could wait.
My next question was natural. “The restaurant is right here, and you were coming from that direction. Why don’t you want to get something to eat here?”
“I left somebody in the restaurant that I don’t feel like seeing.” Ah-hah! That was where that hint of anger that I’d picked up on was coming from. That’s what was distracting him. And with a pained expression, before I could launch into my next natural question, he added, “And no, it’s not another woman. It’s somebody else I don’t feel like dealing with.”
Okay, now he really had me wondering. Who was it that big, strong Barrett Porter didn’t want to deal with, and why didn’t he want to deal with them? For some reason I just had to know more.
“All right. I already had breakfast up in my room a little while ago, but I could grab a little something...”
Seeming a little less distracted now, he said, “Okay. Good.”
“But...um...since I’m not going to the spa, do you mind if I go back to my room and freshen up a little before we go?”
“Fine,” said Barrett. “I’ll ride up the elevator with you.”
_______________
What I didn’t let on to Barrett was my other reason for wanting to go to the spa. Since I’d gotten pregnant, I’d had less morning sickness than women usually go through, and I was grateful for that. But for some reason, this morning it had really hit me, and after room service brought me a nice breakfast I ended up running to the bathroom for my body to send most of it back. After that, all I wanted to do was lie down on a table in the spa and have a masseur rub out the tension in my shoulders from the retching that I’d done, damn it all.
I wasn’t exactly feeling pretty and glamorous, and if I were going to be go out to a public place with the guy I was doing a publicity campaign with, I wanted at least to look more decent than I felt. So back to my room I went, to run a brush through my hair one more time and put on a little bit of makeup.
I came back out of my room and found Barrett stepping back out of his door, down the hall. We met each other halfway. Barrett didn’t seem to have gotten any less distracted or less angry in the minutes that I’d spent primping myself, and I wanted even more to know what was going on with him. Also weighing on my mind was the question of whether this, finally, would be the right time to tell him what was going on.
______________
At a table at that same cafe where Barrett had asked me whether I was in love with him, we sat down. He had a croissant sandwich and a coffee. I just had a cup of tea and a wedge of lemon, which I hoped would help to settle my stomach a little more.
Barrett didn’t say anything at first, and I decided to let him talk when he was ready. Once he had a bite of his sandwich and a mouthful of his coffee in him, he began.
“I know what people think about me.”
“People think a lot of things about you,” I mentioned. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Yeah,” he said, wearing a strange and faraway sort of look. “Well, I think I know pretty well what most people think. People think I’m set for life; I’ve got it made. NFL player with a multimillion dollar contract. Super Bowl champion. Women left and right.” With that last part, he gave me this edgy sort of look, as if perhaps he’d said too much, considering the spontaneous thing that had happened between us. “Sorry about that.”
I took it with a straight face and just said, “Go on.”
“Well,” he continued, “you know, being a rich and famous football star doesn’t mean you don’t have any problems. Things in your life from before you got that way are still there, you know? They don’t just go away.”
“Okay,” I said. “So what is it from…before...that’s bothering you now?”
He let out a heavy sigh and took another gulp of coffee. “You know, everybody’s got a family. And, people always go on about how family is what life and the whole world is about, and they act like the family is this perfect, shiny, spotless thing. But, it’s not, you know what I mean? No matter what anybody says, families aren’t perfect. They’re not.”
Something more of the anger that he’d brought with him out of the hotel restaurant was showing now. It was as if something were seething under th
e surface, wanting to come out. And whatever it was, he wanted to keep a lid on it, but he couldn’t completely contain it. I felt bad for him. I knew everyone had their demons and their secret pains, but this was the first time I’d ever seen a hint of Barrett’s demons, Barrett’s pains.
I ventured the question, “So, whoever it was at the restaurant – that’s what got you so upset that you didn’t want to stay there? And this was who, someone in your family?”
“No, not actually,” he said. “Someone else. A friend of my family. Someone who...reminds me of some things.” A dark, brooding look came over him, a look of dark clouds churning up inside him along with the anger he was carrying. I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Oh,” I said, sounding as if I understood more than I did. “I guess this wasn’t the best time for all this to be coming up for you, then.”
He shook his head, staring at his partly consumed sandwich. “There’s never a good time for this,” said Barrett. “This guy... He’s known my father like, forever. And, he keeps showing up when I wish he’d go the hell away, and today he reminded me about my father – and why we don’t talk.”
“You and your father don’t talk?” I was quietly startled again.
“Haven’t talked in years. And, I haven’t wanted to. I don’t want my old man in my life. Not after…”