Playing for Keeps: A Scorching Hot Romance (Game Changers Book 2)

by A. C. Arthur

  “Hello,” Estelle said when she entered the living room. “I wasn’t expecting you this evening, Rylan. Naomi and I have already had dinner.”

  Rylan had been standing near the glass cabinet looking at all of Naomi’s awards wondering dismally why she was born so different from the other women in this family.

  “Hi Mom,” she said softly. “I hadn’t planned on stopping by.”

  Because since her father had been gone, this house seemed colder and less welcome than it had during Rylan’s childhood years.

  “Well, are you going to just stand there? Because I have some reports to go over before a regional school board meeting tomorrow. If you just came over to stare at the furniture, I can leave you alone.”

  The way she’d left Rylan alone all her life. Because for Estelle, there was no use trying to deal with the daughter who had no intention of being what Estelle wanted her to be.

  “Dad’s going to give you what you want,” Rylan said and turned slowly to face her mother.

  At fifty-eight years old, Estelle was still a stunning woman. This evening she wore soft gray wool pants, a crisp white blouse and her black leather house slippers. This morning before she’d left for work, she’d most likely worn her gray and navy-blue tweed jacket with matching suede ankle boots. Her hair was pulled back into a perfect chignon and she still wore the pearl choker and matching earrings that completed her astute school principal outfit.

  “You want the money you claim he owes you and he’s going to sell the business he’s worked his whole life to build to give it to you,” she said.

  Her voice was surprisingly even as she spoke. Most likely because Rylan had the last nine hours to go over what she would say to the woman who’d given birth to her. How she would express her profound disappointment in the woman who had once loved Rylan’s father.

  Estelle gave one quick shake of her head. She lifted an arm and wagged her finger as if she were disciplining one of her students.

  “Do not come in here and pass judgment on things you know nothing about,” she said to Rylan.

  “I know that your cool disdain for my father has created an even bigger wedge in this family. I’m not at all affected by the sale of the place where I’ve worked since I was seven years old?” Rylan asked.

  She was astounded by how evenly her tone matched her mother’s. Aside from their skin complexion, Rylan would’ve sworn she and Estelle had absolutely nothing in common.

  “You are the child,” Estelle began.

  “Not anymore,” Rylan countered. “And because you want money that you were only entitled to by the graciousness of my father, I’m the one who’ll be out of a job once the body shop sells.”

  “You could have done anything. You still can do anything, Rylan. Stop being so dramatic.”

  “Why?” Rylan asked, raising her tone. “Why should I not be emotional about the prospect of watching my father walk away from his dream and mine?”

  “He let me down!” Estelle yelled back.

  Her shaking fingers moved to cover her stomach as she took steadying breaths.

  “He promised that our love, our family, the life we’d envisioned together would always come first and he lied. Gambling took my place. And nothing I did or said could change that for Will. He walked out on this marriage long before I filed for divorce, so don’t you stand there and pretend to know what’s been going on in my life for the past ten years because you have no idea,” Estelle told her.

  Rylan didn’t know what to say. This had been the most her mother had ever talked to her about her relationship with her father.

  “People make mistakes. Are you really so perfect and so rigid that you can’t forgive? He made a mistake. He tried to make amends.”

  “He kept it a secret. He tried to cover it up so I wouldn’t know. If I hadn’t asked for a divorce, he probably would never have told me how bad his financial situation was. No, Rylan, I cannot easily forgive that when I was right here all along. I didn’t go anywhere and at any point Will could have come to me with what he was going through. He chose not to and I chose to walk away from a man I can never trust with my life or the life of my children again.”

  “I’m not a child,” Rylan insisted.

  Estelle’s hands fell once again to her side. “Then stop acting like one. Don’t come running in here to take up for your precious father when you don’t know the whole story. And don’t you dare judge me based on the type of woman you’ve become. Running around in secret with a man who hadn’t the decency to come back and take care of his ailing mother. Do you think Delano Greer is going to do any better by you, Rylan? If so, you’re as delusional as your father.”

  Rylan gasped. Her mother’s words had taken her completely by surprise.

  “You know nothing about my relationship with Del.”

  Estelle shook her head and chuckled. “And neither do you, babygirl.”

  The sound of her father’s nickname for her in her mother’s voice was foreign and made Rylan extremely uncomfortable.

  “I shouldn’t have come here. You never gave a damn about me. It was always Naomi for you.”

  “And you for your father. Yes, that’s the way the battle lines were drawn in this house.” Estelle shrugged. “I won’t say I’m proud of that fact, Rylan. But there’s no use in crying over the past. You are my daughter and I care very much about your well-being. I believe in your potential to be anything you want. I also hope, for you and your sister, that you both find love and can really be cherished and respected by the man you give your heart to. Just because it didn’t work out for your father and I, doesn’t mean I don’t believe it can work for you. But don’t be fooled, Rylan. Don’t let sentiment or your desire to keep things in your life the same because it’s the only way you feel safe, lead you down the wrong path or into the wrong man’s bed. Demand more from him from the start so that in the end, you won’t be disappointed.”

  Rylan couldn’t stand any more of this. She wasn’t going to listen to advice on her love life from her mother, the woman ending her marriage. Her feet couldn’t move fast enough to carry her out of the house and into her car. And when she switched on the ignition and pulled out of the driveway, she drove to the only place she knew that would make her feel better.

  Del opened his front door at a little after eight to see Rylan standing on the Santa head-shaped doormat.

  “Hey. Are you okay?” he immediately asked because her eyes were brimming with tears and she was rocking side-to-side, her arms folded around herself and the puffy coat she wore.

  “No,” she whimpered and one tear rolled down her cheek.

  His heart nearly stopped.

  Del reached for her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulled her inside. He closed and locked the door and then pulled her close. For endless moments they stood there with him holding her tightly in his arms. He had no idea what had happened or when. All he knew for certain was that Rylan Kent didn’t cry. He’d seen her fall off bikes and walk away with busted knees and elbows without shedding a tear. She’d climbed trees and jumped fences with the rest of the boys in their neighborhood. And the one time Lance had agreed to race her, Rylan had beat him by two cars, but tripped over her shoelaces at the very end tumbling onto the sidewalk where she busted her lip so badly she had to be rushed to the emergency room to get stitches. And she hadn’t shed a tear.

  So, seeing her like this wasn’t normal for Del. Not as her friend, nor as a man who cared very deeply about her.

  She continued to make that quiet whimpering sound, her arms around his waist, holding him as if she were afraid he might let her go. He had absolutely no intention of doing that. He did lean back away from her just enough so that he could touch a finger to her chin and tilt her head up until he could look into her eyes.

  “Let’s get you out of your coat and we’ll go sit down. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Del unzipped her coat and pulled the sleeves off each arm. He hung it on the coat
rack behind the door and then took her hand, leading her into the living room. They sat on the couch and Rylan shivered. He immediately went to the fireplace and worked to get a fire started. Moments later when he returned to where she was still sitting on the couch, he sat beside her and took her hands in his.

  “Tell me what happened,” he implored.

  After she finished, he had no idea what to say. There’d been rumors floating around town about Mr. Will’s gambling and Ms. Estelle putting him out of the house, but Del hated the rumor mill in Providence. He’d been its topic of discussion one time too many, so he tended not to believe everything he heard on a third, fourth, fifth or whatever retelling. And he especially tried to mind his own business. He had enough to worry about with the business and the repairs that were coming to the forefront on the house he owned with his siblings. There was no time to take on anyone else’s problems.

  But Rylan wasn’t just anyone else.

  “How much would you need to buy the business from your father?” Del asked because he had no idea how much an auto body shop was worth.

  He also didn’t know how much money he could offer her since he’d tied up most of his savings in the restaurant. And while he’d made some sound investments while he was living in D.C., he didn’t have a number on how much they were worth at the moment.

  Rylan sighed heavily. “I went to the bank a month ago and applied for a small business loan. But since I have no collateral, I’d need a twenty-five thousand dollar down payment, or the amount they could offer me without it wouldn’t come close to being enough to make the purchase. Besides that, my father refuses to sell to me because he thinks I should get married and let my husband take care of me.”

  She shook her head. “I mean, I never said I didn’t want to get married and have a family. But when I do, I’d like it to be because I’ve fallen in love with someone and not because I need a man to help keep a roof over my head. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, I’ve been doing so for a while now.”

  Del agreed. She had taken good care of herself, even if she was living in a too small, subpar apartment building likely because she wasn’t making enough money at the body shop. She drove an antique car which was great for a collector, but she could probably use something a little more reliable. These were just the things that Del noticed. He had no idea if there was anything else Rylan was going without or sacrificing for this business. The thought briefly crossed his mind to say that this might be a blessing in disguise, but Del knew better. He knew what it was like to have a dream and have it collapse while you were helpless to do anything to stop it.

  “And you’ll continue to take care of yourself,” he told her. “This is going to work out, Rylan. You might not feel that way right now, but it will. And if not with this body shop, then with another. With your own, one that you could build and run the way you want to. You have the education and the training to make it work and I believe you can do it. As for your parents’ marriage,” Del paused. He could only shake his head at that situation. “That’s their problem, not yours. Sure, it affects you, but there’s nothing you can do but watch and wait while it plays out.”

  She was sitting quietly on the chair now. She’d used her free hand to wipe the tears from her face.

  “I know,” she said with another sigh. “I just feel so helpless and I hate that feeling.”

  “You’re not helpless,” Del told her. “You have the power to do whatever you want to do to make your life better.”

  His mother had told him that and though it had taken him a while, Del wholeheartedly believed it.

  When Rylan only nodded, Del leaned forward. He untied and removed her boots and then lay back on the couch, pulling her against him. Reaching back to the end table, he handed her the remote to the television.

  “It’s your choice tonight,” he said before kissing the top of her head.

  She accepted the remote and snuggled back against him. “I’m gonna need an action movie tonight. No wonderfully cheerful Christmas movie’s going to help my mood,” she told him, her tone not as light as normal, but not as dismal as it’d been when she first arrived.

  A few moments later Del grinned when she leaned forward and set the remote on the floor. She’d left the channel on Die Hard.

  “Perfect!” she exclaimed as she lay back against him.

  Del kept his arms wrapped tightly around her and continued to smile minutes after her comment, because she was absolutely correct. This, right here at this very moment, was perfect.

  13

  Christmas was five days away and Del still hadn’t gotten Rylan a gift.

  She and Camy had been shopping for the past two weeks. Del had no idea how many gifts they had to buy but was certain it was way too many. The brothers had already made plans to spend Christmas Eve at Camy’s for a game night mixed with more caroling. Del wasn’t looking forward to the singing part but had to admit they’d had a great time at his house decorating last weekend. He’d actually enjoyed the whole festive atmosphere more than he imagined he could have again.

  It had been a perfect mood changer to get him through the bulk of this week. But tomorrow he would be heading to Washington D.C. to testify in the case of the District of Columbia versus Renaldo Wimbley. That, Del definitely wasn’t looking forward to. And yet, he desperately wanted to get it over with.

  Del hadn’t told Rylan about the trial or that he’d be in D.C. all day tomorrow giving his testimony. He’d considered it. Especially after she’d come to him on Monday evening pouring out all her feelings and concerns about her parents’ declining relationship and the pain of losing her father’s body shop. As they’d lay on that couch watching one movie after another, Del had thought that he should give her something in return for opening up to him. He should tell her everything about the situation with Shannen and the case that had destroyed his career. But he hadn’t.

  Instead, they’d ordered pizza and after eating until they were stuffed, headed upstairs to bed. They’d slept in Del’s bed cuddled together just as they had been on the couch and it had felt more than right to Del. It felt as if it were meant to be. Getting up the next morning, Del rode with Rylan because his truck was ready to be picked-up. He’d been more than happy to call the rental company and have the second SUV picked up once and for all.

  Now, he was overseeing a few deliveries that they’d wanted to get in before Christmas. Jeret and Rock were off this morning, so it was just Del, Lance and Ethan on the lower level. Noah was in the back office dreaming up more marketing strategies for the bar. One of which included an endorsement proposal they planned to pitch to Ellis Colby once they hosted his and Naomi’s engagement party. With that thought in mind, Del pulled his phone out of his back pocket and was scrolling through his contacts for Naomi’s number so he could confirm the meeting with her and the event planner she’d hired for the first week in January. They’d played a bit of phone tag throughout the week, but Del wanted to get this date nailed down before next week when everyone would be busy with holiday plans and Ethan and Portia’s upcoming wedding. Unfortunately, he’d had to leave Naomi another message.

  Del had just disconnected the call when he looked up to see Mal walking proudly through the front door.

  His body tensed at the sight, but Del took deep, slow breaths to remain calm. He took a few steps until he was out from behind the bar and standing near one of the empty tables. It was just after noon, so the bar wouldn’t start to fill up until around four when the happy hour crowd poured in.

  Mal walked directly toward Del, which wasn’t that much of a surprise. The guy loved confrontation. What did give Del a little pause was the fact that Mal wasn’t alone. Sheriff Mike Johansen walked just a few steps behind him.

  They’d walked right past the hostesses, so Del did the honors.

  “Afternoon,” he said with a nod. “You guys need a table or will you be sitting at the bar?”

  Mal’s slowly spreading smile said they had another
reason for being here.

  “Hey Del,” Mike said and reached a hand around where Mal stood.

  Del shook the guy’s hand. They’d met immediately after Del returned to Providence when Del had visited the Sheriff’s office to let the man know that he was no longer with the DEA and would be living in Providence again. It wasn’t something he was required to do, but Del had felt it was a common courtesy. He got the feeling the handshake was Mike’s way of doing the same.

  “I wasn’t sure if you heard, but Renaldo Wimbley’s body was found in a motel over in Denton. Murder.” Mike continued.

  Del hadn’t known. The notification of Wimbley’s death wasn’t a surprise—the guy was a drug kingpin who’d made enemies in every state across the nation, not to mention a few international ones. Some would say his death by some form of violence was karma. Del just figured it was a way of life.

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Del told him. “Thanks for coming all the way over here to inform me know.”

  “I know you were supposed to testify up in D.C. tomorrow, so I figured you’d like to know you wouldn’t need to make that trip,” Mike said. “Looks good in here.”

  “Thanks, again,” Del said and waited. These two wanted something more than to deliver a personal message that would save him a drive to D.C. in the morning. And even if Mike was giving Del another professional courtesy by personally delivering that news, Mal had no business coming in with him to gloat.

  Mal’s eyes almost glittered with excitement. The guy was rocking back on the heels of his worn loafers, hands stuffed in the front pockets of his khaki pants.

  “Yeah, so you don’t have to go to D.C., but you are going somewhere,” Mal said. “To a place I’ve known you always belonged. And as soon as you’re gone, I’m going to petition the council to have this place shut down for good.”

  Del looked away from Mal and back to Mike for the rest of the explanation.