“I have been thinking. Perhaps after this summer I will move back to California and live with you, Rohan, and Max. I know he has been having a hard time accepting Max’s choices, and perhaps having another man there to advise him will help.”
Oh God, she had to tell him. And she supposed now was as good of a time as any.
“Dad, there’s something I need to tell you…”
The phone rang before she could finish. And she sighed when she pulled it out to decline the call, so that she could have this tough conversation. But then she saw it was Rohan. Better take it. He hadn’t fought her much on the divorce, but Rohan could get snitty when she ignored his calls. It was easier to just answer it.
“I’m going to take this outside,” she mumbled to her father before rushing out the door.
It was still early June, but Boston was already hot and sticky in a way that made her not miss the place even more than she had when she’d been living in L.A.’s relatively dry heat. “Hi, Rohan,” she said, answering the phone.
“There is a charge I don’t recognize on one of the old cards we agreed not to use per or our divorce agreement. Something about hockey….”
She closed her eyes. Ugh! She’d thought she’d cancelled all the recurring payments for Max’s hockey stuff back in Pasadena, but apparently something had gone through.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll take care of it tonight, and if I can’t get the charge taken off, I’ll Venmo you.”
A beat of silence. “Max is playing hockey now?”
Max had actually been playing hockey for two years, but Rohan had been so immersed in his work as a pathologist, that it had been easy to sneak around behind his back. “Yes,” she answered, not wanting to get into an argument, but not knowing how else to answer.
“You should not be encouraging this wild phase by letting Max play that idiotic sport.”
“Mmm,” she answered non-committedly.
Then like a lifeline sent down from the Divorced Mom heavens, the call-waiting beeped with her son’s number, cutting off her disapproving ex. “Sorry, Rohan. This is Max on the other line. I have to take it.”
She hung up on Rohan without further explanation. “Hey, sweetie, everything okay?” she asked. “I thought the Better Boys summer camp didn’t let out for another hour.”
“Mom, don’t be mad, okay?” Max answered sounding strangely out of breath. “Just don’t be mad.”
“Be mad about what?” she asked, several alarm bells going off in the back of her head.
“Front desk just texted. California’s mom just arrived,” Con told them, walking up to the set of bleachers, where Keane was writing out a set of stick skill drills he used to practice on his own to keep his puck from getting stolen.
Normally he wouldn’t have bothered teaching pro maneuvers to a kid this young, but as far as Keane could see it was his only weakness. And he remembered feeling frustrated about not being able to keep a puck on lockdown as he skated across the ice when he was Max’s age.
The kid had been into the lesson, but he went still as a wood dove as soon as Con made the announcement.
“Is she mad?” he asked Con.
“Front desk didn’t say,” Con answered.
“But I bet she’ll calm down when we tell I’m giving you a scholarship to go here free for the entire summer,” Keane assured him. “Right, Con?”
However, Con was too busy squinting at something in the distance to answer. “Holy shit, is that…?”
Before Keane could follow the direction of Con’s stare, Max jumped up, completely blocking Keane’s view.
“Mom, I can explain!” Max rushed out to the woman Keane couldn’t see.
“How can you explain lying to me?” she countered, her voice getting closer and closer. Keane frowned. The voice rang a familiar bell, but he couldn’t quite figure out from where. “Or putting yourself in danger? I cannot believe you took a bus without telling me. In a city you barely know.”
“Grandpa said you used to take the subway and the bus all the time.”
“That was different.”
Keane waited for Con to step in and introduce him, but for some reason, he was just gaping at the unseen mom, like he didn’t know what to do.
Figures. Con had always been awkward with the ladies. There was a reason why he’d never had more than a few scattered hook-ups in high school, despite his hockey god status. And why he remained on the incel side of single now that he was a coach.
Time to deploy his devastating good looks and money to deescalate this argument between the kid and his mom, Keane decided.
“Let me talk to her,” he said low in Max’s ear, before placing a hand on the kid’s shoulder and standing up. “Ma’am, I know you’re upset, but…”
The words that were supposed to come after the “but” never arrived. They jammed in his throat, car wrecking the entire explanation about how her kid was a potential star who needed the training and guidance only his elite academy could provide.
The kid’s mother…she wasn’t some California hipster who’d only been taking her son to hockey practice on a lark. She was a ghost.
One he’d been trying not to think about for three days.
Lena… Lena Kumar stood at the bottom of the steps. Which meant….
He turned to look down at the kid, who despite his background and racial make-up had reminded him so much of himself.
Chapter Six
Lena couldn’t breathe. She could sense her lungs trying to work as they normally did, but they had nothing to work with. Every major organ in her body had frozen over when Keane stood up. She hadn’t registered him at first. But when she did, he became all she could see. For seconds…minutes…eternities on end.
“Mom…mom….”
Somebody was calling her name. Somebody important. Even more important than Keane.
She raised her eyes to the son she’d chosen over her previously easy marriage to Rohan. Without thinking twice.
And in that eternity moment she chose him again.
Blinking, she wrenched her attention from Keane to the son who meant more than anything to her. “Max,” she said, using all of her fierce love to shore up the voice box that had collapsed at her first face-to-face sighting of Keane in over ten years. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
“But, Mom—”
“Let’s go now, Max. Right now.”
“But, I wanted to ask you if I could—”
“No, buts, Max. You’ve broken several rules and have violated my trust. If I have to tell you to come again, not only will there be consequences for your actions, but the automatic answer to whatever you want to ask me will be no.”
Luckily, this wasn’t their first battle. Calling Max headstrong was like the ocean waves calling the moon a little tuggy. That was just one of the reasons his and Rohan’s relationship fell apart. She’d learn early into his childhood to set consequence examples that ensured he understood until he was eighteen she had the ultimate say when it came to coming and going.
Without another word, Max sullenly shouldered his backpack, which she could only assume had a pair of skates inside, not just the lunch she’d packed him this morning.
“Bye,” he mumbled to the ghost from her past, then joined her at the bottom of the steps.
She could tell from the hunch in his shoulders that he’d like nothing more than to argue with her. But whole child centered as Lena tried to be, old coding died hard. And Max knew pulling her into embarrassing public scenes trophied at number one on her parental Don’t Ever List.
“Is that public enough for you?”
Keane had asked her that after coming to her internship and humbling himself in front of a crowd, then kissing all the doubts out of her, when she agreed to give him a chance. Kissing in public had been #4 on her shake it off list. GIVE KEANE A CHANCE, number 10.
But he had written that one in himself. She’d thought that write-in gesture so romantic as the former school bully kissed her
nerdy self in public, like he no longer cared who knew he liked her. But in reality, it had been the first step in a ruinous journey.
She’d learned her lesson about playing with Keane. He was fire disguised as a human being, and the last thing she should do was touch it. Or let her son anywhere near it.
So she shuttled Max out of the hockey center, doing what she should have done eleven years ago when Keane unexpectedly re-appeared in her life after the disastrous end to their Spring Break hook up. Run. Run as fast as she could to get away from him.
And this time, she refused to look back. She kept her eyes on Max, her son, the only person who mattered. But Keane’s eyes burned into her back as they left. She was in Boston now, but his green gaze enflamed her skin just the same as stepping out into LA’s scorching hot sun.
“Slow Down, Lena, slow down…explain to me why you need me to look up hockey programs again?”
Lena didn’t blame Vihaan for sounding alarmed with a big scoop of worry on top. He hadn’t been required to calm Lena down since their senior year of high school. And how crazy that both meltdowns had been inspired by the same boy.
“Max snuck off to this hockey camp today after I dropped him off at the Better Boys’ day camp.”
Lena cursed herself again for being in such a rush to get back to the Sisyphean task of helping her father box up the EasyStop store this morning. Trusting her son, she’d simply dropped him off curbside and told him to let Nancy know she’d take care of signing him in and out when she picked him up.
“And now he’s upstairs sobbing because I told him he couldn’t go back.”
Vihaan let out a snort on the other side of the phone. “You’re much better than my mom. She would have done more than tell me I couldn’t go back. I wouldn’t have been able to sit for days!”
“Yes, well. Your mom did the best she could with the limited resources she had. And I probably should have guessed that ripping Max from both his therapist and his hockey team in California and putting him in the Better Boys’ day camp here might backfire. I was trying to solve two problems with one program, and hindsight being 20/20, that was probably unrealistic of me.”
This very mature observation only earned another derisive snort from her longtime friend. “Okay, Lena. Somehow make your son stealing your credit card and running off to some hockey program he didn’t tell you about is your fault. I can almost understand that logic. But if you’re feeling so guilty about making him give up summer hockey, why can’t he just stay at the program he found?”
“Because it’s at the Keane Hockey Academy.”
“Oh, shit!” Vihaan said before exploding into laughter.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it isn’t,” Vihaan agreed, still laughing. “How are they actually letting that mean bitch teach children?”
“And that best friend of his from high school was there, too. He was like wearing a polo, so I think that makes him the head coach.”
“Oh my God, it’s like all those high school nightmares I have whenever I’m stressed out about a deadline came true. Did Con also make you take a math test you forgot to study for?”
Despite herself, Lena laughed at Vihaan’s question. “No, but you’re right. This is a nightmare.” For more reasons than even her best friend from high school understood. “Can you please just look into this for me. Max keeps on talking about them having this great summer travel team, and I have to find something equivalent—with what money, I’m not sure. But whatever, I need to do this for him, and I don’t know Boston as well as you do these days.”
“Well, I was planning to spend my Monday, dusting the many cobwebs that have accumulated on the Last Jewish Mistake side of my bed, but since you called…”
“Thank you, Vi,” she said, tamping down the urge to remind him that alone time after the break-up of a long-term relationship was allowed and sometimes even needed.
She should know. Rohan and she had separated over two years ago and she’d only been on a couple of dates since the divorce had been finalized in December.
“Seriously, Lena, no problem,” he answered, his tone magnanimous. But then he said, “Please tell me Con has a beer belly now and one of those ugly comb-overs.”
Lena bit her lip, trying to remember. The truth was, she’d only squinted at Con a little, trying to figure out where she knew him from before the Keane bomb went off. “He was wearing a hat, so I didn’t see his hair. And I don’t remember a beer belly…”
Vihaan let out a frustrated sound. “Ugh, that coach look is so hot without the beer belly. It’s not fair that the guy who called me a fag every day for two years still gets to be cute….”
Her friend probably had a lot more to say on the subject, but she had to cut him off when the doorbell rang.
“Sorry, the pizza I ordered just got here. I have to go, but I’ll call you back later.”
She got off the phone and rushed to the door, grateful that reinforcements had arrived. She was starving, and talking to Max about switching camps would go a lot easier after they both had some food in their bellies—
That gratitude died an instant, painful death when she saw who was at the door.
“Keane,” she said, her heart dropping into her stomach. “What are you…what are you doing here?”
People don’t grow past the age of twenty-one, do they? Somehow Keane looked like he added more inches since she saw him ten years ago. He loomed over her, his ice green eyes burning, his entire body radiating strength and energy even though he stood utterly still.
In fact, nothing but his lips moved as he answered her question with, “Is he mine? Tell me the truth. Is that kid my goddamn son?”
Oh my gosh, you have got to read what happens next!
Click here to check out
KEANE: Her Ruthless Ex
Also by Theodora Taylor
BROKEN AND RUTHLESS
KEANE: Her Ruthless Ex
STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer
RASHID: Her Ruthless Boss
RUTHLESS TYCOONS
HOLT: Her Ruthless Billionaire
ZAHIR: Her Ruthless Sheikh
LUCA: Her Ruthless Don
HOT AUDIOBOOKS WITH HEART
The Owner of His Heart
Her Russian Billionaire
His Pretend Baby
His Everlasting Love
Her Viking Wolf
THE RUTHLESS NAKAMURAS
Her Perfect Gift
His Revenge Baby
12 Months of Kristal
(newsletter exclusive)
RUTHLESS RUSSIANS
Her Russian Billionaire
Her Russian Surrender
Her Russian Beast
Her Russian Brute
THE VERY BAD FAIRGOODS
His for Keeps
His Forbidden Bride
His to Own
HOT CONTEMPORARIES WITH HEART
The Owner of His Heart
The Wild One
His for the Summer
His Pretend Baby
His One and Only
ALIEN OVERLORDS SERIES (as Taylor Vaughn)
His to Claim
His to Steal
His to Keep
Theirs to Claim
THEIR ALPHA KINGS
Her Viking Wolf
Wolf and Punishment
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 1)
Wolf and Prejudice
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)
Wolf and Soul
(The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 3)
Her Viking Wolves
THE DRAGON KINGS
Her Dragon Everlasting
Her Dragon King
THE BROTHERS NIGHTWOLF
NAGO: Her Forever Wolf
KNUD: Her Big Bad Wolf
RAFES: Her Fated Wolf
THE SCOTTISH WOLVES
Her Scottish Wolf
Her Scottish King
Her Scottish Warrior
HOT HAR
LEQUINS WITH HEART
Vegas Baby
Love’s Gamble
HOT SUPERNATURAL WITH HEART
His Everlasting Love
12 Day of Krista
(only available during the holidays)
About the Author
Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. She now lives in Los Angles, California, and she LOVES to hear from readers. So….
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Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 85
