The Penalty

by Piper Westbrook

  “Well, this one was.”

  “You didn’t mean to go to his hotel suite for what was going to be a full-blown F-U-C-K?”

  Waverly narrowed her eyes. “You can say the word, Meg. 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.” Meg set off with her cane. “So, do enlighten me about this mystical thing you call accidental fucking.”

  Waverly struggled to put words to what she’d experienced with Jeremiah 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 previous owner’s son…Milo Tarantino’s brother. God, he even looks like him.” She snorted. “I got lost in wanting to do something I wasn’t supposed to do.”

  “Hell, did you ever.” Meg 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. “Waverly, perhaps he didn’t follow you to the party, but…”

  “What?” Waverly waited until Meg met her eyes before she pressed, “Out with it, seriously. Don’t try that ‘protect her by keeping quiet’ thing.” Her college roommate, Khloé McBride, had chosen that route when she’d found out Waverly’s then-boyfriend was a serial cheater, and after the truth finally erupted, Waverly and Khloé had gone an entire semester without speaking. Waverly didn’t want to be “handled” again and needed her closest friends—Khloé and Meg—to never forget that.

  “There are angles to this situation you’re not really seeing here, amiga,” Meg 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 Tarantino. Didn’t Milo Tarantino—that tight end who was injured 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 Greers 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. Waverly, 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, Meg. The owner himself never publicly said Dad bullied him, and yeah, J.T. ‘The Body’ Greer isn’t a man anybody would be smart to mess with, but he doesn’t bully to get his way. Plus, Milo hasn’t said anything more about it.”

  “Not publicly, but can you be so sure he dropped his vendetta?” Meg gripped her cane with one hand and used the other to drum her French-manicured nails against her thigh. “Okay, follow me on this, Waverly, and let me talk. This is how I put things together.”

  An agent at work, Meg’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. Waverly waited, pretty sure she had figured out the destination of her friend’s train of thought.

  “Your family’s in the limelight, Waverly,” she said quietly. “Your mother practically knows by name the paparazzi who follow her. Anyone could’ve paid one of those assholes to keep an eye on you. So you’re being watched, and opportunity knocks when you show up at the Rio after being put through the media wringer. Then he’s there—a gorgeous guy with a cast-iron body who droves of women likely find attractive.

  “Please don’t look ashamed of yourself, Waverly,” Meg 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 end game 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 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?”

  Waverly hated every word of the speculation—every damn logical word of it. It had fallen too conveniently into place with Jeremiah 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?” Meg asked.

  “I don’t exactly know. Suspension? Firing?”

  Meg averted her eyes, chewing the inside of her cheek. She didn’t bother protesting the idea that Waverly’s parents and sister would fire her, because she knew they would in a heartbeat.

  “Jeremiah would lose his job, too,” Waverly 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 Greers something to remember the Tarantinos by.”

  “I trusted myself with him,” Waverly said on a sigh. “I trusted a stranger.”

  “These hiccups happen, Waverly. I was on an undercover job 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 trust—in myself. I don’t trust strangers completely, but I always trust myself.”

  Waverly nodded, and though she and Khloé from college were still close friends even as Khloé spent her sabbatical from UNLV in California as a visiting facial plastic surgeon, Waverly was glad that Meg was the friend she could lean on in this moment. Meg didn’t normally go deeper than vague when talking about her life as a DEA agent. Waverly always figured it had a lot to do with the sensitive nature of her career, but clearly there was a level of emotional distance Meg needed to maintain in order to remain in such a dark line of work.

  “What I’ve just unrolled for you is my theory, Waverly. Find out if it’s the truth. And in the meanwhile, how about some chocolate cheesecake? I’ll treat you, seeing as you’re going through all this and only got unfinished oral out of it.”

  A smile broke and Meg’s throaty laughter was contagious as she steadied her cane and took off walking again. It went without saying that betrayal had tarnished Jeremiah Tarantino in Waverly’s eyes. Plus, there was bad blood between the Tarantinos and the Greers, and Waverly 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 Villains’ 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.” Veronica’s voice echoed off the high ceilings and empty rooms of her three-storied showcase home when Waverly, weighed down with shopping bags despite her intention to purchase only a new charm for her 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.” Waverly kicked off her shoes, set her loot on the marble floor and moseyed barefoot into the kitchen to see her sister had turned the room into
a chef-style mini-office. Surrounded by folders and papers and pens and sticky notes, Veronica sat at the island counter in jeans and a cutoff sweatshirt with her laptop in front of her.

  As if thrilled to be interrupted, Veronica pulled off her reading glasses, pinched the bridge of her nose and waved Waverly over for a quick one-armed hug as if they hadn’t just seen one another less than twenty-four hours ago. “Hi, sis.”

  “Hey.” Waverly lightly tugged her brunette sister’s ponytail. “Tough day?”

  “Oh, your average contract drama. We’ve a guy who’s holding out. But it is what it is.”

  “Veronica? 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, Waverly 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.

  “Waverly?” Veronica 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.”

  Waverly frowned, turning to her sister, who’d all but added, “You should try it yourself sometime.” After bunking with Khloé 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 always had plenty of room, here and in Texas, and they’d insisted that she stay with them until she got her life together.

  Veronica had exchanged Chance Kershaw’s ring for a house key. Aly, 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 souped up Oldsmobile is that out front?”

  “Chance’s. He left his weight bench in the workout room, had to come for it tonight.”

  “This shouldn’t be news to you,” Waverly 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 Chance Kershaw has enough money 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,” Waverly said again, though she wasn’t completely convinced. But neither was Veronica 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?” Veronica asked. “Finally sick of Aly’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.” Veronica 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.”

  Waverly didn’t care for the exhaustion and touch of loneliness in her sister’s voice. She’d always figured Veronica had gotten used to being defined as music god Chance Kershaw’s wife, and calling it quits to her marriage had forced her to accept someone she didn’t yet know how to be: Veronica Greer, a woman who deserved a life free of lies and mistrust and heartbreak.

  Waverly loved her sisters but didn’t want what they’d gotten into—Veronica’s marriage, which apparently had more downs than ups, and Aly’s gossip-fodder hard-partying lifestyle.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Waverly offered.

  “Team-lift a weight bench.” Chance 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, Waverly, 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.”

  Chance rubbed a hand over his head 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 Veronica into a whirlwind relationship neither of them had been ready to commit to. At Waverly’s blank expression, he edged closer to Veronica and peered over her shoulder.

  “Buzz off,” Veronica said. “If you can’t pull that bench out of here, I’m surrounded by muscle-bound men who’re able and available.”

  “Stop trying 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.” Veronica blinked at him. “Weight bench?”

  Chance squeezed her shoulder, but she didn’t respond. “I’ll come—”

  “Back for it,” Waverly and Veronica finished in unison. Rolling her eyes, Waverly stepped in, hoping her sister would forgive her for micromanaging this one last time. “Let me show you the way out, Chance.”

  “Nobody knows this house better than I do,” he said, but walked with her anyway.

  “Thought you wouldn’t recognize it without all your music awards—” Chance’s shoulders stiffened and Waverly 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 Waverly, 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 Chance, Waverly returned to the kitchen with purpose. “Two things. Chance Kershaw 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?”

  Veronica sighed, dragging a hand up her face and into her hair. “Didn’t think about all that.” She slid off the stool and gathered papers. “Oh, Waverly, 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. Waverly coughed at the thought. “Okay.” Pitching in, she grabbed a stack of files and noticed one labeled Active Roster.

  “Veronica…you know what you said to Chance 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?” Veronica paused as she bent to retrieve her briefcase. “Pursue what? Like sleep with one of our players or something?”

  “A player, a coach, anyone.”

  Veronica shot up. “Is that out there? Did anyone say I was screwing someone from the team? Because I’m absolutely not. As the general manager I can’t even fantasize about getting personal with someone I have professional power over. And the bigger problem—Mom and Dad would freak the fuck out—”

  “Thought so,” Waverly mumbled. But she wasn’t the general manager, and her incident with Jeremiah Tarantino had been a case of unknown identity. An honest mistake. Surely the front office and the league would understand that, if the details came tumbling forth? She and Jeremiah knew exactly what had transpired—and Meg knew what Waverly had told her.

  Suppose everything were out in the open. Even if
conflicted, Veronica would simply do as their parents requested and fire Waverly. Waverly would love Veronica for eternity, but nothing stood in her way of making their parents happy. It was what she did best.

  If J.T. and Joan let it slide—which they most certainly would not—then media pressure, frequently an unstoppable force, would likely compel the league to interfere. Only in special circumstances did the National Football League grant a team true autonomy.

  A sex scandal like this would only underscore the opposition’s point that professional men’s football was no place for a woman. The stance was sexist and in no way progressive, but clever-minded people had ways of twisting an honest mistake into a sordid scandal.

  “Waverly, why these questions? It’s all a little random. What are you getting at?”

  She barely heard her sister, preoccupied with the files in her hands. Did Veronica keep a full employee roster on hand in her mini-office? Only one way to find out. Nonchalantly, she put the active roster file at the bottom of the stack she was holding and scanned the label of the next one.

  “I’ll take those,” Veronica said, her pitch a bit high as she reached for the stack. When Waverly held on a moment longer than she should have, her sister yanked the folders away and snapped, “What are you doing?”

  “Um…I was talking to someone at the party last night and have a question for him.” She was dancing on thin ice now, telling sort-of-truths to her sister, who had the power to fire her. “I didn’t get his phone number.”

  Jeremiah had wanted to exchange phone numbers, but she’d refused.…

  “This question of yours. Is it about business?”

  “Absolutely.” If Veronica considered her older sister’s career business. “I really need to get that number tonight—to ask him that question.”