Play My Game: A 100 Series Standalone Romance

by Lara Adrian

Katie scrunches her nose. “She’s not gonna like that.”

  “That’s why I’m going to need your help making sure she behaves, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Eve smiles at us. “If I’m leaving, I should go.”

  “Go,” I tell her, drawing my niece under my arm. “We’re good.”

  “I’m calling you later.”

  I nod. “Thank you for being here. I love you, girl.”

  “Love you, too. And you,” she tells Katie. With a wave, she turns away from us and glides out of sight as elegantly as if she’s on a fashion runway.

  When it’s just the two of us, I glance down at my niece and the dog-eared kids’ magazine clutched in her hand. “Are you reading something good?”

  “Uh, huh. It’s all about elephants in Africa. There are games and stuff in it, too.”

  “That does sound good.” I smile at her sweet face that looks so much like my sister’s. “Will you read some of it to me?”

  “Sure.”

  We head back into the mostly empty waiting room. Traffic in the coronary unit has ebbed and flowed since we arrived yesterday afternoon. The brown vinyl recliner I sat in while Katie slept in my arms last night is vacant, so we reclaim it. For several minutes I allow myself to unwind to the sound of my niece reciting facts about elephant social structures and efforts to conserve endangered species around the world.

  I don’t even realize I’m dozing until I startle awake and find my lap empty.

  “Katie?” I vault out of the chair and step into the wide corridor outside the waiting room.

  She’s nowhere in sight. The halls are busy with nurses moving patients and people drifting out of one room or another along the passageway. But no sign of my niece. I start walking fast, panic rising in my breast.

  “Katie?”

  I round the corner toward another stretch of hallway practically at a skid. All my breath leaves my lungs in a relieved gust when I see her standing in front of a vending machine. Her small hand is splayed against the Plexiglas, her pale blond head tipped up as she looks longingly at all the beverages inside.

  “Katie, what are you doing out here? I thought I told you not to wander off while we were at the hospital. I want you to stay where I can see you, remember?”

  She glances at me, her sweet face contrite. “I know. But you were sleeping and I got thirsty.”

  “It takes money to use this machine, honey. Come on, I’ll get you a drink from the water cooler near the nurse’s station.”

  “But I want juice,” she says, disappointment and fatigue in the puppy dog look she gives me.

  She’s tired and bored, which is understandable considering how long we’ve been keeping vigil outside my mom’s unit. She’s probably hungry again, too. We had breakfast in the cafeteria downstairs, but Katie barely picked at her toast and eggs.

  I should see about getting her an early lunch.

  What I really should have done was take Eve up on her offer to bring us home. Katie needs the rest and a proper meal. God knows I could use a little of both as well.

  “All right,” I relent, digging into my purse for a couple of dollars to feed the machine. “You can have juice. Which one do you want?”

  “Apple.” Then she shakes her head and points to another one. “No, grape. I want grape.”

  A deep voice sounds from behind me while I’m still foraging for my wallet. “How about one of each? My treat.”

  I swivel my head at the dark whiskey growl I’d now recognize anywhere. It doesn’t lessen my surprise to hear Jared Rush’s voice, or to see him standing in the hospital corridor with me.

  “What are you doing here?” I’m sure my frown isn’t any more welcoming than my tone, but I can’t help it.

  “Can I have both, Aunt Melanie?” Katie asks, oblivious to the change in the air that always seems to occur whenever Jared’s nearby.

  I wish I could be oblivious to it, too. Awareness of him arcs through me like an electrical current, hot and bright and intense. He looks good, dressed in jeans and boots, the sleeves of his white button-down shirt rolled up over his tanned, muscular forearms. His thick man of sandy-brown hair breaks in waves on his broad shoulders, wild and untamed, like the rugged handsomeness of the man himself. And he smells ridiculously good, spicy and warm, a comfort to my senses that I want to refuse but can’t.

  I break away from his smoldering stare to hand my money to Katie. “Choose one or the other, honey. I don’t have enough for both.” I glare back at Jared. “And we don’t need anyone’s charity.”

  “How about an apology?”

  The only thing that could shock me more than his unexpected appearance here are those words falling off his tongue in a low tone that actually seems sincere. He seems a bit taken aback by them, too. Something flickers in his warm molasses eyes, something I’m tempted to call regret.

  I lift my chin, refusing to give in to anything about this dangerous, volatile—obviously troubled—man. “I don’t need your apology, either.”

  After Katie’s bottle of grape juice clunks into the tray and she fetches it out, I steer her away from Jared, prepared to leave him standing right where he is.

  “I heard about your mom, Melanie. How’s she doing?”

  I freeze, wheeling around to face him. “What do you mean you heard about her? How? Did Eve—”

  He shakes his head. “Not Eve. I ran into Gabe this morning while I was at the Baine Building meeting with Nick. He was on his way to pick her up at the hospital.”

  “And he told you she was here with me?”

  “He didn’t want to tell me anything, so don’t be upset with him. When I heard what happened to your mom, I pressed him to tell me where I could find you.”

  “Why?” The question blurts out of me like an accusation. “What do you care? Oh, wait. Let me guess. You’re here because I didn’t show up for our session today?”

  Katie looks up at me as my temper swiftly moves toward a simmer. “Who is this man, Aunt Mellie?”

  “Just someone I met recently. He’s not important.” I see Jared’s jaw go a bit more rigid at my jab, but he says nothing. I paste a comforting smile on my face as I meet my niece’s worried look. “Why don’t you go back to the waiting room and read some more from your magazine?”

  She frowns. “But you just said not to go where you can’t see me.”

  “I know, and thank you for reminding me. I need just a minute with Jared, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”

  “She’s cute,” Jared says as we both watch Katie skip back to the waiting room.

  “She is,” I admit softly. “She looks just like my sister.”

  “Your sister’s not here with you?”

  “Jen’s dead. She died when Katie was two years old.” I level a flat stare at him and find him watching me with a soberness in his gaze.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I fold my arms over my chest. “Why are you here, Jared? If you’ve come to tell me I’m in breach of my contract with you, don’t bother. If my mom wasn’t in the hospital, I was going to tell you I want out of the agreement. I can’t be around you, Jared. After what happened at the studio on Friday, I won’t be around you anymore.”

  “That’s more than understandable,” he says, no inflection in his voice. “I’m here now only because I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have.”

  “Probably not, but here I am.”

  His stare is unnerving. Not for the usual reasons, the ones that send my heart into a gallop and make everything female in me unfurl with anticipation. No, right now his gaze knocks me off kilter because it’s full of compassion and concern. I swallow, feeling my outrage fizzle under the unexpected warmth of his caring regard.

  “How are you holding up, Melanie?”

  It’s the tenderness in his voice that unravels me the most. “I’m okay.”

  “And your mom?”

  “Better now, thank Go
d. She collapsed after we came home from a day in the park yesterday. The surgeon put in two stents, one of them to clear an eighty-six percent blockage in the left anterior artery. He said that one’s the worst kind of blockage to have.”

  Jared nods grimly. “The widow-maker.”

  “That’s what Mom’s doctor called it. How do you know so much about heart issues?”

  “My mother had similar problems. She wasn’t as lucky as yours. If the heart disease hadn’t killed her, the alcoholism and smoking eventually would have.”

  He’s mentioned his family had hardships when he was young, including the financial mistakes of his father that cost the family their horse farm in Kentucky, but this is the first he’s shared any of the details of his past. Having come so close to losing my mother now, I can understand some of the pain he must have felt in losing his. “I’m sorry, Jared. I truly am.”

  He grunts. “Ancient history.”

  And yet the way he says it, the way the tenderness in his gaze seems to harden, tells me his history isn’t as ancient as he’d like me to believe.

  “What’s the plan with your mom?” he asks, deftly attempting to shift my focus away from him. “How long are they keeping her here?”

  “Another day or two for tests and follow-ups. I’m going to have my work cut out for me after she comes home. I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m raising two six-year-olds.”

  “Your father’s not in the picture?”

  “No. Just me.”

  He nods, studying me in that way he has of cleaving through all of my defenses and protective walls. My simple answer gives away nothing of the trauma of my past, yet I sense him waiting for me to tell him more. I glance away, reminding myself that this is Jared Rush, the artist who thrives on dissecting people, peeling them apart to expose every vulnerability. I don’t want him to see mine, not now. Not here, in the middle of the hospital corridor.

  “I should’ve seen this coming with her,” I admit under my breath. “I knew she looked tired yesterday. I knew her color wasn’t good. She had a heart attack last year. I should’ve known a blood clot was more than a possibility. I should’ve taken her to the emergency room myself as soon as I noticed how fatigued she looked—”

  “Hey,” he says gently, as the words tumble out of me in rapid fire. His hand comes up between us but instead of touching me, he lets it slowly fall back down to his side.

  “What about you?” he asks, his brows furrowed. “Have you gotten any sleep since yesterday? Gabe said you’ve been here the whole time.”

  “I’m fine. I’m tired, but I’m fine. I shouldn’t have brought Katie with me, but I had no other choice.”

  “What about Hathaway? He isn’t willing to help out?”

  “I didn’t ask him to,” I murmur, unwilling to tell Jared that we broke up. I’ve got enough to deal with at the moment without seeing him gloat over my bad choices or the fact that he warned me not to put my trust—or my heart—in Daniel. “I should go look in on my niece.”

  Jared nods solemnly. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to the waiting room.”

  I know I should refuse. I don’t want his comforting any more than I want his charity. But my body is too exhausted to resist when he moves his hand to my back and lets it hover just above my spine, not touching me, yet offering a warm support—a soothing strength—I can’t deny.

  We walk to the waiting room in silence, and while it should feel awkward, even uncomfortable, after the way we left things between us at his studio a few days ago, all I feel is gratitude for his presence. No, that’s not all. I feel a strange sense of calm, too.

  God, I must be a fool.

  Jared Rush should not be my safe harbor, yet right now, in this moment, that’s exactly what he feels like.

  We arrive in the family waiting area and I sigh when I see Katie curled up and sleeping like a kitten in the vinyl chair. Her half-empty bottle of grape juice sits on the end table beside her, the magazine she’d been reading still clutched in her small hands.

  “She needs to be at home in her bed,” I whisper, reluctant to wake her.

  Jared glances me. “My car’s in the visitor lot downstairs. I can have you back at your house in ten minutes.”

  I start to shake my head. “I’m sure you have plenty of other more important things to do.”

  “I don’t,” he says, his deep voice solemn. “Let me take you home, Melanie.”

  21

  MELANIE

  Asleep and belted into in the backseat of Jared’s black sports car, Katie hardly stirs during the short ride from the hospital.

  Although the gorgeous Aston Martin could probably hold its own and then some on a Formula One racetrack, Jared drives it with reserved control through the busy morning traffic in Queens and zigzagging one-way streets of my neighborhood.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I tell him as he parks in the short driveway of my little house. “You really didn’t have to go to the trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble at all.”

  I don’t expect him to get out of the car, but when I unbuckle my seatbelt, Jared turns off the engine and comes around to my side as I reach into the back to retrieve Katie. She’s dead to the world, slumped in the seat, a sprawl of long legs and loose arms, her head flopped down on her narrow chest.

  “I can carry her inside for you,” Jared offers, moving in to help.

  “That’s all right, I’m used to this.”

  He frowns and shakes his head. “You’re as exhausted as she is. Let me take her.”

  As much as I may want to argue against accepting his help, he’s right. I am tired. I give him a vague nod, then step aside and watch as he carefully extricates her from the seat and gathers her boneless weight against his strong shoulder.

  “Lead the way.” The sound of his deep voice pitched to a lower timbre to avoid waking the child sleeping in his arms makes my heart squeeze up like a fist in my breast.

  I didn’t imagine a man like Jared Rush had any degree of tenderness in him. Seeing him like this makes me wonder what else I’ve yet to learn about him.

  As much as I try to cling to the fear, confusion, and anger I left with the other day at his beach house studio, this calm, steady side of Jared isn’t playing along with that plan.

  Despite my firsthand knowledge from childhood of how quickly a man can veer from the straight and narrow path of kindness, even charm, to a monster with the ability to destroy everything in his path, I can’t reconcile that image with Jared.

  Unlike my father, Jared hasn’t been violent with me. His explosive reaction when he knocked the bottle of whisky off the counter had been vitriol directed at himself, not me. And while I’d been afraid of the alcohol, and remain disturbed by how readily Jared reaches for it, I haven’t ever been afraid of him.

  If I were, our conversation today—and whatever it is that lingers between us now—would have ended back in the hospital corridor.

  “We’ll go in through the back,” I tell him, trying to pretend I don’t notice the current of energy that still lives between us, no weaker for the days that have passed since I saw him at the beach house studio.

  If anything, I’m even more aware of him now that I know how his mouth feels on mine.

  I lead him to the side door of my house, Katie still asleep on his shoulder as I unlock the deadbolt. The house has always seemed small, but the space inside shrinks around the presence of Jared Rush.

  “Katie’s bedroom is upstairs,” I murmur quietly in the stillness surrounding us as I lead him deeper into the house.

  It’s neither an invitation for him to take her there nor a request for him to surrender her to me so he can leave. To be honest, I’m not sure which I’d prefer. Part of me is grateful for his company today, and for his smooth ability to take control of every situation. That arrogant confidence I found so maddening when I met him is the thing I’m simply grateful to lean on now.

  The empty picnic cooler is on the kitchen floor where I left it when
I ran to help my mom after she collapsed. In the living room, the overturned end table is still on its side, Mom’s reading glasses and book lying haphazardly where they fell. It’s difficult to walk past the reminders of how close I came to losing her.

  Jared seems to clue in to the weight of my unspoken thoughts. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. This just brings the reality of it crashing back to me, you know?”

  His nod is solemn, something haunted in his grim expression. It was only days ago that I considered him the last person I’d want to see me vulnerable or hurting. Now, I look at him and find an unexpected reassurance in his perceptive gaze.

  When we reach Katie’s room, Jared carefully deposits her on the mattress, then steps back to let me take off her shoes and cover her with the blanket folded at the end of her bed.

  Once we’re back downstairs, Jared moves ahead of me to right the small table. I pick up Mom’s things and set them where she’ll want them when she gets home.

  “Have you been taking care of your niece for long?”

  “Since she was an infant. Mom was already living with me here at the house.”

  “And your sister?”

  “Jen had a lot of problems,” I admit, frowning at the memories. “She struggled with drugs and alcohol, which didn’t make it easy for her to hold a job. She used to leave Katie here with Mom and me when things got rough. She died before Katie really knew her. The medical examiner called it an accidental overdose.”

  “But you don’t believe that?”

  “Life wasn’t easy for my sister.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it was easy for you, either.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” He has no idea how hard things were, and as much as I’d prefer to keep my ugly childhood locked up inside me where I don’t have to examine it, I can’t stop the words from coming. “My father didn’t make things easy for anyone near him. He wasn’t always bad, not in the early years, at least. No one realized he had psychological issues. It would’ve mattered if we did. He was too proud for therapy, not that we could’ve afforded it. He drank instead. Mom thought she could save him. She tried to be his rock, but he spiraled to a dark place. One day he could be charming, seemingly normal. The next, he was a monster.”