Game On Box Set: Time OutHer Man AdvantageFace-OffBody Check

by Jill Shalvis

  A gray-haired man with the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger and a George Hamilton tan made a beeline in their direction. A plump, blond woman tagged on his heels, looking annoyed by her escort’s obvious enthusiasm for Darcy.

  “Darcy!” Jonas Quade boomed, grinning widely. “What a treat to see you here.”

  “Happy birthday, Mr. Quade,” Darcy said politely.

  Quade turned to his companion. “Margaret, this is the owner of the lingerie store where I buy you all those intimate gifts.” He winked at the blonde. “Darcy, this is my wife, Margaret.”

  Hayden could see the barely contained mirth on her friend’s face. Hayden had to wonder if Quade’s wife was aware that her husband wasn’t buying intimate gifts only for her.

  “And who is your lovely friend?” Quade asked, peering at Hayden.

  Since she didn’t particularly enjoy being ogled, Hayden felt a flicker of relief when, before Darcy could introduce them, Quade’s wife suddenly latched on to his arm and said, “Marcus is trying to get your attention, darling.” She proceeded to forcibly drag him away from the two women.

  “Enjoy the party,” Quade called over his shoulder.

  “That poor woman,” Darcy said. “She has no idea…”

  “I’m sure she knows. He might as well have adulterer tattooed on his forehead.”

  She and Darcy started to giggle, and Hayden decided this party might not be so bad after all. She hadn’t spotted her father yet, but with Darcy by her side, she might not have such an awful time.

  “Can I interest you in a dance?”

  Damn, she should’ve known her best friend, with that indecently short dress, wouldn’t be available for long.

  The handsome, dark-haired man in a navy-blue pinstriped suit eyed Darcy expectantly. After a moment she shrugged, and said, “I’d love to dance.” She handed her champagne flute to Hayden, adding, “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”

  “Sure. Have fun.”

  Hayden’s shoulders sagged as her friend followed Handsome Man onto the dance floor. Great. Seeing Darcy had been a pleasant surprise, but now her enthusiasm returned to its original level: low.

  Then it swiftly dropped to nonexistent.

  “Hayden, honey!” Her father’s commanding voice sliced through the loud chatter and strains of music. He strode up to her, a glass of bourbon in his hand and an unlit cigar poking out of the corner of his mouth.

  She stood on her tiptoes and pecked his cheek. “Hey, Dad. You look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “I am, I am.” He squeezed her arm and beamed at her. “You look gorgeous.”

  Something about his overly broad smile troubled her. She wasn’t sure why—he was just smiling. And yet an alarm went off in her head. She examined her father more closely. His face was flushed and his eyes were a touch too bright.

  Like an unwanted visit from the Avon lady, Sheila’s words filled her head. Your father’s drinking again.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, unable to stop the wariness from seeping into her tone. “You look a little…tense.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “I’m absolutely great.”

  “You sure? Because I saw those reporters outside and…” And what? And I wanted to make sure that they’re all just lying about your involvement in illegal sports betting?

  Presley’s eyes darkened. “Ignore those bloodsuckers. They’re only trying to cause trouble, conjuring up their delusional stories to sell papers.” He took a slug of bourbon. “This isn’t the time to discuss this. Martin Hargrove was just asking me about you. You remember Martin, he owns a chain of restaurants—”

  “Dad, you can’t just ignore this,” she cut in. “What about the announcement that one of your players came forward? I tried calling your cell yesterday afternoon to talk about it but I kept getting your voice mail. I left you two messages.”

  He ignored the last statement and said, “I was golfing with Judge Harrison. No cell service out on the course.”

  She decided not to mention that she’d also called the house he was renting, knowing he’d probably have an excuse for not answering those calls, too.

  God, why was he acting like none of this was a big deal? One of his players had admitted that Presley fixed games, and her father was brushing it off like a fleck of lint on his sleeve. Going to parties, smoking cigars, mingling with friends. Did he honestly think this would all just blow over? Hayden refused to believe her father had done the things he was accused of, but she wasn’t naive enough to think they could just close their eyes and blink the whole mess away.

  “Did you at least talk to Judge Harrison about what your next move should be?” she asked.

  “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Because this is starting to get serious.” Hayden clenched her fists at her sides. “You should give a press conference maintaining your innocence. Or at the very least, talk to your lawyer.”

  He didn’t bother replying, just shrugged, then lifted his drink to his mouth. After swallowing the rest of the liquid, he signaled a passing waiter and swiped a glass of champagne.

  Hayden took the opportunity to place her and Darcy’s drinks on the waiter’s tray, suddenly losing any taste for alcohol. Both times she’d seen her father this past week, he’d been drinking, but tonight it was obvious her father was drunk. His rosy cheeks and glazed eyes, the way he was swaying on his feet. The blatant case of denial.

  “Dad…how much have you had to drink?”

  His features instantly hardened. “Pardon me?”

  “You just seem a little…buzzed,” she said for lack of a better word.

  “Buzzed? Is that California slang for drunk?” He frowned. “I can assure you, Hayden, I am not drunk. I’ve only had a couple drinks.”

  The defensive note in his voice deepened her concern. When people started making excuses for their inebriated state…wasn’t that a sign of a drinking problem?

  She cursed her stepmother for putting all these absurd ideas into her head. Her father wasn’t an alcoholic. He didn’t have a drinking problem, he hadn’t had an affair, and he certainly hadn’t illegally fixed any Warrior games to make a profit.

  Right?

  Her temples began to throb. God, she didn’t want to doubt her dad, the man who’d raised her alone, the man who up until a few years ago had been her closest friend.

  She opened her mouth to apologize, but he cut her off before she could. “I’m sick of these accusations, you hear me?”

  She blinked. “What? Dad—”

  “I get enough flak from Sheila, I don’t need to hear this shit from my own daughter.”

  His eyes were on fire, his cheeks crimson with anger, and she found herself taking a step back. Tears stung her eyes. Oh, God. For the first time in her life she was frightened of her own father.

  “So I made a few bad investments. Sue me,” he growled, his champagne glass shaking along with his hands. “It doesn’t make me a criminal. Don’t you dare accuse me of that.”

  She swallowed. “I wasn’t—”

  “I didn’t fix those games,” he snapped. “And I don’t have a drinking problem.”

  A ragged breath escaped his lips, the stale odor of alcohol burning her nostrils and betraying his last statement. Her father was drunk. This time there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind. As she stood there, stunned, a tear crept down her cheek.

  “Hayden…honey…oh, Lord, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”

  She didn’t answer, just swallowed again and swiped at her face with a shaky hand.

  Her father reached out and touched her shoulder. “Forgive me.”

  Before she could respond, Jonas Quade approached with jovial strides, clasped his hand on Presley’s arm and said, “There you are, Pres. My son Gregory is dying to meet you. He’s the Warriors’ number-one fan.”

  Her father’s dark green eyes pleaded with her, relaying the message he couldn’t voice at the moment. We’ll talk about this later. />
  She managed a nod, then drew in a ragged breath as Quade led her father away.

  The second the two men ambled off, she spun on her heel and hurried to the French doors leading to the patio, hoping she could keep any more tears at bay until she was out of sight.

  8

  “I REALLY WISH you hadn’t dragged me here,” Sam Becker groaned as he drove his shiny silver Lexus in the direction of the Gallagher Club. “My wife is pissed.”

  “Come on, Mary doesn’t have a ‘pissed’ bone in her body,” Brody replied, thinking of the tiny, delicate woman who’d been married to Sam for fifteen years.

  “That’s what she wants you to think. Trust me, behind closed doors she’s not very nice.”

  Brody laughed.

  “I swear, she almost tore my head off when I told her I was going out with you tonight. It was last-minute, so we couldn’t get a babysitter for Tamara. Mary had to cancel her plans. I’ll never hear the end of this. Thanks a lot, kiddo.”

  Sam’s words might have evoked guilt in some men, but Brody couldn’t muster any. For two days he’d been trying to come up with a way to see Hayden and make things right. Sure, he could’ve just called her, but the way things had ended at the penthouse the other night left him cautious.

  Hayden had mentioned she’d be at the Gallagher Club tonight, and he’d spent the entire afternoon wondering how he could show up there without appearing desperate. The answer had come to him during a call from Becker, who’d phoned to discuss a charity event they were participating in next month.

  Brody wasn’t a member of the Gallagher Club, but Becker was, so Brody had promptly ordered his best bud to brush the dust off his tuxedo.

  He felt bad that Becker had been raked over the coals by his wife, but he’d make it up to him.

  “Why didn’t you get Lucy to watch Tamara?” Brody asked. He’d been over to Becker’s house dozens of times, and had spent quite a bit of time with Becker’s two daughters. Lucy was fourteen, ten years older than her sister Tamara, but it had been obvious to Brody how much the teenager loved her baby sister.

  “Lucy has a—God help me—” Becker groaned “—boyfriend. They’re at the movies tonight.”

  Brody hooted. “You actually let her leave the house with the guy?”

  “I had no choice. Mary said I couldn’t threaten him with a shotgun.” Becker sighed. “And speaking of shotguns, she told me to put one to your head if you didn’t agree to spend a week at our lake house this summer. She renovated the entire place and is dying to show it off.”

  Brody usually tried to spend the entire summer in Michigan with his parents, but for Becker, he was willing to alter his plans. “Tell your wife I’ll be there. Just name the date.”

  Becker suddenly slowed the car. “Oh, shit.”

  A small crowd of reporters hovered in front of the gates of the Gallagher Club. A few turned their heads at the Lexus’s approach.

  Rolling up the windows, Becker turned to Brody and said, “Obviously the vultures are following dear old Pres.”

  Brody suppressed a groan. “Are you surprised? Someone on the team came forward and confirmed the rumors. The press is salivating.”

  Becker drove through the gate and stopped in front of the waiting valet. Lips tight, he got out of the car without a word.

  The second Brody’s feet connected with the cobblestone driveway, one of the reporters shouted at them from the gate.

  “Becker! Croft!” a man yelled, practically poking his entire bald head between two of the gate’s bars. “Any comment on the allegations that Presley Houston fixed Warriors games and…”

  Brody tuned the guy out, choosing instead to follow Becker up the front steps toward the entrance of the club.

  “Jeez, I hate this place,” Becker muttered as they entered the foyer.

  “How’d you get to be a member anyway?” Brody asked the question without caring too much about the answer. He’d much rather talk to Becker about Craig Wyatt and the possibility that he was the one who’d come forward, but Becker’s body language clearly said he didn’t want to discuss the reporters or the scandal. His massive shoulders were tight, his square jaw clenched. Brody could understand. He’d been feeling tense himself ever since he’d watched that news story with Hayden.

  And yesterday’s loss in Los Angeles hadn’t helped. Losing a play-off game was bad, but losing 6–0 was pathetic. The Warriors had played like a team of amateurs, and though nobody had spoken about the scandal, Brody knew it was on their minds. He’d found himself glancing around the locker room, wondering which one of the guys had confessed to knowing about the bribes.

  “My wife is involved with one of Jonas Quade’s charity foundations,” Becker was saying in response Brody’s question. “When he offered to put in a good word for me with the members’ committee, Mary pretty much threatened divorce unless I joined.” Becker muttered a curse. “I’m telling you, man, she’s not a nice person.”

  “You must have seen something good in her considering you married the woman.”

  “Yeah, I did see something.” Becker’s rugged features softened. “My soul mate.”

  The two men entered the massive ballroom, and Brody’s eyes instantly began darting around the room.

  “So what’s her name?” Becker asked with a sigh.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Come on, Croft. Only reason you dragged me here is because I belong to this pretentious society of snobs and you needed to score an invite. And since you’re no social climber, that means you came here to see a woman. So what’s her name?”

  “Hayden,” he admitted.

  Becker accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter. “Is she a member of Chicago’s high society?”

  “Kind of.” He hesitated. “She’s Presley’s daughter.”

  Becker paused mid-sip. “As in the daughter of Presley Houston, the man who signs our paychecks?”

  “Yep.”

  “Bad idea, man. You don’t want to get involved with a Houston, not while this betting bullshit is going on.”

  Brody’s tuxedo jacket suddenly felt too tight. “Hayden has nothing to do with that. She’s just visiting from California.”

  “And if the media finds out you’re sleeping with her, they’ll start drooling. It’ll be all over the headlines, how Pres’s daughter is screwing one of the star players on the team in order to shut him up.”

  The hairs on the back of Brody’s neck stood on end. “You say that as if you think there’s something I need shutting up about. Sam…do you know something about this bribery crap?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You sure?” He hesitated. “You didn’t…you didn’t take a bribe, did you?”

  Becker looked as if he’d been shot by a bazooka. His mouth dropped open, his cheeks reddened and a vein popped out in his forehead. “You actually think I’d take a fucking bribe? I’ve been playing in this league for half my life. Trust me, I earn enough.”

  Brody relaxed. “I didn’t think you took a bribe,” he said, trying to inject reassurance into his voice. “But what you just said…it sounds like you know more about this scandal than the rest of us. Did Pres tell you anything?”

  Though he looked calm now, the vein on Becker’s forehead continued to throb. He seemed uncomfortable, scanning the room like that of a prisoner scouting out an escape route. “I don’t know anything,” he finally said.

  “Well, I think I might,” Brody found himself confessing.

  Becker’s head jerked up. “What are you talking about?”

  Although this was probably not the time, and definitely not the place, Brody told Becker about what he’d seen at the arena the other day. He spoke in a hushed tone, revealing his suspicions that Sheila Houston had confided in Craig Wyatt about whatever it was she knew, and that Wyatt was the one who’d spoken to the league. He finished with, “So do you think I should do something?”

  The other man released a ragged breath. He looked a bit shell-
shocked. “Honestly? I think it would be a bad idea.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You don’t want to get involved,” Becker warned in a low voice. “You’ll only cast suspicion on yourself.”

  He mulled over his friend’s advice, knowing Becker did have a point. But then he thought of the team captain, and how subdued Wyatt had been lately. Wyatt had always been serious, but he’d barely spoken a word to anyone in weeks, and when he did, it was to yell at them for making a mistake out on the ice. Brody got the feeling Craig Wyatt might very well be in need of a friend, and as reluctant as he was to get involved, he wasn’t sure he could watch a teammate struggle without doing a thing to help.

  But Becker remained firm. “Don’t confront Craig, kiddo. If it bothers you this much, I’ll talk to him, okay?”

  He glanced at his friend in surprise. “You’d really do that?”

  With a playful punch to Brody’s arm, Becker gave a faint smile and said, “Unlike my old-timer self, you’ve still got a lot of years ahead of you. I don’t want to see your career tank just because Presley Houston might’ve decided he needed some extra cash.”

  “My two favorite players!”

  Speak of the devil. Brody shot Becker a look of gratitude, then pasted on a smile as Presley approached them, holding a glass of champagne in his large hand. Considering there were reporters outside just dying to roast Pres for these bribery charges, the man seemed surprisingly jovial. Either the allegations didn’t concern him, or he was doing a damn good job covering up his distress.

  “Having a good time?” Pres asked.

  “We just got here,” answered Becker.

  “Well, the party’s just getting started.” Pres lifted his glass to his lips and emptied it. A second later he flagged down a waiter and promptly received a full glass.

  “Is your daughter here tonight?” Brody asked. His voice came out more eager than casual. His peripheral vision caught Becker’s mouth creasing in a frown.