“I didn’t know Bruce had a twin brother.”
Shanna’s scissors stopped in mid-snip. Mac caught her surprised expression in the mirror. “Bruce told you about Brice?”
“No, a friend of his did.”
“Figures. I’ve never known him to talk about it. None of us do. Our family is weird like that.” Shanna tugged on the hair on both sides of Mac’s face to make sure it was even.
“Why is that?” Mac pushed it, having no doubt Shanna would nail her if she stepped over the line.
Shanna shrugged and picked up the curling iron. “We’re experts at denial.”
“Especially Bruiser.” Mac planted the bait and waited for Shanna to bite.
“Look, I don’t talk about my brother to just anyone. He might seem like a public person, but he’s not, not one damn bit. He lets people see what he wants them to see and no more. But I think you’re different than his usual girlfriends.”
Mac opened her mouth to dispute the statement but Shanna stopped her cold. “Hear me out. You’re good for him. You ground him, and God knows he needs that. He’s ten times smarter than those bimbos he dates, but you’re his equal.” Shanna studied her in the mirror, tapping her scissors on the chair.
“What happened to his twin? I know he was in an accident and then—”
Shanna held up a hand to stop her. “We don’t talk about the accident. If you want to know, he’ll have to tell you. But I will say Bruce lives the life he believes Brice would have lived, as if Bruce doesn’t deserve to live his life for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Growing up, Bruiser was the quiet, studious one. Brice was the daredevil, attention seeker, and athlete of the family. Not that Bruce wasn’t athletic—of course he was, but not like Brice. Brice overshadowed everything Bruce did. Our parents never hid the fact that Brice was their favorite. After Brice’s accident, Dad couldn’t deal with Brice’s injuries, nor could he look at Bruce because he was a constant reminder of what Brice used to be. So Dad left. And Mom, well, she blamed Bruce—not directly, but she has her ways. She reminds us every chance she gets of Brice’s absence in our life. I think she tortures Bruce for living because she doesn’t know how else to deal with the grief.”
“That’s awful.” Mac couldn’t imagine a parent holding such guilt over a child’s head. Or maybe she could. Maybe in a way her father did that same thing.
“Yeah, it took me a long time to forgive Mom and Dad. They’re superficial people; their lives and their livelihoods depend on appearances. Neither of them could bear looking at Brice. He did look pretty hideous, the stuff of nightmares, but he was their kid.”
Mac wiped an unexpected tear from her eye, getting a yank on her hair in return.
“Don’t move,” Shanna chastised Mac. “Anyway, Bruce found Brice after he’d shot himself. After that it was weird. Bruce took on his twin’s personality. He became Brice, but it didn’t matter to our father, and Mom just buried herself in the business. I think it was too painful to look at Bruce and see the mirror image of the son she’d lost.”
“Are you saying that Bruiser has been his brother all these years?”
“I’m saying that he’s been the person he imagined Brice would be for so long that I don’t think he knows how to be Bruce anymore.”
“Wow.” Mac couldn’t seem to wrap her head around how screwed up his whole situation was. Her heart was breaking for him.
“He hates doing all those endorsements, especially the modeling. I mean, he despises modeling. But every penny he makes on endorsements goes to his charity for burn victims.”
“I assumed he spent it on designer clothes and stuff.” When she thought about it she realized with all the money he made he had to be doing something with it besides buying clothes. She’d bought right into the image he’s sold to everyone.
Shanna laughed. “Bruce is a tight-assed bastard. He hoards money. Most of his clothes come via the endorsements or he gets them on sale, or they’re last year’s designs. He wears them so well no one notices.”
Mac shook her head in amazement. “I never knew.”
“No one knows. He needs to maintain his man-about-town persona.”
“He has terrible nightmares.”
Shanna locked eyes with her in the mirror. “And you know this how?”
Mac’s face turned bright red. “I—uh—well—”
“Hey, don’t fret it. I know how he is with women. Never met one yet that could resist him when he turned on that boyish charm.”
Mac hated being just one of his many women. Brett was wrong. Bruiser couldn’t miss her. Maybe the sex, but not her.
“Funny, I thought you might be different. That’s why we invited you to Sunday dinner. You’re real, and Bruce needs a real woman, not some piece of arm candy without a brain in her fucking head. He’s so damn gun-shy when it comes to women.”
“Gun-shy?”
“His divorce. Surely you know about that one?”
“I know he’s divorced and the marriage didn’t last long.”
“I never liked the bitch. Let me put it this way—she was looking for a man who’d be somebody, so she latched onto him in college. She was smart, clever, and devious. He never saw through her. Totally fell for her. They married their senior year, lived in student housing, and she worked two menial jobs, which she thought were beneath her. When she caught the team quarterback’s eye, they had an affair.
Bruce didn’t find out until his QB buddy went higher in the draft and signed a bigger contract. She threw Bruce to the curb and never looked back. It devastated him. He was so busy finishing his degree he didn’t see it coming.”
“Bruiser has a degree?” She’d known he played college ball, but she figured he got drafted into the pros and left school.
“Yeah, in business and finance. He graduated with honors.”
Mac shook her head. She felt shell shocked. She hadn’t a fucking clue. Everything she thought she knew about him was a misconception.
And just maybe there was one more. Maybe he was a man with the ability to commit long term.
Who the hell was she kidding? The guy carried more baggage than the cargo hold of a Boeing 787, and the last thing he needed was a commitment to a woman who had her own cargo hold full of matched luggage.
* * * * *
Beady little blue eyes bored into Bruiser’s back as he sat at the bar. He could feel them. He swung around and came face to face with the team’s asshole quarterback. When the jerk continued to stare without saying a fucking thing, he turned his back on Harris again and faced the bar, but the quarterback’s laser-sharp gaze still seared his skin as if he held a blowtorch.
Bruiser whipped around again. “What?”
Tyler shot him his trademark smirk, an expression he’d honed over the years. “You are such a fucking tool.”
“You would know.” Bruiser would never understand what Lavender saw in this guy.
“Hey, I make it my business to know anything that might remotely affect the team. You’ve been moping around like a pansy-ass about to turn in his man card because of some female.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
Harris’s cronies gathered around the bar, pulling barstools from other locations. So much for a quiet night to think things over.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Harris threw back his head and laughed so hard Bruiser swore he’d snort up a lung. Finally, wiping his eyes, Harris got a hold of himself. “What would we know about that, right guys?”
Derek seemed to find this hilariously funny, too, along with Zach. Brett half smiled and buried his head in the bar menu, which after all this time frequenting this place, he should have memorized.
Bruiser didn’t get it, not one bit. Other than they were annoying the hell out of him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“One word, dumb shit. Mac.” Tyler’s superior smirk pissed Bruiser off, but then Tyler loved to piss people off, it was part of his M.O.
If he knew he got under Bruiser’s skin, he’d burrow in deeper and heckle Bruiser until hell froze over.
“Mac?” Bruiser played dumb. He was blond, after all.
“Yeah, you’ve fallen harder than a kicker trying to throw a block on a lineman.” Zach snorted beer through his nose. After a coughing fit, he quickly wiped his nose with a napkin. Kelsie had taught him a thing or two.
“I don’t fall for women—not Mac, not anybody.” They knew about Mac?
The three idiots shared a private look and burst into another fit of annoying laughter, while Brett’s pinched expression made him look constipated.
“Yeah,” Harris said. “That’s why you’re as shit-faced cranky as Lavender when I took away her Nordstrom’s credit card.”
Bruiser exercised epic denial. “It’s not about Mac. Not really.” And it wasn’t, at least not in total.
Another fit of laughter, then the idiots grinned like a pack of hyenas after a wounded antelope. These assholes were seriously pissing Bruiser off.
“Yeah, sure, then who’s it about?” Harris challenged.
“Elliot.” Bruiser deflected the Mac questions to a safer subject though just as equally troubling. Thinking about the kid’s circumstances made Bruiser sick to his stomach. He’d been visiting Elliot regularly. The boy’s Aunt Ruth made no bones about how much the kid inconvenienced her and her brood of “normal” children. All the while, she played the martyr role to the hilt for her church friends. After all, she had taken in this difficult orphaned child of a former sister-in-law.
Bruiser disliked the woman and her husband. They didn’t want Elliot but appearances were everything to them. After all, what would people think if they sent the kid back to the foster care system? Bruiser researched a possible guardianship, but The Joneses were adamant that his situation didn’t fit Elliot’s needs. He grudgingly had to admit they were right to a point.
“Is Elliot the kid from the burn unit?” Derek’s smile faded and his brows drew together. Even Tyler’s glee over needling Bruiser turned off faster than the power in a Maple Valley thunderstorm.
“His aunt showed up and took him home a week ago. She’s a real bitch. Can’t even look at him she’s so horrified by his burns. Her husband is a fat, lazy slob who sees Elliot as his personal slave so he doesn’t have to get out of his La-Z-boy. Elliot wants to live with me.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at him as if he’d announced he was hanging up his cleats to take up quilting.
“Crazy, I know,” Bruiser admitted.
“I don’t think that’s crazy. You have lots you could offer someone like him.” Of course Derek would say that. Derek saw the best in everyone.
“Even if I tried, no one would give me a guardianship. I’m single, gone a lot, and not in a stable home, or so the aunt says.”
“That’s what you needed Freddie’s number for?” Harris asked. Freddie was Harris’s take-no-prisoners attorney sister.
“Yeah, I asked her to look into my options.” Which hadn’t been very encouraging. The aunt and uncle hadn’t done anything to lose custody. They fed and clothed Elliot, kept him clean, and he showed no signs of any physical abuse. Essentially, he had what he needed except for love, and the courts only considered the observable elements of caring for a child. Apparently love couldn’t be measured. Bruiser knew better.
And he had promised.
“She’ll help if anyone can. Man, I’m scared as hell of my sister.”
“So far, the bitch aunt isn’t having any of it. She doesn’t want the kid. I think it’s all about getting her hands on the insurance money from the accident, which should be put in trust for Elliot until he turns eighteen. Plus, their entire social life revolves around their church, and they have this image to uphold. How would it look if they relinquished this orphaned child to a known playboy bachelor with a reputation for partying?”
“You could solve the money concerns by offering them some kind of stipend for their trouble.” Harris always worked the angles on any problem.
“Yeah, if the only problem was greed, it’d be simple. I’d donate to their church, which is as good as putting money in their pockets since the uncle is the pastor. I’m sure they’d like to send the kid packing, but how would they justify it as a selfless act? Especially to such an inappropriate choice as me? After all, and I quote, ‘my life is not stable.’”
“Marriage shows stability.” All heads turned toward Zach.
Marriage-phobic Harris had the same horrified expression Bruiser suspected was on his own face.
Zach shrugged. “Well, I would know.”
“You think I should get a wife just so I can get custody of Elliot?” Bruiser rubbed his temples as his brain beat itself against his skull, giving a new meaning to the word headache.
“Yeah, if Elliot means that much to you. Marriages have been made over less than that,” Zach said.
Bruiser shrugged, conceding that point. Hell, for him love didn’t work the first time around, why should it be a valid reason for marriage this time? Not that there’d be a this time.
“I’m a great believer in marry first, and she’ll fall in love with you later.”
Derek and Harris gaped at Zach like he’d just suggested they join a knitting circle at the senior citizen center.
“Ignore him; he’s a moron,” Harris snorted. “Marriage is just a piece of paper, doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”
Derek rolled his eyes and gave his cousin a disgusted look. “Yeah, really? How’s that working for you? Rachel tells me Lavender’s getting restless. You might just find an arrow in your heart one morning or an empty bed.”
“Or both.” Zach grinned, as if the thought conjured up some interesting possibilities. “You could try living with a decent woman, but I’m guessing this aunt would consider that a sin. So it’s marriage or take your chances.”
Brett, who’d been quiet during this entire crazy conversation, finally spoke. “I could see you and Mac together. I think you might have staying power.”
Bruiser turned to look at his friend like he’d just proclaimed all football be a non-contact sport. “I’ve been down the aisle once. No way am I going down that devil’s path again, even with Mac. Especially with Mac. There has to be another way.”
He looked to each one of his teammates. Every single asshole wore a stupefied expression on his face, except Harris, and he was nodding. This was not good to be on the same side as Harris. What did that say for Bruiser and his judgment? The only place Harris displayed good judgment was on the football field and by picking Lavender.
“Mac’s had a crush on you for the last couple years. Everyone knows it. Plus, she’d make a great mother.” Derek warmed to Zach’s crazy-assed idea.
Bruiser rubbed the back of his neck and stared hard at nothing. Mac? A crush on him? He’d suspected it the past few months, but for a few years? The thought seemed outrageous.
“Yeah, and she’d be devoted. She’d never cheat. She’s not that type.” Brett added.
Bruiser wanted to pound his head against the wall, but it already hurt like hell. “Sure, she’d be a great mother if she didn’t spend every spare minute looking for a brother she will probably never find.”
“That’s her father playing on her guilt. It’s tragic how good people do dumb-shit things and are completely oblivious as to how much they’re screwing up their kids,” Brett said.
Not one to keep his mouth shut, Zach offered more uninvited advice. “You could ask her. The worst she can do is spit in your face.”
If they thought that was the worst thing Mac could do, they didn’t know Mac very well. Bruiser liked to keep his privates intact and functioning, not to mention his heart, though it’d already taken a beating because of one little blonde groundskeeper.
* * * * *
Almost a month had passed since Mac and Bruiser did their version of breaking up, which essentially meant they didn’t sleep together anymore. Their affair had been short, sweet, and hot, but Mac too
k some comfort in knowing she lasted longer than any of Bruiser’s other relationships in the past three or four years.
Mac still hung out on Monday nights at O’Malley’s with the team, along with Bruiser, both of them playing the part of friends without benefits. She missed him more than she’d ever admit, and not just the sex. She missed those blue-gray eyes that could light up the darkest world and make her believe if only for a short while everything would be fine. She missed his quick wit and his storytelling abilities. She missed the gentle, generous soul who worked with burn victims and made their lives that much better. She just flat out missed him, but she doubted she was even a blip on his radar.
After all, a new football season lurked just around the corner, and Bruiser loved his football.
The team was deep into training camp after winning its first two preseason games, led mostly by Brett and the defense. Tyler never played much in preseason; his arm was too valuable to risk. Brett lived for preseason and actual playing time in a game situation. Bruiser—as usual—immersed himself in football to the exclusion of all else.
Like Mac didn’t know that story. Her father became more rabid than ever to find her brother, spending money he didn’t have on private detectives, going places he couldn’t afford to go, and looking so rough he’d been mistaken for a homeless person more than once.
More to keep busy than because of any optimism, Mac spent nights and weekends poring over old evidence and hunting down new clues, yet nothing wiped Bruiser’s teasing smile from her memory. She could still feel his skin against hers and his lips on her lips.
Late Friday night, Mac still couldn’t get Bruiser out of her mind. She walked down the hallway near the locker room on her way to her car. Bruiser burst around the corner and slammed into her, ramming her into the wall and knocking the wind out of her. Before she could sink to the floor, he grabbed her waist and hauled her to him. For a moment, she leaned into him, savoring the feel of his hard body, breathing in his freshly scrubbed scent, and forgetting her best intentions as she drowned in those warm blue-gray eyes. And they were warm tonight. Very warm. He felt so right, so strong, so confident.
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