Traded

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  That was really getting to the point. “No, no, and no.”

  It was the first time he’d smiled since she met him. Maybe his icy exterior was starting to thaw. “Why not? Someone as gorgeous as you should have a hundred guys lining up in the wings trying to date you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m not one of those girls who has guys lining up. I’m only interested in one.”

  And that one was Troy, who’d played right wing with the Cardinals but been picked up by Denver. Her brother had warned her off the players, but she hadn’t listened, and she’d been crushed when he up and left without her.

  “Sounds like there’s someone there—or was?”

  “There was. Now there’s not.”

  He was watching her.

  “He left,” she said.

  “Fool.”

  She swallowed past the ache that always built when she thought of losing Troy. It would have been one thing if she’d realized there was no future, but she’d believed he was the one. She’d never been so head over heels with anyone to the point that she couldn’t let it go. She’d been obsessed to the point that she tried to tell herself he loved her still, that he really did want her.

  “You okay?” He actually reached across and touched her hand.

  She’d thought she was better at hiding her feelings, or maybe she’d allowed a moment of weakness to slip through and show her vulnerability. She thought she’d nailed that door shut. So she did what she always did when the situation called for it: She put on her game face. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Hey, listen, if you don’t have plans right now, would you like to stop for a bite to eat? I’m starved and hate eating alone. Don’t have any friends here, so you’d be doing me a favor.”

  She didn’t have to be at work until later. She’d been planning on having a sandwich and sifting through her emails. “Okay. There’s a pretty great little Italian diner not far from my place, makes the best pasta and fish.”

  “Sounds great. You just saved me from ordering room service and eating alone.”

  “Well, far be it from me to let you eat alone.”

  When he glanced her way again, the smile he gave her had her heart doing a little leap. Oh no!

  Chapter 6

  What had he been thinking, asking this cute little redheaded cheerleader out to eat? It wasn’t a date. Of course it wasn’t a date, because Jake Wilde, in his mind, was still taken. His heart belonged to a woman who’d just dumped him in a Dear John sort of way over the phone. He’d had no time to process any of the phone call that had just taken all his hopes and dreams and flushed them down the toilet. And worse, his brother Samuel had just stabbed him in the back.

  Right now he hated the brother he had once loved so much. They’d been best friends, closer than most, and always together out on the town in Seattle. They even lived close to each other so they could do anything and everything together. Even just hanging out with a beer or two or a night out. But not now, not anymore.

  He followed Chris into the quaint little Italian restaurant with red checked tablecloths and pictures of famous dead actors on the walls.

  He hadn’t missed the ass on this girl. She had one fine set of buns, a slim waistline, and when she walked she did it with her head held high. Her hair…he found himself noticing how different it was from Jill’s: longer, redder, and thicker.

  A portly man at the door smiled brightly at Chris. “Hey, how are you? Where’s your brother?” The man was Italian, gray haired, probably in his sixties. He glanced up at Jake curiously with a flash of something mischievous in his eyes.

  “Not sure,” Chris said. “This is Jake Wilde, the new wide receiver for the Cardinals, showed up just in time for the end of the season. We’re here for a late lunch if you’re still serving?”

  Jake wondered as he took in the empty restaurant. It was small with maybe twenty tables. And not a soul in sight.

  “Of course, for you. Come on, I have a nice table by the window, and I think there’s still some of Rosa’s special grilled halibut with linguine.” He guided them over to a table by the window and put a menu in front of them. “Can I get you something to drink to start, a glass of vino or beer?”

  “Diet coke for me,” Chris said as she glanced up from her menu.

  “Water, please,” Jake said, although he would’ve preferred a beer.

  Chris was staring at her menu when the man left them.

  “Nice place. The food good?” Jake asked, but if the spicy aroma wafting from the kitchen was anything to go by, the food was going to be mouthwatering.

  “The best—and I’m not kidding about that. I’m a foodie and have always said there’s too many really good restaurants out there to waste your time on the ones that are just average, you know?” She shut her menu and rested her hands on the table. He hadn’t even had a chance to look at the menu when the waiter returned with their drinks.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Jake?” Chris prompted him. “I know what I want.”

  “What are you having?”

  “Caesar salad.” She glanced up at the waiter, who frowned down at her much like a father would.

  He tsked. “Your brother would make you order more than that. How about some meatballs?”

  “Order her the meatballs, too, and I’ll have the special,” Jake said. “The halibut’s good?”

  The waiter kissed his own fingers in reply. “You’ll love it.” He scooped up the menus and left.

  When Jake glanced across the table, he realized Chris was frowning up at him. “Everything okay?”

  “Why did you order meatballs for me? All I wanted was a salad. You’re just like Myles, thinking you know what’s best for me.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

  “Well, you don’t have to eat it all. I’ll finish it for you. Besides, you can’t just live on lettuce.”

  “I also can’t eat like a football player or I’ll be two hundred pounds.”

  He couldn’t help smiling at her comeback. He realized she’d probably never let herself go, not that he knew much about her. “Got me there. So, Chris, what do you do for fun?”

  She stretched out her foot and bumped his leg. “Sorry.” She pulled her foot back, but he didn’t mind in the least.

  “Yeah, I’m a big guy, take up my share of space and then some.”

  She had a lovely smile that showed off straight white teeth. He hadn’t noticed before, but she had a mole on the side of her lip that he found extremely attractive. Her face wasn’t painted up with all that goop many women plastered on their faces. She looked clean and wholesome. Her eyes were like nothing he’d ever seen before. The blue…he’d swear a man could get lost in it. She cleared her throat, but he didn’t look away. He was staring, but he liked what he was looking at.

  “Movies, old ones,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You asked what I do for fun. I like old movies, the classics, Jimmy Stewart, Rock Hudson, John Wayne.”

  Well, that he didn’t expect. “Seriously, no bars, clubs, dancing, biking?”

  “Not much into the party scene. Would rather rent one of those old movies and sit and watch with a tub of popcorn. That’s a night of fun for me. What about you, Jake?” she asked.

  Of course his head went right to his nights with Jill, and before that he had always stopped at a pub for some dancing. “Not much as of late,” he said. He patted his pocket, about to check his phone, when he realized he couldn’t because it was shattered in the trash bin outside the locker room.

  Chris seemed to follow where his hand went as if she knew. She didn’t say anything, but he still felt he needed to explain himself.

  “My phone, I feel lost without it. I’ll have to find a store around here to replace it.”

  She didn’t even blink as she watched him. “You know, this may be none of my business, and I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

  He wondered if he should call her out, beca
use of course she had been. Instead of leaving, she’d even stuck around to give him advice. He noticed her cheeks were flushed, and he raised an eyebrow. Of course he was wondering what she was thinking. What had made her blush?

  “Okay, I was listening. I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You must think I’m pretty pathetic, then.” He tapped his fingers on the table, and her eyes widened as she leaned across. Reaching out, she touched his hand.

  “No, I don’t think you’re pathetic. I was thinking that it wasn’t so long ago that I was in your position, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” She pulled her hand away and leaned back, and for a minute he’d swear he’d seen some vulnerability, a hurt that was still raw and very real. Then it was gone and her game face was back on.

  “She was my brother’s girlfriend,” Jake finally said. “Maybe I should have known better, but he got cold feet and picked up another woman in a bar in front of her. She dumped him, and, well…” What could he say? He’d always carried a torch for Jill. He’d envied his brother. He’d made himself available. Logan had been right about that, too.

  “Ouch. And she leaned on you, cried on your shoulder, and you were there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.” She glanced away, watching something out the window as she rested her elbow on the table, her chin in her palm, before glancing back his way. “No, that just makes you human.”

  He didn’t know what to make of Chris. “So what happened for you?”

  She leaned back, wagging her finger at him. “No, we’re talking about you and…” She hesitated.

  “Jill is her name. I asked her to marry me, and…” He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t tell anyone what he’d done, trying to get her pregnant to tie her to him. Even though he wouldn’t have admitted it before now, that was exactly what he’d been trying to do: make her love him, force her to stay with him. It stung to realize it, but it also hurt that she was so head over heels in love with his prick of a brother.

  “Let me guess, she’s not over your brother? She panicked, maybe a reality check, and started backing away.”

  Boy, was she spot on. He leaned back, and then the waiter appeared with their meal, setting it in front of them. For a moment, they just ate in silence, and he stifled a smile when she dug into her meatballs.

  “So how did you know that’s what she did?” he asked. “I mean, I’m still trying to figure it out. I offered her everything, wanted to give her the world, security, family.” Love. He’d just wanted to love her. “And she left. I haven’t seen her in months.”

  “You’ve been calling, I take it, waiting for her to call you back, pushing, trying to change her mind, being understanding? And all the while, you’re eating your heart out,” she said between mouthfuls. There was a dot of sauce on the side of her mouth, and he wanted to reach over with his finger and wipe it away. Chris must have known, as she wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “Sounds like we’re talking about more than me,” he replied, gesturing with his fork toward her. He then wound it in the fresh pasta and shoved a forkful into his mouth, the garlic and fresh herbs coming alive on his tongue. She was right. The food was really good.

  “Been there, made a fool of myself,” she said. “Thought he cared more than he did. He left, and I kept calling, you know…” She trailed off. “Did she ask you not to call?”

  “She said she needed space. I wanted to convince her otherwise, thought she was just freaking out.”

  “That she didn’t know what she wanted.”

  He nodded. Maybe she did understand. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “How many messages did you leave before she called you back?”

  He didn’t want to tell, because he’d lost count. When you loved someone with everything you had, Jake didn’t understand how you could just let that person walk away. “Probably one too many.”

  “You do know there’s a line you can’t cross, and you may not even be aware of it. Sometimes it helps to have someone else point it out to you, because when you’re emotionally in it, you can’t see the road ahead. You’re lost in this haze, you know? So I’m telling you because I’ve been there. My advice is to walk away.”

  “So answer me this: Why do women always go back to the guys who treat them like shit?”

  A slow, sad smile drifted across her face. “Because at the time we’re so in it that we don’t realize we’re just repeating the same pattern over and over. We go back to what we know even though it may not be what’s best for us. A woman with a broken heart who’s still reeling from some betrayal isn’t anyone you should be getting involved with. She needs time to heal, figure things out, get her head on straight. When you put yourself in the picture, became a shoulder for her to cry on, of course she fell right into you. But her heart was still with your brother.”

  “Well, she’s with him now.”

  She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jake. I hate to say this to you, but you gotta know there’s no future with a girl like that. Coming between you and your brother, she had to know. Of course she knew. That’s shitty.”

  For a minute, his instinct was to defend Jill, but when he opened his mouth, the words fell away. “She may be pregnant.”

  “Oh.” Chris paused with her fork in midair. “Yours?”

  He felt his face warm. Of course it would be his, wouldn’t it? If she was pregnant. She hadn’t denied it.

  “Oh, Jake, take my advice or not, but I’m going to give it anyway. Walk away. It sounds like a very messy situation that can divide a family. I don’t know your family or your brother, or this girl, but there isn’t anything you can do. She’s walked away, avoided your calls. That’s the coward’s way of saying, ‘Get lost.’” Chris lowered her gaze to her plate and pushed her half-eaten salad away. “Done?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. Instead of feeling good talking with Chris, he felt like crap. He had some hard thinking to do.

  She started to reach into her bag for her wallet.

  “No, I got this.” He pulled out his wallet and lifted out cash, more than enough to cover the bill, and stood up. “Ready?”

  She bit her lip as she stood up and started out of the restaurant ahead of him. Then she stopped, and for a minute he was positive she was about to say something else, but her expression changed, and she pulled open the door and walked out.

  Chapter 7

  The funny thing about soul searching was the incredible ache that went along with it. Jake had been grateful to Chris after their lunch the week before—and after the few times they’d stopped for coffee after practice since. He realized in one of his dark, lonely waking hours that she’d been the best sounding board he’d ever had. Maybe that was because of her own experience. He’d yet to get her to talk about what made her understand him so well.

  That was all fine and great, but there was something about the ending of any personal relationship that was especially devastating. He couldn’t help but envy those who could just shake it off and move on. Jake wasn’t made that way. He’d never been able to get over it. He held on to things, reliving them over and over in his head.

  He glanced at his phone again as he left the hotel gym and headed back to his room to shower. There was no practice today, as many of the players were taking off on holidays. It was the end of the season. There would be the spring camp and then the training camp in June. It would give him time to work out his kinks, get stronger, and figure out what he was going to do next. Find a place, an apartment, a condo, something. He couldn’t continue to live in a hotel forever. His options were open, but he wanted something close to the stadium and out of the downtown area.

  He stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the fourteenth floor. There was no one else on board when his cell phone rang. Of course he couldn’t help the surge of hope as he answered. “Jill?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Ah, no. This is your brother Logan.”

  He thunked his head against the mirror at the back of
the elevator. Idiot, what the hell was the matter with him? Every time the phone rang, he couldn’t stop hoping that Jill had a change of heart and was calling him.

  “Hey, Logan, how are you?” Jake was distracted and tired, having worked himself so hard that his muscles ached. But that was the only way he was convinced he could find a way to keep his sanity.

  “Um, good, but I’m calling about you. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Called you a few days ago, left you a message. You didn’t call back.”

  No, he hadn’t. He’d seen Logan’s name on the screen, but he hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, and he couldn’t talk to Logan, not when his heartache was so raw, because Logan would know, and he’d pry and keep at him until he spilled. Jake didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He felt like such a fool, and he didn’t want anyone telling him, “I told you so.”

  “Yeah, I, uh…” He couldn’t come up with a lie that would be believable.

  “You’re not talking to anyone anymore?” Logan asked.

  “Sorry, just a lot on my mind. How’s Julia, the twins, and the baby?”

  “Great. Julia says hi. The girls would love to see you. You got time off now. Why don’t you come up for a visit, spend some time with us?”

  At any other time, he would’ve loved to spend time with Logan and his family. He’d always gone to Logan when he was in trouble, because he’d always been the one constant growing up. But not this time. There was something so hairy about this mess, this bitch of a triangle with Jill and Samuel, that he didn’t want anyone taking sides. So he decided to take himself out of the equation. “I think I’m going to stay here for the time being, get settled, find a place, you know, but thanks for the offer.”

  “Thanks for the offer? Seriously, Jake, this is me you’re talking to. Just what the hell’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing, Logan. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” He shoved his keycard in his door and walked into the freshly made-up room, taking in the king-size bed, the flat-screen TV on the wall, and the small table with two chairs by the window. It was an average hotel room with all the amenities.