by Sarina Bowen
“No thanks,” I said.
“Guess we can’t go to that other bar, anyway,” O’Doul offered. “It would be like returning to the scene of the crime, right, Beri?” The captain laughed at his own joke.
“She doesn’t work there anymore,” I said to shut down that particular discussion.
The bartender gave us the side-eye as he wiped down the counter. His mouth got weirdly tight, and he studied me in a way I really didn’t like. But I was probably just being paranoid.
“Anyone want to shoot some pool?” I asked, hoping for a change of subject.
“The tables are busy,” Leo said, jumping off his stool. “I’ll put some quarters down to get in line.”
“Good rookie.” O’Doul chuckled. “He snaps to attention. You should be more like Leo,” he said, teasing Castro.
“Oh, please,” Castro said with an eye-roll. He was a fun kid. A party animal and witty in a way that women enjoyed. “Nobody can kiss ass like Leo. There’s no point in trying.”
“Thing is,” I said, taking a sip of my beer. “Leo isn’t an ass-kisser. He means all the shit he says. He’s really that nice.”
“Not all of us can jump over the bar if it’s set that high,” Castro argued. “Maybe you should try to lead by example.”
“I’m nice,” I argued. “Niceish. I’m at least as nice as Doulie, here.”
“But I hit people for a living,” O’Doul pointed out. He was our team’s enforcer as well as the captain. “If I was too nice, they’d fire me.”
“Excuses.” Castro shook his head in mock disbelief. “And now you’ve gone and gotten yourself a girlfriend, too. Making the rest of us look bad. And Leo is married at twenty-four. That leaves me and Beringer to be the wild men. And he knocked up a local girl already, so there’s no topping that.”
“Castro, Jesus,” I muttered. He was only trying to be funny, but hockey players could be pretty crude.
“The fuck?”
The bartender was staring at us with a strangely electric intensity. No—staring me down. He had both hands planted on the bar, and he leaned in like he might jump over the thing and take a swing at me.
And now I knew why he’d seemed familiar. This guy was the older, macho male version of Zara—all dark eyes and fire.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I heard Castro’s chuckle die in his throat. “Aw, shit,” my teammate whispered. He might be crude, but he wasn’t dumb.
“Something the matter?” O’Doul asked slowly.
“I need to know who it is you think you’re joking about.” The bartender pointed a finger right at Castro’s chest. Then he lifted his chin in a challenge.
O’Doul lifted his chin in a matching gesture. “We’re just teasing my teammate here. A little gallows humor.” Nobody knew how to square off for a fight like O’Doul. I felt myself growing wary.
“Gallows humor,” the bartender spat. “About a local woman? That’s low.”
Nobody had said a single word against Zara. But this guy wasn’t in the mood to go over the finer points of our banter. “Sorry, man,” I said slowly. “We’ll take it down a notch.”
“You’ve been around here before?” the guy asked, turning his angry eyes back to me.
“Not to your bar, no,” O’Doul answered for me.
The bartender’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “I’m talking to the redhead. You’re not local?”
I shook my head.
“Been to Vermont much? You know Zara Rossi?”
“Oh, shit,” Leo breathed, rejoining us.
“Oh shit is right,” the bartender echoed. “You got a name?” he asked me. “How about a phone number.”
“Slow down, now,” O’Doul intervened on my behalf. “You want to be pen pals with my teammate or do you have any real business with him?”
I reached a hand out and palmed O’Doul’s puffed out chest. “It’s okay, Doulie. Maybe our new friend wants to tell us who he is to Zara, and we can have an actual conversation and not a pissing match.”
The man scowled at me. Then he turned his head and barked out a command toward the other bartender at the far end. “Smithy! Cover for me a while.” Then he stalked to the end of the bar and hopped over it, dropping to his feet beside Leo. He stalked closer and stood in front of me, his arms crossed over a puffed-out chest. “You and me are going to have a talk.”
“We should have gone to a different bar, maybe,” Leo mumbled.
“You’re her brother,” I said, stating the obvious. “She has four of them.”
“Four?” Castro yelped. “You’re in deep shit now.”
“Come with me,” Zara’s brother said, turning toward the door.
Doulie put his beer down on the bar and followed the guy, uninvited. I didn’t need my guys to trail me outside. In fact, it would have been easier if they stayed out of it. But there was no point in saying so, because that’s what teammates did. O’Doul wouldn’t let me take a punch alone whether we were wearing skates or not.
“I don’t get to finish my beer?” Castro asked. “What a rip.”
But he was just trying to lighten the mood. He set his bottle down and moved toward the door, too. I had to hurry to get there first. I pushed the door open into the Vermont summer night. It smelled so freaking good here. I’d never get used to it.
“What, do your friends follow you everywhere?” Zara’s brother snapped when O’Doul stepped outside after me.
“Depends,” I said. “You seem to want us out of your bar, anyway.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me your fucking name.”
“Do you have one, too?” I asked. “Let’s all share.”
That must have come out extra snarky because the guy launched himself at me, grabbing my shirt.
About a half-second later, O’Doul had pulled him back, trapping him in a hold. “Calm the fuck down, okay?”
“Whoa!” another man said, stepping out of the shadows to join our tense little gathering. “You want to let him go? I’m off duty right now, I haven’t seen my brother in three months, and it would be a pain in the ass to arrest you.”
“It all depends on whether your brother’s gonna lunge at my teammate again,” Doulie said calmly.
“Alec, don’t lunge,” the new guy said, sounding bored. This was another Rossi brother—a younger one. Ben. His name leapt into my mind, because I’d seen him before. He and Zara had gotten into an argument right in front of me once.
Fuck my life.
“But you all have ten seconds to tell me what the fuck is going on,” Ben added.
O’Doul loosened his hold, and Alec shook him off. “They were at the bar talking some smack about getting a local girl pregnant. Look at him,” Alec said, pointing at me. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
The newcomer’s eyes widened. He gave me the same quick scan I’d given him a minute ago. “What’s your name?” he asked me.
“David Beringer,” I said immediately, just to piss Alec off.
“Spell it.”
“B-e-r-i-n-g-e-r.”
“With an ‘e’?” He tipped his head back toward the stars. “Fuck. An ‘e.’ Why didn’t I figure that out?”
“Benito,” Alec demanded. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“We searched for him,” Benito said. “We searched through a whole lot of Davids from New York City. Barrister. Barrier. Barer. Currier. Carrier. We never got the name right.”
“But Zara knew my name,” I argued. “I put my ID in front of the security camera…” The sentence died away as I tried to figure out how to finish it. Before we banged for the first of many times.
Benito gave me a stare. “Took Zara a couple months to realize she needed to know who you were. That footage was long gone. We tried rental-car records and cabin rentals, too. No name like yours came up anywhere.”
“I rented everything,” O’Doul grunted. “His name wasn’t anywhere.”
“We figured it was something like that,” Ben sa
id with a sigh.
But his brother Alec still looked like a bomb waiting to explode. If possible, he looked even angrier at his brother than he’d been at me. “You were looking for him? Zara told you his name?”
Ben put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah. She didn’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Except to you.”
“I’m in law enforcement,” Ben said quietly. “Who would you ask if you needed to find someone?”
Alec’s jaw remained clenched.
Ben, who I had decided was the calmest member of the Rossi clan, turned his attention back to me. “So now you’re back in Vermont?”
“For a few weeks, yeah.”
“Did you, uh, see Zara yet?”
I smiled in spite of my tension. “This afternoon. Walked into the coffee shop and there she was.” I cleared my throat. “We talked for about sixty seconds. The shock hasn’t worn off.”
“I’ll bet.” He crossed his arms, rocking back on his heels. “Come around back and have a beer on the house. We’ll talk.”
“Hey!” Alec argued.
His brother turned on him. “You really want to start off like that? I know you’re pissed off for your little sister, but she wouldn’t want you to be such an ass to the father of her child.”
Father. The word sent a fresh chill down my spine.
“Do we really know how Zara feels?” Alec challenged. “Maybe she hates his guts.”
Benito rolled his eyes. “The evidence suggests she liked him at one point.”
Alec clenched his fists and growled.
“Go back to your customers.” Benito pointed at the door. “I’m going to sit on the deck and ask Mr. Beringer a few questions.”
Without another word, Alec stomped back inside.
“Well,” Ben said, holding out a hand to O’Doul. “I’m Benito Rossi. You’ve met my brother Alec.”
“And it was a pleasure,” O’Doul said drily.
Benito shook everyone’s hands. Then he waved us around the side of the building toward the deck. “I’ll be right out to sit with you,” he said before following his brother inside.
“He’s loading the shotgun and calling the minister,” Trevi joked as we walked toward the deck.
“What’s your ring size?” Castro teased.
O’Doul just chuckled. “And to think we almost stayed home tonight.”
I said nothing. We all took a seat at a round table with a hurricane candle on it. The air was cool and the frogs were singing their tune. I’d forgotten about the frogs.
“Nice place when people aren’t trying to kick your ass,” Trevi said.
“Be nicer if I hadn’t abandoned my beer,” Castro complained.
“So go inside and order a round,” O’Doul suggested. “I’m running a tab.”
But before Castro could make it through the sliding glass doors leading into the bar, Benito emerged with a tray, a full pitcher, and five glasses. He sat down with us and began to pour. “So what do you all do for a living?”
“Hockey,” I said.
Benito handed me the first glass with a thoughtful frown. “How’s that?”
“We play hockey,” I said. “For the Brooklyn Bruisers. I play left wing.”
Benito looked around the table. “Professional hockey players?”
“Yup,” O’Doul said.
Benito snorted and shook his head. Then he raised his eyes up to the sky. “Oh, Zara. Really?”
“She didn’t tell you?” I asked, and then I realized. “She didn’t know.”
Ben shook his head slowly.
“She didn’t know?” Castro yelped. “What did you tell her you did for a living?”
“I didn’t ever say.”
“Why the hell not?”
I gave my head a shake, and Castro clamped his mouth shut. They wouldn’t understand that Zara and I had experienced a rather unique month-long tryst. Sex, conversation, and very few personal details.
Benito ran a hand through his hair. “So you just happened to come back to Vermont for another vacation. And you ran into Zara?”
“That’s right.” I dug another business card out of my pocket. “Does somebody have a pen?” When Castro handed me one, I wrote my cell phone number on the card. “Here.” I handed it to Benito. “I didn’t get a chance to give Zara my number today. The conversation we had was really, uh, short.”
Ben studied me, his dark features appraising. “Where did you two leave it?”
“How big a dick were you?” Castro clarified.
Thanks, buddy. “Just, I dunno. Medium-sized.” Everyone laughed, even Benito. “I was just surprised. And so I said I’d call my lawyer.” Benito flinched. “That’s all. Zara bolted after that. I’ll apologize to her when she’s ready to hear from me. You can give her that number on the card. The printed one goes to my agent, so I added my own.”
He nodded, tucking the card into his back pocket. “All right. She’s my next call.” He took a deep drink of his beer. “But before I go, there’s something you need to understand about my family.”
Beneath the table, Castro nudged my knee. His face said, Here it comes!
“Zara has four brothers,” Benito said. “And two uncles. And we’re horribly overprotective of her, even though Zara is the toughest girl alive.” He smiled fondly. “But when Zara got pregnant, she didn’t tell a soul what had happened. So that led to a lot of speculation. Some of it really bad.”
“Why?” I wondered aloud. “Why not say that she and I had a fling for a while, but we were shaky on the details?”
Benito shrugged. “She’s fiercely private. You kinda have to be in my family. It’s a self-defense mechanism. But also she was embarrassed. I mean—she insisted that there was nothing awful about the story. That she wasn’t protecting anyone. But my family has more testosterone than most, so it only gets you so far.”
“Okay?”
“I just wanted you to know that there’s been a lot of speculation.”
“So he won’t be too surprised when the next brother slugs him?” O’Doul asked, his question dripping with skepticism.
“Something like that.” Benito smiled again. “I haven’t seen my sister in way too long. So if you’ll excuse me, guys.” He drained his beer and stood up.
“Good night,” Trevi called before he walked away. “That coulda gone worse,” he said when we were alone again.
“The man brought us beers,” Castro pointed out. “And I haven’t seen a shotgun yet.”
“The night’s still young,” O’Doul said, and everyone laughed.
Chapter Twelve
David
There’s a baby crying. She’s wailing. Hard. But I can’t see her. She’s in another room. Even so, I can hear her anguished screams and the ragged gasps she makes between them. It’s a horrible sound. Suffering.
I need to fix it. I would do anything to make that sound stop.
But I can’t. I can’t move. Every new wail is like a fresh stab of pain. My head aches, and my pulse is too fast. But my feet are rooted to the floor. There’s something terrifying in front of me. I can’t lift my gaze because I’ll see it again. I can’t look.
Still. The screams. She needs me.
The carpeting beneath my feet is dirty. It’s a dull gray color, but it used to be white. And there is a sick, green stain near the toe of my sneaker. It’s the color of…
* * *
I sat up fast, almost nailing my head on the reading light affixed to the wall. For a moment my eyes darted around, taking in the details of my room in the cabin. Meanwhile, my chest heaved as I tried to take in oxygen.
Kicking off the covers, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. My sweaty body needed space. It helped that I’d left the window open overnight, and the sweet Vermont air was good for breathing deeply.
I closed my eyes and inhaled all the way to my diaphragm, the way my yoga teacher—O’Doul’s girlfriend—encouraged us to do. Then I exhaled the last of my
panic.
What a fucking dumb dream. Crying babies? My subconscious had gone right for the cheap joke.
I raised my arms overhead and then bent slowly at the waist, hanging my head, stretching out my back. There. My panic was receding, leaving me with a calmness that was much more me.
Another day. Another chance to get it right. Nobody became a veteran NHL player without being able to center himself. Every professional hockey player worth his paycheck could shake off the prior day’s disasters and start fresh.
Standing up again, I took stock of my day. I’d reserved some gear and hired a guide for a fly-fishing expedition in the very river that ran past Zara’s family’s businesses. But my teammates could go without me. I’d need the day to call the lawyer and learn a few things about my legal obligations to Zara’s child.
A man takes care of his people first and goes fishing with his buddies later.
I found a pair of shorts in my suitcase and pulled them on, listening to the quiet chatter of my teammates’ voices elsewhere in the house. I’d taken the upstairs master suite for myself, of course. The guy who planned the expedition always got dibs. My teammates weren’t doing so badly downstairs, though. O’Doul had a queen-sized bed with its own bathroom, and Trevi and Castro were doubled up in a bunk room.
“Oh man,” Trevi had complained last night. “I see how it is. The rookie gets the bunkbed.”
“That’s right, college boy,” O’Doul had teased. “You’re used to dorm rooms. You and Castro. This will be like memory lane.”
“You shoulda given the single guy his own room,” Castro had grumped. “If I hook up I’m gonna put a bandanna on the door handle, Trevi. If this bunk bed is a rocking, don’t come a knocking.”
It had just been smack talk, though. We’d all come home from the bar together last night.
Now, as I descended the stairs, I heard Castro’s chuckle. Then I was startled to hear a feminine giggle. And not just any feminine giggle. Holy…
I rounded the corner at the bottom of the staircase and walked into the great room to find the giggle’s owner. “Bess?” I yelped. “What are you doing here?”
