Dirty Play (A Nolan Brothers Series Novel ~ Book 3)

by Amy Olle

  Heart thrumming, she accepted the call. “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Haven? Is that you?” Kristen’s voice sounded shrill. “Haven?”

  “Yes, it’s me. What’s going on?”

  “It’s your dad.” Kristen’s next words shattered Haven’s world. “He’s been in an accident.”

  Haven’s knees gave out and she plopped down hard onto the stuffed ottoman.

  “We’re at the hospital. The police are here and—”

  “The police?” Haven’s mind struggled to keep up. “Why are the police there?”

  “I don’t know.” Frustration mixed with hysteria in Kristen’s voice. “They say he was drinking.”

  “He’s been drinking again?”

  “He’s hurt.”

  “How long has been drinking?”

  “Why aren’t you listening to me—?”

  “How long, Kristen?”

  Silence crackled through the phone speaker. “Since the summer.”

  Haven squeezed her eyes shut.

  “He wants to see you.”

  Haven sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. “I won’t come.”

  “Stop it. Stop it right now.” The snap in Kristen’s tone dissolved into sobs. “You have to come. I don’t know what to do and there’s no one else.”

  Her stepmom’s pitiful wails reminded Haven of the time they were in second grade and Kristen had fallen off the swing on the playground. She’d cried huge crocodile tears and begged Haven to stay with her while the nurse cleaned and bandaged the bloody scrape on her bony knee.

  Eleven years later, when the girls were eighteen, Kristen had married Haven’s dad. Needless to say, Haven’s relationship with her dad and stepmom was complicated.

  “I can’t,” Haven said. “I’m sorry.”

  She wanted to snatch back the apology. Why should she be sorry? Because he was her dad? Well, she was his daughter, and that hadn’t compelled him to rush to her side when she’d needed him.

  “He asked to see you, Haven.”

  “He did?” She cringed at the hopeful ring in her tone. “What did he say?”

  “He wants to talk to you about something. Something important. I don’t know what. He’s not making any sense. He’s drunk, or drugged, or in too much pain—God, Haven, will you just come on already? We need you.”

  Haven wanted to argue with Kristen, but she became aware of Jack sitting up in the bed, his green-gold eyes fixed on her.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she hedged. “Maybe in a few days—”

  “No. There isn’t time.”

  “What do you mean? How badly is he hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.” Kristen’s words garbled. Her exhaustion and fear reached through the phone to wrap tentacles around Haven’s throat. “I can’t think and…. Haven, please, just come, okay?”

  Haven stared blindly at the closed bedroom door for many long moments while the weight of attachment pressed down on her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, thank you. I’ll let him know. He’ll be so relieved.”

  Kristen disconnected the call before Haven could argue with that last comment.

  In the silence, she stared at her cell phone’s dark display screen. She wiped away imaginary fingerprints. Then she set the phone aside with undue care and risked a glance at Jack.

  He sat up in bed, his back against the headboard. “You have to go.”

  She ducked her chin and nodded.

  The sheets rustled and soon his bare feet came into her line of sight.

  He crouched before her, bringing their faces level. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She swallowed the hard lump in the back of her throat. “I can’t keep our deal. I’m sorry.”

  His hand found hers. Turning her palm face up, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into the heart of it. “Another time, then.”

  They both knew it was a lie. That, barring some insane twist of fate, they’d never see each other again.

  Hot pressure formed behind her eyes. “Sure.”

  Instead of spending one more day, and night, with Jack, she’d be traveling to Milwaukee. Though a straight shot across the lake, the ferries that ran between Michigan and Wisconsin would be unable to make the crossing until spring. Which meant she’d have to drive around Lake Michigan.

  First, she’d have to get off the island.

  “What time does the first ferry leave?”

  “Seven.”

  “Perfect.” Her voice wavered. Clearing her throat, she stood. “I’m going to grab a shower.”

  She stepped under the water’s warm spray, hoping to wash away the stormy jumble of emotions freaking her out. She’d never felt quite like this before. Haven recalled how, in college, Emily and the other students living with them in the dorms had talked about missing their friends and families at home. Haven hadn’t understood the sappy melancholy they’d described.

  Until now.

  Which didn’t make any sense.

  She wrenched the shower nozzle, cutting off the flow of water.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, Jack disappeared behind the door. The sound of running water accompanied her as she dressed in blue jeans and a wheat-colored wool sweater, then moved around the bedroom, gathering up her scattered belongings.

  A white undershirt lay atop his duffel bag and she paused to finger the soft fabric. She lifted the shirt and his unique, spicy scent clung to the material.

  The odd compulsion to steal, which she hadn’t indulged in years, overcame her then. With a glance over her shoulder, she swiped the cotton T-shirt from his bag and stuffed it inside her suitcase.

  She yanked the zipper closed as the bathroom door swung open and Jack reemerged, his dark hair sticking up on end and a towel wrapped snug around his lean waist.

  She thrust a thumb at the bedroom door. “So, I’m going to head out.”

  “Wait, I’m going with you.” At his bag, he removed a pair of blue jeans.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary—”

  He silenced her with a look. “It’s not up for debate.”

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as he pulled a sky-blue T-shirt over his head and shoved his arms through the armholes.

  “Besides,” he said, “the ferry is a few blocks from where I left my car.”

  The sun had not yet peeked over the horizon and the world remained cloaked in dusky darkness as they loaded their suitcases in her rental and climbed into the frigid interior.

  They rode in silence along the winding lakeshore road back to town, which remained perilous with patches of ice and wide, blowing snowdrifts.

  Jack directed her to the car ferry lot and she pulled into an empty parking spot.

  They sat in silence a moment. Through the windshield, seagulls circled overhead.

  “I should’ve told Emily I had to go.”

  “I’ll see her later. I’ll let her know.”

  He reached across, slipped his hand beneath the curtain of her hair, and pulled her close. “Thank you, Haven.”

  She swallowed convulsively.

  He kissed her long and deep, his mouth all slippery friction and hot silk. His grip on her neck tightened, as though he might refuse to let her go.

  Unable to catch her breath, she broke the kiss. She wanted to say something smart-mouthed, but nothing came to her, so she faced the front.

  “Good-bye, Jack.”

  A moment passed where she thought he might say more, but instead, he reached for the handle and a blast of winter air struck her when he climbed from the vehicle.

  Her heart aching, she backed out of the parking spot and steered the car around to the short line of vehicles waiting to board the ferry.

  In her rearview mirror, Jack stood watching her car pull away.

  A biting sorrow kicked in her chest and only served to convince her it was for the best she left him now. If it hurt this badly after only two days, s
he could only imagine how painful it would’ve been to say good-bye after they’d spent another day together.

  Yep, she’d avoided a disaster.

  A catastrophe of epic proportions.

  She should be happy to be so lucky. Jack was trouble for someone like her. Someone who gave her heart to anyone who showed her even the slightest affection.

  In high school, she’d earned a reputation as a slut. She’d truly earned it. She was, in fact, a slut. After Ryan died, her parents had withdrawn into their own pain and, starved for attention, Haven mistook sexual interest from boys for something more.

  She gave herself to them freely because, at sixteen, she was too young to understand that intimacy didn’t equate to love and respect. She flirted and chased after them, prepared to give it all away for nothing more than an hour of their attention. Along with her body, she gave her heart to all of them.

  She was a heart slut.

  Past tense.

  These days, no one touched her heart. Not since Ryan died.

  Which was why Jack belonged in her rearview mirror, before her foolish heart decided to love him forever.

  The stench of disinfectant and despair slammed into Haven when she entered the hospital.

  Nausea choked her as she rode the elevator to the fourth floor, and as she walked down the long corridor in search of her dad’s room, memories taunted her from the shadows.

  She rubbed at the phantom twinge on her clavicle, one of several broken bones she’d suffered in the car accident that’d confined her for three weeks to a bed in this very hospital.

  It was where she’d lain when they confirmed what she already knew. That Ryan was dead.

  Her steps slowed as she approached the room number Kristen had texted to her, but she didn’t enter.

  When Haven was young, her dad had delivered pizzas for a living while her mom attended college. When Haven was five, he’d opened his own pizzeria, and a couple of years after that, her mom quit her job at the high school to help him run the restaurant.

  In the summer of Haven’s eleventh year, some fancy food critic voted her dad’s pizza the best in Milwaukee. Business took off and soon, her parents opened a second, and then a third restaurant. Every year after that for the next five years, they opened a new restaurant in the state, and it was only as her family moved into the upper middle class that Haven realized they’d been poor before.

  Then Ryan died.

  In the year after his death, Haven rarely saw her dad, who threw himself into working and drinking while her mom lay in bed, crying. By Haven’s seventeenth birthday, her parents had divorced, because the idea that love overcame all or healed the worst kind of pain was an utter joke.

  Shortly after the divorce, the pizza chain, which her dad had won sole custody of, went national, and he spent the next couple of years amassing a fortune. With his newfound wealth, he acquired a sprawling mansion in Milwaukee’s most affluent neighborhood, vacation homes in Aspen and Napa Valley, a helicopter, a professional hockey team, and a trophy wife.

  Meanwhile, Haven’s mom struggled to get out of bed, which meant she also struggled to find and keep a job, any job, and the fixer upper they’d moved into after the divorce never quite managed to get fixed up. Eventually, they were forced to move on, and Haven’s notions of refinished hardwoods and neutral paint colors turned to dreams of escaping the trailer park where she and her mom had landed.

  Now, Haven inhaled a bracing breath and stepped through the door.

  Her dad lay in the hospital bed, his eyes closed and his thin body covered in a white bedsheet. His hair had more salt than pepper now, and puffy bags sat under his eyes.

  How old was he? Fifty-six? Fifty-seven? Not nearly as old as he appeared.

  Kristen popped up out of the recliner beside the bed. She’d pulled her expertly colored blonde hair into a messy ponytail, and a conspicuous coffee stain marred her rumpled designer blouse between her breasts. Full, perky breasts Haven didn’t recall her having the last time they saw each other for the holidays nearly two years before.

  “Thank God, you’re here.” She flung a snow-white parka over her shoulders.

  Her dad’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot, blinked open. “Hey, pumpkin.”

  “Hey, Dad.” Haven sidled around the side of the hospital bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “They think I’ll live. Unfortunately.” His voice sounded thin.

  Weak. One quality she couldn’t recall seeing in him before.

  She resisted the urge to smooth a hand over his forehead. “When can you go home?”

  “Wednesday at the earliest, but probably Thursday or Friday.” Kristen snagged her Kate Spade purse off the floor. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Wait, what?” Haven shot a panicked look at her dad. “You’re leaving?”

  Kristen sailed across the room. “I’ve got to pick up Braden. He’s stuck at practice.”

  Kristen and Haven’s dad had two boys together, Braden and Chance, who must’ve been around ten and twelve years old by that point. Haven wasn’t close to her half brothers. She hardly knew them. It hurt too much to know them.

  At the hospital room door, Kristen blinked large green eyes at Haven. “Can’t you sit with him until I get back?”

  “Uh… how long will you be?”

  “Not long. I have to grab the boys something to eat, and take a shower. And I need a nap, but then I’ll be right back.”

  “I can’t stay....” Haven’s protest died on her lips when Kristen disappeared through the door.

  She pasted a stiff smile on her face and wiped a clammy palm on the thigh of her blue jeans.

  “You don’t have to stay,” her dad said quietly. “What I have to talk to you about won’t take long.”

  Haven frowned with her weariness. She’d assumed, years back, that her dad had disinherited her. So why would he make her show up in Milwaukee simply to confirm what she, and everyone else, already knew?

  On the small TV mounted to the wall at the foot of her dad’s bed, a sports talk show played. She dug through her purse for her cell phone. If she had to guess, Kristen hadn’t updated her dad on the day’s scores.

  “I need a favor,” her dad said.

  The recliner’s vinyl squeaked when she perched on the seat edge. Her head bent over the device as she browsed to the hockey scores.

  “I need you to take over the team for a while.”

  Her cell phone hit the floor. “What?”

  Her dad held up both hands, a tangle of wires rustling with his movement. “Only for a couple of months.”

  Haven was shaking her head. “No. Uh-uh. No way. Absolutely not.”

  “Haven, I need you to listen to me.”

  The gravity in his tone cut off her protest.

  “I need help.” A slight quiver wobbled his bottom lip. “I’ve got a problem with alcohol. I’m going to spend Christmas with Kristen and the boys, but next week I’m checking into rehab.”

  “Good.” She approached the bed. “Dad, that’s good.”

  He watched her with sad, serious eyes. “I gotta do sixty days this time.”

  She rushed forward. “Whatever it takes, Dad, you can do it. I know you can.”

  “The thing is, I need help. I need you to oversee a few things with the team while I’m away.”

  “Dad, I can’t.” Terror choked out her guilt. “I can’t drop everything and move to Milwaukee.” Memories clogged in the back of her throat. “I have a life I need to get back to.”

  A life she’d just hit the reset button on, but a life nonetheless. Sort of.

  “You’re a waitress.”

  “Bartender.”

  The line of his mouth pinched with disappointment. “Then it’s settled.”

  “Dad—”

  “You can move into the apartment downtown. Kristen and the boys will be at the house and won’t bother you.”

 
She swiped at the bead of moisture collecting on her forehead. Their conversation had passed ridiculous. What he called an apartment was a penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan, and the team was a professional hockey club, full of professional hockey players. Only an act of God could convince her to set foot in that arena.

  “Isn’t there, uh, something else I can do to help you out?”

  “Kristen’s taking care of the rest.” His mouth formed the downturn of disappointment once more. “But she can’t do it all. The restaurant and the boys are more than enough for her to handle.”

  “I’m flattered, Dad. Really, I am, but I’m not qualified to run a hockey team.”

  He waved off her worries. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know to keep from burning the place down while I’m away. We’re in last place in the league, so there are no expectations for you. I just need you to show up and act busy for a few hours every day, and make sure Darby is doing his job.”

  “Who’s Darby?”

  “Darby Poitiers. He’s my general manager.”

  “He isn’t doing his job?”

  “He’s doing everyone’s job.”

  “Great. Get him to take over for you. Hell, your secretary would be a better pick than me.”

  But her dad gave his head a hard shake. “You heard me say we’re in last place? Darby’s got work to do. His work, no one else’s. We’re breaking in a new coach, and the list of injuries has grown longer than my prenup.” He pulled a rumpled napkin from the blankets. “We’ve got a couple of trades in the works I need you to follow up on for me. Here.” He held the napkin out to her. “Take this with you tomorrow when you go to the arena.”

  She recoiled. “Tomorrow?”

  “I wanted Hansen, but he balked. Try again to get him, but if you can’t, here’s a list of alternates.” The napkin dropped to his lap. “We have needs at every position so you can’t go wrong, but focus on defense. Darby promised to get us an elite defender in the off-season, but then he loaded up on offense instead. I know he’s got his mind set on the shooter from Toronto, which probably isn’t a bad idea if Bryce can’t stay out of trouble, but a defense-minded player has to be the priority right now.”

  His words twisted and jumbled in a hopeless tangle inside her head. Overriding the chaos was the certainty she couldn’t go near that arena. Those players. She hadn’t attended a hockey game in nearly ten years.