Defensive Zone

by Catherine Gayle

  I freaking loved making clothes for this woman. She was like a fiery, Latina version of Ashley Graham, only with twice as much sass and without Ashley Graham’s confidence when it came to living in her own skin.

  I was working on that with her, though, whether she realized it or not. Fashion designer by day, unlicensed counselor by night—that was me. Kind of.

  “I don’t know,” Bea said hesitantly, and I wanted to growl at her.

  I kept my growl in check, but not my scowl, handing her the final piece I had ready for her to try on this afternoon—a formfitting shell with a cowl neck, in a gorgeous autumn orange that she could wear under a jacket or a sweater. The sleeves went to her elbows, so it more than fit Bea’s chicken-wing-coverage requirement, and it had the tummy panel around her entire belly and hip area to keep all her floppy bits hidden away while still allowing her to breathe.

  She drew the shirt on over her head and tugged it into position. It fit her perfectly. By now, I had her measurements down like nobody’s business. I wouldn’t need to adjust this one at all.

  “This is a gorgeous color,” she murmured, running her fingers over the silky material.

  “Looks like perfection on you. I don’t know many women who can get away with that shade, but you pull it off.”

  She raised her brows in challenge. “You could wear it.”

  “Winter colors are more my thing, not fall colors. It’s the pale skin.” I had the same fair complexion of a redhead. The same as Harry’s. Which meant he and I could make gorgeous ginger-haired, fair-skinned babies. Not that I needed to be thinking about making babies with him. Might need to figure out how to get him to properly screw me before we jumped onto the baby-making wagon.

  She let out a hmph, apparently determined to argue with me. Which was fine, because I wasn’t about to give up on my argument with her. She and Harry both needed to get it in their thick heads—when I made up my mind about something, I got my way. He was going to be mine, and Bea was going to wear this dress on a date, once I’d found the right guy for her. And she was going to feel like a million bucks in it, too.

  And, damn it, she was going to have a good time.

  “All right, so here’s the deal,” I said. “I’m going to make it. And I’m going to make it to fit you. When it’s ready, you can try it on and see how you feel in it.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re sure I’m going to feel amazing in it.”

  “Because you will.”

  “I feel amazing in everything you make me,” Bea argued.

  “Not because of anything I’ve done,” I insisted. “It’s because you’re a freaking sexy beast. All I’m doing is finding ways to make your clothes work for you, instead of working against you.” I would never understand why so many designers refused to make clothes that would look good on a larger body. So many of them put together dresses in the general shape of a burlap sack and called it good enough. I wasn’t plus-sized, but I wasn’t a stick figure, either—I had hips and an ass. That didn’t mean I needed to wear shapeless clothes. So now, I could do my part to help.

  “I still don’t have anywhere to wear a dress like that,” Bea complained. “I can’t exactly walk into school in a corset.”

  “Maybe if you start to wear things that make you feel like the hottie you are, you’ll start to get invited to do things where wearing an LBD and a corset would be appropriate.”

  She started to roll her eyes again, and I was sure she was about to fire off some other excuse about why I was wrong, but I didn’t give her the chance.

  “I’m making the dress. You’re trying it on. And if you feel as good about it as I know you will, you’re going to let me set you up on a date.”

  That stopped her short. She blinked at me a couple of times. “A date? Who do you want to set me up with?”

  “I’ll figure someone out.” Or Harry and I would, once I’d convinced him he needed to take me on a date. And maybe, if I spent a bit of time thinking about which of the guys from the team I should hook Bea up with, I could ignore the fact that Harry still hadn’t called me after blowing my mind.

  At least for a while.

  Bea checked herself out in the floor-length mirror one more time before nodding resolutely. “Love this.” She took off the shell and put her clothes on again. “You busy the rest of the afternoon, or can you come do something with me?”

  That wasn’t what I’d been expecting after essentially threatening her with a date. “What do you have in mind?” I asked.

  She sat down in a chair so she could tie her sneakers. “Go put on something more comfortable. We’re going for a walk in your neighborhood.”

  “A walk?” Color me confused.

  “When I pulled up earlier, I checked my Pokémon Go app. Your neighborhood is crawling with Pokémon, and there’s a PokéStop a couple of blocks away. I need more Poké Balls and you’re coming with me.”

  “Pokémon,” I mumbled. Was she being serious?

  “Yes, Pokémon.” Bea finished tying her shoes and rolled her eyes at me. “You can come like that if you want, but you’d better keep up. I’ve gotta catch ’em all, and I need to get a couple of miles in before supper. Been sitting around on my butt for way too long today.”

  “Give me three minutes,” I said, hurrying off to change into some cute workout clothes. Because I had an idea.

  I WAS PROUD to say that I avoided jumping on a plane and flying home to shove my nose in things, but I still spent the entire day on Sunday preoccupied with trying to help my sisters figure out what we were going to do with our father. Frankly, short of me going home to babysit him, our options were severely limited. But I’d already spent too many years racing in to pick up the pieces of our lives, and they had both had more than enough of my Superman act, thank you very much—or so they were all too keen to tell me. Only this past summer, Shelby had pointed out that it made them feel incapable—or at least like I thought they were incapable—every time I barged in and insisted on taking over. Old habits die hard, but she had a point, and I was doing my best to trust that they were as well equipped to deal with this as I was. Which wasn’t saying much, because what child—adult or otherwise—is ever prepared to care for a parent who’s become little more than an angry vegetable?

  So this time, I had to let go and trust that they could handle the latest catastrophic situation we’d been handed. Yes, I could help, but I had to do it from a distance. I was needed in Portland, where I could make the kind of money necessary to pay for Dad’s care.

  They both held down full-time jobs that required working unusual hours—Megan managed a bookstore and Shelby was a sous chef at an upscale Italian restaurant—which meant they couldn’t split time caring for him between them. There would be too many times when both of my sisters would be needed at their jobs, both now and in the future. That left us with two options: full-time care in the home or moving Dad into a nursing home. Which really meant we only had one option.

  Frankly, the more legwork I could get done for them, the better, even if I didn’t head home to take over. For hours, I sat at my laptop, Googling every possible facility in British Columbia. I needed to find out what sort of waiting lists they might have and what kinds of reviews people had posted about them.

  The truth was, even after spending most of the day scouring the Internet for these details, I didn’t think we were any closer to an answer than we had been to start with. Cost wasn’t much different from one place to the next, for the most part. I’d been able to rule out a few places because of the horrifying reviews and reports I’d stumbled upon, although I’d yet to find one facility that anyone was gushing about. The bigger issue was that several of these places had wait lists that went on for years.

  We didn’t have years.

  Shelby had arranged for a few days off by getting one of the other sous chefs to fill in for her, but she’d have to make up for those days sometime soon. Later in the week, Megan would have a couple of days off, so sh
e could take over caring for Dad…but she only had one assistant manager working beneath her, which made it complicated for her to truly take time away from her store.

  My sisters couldn’t keep juggling their schedules like that for long. And that didn’t even take into account the physical and emotional strain that caring for our father would put on them. His mind wasn’t there anymore, thanks to the severe injury to his brain, but he was still a lot bigger and stronger than either of them. If he lost it while one of them was alone with him…

  I couldn’t let myself think along those lines. It wouldn’t do any of us any good, least of all him.

  That afternoon, I emailed my sisters with my findings. Early in the evening, we all got on a three-way call together and came up with a plan for the two of them and our aunt to visit as many of the potential facilities as they possibly could over the coming days so we could make a decision and get on the waiting list for our top choice. We needed to do that before too much more time passed. The clock was ticking.

  By the time I hung up with them, I had a pounding headache, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and try to dream myself into a different life. This was the life I had been handed, though, so I had to figure out a way to live it. My plan for the week was simple in theory, even if it might prove to be difficult in execution: keep my head down and dedicate myself to the team as much as possible, avoid Dani Weber at all costs, and stay off Webs’s radar while still doing everything I possibly could to help my sisters from a distance.

  To be honest, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard a peep out of Dani since I’d walked away from her last night. That wasn’t her usual MO. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the radio silence coming out of her camp right now. It made me uncomfortable, almost like I missed her constantly bugging me.

  And I hadn’t heard anything from Webs, either, which left me feeling antsy. There was no doubt he’d already received a full brief about everything that had gone down. My only question was what he intended to do about it. I supposed I’d learn on Monday morning, when I headed up to the practice facility for the beginning of training camp.

  The crazy thing was that thinking along those lines was a nice break from worrying about my sisters and how they’d handle Dad’s situation without me. Yeah, I’d done a good job of raising them, considering I’d still been a kid myself, but they were adults now. There was a part of me that very much wanted to keep raising them, looking after them, and taking care of all the nasty parts of life so they didn’t have to.

  Doing so wouldn’t be fair to any of us, and we all knew it.

  One of the hardest things I’d ever done was to get on a plane to Portland eight years ago, leaving my sisters behind. I’d been almost twenty-two. They were smart nineteen- and twenty-year-old girls. And they’d had plans for what they wanted to do with their lives, just like I had.

  Their plans were coming to fruition, the same as mine were.

  I’d done a good job of taking care of them, damn it. I needed to remember that and stop wallowing in the thought that I somehow could have done better.

  It was seven o’clock, and I hadn’t done a freaking thing all day but sit on my ass and Google things. That had to change, stat. After shutting down my laptop and shoving my phone in my pocket, I got up and headed into the kitchen to figure out what I had in there that might be edible. I’d only made a brief trip to the grocery store since flying in, and there wasn’t much other than a steak I intended to throw on the grill sometime. That seemed like more work than it was worth at present, and a bowl of oatmeal wouldn’t satisfy me for long, so it looked like I needed to head out and pick something up.

  I grabbed my keys and wallet off the coffee table. Then I flipped on the porch light. No sooner had I done that than my doorbell rang.

  Fuck. My insides cramped with the realization that it could be—and probably was—Dani. And since I’d just turned on the light, I couldn’t exactly pretend I wasn’t at home. No getting around it. I was going to have to answer the door and then figure out how to get rid of her. And I couldn’t even delude myself into thinking she’d go easily. That girl was going to be the death of me.

  Saying a silent prayer for patience, I turned the lock and opened the door.

  Dani wasn’t alone. She had some Latina woman I’d never seen before with her. They both had their phones out in their hands, and Dani was carrying a bag from one of the local Chinese takeout places. Without so much as a hello, Dani pushed inside and dragged her friend along with her, moving directly past me even though I’d attempted to angle myself so I could body block her, like you’d do with an overly excitable dog.

  “Hey, this is Bea,” she said without looking up. “You’ve got a Pokémon in here that we need to catch. Brought you some dinner as payment for allowing us to barge in unannounced like this.” She set the bag down on the coffee table, and she and Bea took seats on the couch, their attention focused fully on their phones.

  “A Pokémon?” I repeated. They were playing Pokémon, of all things. That was her excuse for showing up at my door and barging inside.

  How was this my life?

  “Yeah,” Dani replied, like it was the most normal thing she could ever be doing. “You have plates we can use? I remembered to get chop sticks, but I didn’t think about plates. Damn it, this little guy is just refusing to be caught.”

  “Some of them are persistent little buggers. They might take a few Poké Balls to catch,” Bea said to her. She looked up at me and winked before going back to her game. “And sometimes, you’ll catch one and it’ll get away, so you have to start over again.”

  Don’t ask me why, but I found myself heading into the kitchen and getting plates, bottles of water, and napkins for all three of us. Maybe because I could smell the General Tso’s chicken and it made my stomach rumble. Maybe because I lost all sense of reason any time Dani Weber was in the picture—proof that I was a masochistic motherfucker. Either way, I ended up doing exactly what she wanted of me instead of kicking her out of my house like I should have if I wanted to keep my balls exactly where they currently resided.

  By the time I returned to the living room, they’d put their phones away and were taking cartons of food out of the bag.

  “Steamed chicken and stir-fried veggies, no rice,” Dani said, passing one of the containers over to Bea. She glanced up at me and took a plate from my hands. “Brown rice okay with you? It’s what Dad and Luke always want, so I just assumed…”

  She’d been assuming a lot lately. I grunted in lieu of answering, because I wasn’t sure I could say anything nice right now, and I didn’t want to be rude in front of this Bea chick, no matter who she was.

  They both set about filling their plates, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I was stewing in my own juices. But the sad truth was I was starving. Hunger would always win out over discomfiture where I was concerned. I took the carton of brown rice and made a bed of it on my plate before loading it high with General Tso’s and vegetables.

  “Didn’t see your headlights,” I commented as I passed Bea a bottle of water.

  “That’s because we didn’t drive,” Dani replied.

  “What? You walked from your dad’s house?” Webs lived on the other side of the city.

  “Not from Dad’s house.” Dani grinned at me. She reached for a napkin and wiped the corner of her mouth, drawing my eye there. Exactly where I didn’t need to be focusing, because it made me remember the taste of her. And then I wanted to taste her again, in so many more ways than I had before. But then she winked at me. “From Katie’s. She’s been letting me stay there. That’s where I’m living and working.”

  Which would explain why she’d taken me in there last night and hadn’t needed a key. Hell, I didn’t know why the thought hadn’t crossed my mind that she’d be staying in the empty house next door to Babs and Katie. But it hadn’t. Not even once.

  But this meant I was in even deeper trouble than before. Because it meant she was living about ha
lf a mile away. She could stop by unexpectedly, just like this, any time she wanted. She could drive by at all hours and look to see if my car was in the driveway.

  And it meant I could do the same with her, without her father knowing.

  This was bad.

  Beyond bad.

  This could be the death knell for my career.

  WE WERE NEARLY through the first full day of training camp, and so far, Webs hadn’t said a single fucking word to me. All he’d done anytime he’d looked in my direction the whole day was glare. So…yeah…he knew something. No telling what or how much he knew until he decided to speak to me.

  There was a part of me that wanted to just confront him and get it over with, but that was probably the stupid part of me—the same part that kept doing the opposite of what I should when it came to Dani.

  At least last night she’d had her friend with her so she hadn’t completely thrown herself on me. Not that I hadn’t caught the wicked gleam in her eyes every time she’d looked my way. That woman was making plans, trying to catch me in some sort of spider web, and I’d be damned if I hadn’t let her wrap a few more of those silvery threads around me last night. Hell, on their way out the door, she’d stopped to whisper in my ear, and it was all I could do not to slam the door with Bea on the other side, throw Dani against it, and make her scream out my name a few times.

  We need to set Bea up on a date with one of the guys, she’d said. Let’s make it a double date. Not that any of her words had trickled through the lust fogging my brain when she’d said them. It was only later, once I’d had time to jerk off in a cold shower, that I’d processed any of it.

  A double date. Meaning with the two of us, Bea, and one of my teammates.