Julian refused to look away from Kilroy’s cold blue eyes. One more word. Let the bastard say one more word against his family, and Julian would have him running faster than the French at wartime.
Irina, always cool and diplomatic, intervened. She brushed past Kilroy and focused her attention on Julian’s mother. “Well, are we fitting you for a sash today, Chika, or just your fine, strapping son in his kilt?”
His mother laughed and turned away from Kilroy, effectively dismissing him from her presence without another thought. She had power, his mother. She might be small and she might not have even a hundredth of the Kilroy wealth, but she had power.
“Oh, Irina. I couldn’t possibly. No one cares what the little old lady serving up the haggis wears.”
“Thank you, Duke. I’ll call you when your kilt is ready.” Irina’s voice was kind but firm as she ushered him to the front door. Not even Kilroy’s pig-headed crudity could keep him in a room against Irina’s iron will.
But of course, the man had to get the last word. “Looking forward to seeing you at the practice field, Wallace. It’s always such fun when you’re in town. You’re the only one who can come close to my record. But then, neither you or your dad was ever able to beat it, were you?”
As if Julian needed a reminder.
Kilroy had broken the record in the hammer throw—one hundred eighty-seven feet—back in his early twenties, outstripping Harold’s standing by a good twenty feet. Julian knew full well it was his responsibility to get the family title back. If not for Harold, then for himself. Losing to Kilroy—every single damn time—was excruciating.
It would have been easier to bear if Julian thought for a minute Kilroy cheated or manipulated the judging. But Kilroy just won. He was always a little bit stronger, a little bit more successful. And a complete and utter asshole in the bargain.
Even now, he refused to leave the shop. He lingered in the doorway like he had a God-given right to oversee everything Julian said or did.
“A word, if I might, Wallace?”
Julian scowled but followed Kilroy outside the shop. There was no use delaying it. Kilroy would track him down one way or another.
Kilroy leaned against the brick wall, his arms crossed. “It’s quite fortuitous we met like this. I’ve been meaning to stop by.”
“Good for you.”
“I thought maybe a beer or a few practice throws could get us on good terms again. We might be able to reach an accord, you and I.”
“I doubt it.”
“But you haven’t even given me a chance—always so hasty. Don’t you even want to hear my proposition?”
“Cut to the chase, will you?” Julian wasn’t in the mood to put up with Kilroy’s oiled jocularity.
“I always liked you, Wallace. Never a man of many words. Well, I’ll have out with it, then. I have twenty thousand dollars with your name on it.”
“Do you?” Julian didn’t allow a glimmer of emotion to cross his face, though his stomach flipped at the casualness with which Kilroy dropped the figure “How nice for both of us. I don’t suppose the bank considers it legal tender if you’ve defaced it, do they?”
“Oh, it’s legal, all right, and it’s yours for the asking.”
“And what, exactly, am I asking?”
Kilroy’s lips contorted into a curl of self-satisfaction. “You’re asking yourself if playing in this year’s Games is really that important to you.”
“And I know the answer to that question. It’s yes.” A resounding yes, which beat in his heart loud and strong.
Kilroy gave a short laugh. “C’mon, Wallace. Who do you think you’re kidding? You have a chance—a very, very remote one—of beating me. And even if you do win, the prize money is five thousand dollars. Hardly enough to set a man up in the style to which he is accustomed, don’t you think?”
“You and I both know this isn’t about the prize money, Kilroy. Get to the point. I don’t want to keep Irina waiting. It’s rude.”
“You’re right—it’s not about the prize money. It’s about money, period. I have it and you don’t. I’ll tell you what. I’m feeling particularly generous after seeing what a fine figure I cut in my Highland formal. Name your price and it’s done.”
The temptation was there, especially with his mom so close by. The whole reason Julian worked so hard was to give her a better life, to bring her up into a more comfortable sphere. And there was nothing illegal about stepping down from the Games. There were a lot of things Kilroy might be angling after—putting on a good show for Rockland Bluff Whisky to get the sponsorship for himself, keeping the competition limited to ensure his reigning title or even painting Julian as the fool. Hell, it could have been all three.
But Julian couldn’t do it. No figure was large enough to lay his honor on the line. He was so close to getting the money he needed, and without doing it on Kilroy’s filthy family dime.
“See you at the Games, Kilroy,” Julian replied.
He turned on his heel and stalked back into the shop, glad when the door stayed firmly shut behind him. He seethed with a thousand emotions, none of which he allowed to rise to the surface. All that showed was a smile for his mom, who placed a gentle hand on his arm and beamed.
“Well, Irina, Julian here needs a new kilt for the ceremonies—he’s running this year’s event, so we can’t have him coming out looking like an orphan.”
“Should be a good show, if you’re in charge. You’ve always had a good respect for the traditions.” Irina nodded toward Chika. “Will you be joining us?”
His mom laughed and waved them off. “Jules hasn’t needed me to help dress him since he was three.”
Julian stepped up onto the platform in front of the tripod of rectangular mirrors. Little copies of himself continued on in an infinite pattern, each one scowling and tense. He forced himself to smile as Irina moved effortlessly around him, grabbing pins and measuring tape and eyeing him closely.
“You’ve built up quite a bit.” She nodded at his shirt and watched as he lifted it over his head, nothing but professional interest in her eyes. There was a time, in his teens, when standing before this cool, efficient woman had been the height of fantasy. She’d known it, of course. There were certain things a boy could never quite hide from the woman who measured his inseam.
“All muscle, I think. But you need to relax or the measurements will be off.” She nodded again, this time toward his jeans. He pulled them off.
“Sorry, Irina. I’m a little wound up.” He tossed the pants to her, and the perfectionist in her promptly began folding them. As she did, a crumpled piece of paper floated to the ground.
Kate’s invitation. He forgot he’d pulled the same pair of pants on that morning, too tired from a night spent mostly staring at the ceiling to care much about his attire.
“Is this important?” Irina asked, picking it up and pointing it at the trash can.
Julian furrowed his brow. “It might be.” He took it from her, flattening it out and scanning the contents. It was simple, a beige rectangle with fancy lettering, swirly lines everywhere and the silhouette of a couple dancing across the upper right hand corner. It was pretty basic—one of those things women liked to have for weddings and tea parties.
As if a tea party was the slightest bit more important than the Scottish Highland Games.
He’d been prepared to admit his wrongdoing. It went against every one of his grains to talk to a woman the way he’d talked to Kate at the bar the other night, but he’d let his anger and yes, he was willing to admit, a little machismo, get in the way of his better judgment. So when he went to her house, he’d had a peace offering in hand—an apology prepared and ready to go. She didn’t know him very well yet, but he rarely said or did things he didn’t stand behind one-hundred percent. So apologizing wasn’t something he made a regular habit of.
But then she’d shown up at the door to her house wearing the flimsiest dress he’d ever seen, all soft white waves and ruffles. He’
d thought it was part of her charm, the way she exuded easy femininity, the way the bare strip of her thigh flashed only when she wasn’t aware of her own majestic movements.
Now he knew better. She’d been playing a game. Playing him. He had few requirements for his relationships with women, but among them honesty and sincerity were at the front of the line. A lithe body draped in an ultra-feminine dress and floating with the light scent of cherry blossoms was not. He didn’t care how hard his body protested.
And it protested. Hard.
He turned the invitation over.
“You should go, caro,” Irina said with a smile. She wrapped the plaid around his waist and began sticking pins along the hem. At his inquiring look, she added, nodding at his hand, “To that party.”
“I wasn’t invited,” he muttered. The back of the invitation had a few words scrawled along the bottom. Flora Folio. It was probably the name of the printer—Kate must have been getting ready to print and send her invitations. And Cornwall Park’s address was right there, looking him in the face. She was that sure of herself.
Irina tsked and whisked the kilt away from his legs. “No? Pity. Maybe it would help you relax. You’re wound tighter than a virgin’s backside.”
Julian choked as he pulled his clothes back on. “What did you say?”
She ignored him, clicking back into businesslike efficiency. “Your kilt will be ready for the final fitting in two weeks. You’ll be a masterpiece—no one makes my work look as good as you.” She pulled back the curtain and started chatting amiably with his mother, looking back only briefly to offer him a wink.
He didn’t move, his mind working fast. A virgin’s backside. There was potential there—quite a bit of potential, actually.
He shoved the invitation back in his pocket and joined his mother and Irina, waiting politely for them to finish talking before heading out the door.
The warrior inside him itched for a fight—not the fierce clan battles of Scotland or a battle of honor against a neighboring village maga’lahi warrior on a remote Pacific island, but something petty and small. Something that would sneak underneath a certain woman’s skin and cause her to itch and writhe without any way to alleviate the discomfort.
And he knew how he was going to do it.
“You look awfully pleased with yourself,” a small, feminine voice said.
Julian looked up to find his sister, Beth, leaning in the doorway of their mother’s kitchen, watching him eat oyako-don like it was the first meal he’d had in a week. His mom always made the traditional Japanese egg-and-chicken rice bowl in the weeks leading up to the Games. The dish had been Harold’s favorite. He’d always said the protein provided a man with everything he needed to fight and to fuck—though that last part was offered in a low undertone meant only for Julian’s burning ears.
“That’s because I am pleased with myself, little sister.” It had been a few days since he’d visited the tailor, and things were definitely looking up.
He stood and gave her a hug, but she disentangled herself with a frown. She was fifteen, the age when affection ruined the painstaking effects of teenage angst. She was a beautiful girl, with his same skin tone, her eyes a lighter shade of brown and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, but her hair was cut at a cross angle to her face, and she had so much eye makeup on she might have been an eighties pop star. He wondered how much time she was spending alone at the house.
“I haven’t seen you around the house very much. How are things?”
She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
“That’s it? Nothing new around here?”
“What do you want to know?” Beth said. “Mom works a lot, as usual. And Nala is almost never here—she’s got a boyfriend now.” Nala was seventeen, apparently the age when affection came back in full force and attached itself to a teenage male partner.
Beth hovered above the table, so Julian kicked out one of the kitchen chairs—the same black-and-brass upholstered ones that had been in his mom’s house for twenty years. The woman never updated a thing.
Beth looked at it with a cynical eyebrow raised. Cynical and pierced. Julian wondered how well that had been received. The day he’d come home with his tattoo, a swirling traditional Micronesian pattern across his upper arm and back, his mother had cried. Even after he’d explained—told her it was the story of his heritage, an important reminder to honor all his warrior roots—she’d had to close her eyes every time she saw it for the following three or four years.
“So, what—are you living here now?”
Julian felt a twinge of guilt. His and Beth’s was not a particularly close relationship—he’d started following the Games ten years ago, when he was eighteen. They’d all expected him to move home for good when Harold died, but Julian always found some way to put it off. He needed more time training. He needed to spend a few long winters in Arizona, building up a savings cushion to supplement the small life insurance policy Harold had left behind along with several years’ worth of medical bills.
And now—now he was so close to the Rockland Bluff Whisky sponsorship it would have been ridiculous to cut back his SHS commitments. The money would be enough to let his mother quit working for good. To send both sisters to college with room to spare.
“You don’t have to worry anymore,” Harold had said gruffly the day he’d married Chika in a little ceremony at City Hall, followed by a party at the local pub. It was a day that changed everything, when Harold bestowed their little family with his name and the good cheer that followed him wherever he went. Julian had never realized how much they’d struggled until that moment—financially and emotionally.
“It’s my job to provide for you both now. That’s what a real man does, Julian. Provides. Remember that.”
And he remembered. He remembered every time he sent a check home, and every time he lifted one of the weights to throw across the field wearing the bold Wallace plaid. But there were limits to his dedication.
“Live in a house with three women?” Julian laughed off his sister’s scorn. “No thanks. I’m staying at the apartment until after the Games.”
“And then?”
Julian shrugged and returned his attention to his plate. That depended on a lot of things, not the least of which was finding a way to get Kate Simmons and her Jane Austen book club off his back and out of his mind.
“You’re going this year, right?” he asked, almost as an afterthought. Although Beth and Nala had liked the Games well enough as little girls dressed in dancing shoes and with big, bouncing curls in their hair, it was an embarrassing spectacle to them now. Kate was right. Teenagers.
“Well, you know…” Beth looked at her fingernails, which were painted a dark black.
“I’d like it if you came.”
Her eyes snapped up. “Oh. Okay, then. If you want.” She grabbed a soda from the fridge. “But I’m not wearing one of those skirts.”
“Then don’t. It’s not for everyone.” He said the words seriously, a man who’d learned the hard way it took quite a bit of confidence to wear a kilt—and to look good doing it.
He went home to his apartment not too much later. His mom had gone off to do something called Bunco, and his sisters retreated to their respective caves on the second floor of the house, leaving him sitting in the dated living room by himself, watching television on a ten-inch screen and feeling ineffective. It was difficult, sometimes, to remember they had lives that didn’t involve him, but that was to be expected when he spent so much time away. It was no one’s fault but his own.
The night threatened to stretch ominously before him. It was still early—only about eight o’clock—and a quick check in his fridge revealed two lonely little beers. Two beers that wouldn’t be nearly enough to cover the feeling of deflation that was wrapping itself shamelessly around him like a pink, hand-knit shawl. One with lace around the edges.
It was only natural—the feeling of deflation. It was the aftermath of making a debilitating blo
w to the enemy but not being allowed to watch while she fell, shrieking, to her knees.
The debilitating blow had been accomplished that morning thanks to Flora Folio, the invitation printer. It hadn’t been hard to track them down. He’d waited a few days, of course, to make sure Kate and her little Jane Austen book club had time to put their order in. Let her think she’d won. That was the first tactic of any good battle—silently retreat from the playing field, all the while crouching, taking tiny steps backward, never moving your eyes from the real prize.
Then he’d paid the invitation shop a little visit.
It was shameless. He’d gone in with Michael, both of them donning their most charming smiles. Julian wasn’t stupid. He knew what effect his physique had on members of the opposite sex. Highland athletes were one step away from football players when it came to attracting women. They had a tendency to fall in line at the sight of the first flexed muscle.
Michael had immediately laid on his signature charm, which Julian never could quite figure out. “Ladies, we’re in need of your help.”
The two women in the shop, a young college-age girl whose long, straight hair looked like it weighed more than she did, and a middle-aged woman with fingers dyed black from the printing press they ran in the back, melted into a single puddle of obliging hormones.
Julian leaned on the counter and toyed with a display of fabric bookmarks, smiling with as much feeling as he could muster any time one of them looked his way.
“My friend here is a man in love.”
The bookmark stand went crashing to the ground. Both women pretended not to notice, listening with rapt attention as Michael wove a ridiculous tale of passion, betrayal and a secret marriage proposal no one could know about. The women devoured it, their eyes getting rounder and mistier with each word. The younger one occasionally shot wistful glances Julian’s way, like she wanted to comfort him for all the agony of the love he was trying so hard to endure in stoic silence.
It took all the willpower he had not to haul Michael out of there on the spot.
Love is a Battlefield: Games of Love, Book 1 Page 8
