Night Games

by Lisa Marie Perry

  Bracing his weight on his forearm, Nate hovered over her and leaned in to whisper, “Did you hear me?”

  “Mmm-hmm. But why take back the truth?” She closed her eyes against the dark empty sky outside the room’s large windows. “I want you. How do you feel about that?”

  “Fantastic, ’cause I want you, too.” He kissed her between the shoulder blades. “Devastated, ’cause I can’t have you.”

  “Franco versus Blue. Family loyalty. Careers.”

  He tensed, then murmured, “I’m repaying a debt to my brother.”

  Charlotte’s eyes opened but she didn’t dare move for fear of triggering him to shut down and shut her out.

  “The bulk of that legacy your family is building was supposed to go to Santino. He lost his career, his woman and his inheritance. It was like someone had come along and knocked down everything good in his life like dominoes.”

  “No, not everything. He still has your father and you.”

  “Dad’s not the man he used to be—hasn’t been for some time. As for me, it’s my mission to do something to save the man who saved my life. Charlotte, remember the kids at the benefit? Growing up, I was like them. And I was given hell for it. My mother was proud, but it’s always been my father’s opinion that matters most. He overlooked me and concentrated on the son with the star quality.”

  “And Santino? How’d he treat you?”

  Nate sighed but answered her. “Santino was a good brother. Fair. Laid-back. A fun guy to be around.”

  Charlotte’s thoughts drifted back to the night at the DiGorgio Royal Casino. She’d been shocked to see Santino Franco’s intense seriousness in just one glimpse, and for a short moment she’d wondered how handsome he’d be if only he would smile.

  “When I was fifteen I didn’t want to be a science freak. Neither did Lamont, my best friend at the time. We wanted a way out of being the bottom-feeders at school.” His hand stilled on her back. “Lamont told me that a guy had offered him a way out, that I should get in on it. He was in a gang.”

  Shit. The grief that cut into his voice told her something had gone horribly wrong.

  “We were supposed to meet this guy and his boys. But Santino found out, cornered me at home and provoked me until I put my fist in his face. I broke his nose. After we got back from the hospital, we were grounded.” He cleared his throat, swore. “Lamont had said he wouldn’t go without me, but he went anyway and ended up rolling with that gang. Few months later he was murdered. Bastards from a rival gang tied his shoelaces together and hung his shoes over a power line.”

  Charlotte gasped. “I thought the shoe tossing was an urban myth.”

  “Not entirely.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I got to live, figured myself to be the luckiest nerd in Las Vegas. Later I was given a choice. Either earn a doctorate in kinesiology and sports medicine, like I’d planned to do, or train guys on my father’s team. It was a simple choice. I got what I wanted. Mostly.”

  Nate had found his own brand of fame in the NFL, and Charlotte didn’t doubt that it had shaped who he’d become. But if gaining his father’s approval and resolving a debt he thought he owed to his brother were what was driving him, then he had bigger problems than his runaway-train relationship with her. “I’m sorry.”

  “It happened a long time ago.”

  “But it did happen. And it’s still with you.”

  “That kind of thing doesn’t come up in everyday conversation. But telling you about it felt right.”

  It did feel right. Sharing deeply hidden truths, discovering intangible closeness. It terrified and thrilled her in equal measures.

  “Let’s try something,” he said, changing the subject as he ran a hand down her spine. “With my finger I’m going to spell out a message on your back. Focus.”

  She tried. But at the first stroke she erupted in giggles. He tried again but she wriggled away, giggling harder. “I’m ticklish.”

  “Who’s ticklish on their back?”

  “I am!”

  Nate was silent, considering. Then he sat up and flipped her onto her backside as if she weighed nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration as he stroked a finger over her belly. There was something extraordinarily hot about being naked and unable to see how he was touching her.

  “M-I-N-E,” she spelled once he’d finished. Mine.

  Somehow, someway, she wanted to make it true. Opening her eyes to see the stirrings of daybreak rising outside the windows, Charlotte reached up and hauled him into a kiss. For the first time in a long time she wouldn’t be running to her hideout in Mount Charleston as the sun rose.

  She planned to stay in bed.

  Chapter 12

  Time fell away, tumbling like the severed bits of shrubbery left in the wake of Bindi’s topiary shears. Minutes shifted into hours as she trimmed the first in a row of modest spiral trees that stood at attention like foot soldiers on either side of the Francos’ front door. It had passed perfection a while ago, but she couldn’t seem to stop obsessing about it and tend to the other trees waiting in line to be groomed.

  Besides, if she moved, she would lose vantage of the driveway. When her fiancé finally came home, she wanted the first face he saw to be hers.

  Snip.

  Last night she’d dressed up in a brand-new dress, practically effervescent with excitement to see a Cirque du Soleil show with her man. But after a half hour crept by with no response to her WHERE R U? texts, he’d responded with CALL YOU BACK but never followed through.

  Snip. Snip.

  Bindi edged to the side, stepping into the neighboring tree’s shade. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the stiffness that had settled there overnight as she slept slumped on a bench in Al’s foyer, waiting for him. This morning she’d woken up irritable and had followed a trail of whispers to the kitchen, where the housekeeper, Nadia, entertained the part-time cleaning staff with gossip. At the master of the house’s request, while Bindi slept, Nadia had discreetly dropped off his shaving kit and a change of clothes to a hotel in Las Vegas.

  Snip!

  A chunk of delicate branches and rich green leaves hit the ground at Bindi’s feet. She stared at the destruction. It was ruined. The topiary, her engagement, her plans…

  She dumped the shears into a wheelbarrow and wiped her quavering hands on the front of her sundress, wanting to berate herself for wasting time she didn’t have.

  The producer who’d dangled in front of her the big break she’d been dreaming about was losing interest in her reality TV show. The concept was solid and she was attractive enough, but her fiancé didn’t have an NFL team anymore and Bindi didn’t have much of an engagement. Oh, and at the age of twenty-nine, she had only a few years of marketability left.

  Visions of red-carpet events, of using communications skills from her unfinished hitch in college to branch out to networks like E! or MTV, of showing her parents that losing their financial and emotional support hadn’t broken her, burst like bubbles.

  Her phone chirped within her dress’s pocket and she glared at Toya Messa’s number on the display. As far as friends went, she was down to just Toya, who was weeks away from a fat divorce settlement that would set her for life.

  The lucky bitch. Bindi pushed away from the shelter of the trees, ignoring the call and wishing she could ignore the tears that burned hotter than the summer sunshine.

  How could she have let a man get the best of her again? No, she hadn’t given Al Franco her body. But she’d given him her trust, trust that he’d let slip through his fingers along with the Las Vegas Slayers.

  Bindi had lost her leverage, risked her future. Entire nights away from the mansion meant Al wasn’t spending those nights alone, wanting her. She wasn’t naive; of course withholding was a gamble. But she’d hoped that he would stay true to his word and remain faithful to her for the duration of their engagement. All he’d had to do was show some integrity, marry her and make good on his promise.

  I’m going to help you,
Bindi, as long as you need me to. You’ll have the money you need to take care of yourself. You’ll never again have to sell yourself out for an old man like me. You deserve better.

  His word had meant nothing. Neither had his son Nate’s. At first Nate had wanted to take the necessary measures to get the team back. Something…someone…had changed his mind.

  The almost seductive growl of a car engine interrupted her bawl-fest, and Bindi clumsily dabbed at her wet eyes. When Al quieted his Porsche 918 Spyder in the driveway and got out clean shaven, wearing sunglasses and a suit different from the one she’d last seen him in, she was there to meet him. From head to toe he looked like a man who’d spent the night in comfort.

  “Trimming, were you?” Al pointed his car key toward the spiral trees. “Let’s have a look.”

  Bindi trailed him in silence across the lush lawn, watched him perform a cursory scan. Noticing the damage done to the first topiary, he turned to her for explanation. “You’re crying.” He shrugged, nudged her chin up gently. “It’ll grow back. It’s a temporary ugly.”

  “I waited for you last night, Al.”

  Al’s hand dropped. “Time got away from me. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t treat me like this. You lie as if you think I’m dumb enough to believe it. You keep me on hold, give me less respect than you do the household staff.”

  Al frowned at the animosity that shook her voice. “I’m providing for you.”

  “A car and a few credit cards aren’t enough. I have plans for my life. You’re going to be my husband.”

  “A wedding was reasonable before things got out of control, out of my hands.”

  “What things?”

  “Never mind. You want the Lamborghini? It’s yours. Take the clothes, too.”

  “No!” She wasn’t some game-show contestant who could be pacified with a few consolation prizes. “What about the reality TV show? Chances like this don’t just fall into a woman’s lap. Without this shot, I’m sunk. No one wants me.”

  “That can’t be my problem anymore.” Al reached for her engagement ring, but she jerked away. “Take some time to come to terms.” Then he strode to his car and was gone again.

  Bindi twisted the ring on her finger, almost shivering with panic. The tears reemerged, bringing up an angry sob from someplace down deep. She lunged for the nearest tree, gripping handfuls and yanking. Branches snapped and the tree quivered, but she couldn’t dislodge it from the ground. When her hands slipped, she staggered backward. What she’d put into this house was more deeply rooted than she’d thought.

  “Bindi.”

  She twisted around to find Santino at the top of the front steps, his tattooed arms crossed. He stood motionless but watchful, like a hawk considering its prey. Great. If he hadn’t seen what had just happened, surely he’d heard every mortifying word of it.

  Not that she was obligated to acknowledge it—or the man surveying her now. If she could just hold it together long enough to get inside the mansion, she could pretend, for a while, that her fiancé hadn’t dumped her on the front lawn.

  With tearstains and dirty hands, she took the steps swiftly. But at the precise moment that she put up a hand to warn him against speaking to her, Santino stopped her with a loose grip on her wrist.

  She straightened to her full height, looking him square in the face through her tears. True, she wasn’t a football warrior as he’d been not so long ago. But she was tough in other ways. And nothing could crush her fighting spirit. At the end of the day, it was all that remained.

  “Sounds like he’s done.” Santino inclined his head, his dark hair brushing his shoulders. “Whatever deal you had going with him—it’s over.”

  “Cute, how you seem to think you have a say in my relationship.”

  “You mean the relationship that was a damn joke from the get-go? The one he ended just now? Yeah, that relationship.” His gaze followed a tear that trickled freely when she blinked, and his features seemed to tighten into a frown. “Walk away, Bindi.”

  “Don’t break out the celebratory champagne yet.” He didn’t appear to be in a particularly celebratory mood, yet she never could gauge whether anything but resentment lived inside him. She flashed the engagement ring. “As long as I have this, I’m still in the picture.”

  Fueled with desperation, she escaped to the guest room she’d chosen upon moving in, grabbed her cell phone and committed to a decision without giving herself the chance to change her mind. Then, tossing the phone aside, she sank to the bed. Guilt, something she didn’t know she could still feel, swamped her.

  It had taken a few phone calls, and more cash than she’d wanted to spend, to find dirt on Charlotte Blue once she’d gotten an idea of what to search for. It had taken one night of following Nate to catch him in a rendezvous with the woman and figure out why he’d defected to Charlotte’s side.

  Bindi had no loyalty to Charlotte or Nate or anyone else, yet she’d hesitated all the same. Now it was make it or break it, and she’d had only one real choice.

  To save herself.

  *

  With Slayers Stadium in the final stages of its renovation, the perimeter of the place was crammed with trucks ranging from ordinary pickups to cherry pickers to cranes. If the building was Marshall and Tem’s oyster, then the owners’ suite was the pearl.

  As one of the many assistants ushered Charlotte inside, she was excited to get her first look at the refreshed space. Since being persuaded to distance herself from TreShawn Dibbs, who had taken it personally just as she’d known he would, Charlotte had been at best cordial to Danica and their parents. It was past time to squash the tension between them. When her father had texted her at the top of the morning, summoning her from Mount Charleston for a long lunch at the stadium, she’d felt optimistic about finally putting all the hurt feelings and disappointment aside.

  The details of the luxury suite stood out all at once: Parisian-influenced furniture, a wet bar, glass panels that showcased the heart of the stadium. Charlotte’s favorite spot in the whole place—the field—was a mess. Would it be presentable, functional, for the next at-home exhibition game?

  “We’re on schedule,” Tem said, sweeping into the room with her tablet. “The turf has taken well and the painting crew will be here at five sharp tomorrow morning to make over the seats.”

  “You read my mind, Ma.” Charlotte reached out to hug Tem but grasped the air as her mother breezed past to set the tablet on the bar.

  “Then it’s nice to be tuned in to my daughters every once in a while. You accused me of not knowing Martha, and it was infuriating because your father and I like to think we know Martha, Danica and you quite well—as parents ought to. But it turns out we don’t. You, for example. We knew you were stubborn, defiant. We didn’t know you were so reckless.”

  “What does that mean?” Charlotte’s skin prickled as Tem picked up the tablet and joined her at the glass panels. “Is this a bad time to have come? Pop invited me.”

  “Marshall and your sisters will be here shortly. You’ll know everything then.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  Tem said nothing more until Danica and Martha entered the suite, followed by Marshall…who had whipped out a bottle of antacids.

  Charlotte was beginning to suspect she had too many secrets. She cleared her throat. “We haven’t all sat down to lunch together in months.”

  “Getting our franchise in good shape is paramount, Lottie.” This from her father. “We’ve been busy blocking problem after problem. Tem.”

  Tem swiped her finger across the tablet, tapped the screen and handed the device to Charlotte. “This is one of those problems.”

  Charlotte stared at the tablet, at the image of her younger self. Naked except for a pair of thigh-high athletic socks and a cleverly placed champion belt, she looked into the camera through a forest of straight teased hair. There was attitude in her eyes.

  Attitude, and purpose, had propelled her to pose for a risqué
magazine that she’d assumed was defunct by now. Twelve years ago, when the photo had been taken, the magazine had been something underground and not even close to the popularity of Playboy or Penthouse. The payment she’d received had been enough to fund the summer Eat & Run program in New England, combining nutrition education and marathon training, she’d wanted to participate in. In college on her parents’ dime, she’d had to comply with their suggestions—demands—because the threat of them cutting her off hung over her head. That summer they’d wanted her home and had refused to pay for the program. So she’d found her own way, had agreed to straighten her hair to amplify her look and posed for a few clicks of a camera.

  After her next visit home she had felt ashamed, and in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, she’d had her hair cut short. Then she’d put the transgression behind her.

  But it had come back, on some celebrity gossip website. How? She’d told no one—not even her college roommate, Krissy O’Claire, who had been studying abroad that summer—about the photos. Charlotte’s guilt trip hadn’t allowed her to buy a copy of the magazine for herself. She’d never even known until now which pose had been used.

  “Our attorney is on this, Lottie,” Martha said. “He’s having the pic taken off the website. How old were you when you did this?”

  “Twenty.”

  “You weren’t underage. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Martha looked to Danica, then their parents. “And at least her lady parts are covered.” She bopped over to peer at the tablet. “Somewhat.”

  “Seems you’ve had more Charlotte Slipups than we know about,” Tem said. “You had a duty to this franchise to warn us about something of this nature. You’re on probation till the start of the season. But tell me why. Why didn’t you consider how this would affect your future?”

  “I did it for my future. You and Pop cut me off the summer I wanted to stay on campus for a fitness program. You didn’t believe I’d find my own money to pay for it, but I did. I took the dare.”