“All right. Fine. We don’t hate Elle. But do we officially hate LeBlanc now?”
“He’s still our number one goalie. I kind of have to deal with him.”
“But I can hate him from over here.” She winked. “I can work up a good hate for him, strong enough to cover for the both of us and to make up for us not hating Elle, too.”
“If you think it’ll do any good.”
“You don’t think they’ll trade him?” Pepper asked, sounding way too hopeful.
“Not a chance. He’s the main reason we got to the Eastern Conference Finals last season.” The guy had won nearly every award offered by the league last season, too, after having a record-setting year. The rest of the team had been good, but LeBlanc had been great. I sipped from my coffee, thankful it had finally finished brewing. It instantly helped ease my headache.
“You, then?” There was more than merely a hint of concern drawing Pepper’s brows together over her nose.
“We already had a couple of meetings with the two of us, the coaching staff, and the general manager. Basically, they told us there wasn’t a chance in hell they were trading either one of us over some personal crap, so we were just going to have to work it out between the two of us and learn to deal with each other again. We can hate each other off the ice all we want, but when we’re out there playing a hockey game, we’ve got to be on the same page. We’re pulling for the same thing. Period.”
“Damn.”
Damn didn’t even begin to cover it, but there wasn’t much I could do. As my agent had put it, our hands were tied. No one was telling me I had to like the son of a bitch, but I did have to play on the same team as him.
“We already passed the trade deadline, anyway,” I pointed out, hoping to ease her worry a bit more. “So nothing else could happen until the summer.”
“That’s good,” she murmured. Still worried. I could hear it in her voice even if she was trying to hide it from me. I couldn’t blame her, either. She’d just left everything she’d ever known in Livingston to come and live in Miami with me, but if I were to suddenly have to up and move to some other city…where would that leave her? It was a legitimate question. I didn’t want her to have that kind of worry. Hell, I didn’t want her to have any worries.
“I’m just glad you’re coming to the party with me tonight,” I said, hoping she’d let me change the subject that easily. I didn’t want to think about Elle and LeBlanc anymore. I didn’t want another reminder that this would be my first summer without Elle in five years. I just wanted to move on, and with Pepper here, there wasn’t any better way of doing that.
“I still don’t understand why Alex Dare wants you to be at that party,” Pepper said. She whisked the eggs in the bowl with a fork before pouring them into a baking dish over a bunch of potatoes and veggies, popping it into the oven, and going back to putting together a fruit salad.
The problem Pepper was having with the party wasn’t the fact that I’d been invited; it was that I wanted her to go with me. She’d never liked being surrounded by a bunch of people she didn’t know. It would be bad enough if they were my teammates. At least she was somewhat familiar with those guys, even if she didn’t know them. But I was probably the only person she would know tonight, and that was going to leave her feeling insanely uncomfortable. I’d have to do everything in my power to help her relax while we were there, especially if I wanted to be sure she met the right people and made the right contacts. This was about her future. It was a first step, sure, but if she didn’t take this one, the rest wouldn’t follow very soon.
“We spent a lot of time together last season after my concussion. Bonded over it.”
I’d been out of the lineup for almost six months with mine. He’d suffered one that had ended his pro football career a few years ago. These days, he worked with the Thunder, helping guys navigate the transition from being professional athletes into whatever the next stage of their lives might be. For a while, I’d wondered if I’d be hitting him up to help me make that transition a hell of a lot sooner than I was ready for, but even though I was playing again, he’d left that door open.
“He helped me out a lot back then,” I added.
My concussion had occurred at around the same time Pepper was going through her recovery. For a while, I’d thought we were both facing the end of our careers.
Alex had talked me through a lot of it. Pointed me in the right direction as far as local doctors who specialized in head trauma. If the guy wanted me at a Miami Thunder party, you could bet I’d be there.
With Pepper on my arm, so I could help her figure out what to do next.
“So we’re definitely going,” she said, sounding deflated.
“We’re going.”
“Please tell me there’ll be alcohol.”
“Open bar,” I replied, grinning. Because now I knew she would come without continuing to give me a hard time. “We’ll take a cab, too. It’ll be great.”
Two
Pepper
Under normal circumstances, I never felt smaller than I did standing next to Jackson. It had a lot to do with the fact that he had a good foot and a half or more on me, not to mention that he weighed at least twice what I did. Our size difference hadn’t stopped me from being able to get him in a choke hold when we were younger, but now he was all muscle. I didn’t think I’d be trying that one again any time soon, even if he pissed me off.
He looked like a man among boys when he was with his teammates, and those guys weren’t anything to sneeze over, on a physical front. At this Miami Thunder party he’d brought me to, the men were all the same size as Jackson’s teammates. Actually, a lot of them were bigger. Football players tended to have a lot more bulk than hockey players. Pound for pound, I was as strong as they were, but they all had a lot more pounds on them than I did.
Right now, I felt like I was about as big as an ant. Any one of these men coming over to shake my hand and tell me how he could help me find a job if I were interested in doing X, Y, or Z could easily squash me under his toes if he wanted.
Like the guy talking to me now, while Jackson was getting us more cocktails from the bar. Alex Dare, the man who’d invited us tonight, was towering over me. Yeah, he was smiling and seemed friendly and all, and he even had this adorable dimple in his cheek that kept coming out when he grinned, but I couldn’t help but wish Jackson would hurry up and come back. He was my lifeline in social situations. We were polar opposites in just about every way. Man versus woman; massive versus itty-bitty; dark-haired versus blonde; extrovert versus introvert. I supposed you could say we complemented each other well, or maybe that opposites attracted.
He’d definitely attracted me. Not that I had a chance with him, but still. He was nice to look at, and at least we were the best of friends. It wasn’t like he was completely oblivious to me. He just wasn’t interested in me the way I was interested in him. In fact, my infatuation had been going on for so long it could make me sick to my stomach if I dwelled on it.
Add in the fact that he was available now and hadn’t bothered to fill me in on the reasons for it until I’d arrived on his doorstep, and I was a mess. And then he wanted to drag me to a party. Yippee. What a great way to spend my first full evening in Miami with him.
I tried to take another sip from my cosmo, but I’d already finished it off, apparently. Damn it.
“So Mad Dog tells me you’re looking for work,” Alex said.
I poked my head around, scanning the room to see if Jackson was on his way back yet, but he was nowhere to be seen. Damn him for deserting me right now. I nodded, returning my attention to the man in front of me. “Something other than waiting tables at the rinky-dink diner at home, which was all I could find there. That’s how it goes when you grow up in a tiny town and only focus on gymnastics. Once the gymnastics is gone…” I felt like my whole life was over and done with, or at least I had in the early days after breaking my back. And now, months later, I felt as if I were floundering
. Mom had suggested I look into coaching gymnastics, but I couldn’t do that. At least not yet. It was too soon. I couldn’t be around that world unless I could really be part of it right now. It would just break my heart right alongside my back.
“Once that’s gone, everything’s gone,” Alex finished for me, giving me a commiserating look. “Been there, done that. Same thing with football. You got a degree, though?”
“A bachelor’s in liberal arts. The most generic, useless degree known to man.”
He chuckled. “You just wanted to get through, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“Any thoughts on what you want to do?”
The only thing I’d ever wanted to do was win a gold medal, and now that wasn’t a possibility. I shrugged, glancing over my shoulder to find Jackson caught up in conversation with the gorgeous blonde I vaguely recalled being married to Alex Dare. What was her name again? Melissa? Melody? Madison? Something like that. Apparently Jackson wouldn’t be returning to rescue me from this forced socialization too soon. She might be married to Alex Dare, but she was totally Jackson’s type.
“I don’t have a clue what I can do, to be honest,” I said, forcing my attention away from the jealousy that had cropped up finding Jackson with that knockout of a woman.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Alex said. “Figure out what you want. Once you know that, you’ll have a much easier path in front of you—then we can help you find a way to get it.”
“We?” I asked, having a hard time keeping the sarcasm out of my tone. Jackson understood my sense of humor, but I wasn’t so sure it translated to strangers all the time.
He nodded. “You and me. I can help. Been doing it for the Thunder players for a while.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” I drawled, drawing my hand through the air along my side to emphasize my lack of size, “but I’m not exactly a pro football player.”
“No, but you’re not that different. And you’re Mad Dog’s friend. I want to help.” He took the final sip from his glass and set it on the tray a passing waiter carried by us. He raised a brow toward my empty glass and took it from me when I nodded, placing it on the same tray. “It’ll be a favor.”
“Favors need to be repaid.”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes they’re just favors.”
“Nothing in this world’s free.” Which I’d tried to tell Jackson when he’d suggested I come live with him in Miami until I could find a job. He hadn’t wanted to hear it, though. For some reason, people with money never seemed to think in the same terms people without money did. All of the Dares and their guests at this party were like Jackson in that regard. He hadn’t always had money, but it was amazing to me how quickly he’d gotten used to the fact that it was there for him whenever he needed it.
Alex chuckled. “Fine. Someday, you can pay me back. Just let me see what I can do, all right? If you come see me next week, we can talk more in depth. I bet I’ll be able to point you in the right direction. How’s Monday look for you?”
“Monday’s open.” Every day was open. There wasn’t a thing on my calendar, unless Jackson had put it there. But how would I manage to repay Alex Dare for whatever kind of help he intended to give me?
It was the same conundrum I was facing when it came to mooching off my best friend. There was no way I could ever return the favor of everything he was doing for me. Cooking for him wasn’t anywhere near enough.
Jackson said he just wanted me here with him. That he missed me. That there were lots of jobs to be found in Miami, and then I could be near him so I wouldn’t be all alone in a big, unfamiliar city.
He had no idea how much I’d missed him over the last while. For years, we’d spent three hours a day, five or six days a week, in the back of a car traveling from Livingston to Nashville. He’d gone there to play hockey, since there weren’t any teams in or around Livingston that were anywhere close to his level. I’d been such a skilled gymnast that there wasn’t anything for me in our tiny hometown, either.
My parents had found a top-tier gymnastics coach in the same sports complex where Jackson’s team played, and then our parents had worked out a carpool trade-off. It didn’t matter whose mother was driving us—every single day, five days a week, the two of us had been trapped in the back of the vehicle together for ninety minutes or longer each way.
At first, he hadn’t wanted to have much to do with me. I had always been ridiculously tiny, which was exactly the opposite of Jackson and the guys he hung out with on the ice. In the early days, we often ignored each other, and when we weren’t doing that, we bickered like siblings. But then one day, he’d gone too far in picking on me, breaking out into the munchkin song from The Wizard of Oz. That was when I’d put him in a headlock. His mother hadn’t done anything about it, either, telling him to figure it out on his own because we still had an hour to drive and it was after ten on a school night, so there was no chance she would be pulling over to separate us.
I’d finally let him go once he’d apologized and admitted I could kick his ass even if he was bigger than me. The two of us had been almost inseparable after that, until we’d gone off to college. That was when everything had changed.
Jackson went to Boston University on a hockey scholarship. I went to the University of Georgia on a gymnastics scholarship. After that, we’d only seen each other over summer breaks, but every time we saw each other again, it was like we’d never been apart.
Except these days, the time apart kept getting longer and longer, and the time we were together kept getting shorter and shorter, and everything felt different between us. Not different in a bad way, exactly, but not in a good way, either. At least I didn’t think it was. He was still my best friend in the world, and I couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t be, but there was definitely something off between us. I’d felt it when I got hurt, and he stopped telling me about himself and all the things going on in his life anytime he’d call me. I felt it even more now that I was here and I learned just how much he’d been keeping to himself. And then there was the fact that things felt odd when we’d hugged at the airport last night, and again tonight, when he’d slipped his arm around my waist and drawn me up against his side as we’d come into this party.
I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. There was a new sense of electricity between us, like everything either of us said or did was a live wire, waiting for a spark to ignite it.
But once that spark was lit…then what?
I wasn’t sure.
And it scared me.
The way I saw it, the only possible outcome was an end to our friendship as we’d always known it. That couldn’t be good, could it?
I’d been half in love with him since those days in the backs of our mothers’ cars, driving back and forth between Livingston and Nashville, but it wasn’t anything I’d ever been able to act on. My infatuation was entirely one-sided. There’d never been even the slightest hint of Jackson returning those feelings, so I’d kept them to myself. He’d always had a girlfriend, or even a fiancée more recently. I was the one he’d come to when he’d needed to talk about his girl problems. To him I was just one of the guys, even though I wasn’t a guy.
Over the years, I’d lost count of how many times I’d hung out at his house with him and a bunch of his teammates. Or how many of his friends he’d tried to set me up with so I could go on double dates with him and whichever girl he’d been dating at the time. Or how many guys who weren’t among his circle of friends that he’d threatened with dismemberment or some other form of bodily harm, should they ever do anything to hurt me, once they’d started to show an interest in me.
Jackson loved me, too—that much wasn’t in doubt—but his love had always been of the sort that a guy has for his sister. So I suffered in silence, glad to have his love in whatever form he was capable of giving it. But he was still busy talking to Alex’s wife, and I didn’t have anyone here to rescue me from having to socialize on my own.
Alex had clearly said something while I was lost in my thoughts. He gave me an expectant look. “Well? Want to meet him?”
“I’m sorry, who?” I spluttered, wishing I at least had that drink Jackson had gone off to fetch. Another cosmo would undoubtedly help. Or hurt. But it would at least change the situation, leaving me feeling no pain in the present.
“Ian—my brother. Well, half brother. But he’s the president of the Thunder, and I thought you’d want to say hello.”
Of course he’d thought that. Because who in their right mind wouldn’t want to meet all the higher-ups possible? In my mind, I slowly raised my hand as being that person. I took one more glance in Jackson’s direction. This time, I caught his eye and gave him the sort of desperate help me look I knew he’d recognize.
He shrugged and held up a finger, begging for another minute, at the same time as Alex Dare carted me off to meet yet another man who would invariably intimidate the hell out of me.
Fat lot of good Jackson was doing me tonight.
~ * ~ * ~
By the time Jackson finally came to my rescue, sidling up next to me and slipping an arm around my waist, Alex had introduced me to at least a dozen other men and women who worked for the Thunder, and I had zero hope of ever remembering any of their names, let alone the ways in which they could supposedly help me find my footing in my new life. At least Jackson came bearing the gift of a fresh cosmo, though.
I took it from him, drinking faster than I should have, but my social anxiety had gone through the roof in the thirty minutes he’d left me on my own. He excused us from Alex, who was already moving on to talk to some other overly large man, and led me to a quiet corner, where I could finally breathe.
“Miss me?” he murmured.
“You have no idea.”
“I might have more of an idea than you think,” he said quietly, taking a sip from his extra-dirty gin martini with as many olives as they’d give him. “Thought I’d never get away so I could come back to you. Felt like Madison wanted to introduce me to every single person in the room.”
Dare To Love Series: Dreaming Up a Dare (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 2
