“I don’t understand what you want me to do, my lord.”
“Let me court you. Let me take you to the theater, to balls. Sit with me in the evening and speak with me at dinner. Dance with me. Ride with me in the park. Let us do all the things we did before—”
He cut himself off. She finished in a scathing tone. “Before you accused me of treachery against you and refused to hear my side of the story.”
“Yes,” he answered calmly.
“And if I refuse to do your bidding?”
He took a deep breath and played his last card. “Then your sister will be ruined.”
She rounded on him again. “What does any of this have to do with my sister?”
“You said yourself that our scandal has threatened her reputation. If we can convince the ton that ours was—is—a love match, that the rumors were untrue about you, then your sister’s prospects will improve as well. But if we remain childless, if the rumors persist about us for long, she’ll be forced to marry any cur your parents push upon her. You know I’m right.”
Long moments of silence passed between them, each more painful than the last, until finally she spoke. “Benedict, there’s something I still don’t understand.”
Her use of his first name propelled him toward her. “What is it?”
“If you win, what do you get out of this?”
Benedict reached for her hand and drew it to his heart. “The greatest prize of all. I win your love.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thea woke up the next morning with butterflies in her gut and a foot in her face. Sometime in the middle of the night, Ava had once again awakened, gotten scared in the dark, and climbed in bed with her.
Thea pressed a soft kiss to her daughter’s foot and quietly moved out from under her. The mental mom to-do list that never quieted started its slow crawl through Thea’s brain. Get groceries. Wash towels. Dump the rest of Gavin’s clothes on the guest room bed.
But first, she had to face Liv.
Thea did the bathroom thing and crept down the hallway. The door to the guest room stood open, but Liv wasn’t inside. Which meant she’d fallen asleep on the couch again after work. When she worked late shifts, she was usually too keyed up to fall asleep when she got home, so she watched TV for a while until she crashed.
Thea padded down the stairs. The rising sun cast a soft orange glow along the line of family photos that hung in meticulous order down the stairwell. Thea had never missed a year scheduling a family photo, because that’s what perfect WAGs did. Were you even a real baseball wife if you didn’t have a picture-perfect Christmas card?
Butter whimpered at the door. Thea let him out back and heard Liv yawn and stretch on the couch behind her. Thea looked over her shoulder. “What time did you get home?”
“Around three.” Liv stretched an arm high above her head and made a long, tired noise as she sat up. “It was insane last night. We had the most obnoxious group come in late and order everything on the menu.” She flopped against the cushions. “I hate bachelor parties.”
Butter ran back inside and followed Thea into the kitchen, where he waited for his breakfast with a wagging tail and jumpy paws. After dumping a cup of food into his dish, Thea started brewing the coffee.
“You going to make me drag it out of you, or are you going to tell me how things went last night?” Liv asked.
Thea filled a mug with coffee, cream, and sugar and then sat down on a barstool to face her sister. No easier way to say it than just to say it. “He’s moving home tomorrow.”
Liv made a face like a possessed doll before squawking, “What?!”
Thea held up a hand. “It’s only for a month.”
“What the hell? Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
Liv hurtled over the back of the couch with remarkable vigor for someone who’d been dead to the world just three minutes ago. “What’s complicated about it? You were so sure about this. What the hell changed?”
“He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” And hit me where it hurts, she added silently. The minute he reminded her of how she used to be—impetuous, daring, ready for any challenge—all logic fled, and the next thing she knew, she was agreeing to it.
Liv shook her head. “What could he possibly offer you that would convince you to let him come back?”
Thea summarized Gavin’s words from last night. “If he can’t win me back by Christmas, he won’t contest any aspect of the divorce. He’ll give me whatever amount I want in child support, and he’ll pay off the house for us.”
An eerie calm settled over Liv’s face. Her eyelids blinked slowly and her lips went lax.
She turned and walked slowly to the fridge. Thea watched as her sister opened the door, robotically withdrew the orange juice, filled a glass, and then put the carton back. All seemed calm, but Thea knew her sister. Liv was like a sudden summer squall—a heavy quiet followed by a whipping wind and rain.
Thea looked at the clock on the microwave. Superstorm Liv making landfall in T-minus three, two, one—
Liv slammed her glass on the counter. “That manipulative sonuvabitch!”
Thea glanced at the stairs. “Keep your voice down!”
“He knows how much having a family home means to you because of how we grew up. He dangled the one thing that matters most to you in front of your face and knew you’d grab for it.”
Thea rubbed her forehead. “Liv, give me some credit, OK?”
“How can I when you’re acting just like—”
Thea slammed her mug down, sending coffee over the edge in a hot tsunami. “Don’t. Say. It. I am nothing like our mother, and my situation is completely different from hers.”
“How?” Liv scoffed.
“Because unlike Mom, I’m doing it for my daughters, not myself.” Thea described what happened at the restaurant—how upset the girls were about not going to their grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving, about missing Gavin, hating baseball. All of it.
Well, not all of it. She left out the things Gavin said that sent her heart into overdrive. You and the girls are my home.
Liv was unmoved. “You know the girls are too young to understand any of this.”
“They’re old enough to understand our traditions and to be sad when they change. At least now they don’t have to have a shitty Thanksgiving or Christmas.”
“So they have a shitty Thanksgiving and Christmas next year?”
“Hopefully by next year, they will be used to the situation and it won’t bother them as much.”
Liv started to protest further, so Thea held up her hand. “You weren’t there. You didn’t hear them cry or see their faces.”
“But I can see yours.”
Thea ignored the observation, mostly because she didn’t want to know what it meant. “I made an impulsive decision. I thought you liked that side of me.”
“Sure, when it leads to something fun. This is a disaster.”
“Only if you refuse to support me.”
Liv took another drink of her juice. “What exactly does he plan to do to win you back?”
“I have no idea.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How could it not matter?”
“Because I’ve learned my lesson, Liv.”
“But what if—”
“I don’t know! Okay? I don’t know! I have a thousand voices in my head telling me what to do. Yours. His. Gran Gran’s. The girls’. I have no idea which voice is mine. All I know is that when he dared me to accept the deal, something snapped in me. So don’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you,” Liv said, a hint of apology creeping into her voice. “I’m worried about you.”
Thea wanted to ignore that observation too, but found herself asking, “W
hy?”
“You disappeared, Thea,” Liv said. “I feel like I just got you back. I can’t stand to see you get lost again.”
Thea pulled her sister in for a tight hug. “I won’t get lost again,” she promised. “It’s only for a month.”
“That’s all it took the last time for him to lure you in.”
“The last time, I was a willing participant.”
“And you’re not now?”
“I agreed to let him move home,” Thea said, pulling away. “I didn’t agree to spend any time with him.”
“Something tells me that’s going to be harder to avoid than you think.”
“Not when he’s sleeping in the guest room.”
Liv made a whiny noise. “Where am I sleeping?”
“Basement.”
“Great. First, he steals my sister. Now he gets to steal my bed?”
Thea walked purposefully to the whiteboard and studied the calendar. Christmas was barely five weeks away.
Five short weeks.
She could do it.
All she had to do was fake it.
* * *
• • •
The guys—Del, Mack, Yan, and Malcolm—were already eating when Gavin walked into the downtown Nashville diner wearing a morning beard and a scowl. Not a good day to ask for an autograph, he conveyed in body language alone as he ignored the too-big smiles from people who recognized him. The place wasn’t exactly along the tourist thoroughfare, but it was still busy enough and country enough to be annoying.
He sank into a chair at the table. Del took one look at his haggard appearance and let out a breath. “Fuck. She said no?”
“Worse. She said yes.”
“How is that worse?”
“She has conditions.”
Mack bit into some egg whites and spoke with his mouth full. “What, like, asthma and diabetes?”
Gavin flipped him off and launched into the recitation of what happened last night. While he talked, Del nodded at a waitress, presumably to let her know their fifth person had finally arrived. Gavin ordered something called the Big Buckle Breakfast because, fuck it, it was the off-season and his wife didn’t trust that he loved her.
Mack grimaced when the waitress walked away. “Dude. That shit’ll kill you and make you fat.”
Gavin lifted up his T-shirt and looked down. Things were flat and tight, just like his trainers and coaches demanded. “I’ll risk it.”
Mack lifted his own shirt and waved at a washboard that put Gavin’s to shame. “Clean livin’.” Mack smirked, returning to his heart-happy omelet. “Try it.”
“Fuck off, ’Roid Rage. You ate an entire pizza by yourself Saturday night.”
Malcolm looked at Del. “Are they always like this?”
Del sighed. “Always.”
Yan looked at Gavin. “What are her conditions?”
Gavin let out a long breath and launched into the list. When he finished, even Mack was sympathetic. “Damn, dude. She really won’t let you say I love you? That’s harsh.”
“How the hell am I supposed to win her back if I’m sleeping in another room and can’t tell her how I feel?”
“Yeah, and if there’s no . . .” Mack made the universal sign for sex—he poked his finger in and out of a circle he made with his other hand.
“You’re looking at this all wrong,” Malcolm said. “This is an opportunity.”
“How?”
“She all but dared you to figure her out, to truly learn her language. If she doesn’t want you to say I love you with those words, you’ll have to learn another way to express it, one that she’ll accept.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“We do,” Del said. Then the guys all spoke at once. “Backstory.”
“What the fuck is backstory?”
“Everything, man,” Mack said. “Backstory is everything.”
“It means that whatever happened to your wife before she met you plays a role in who she is today,” Malcolm said. “We are all the sum total of our experiences at any given time, and our reactions to things are shaped by them. Just like in romance novels. Whatever a character went through before the start of the book will eventually determine how they react to things that happen in the book.”
“But we’re talking about my real life here. Not a book.”
“Same principles apply,” Malcolm said. “That’s why fiction resonates with people. It speaks to universal truths.”
Gavin’s food arrived. He devoured a piece of bacon in two bites. Across the table, Mack puffed out his cheeks and made a round gesture over his stomach, so Gavin ate a second piece with a deliberate glare.
“Tell us about Thea’s childhood,” Malcolm said.
The bacon turned to a rock in Gavin’s stomach. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. She always used to change the subject when I would try to get her to talk.”
“So it was a bad childhood?” Yan prodded.
“Her dad’s an asshole, and her mom is a classic narcissist. They got divorced when Thea was ten. She and her sister had to live with their grandma for a few years because neither parent wanted them.”
“Didn’t want them? What does that mean?” Del asked.
“Her father remarried pretty quickly after the divorce, and his new wife didn’t want the girls to live with them, and her mom was just too selfish to want the responsibility.” Gavin ate a quick bite. “I found out last night that her dad is getting remarried again for, like, the fourth time in a couple of weeks.”
The guys all met one another’s gazes with a stunned expression. Del spoke. “You didn’t know this?”
“No.”
“When did Thea find out?”
“Not sure. She found out that he was getting a divorce from his third wife last spring, but I think the wedding invitation only arrived in the past couple of weeks while I’ve been gone.”
Del leaned forward. “How does Thea feel about it?”
“She’s not going to the wedding, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did she say why?”
Gavin tried to recall that part of the conversation from last night. “She said there’s no point because he’s just going to cheat on this one and leave her too.”
The guys stared at him.
He blinked. “What?”
Mack snorted. “You are some kind of stupid.”
“You think her dad’s wedding has something to do with Thea letting me move home?”
Del smacked the back of his head. “No, dumbass. It has something to do with her kicking you out in the first place.”
Gavin opened his mouth to protest but then shut it. He couldn’t argue without revealing the embarrassing truth about what actually led to him leaving.
“And not wanting you to say I love you?” Yan continued. “Of course she doesn’t trust those words, Gavin. When has she ever been shown that love is reliable, that it can last, that it can be trusted?”
“Words don’t matter, Gavin,” Mack said, uncharacteristically sober. “Actions do. And if she’s skittish from her childhood, then it doesn’t matter how many times you say the words to her. You made her doubt your love when you left.”
“Just like her father,” Del said pointedly.
“She kicked me out,” Gavin growled.
“Maybe it was a test,” Yan said.
Gavin swiveled his head to stare at his teammate. “A test,” he repeated.
“Maybe she wanted to see what you would do if she told you to leave. Would you fight for her, or would you just walk away? You walked away, so . . .”
Gavin’s breakfast began to rot in his stomach.
Mack snorted. “There it is. There’s the lightbulb.”
He was too sick to his stomach to take the bait. Love isn’t en
ough. Was Irena right?
“Look,” Malcolm said calmly, “we never said this was going to be easy. In fact, you need to be prepared for Thea to make this as hard as possible. She’s going to resist you at every step at first.”
“She already is.”
“Which is why you’d better have done some more reading,” Del said.
He sighed. “I read some last night.”
“And?” Del prodded. “Anything stand out to you?”
Gavin glanced around the restaurant. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Read it to us.”
“Here?”
“Unless you want to wait until Easter to save your marriage,” Yan said.
Gavin looked around again. A few people were still staring, but most of the other diners were absorbed in their own meals and conversations. Gavin dug into his coat pocket and pulled out the book. He splayed his hand wide on the cover so no one could see what it was.
Flipping to his current page, he read the paragraph he’d underlined last night. “‘More than anything, she feared that she would awaken some morning and realize her entire life had passed her by,’” he read. “‘That at some point, she had become less than. Less than w-w-what she used to imagine. Less than w-wh-what she used to hope for. Nothing more than a silent accessory to a man. Nothing more than her own mother, a passive face at a glittering table.’”
Gavin set the book down and waited for something smart-assy from Mack. Instead, he heard silence. Glancing up, he found all of them staring. “What?”
“You tell us, bro,” Del said. “Why did that stand out to you?”
Gavin felt hot. He shouldn’t have read it out loud. He should have chosen some stupid-ass, meaningless paragraph just to satisfy them. He knew exactly why it stood out to him. Because at some point during their three-year marriage, Thea had changed into her own version of less than. Gone was the carefree, impulsive woman he’d fallen in love with—the woman who would wake up at all hours of the night to paint, the woman who once kissed him so passionately in his car that they’d ended up in his back seat down a dark road, the woman who once handcuffed herself to a bulldozer to protest the removal of a century-old tree, the woman who picked fights with him just for the makeup sex.
The Bromance Book Club Page 9
