He finished his first entrée before she was even halfway through hers. His gaze flitted over her plate and she glared at him. “Don’t even think about it, buddy,” she warned before taking a bite with more gusto than normal.
He started on the next entree and, unprompted, said, “You can ask me if you want.”
“Ask you what?” she asked casually.
“My type,” he declared after taking a bite and wiping his mouth. He continued staring at her while chewing his food.
Jaya swallowed before saying, “Is all of the above a type?”
“Ouch,” Sebastian said with a hand clutching his chest.
“OK. I’ll ask. If you were to pick up anyone in this restaurant,” she started and let her eyes sweep the room. It was a Friday night at a popular restaurant with easy access to the happy hour crowd and university students, so there was no shortage of young, attractive women around. “Who would it be?”
He chuckled. “That’s too easy, Jaya. You, obviously.”
She couldn’t help but snicker. “I guess I fished for that one. Not looking for flattery here, friend, just turning the question around, that’s all.”
“And I answered it,” he said confidently. “How about you? So not a charming and handsome hockey player, is that it?”
“At one point in my life, yes,” she said, feeling the food warm her stomach and the white wine loosen her restraints. “But it didn’t work out.”
“One guy shouldn’t ruin it for the whole species, though,” he said. “What happened?”
“Gah, you’re so nosy!” she said play swapping his upper arm. His rather large, shapely, bulky-bicep-bearing upper arm. She cleared her throat because maybe she was enjoying herself a little too much. This was a topic that usually made her shut down, but with Sebastian, it felt like an…an opening. Of what, she didn’t know.
“Messy break-up?” he inquired gently.
She took a small bite and chewed. She was hoping he would drop it by the time she swallowed but he just waited, the question lingering between them. Finally, she nodded. “I had a boyfriend through high school and we went to the University of Michigan together, both of us on hockey scholarships. It ended after freshman year. Nothing dramatic. Just high school sweethearts growing apart in college.” Jaya kept her voice steady. She gave a mostly true account.
Except for one part. There was a shitload of drama if you counted the complete breakdown that ended Jaya’s hockey career.
It surprised her, however, that talking about it with Sebastian didn’t have the usual sting. It had been a long time since this kind of male attention made her want to share more, not less.
Suddenly, a jostling from another table made it obvious that eyes were starting to scan towards them. Sebastian cleared his throat. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she assured him, more than ready to dismiss this conversation. “Except to say I sort of kept my distance from handsome and charming hockey players since then.” She tried to keep her tone light, but the complex emotions in her voice were hard to suppress.
“I’m sorry, Jaya. I realized too late that I upset you. That wasn’t my intention.” His expression was full of concern. Full of sweet protectiveness and sincere apology. She reached over. Because that’s what you do when a man like Sebastian looks at you like that.
Jaya traced her fingers over his scarred knuckles. At the contact, she felt Sebastian’s body tighten towards her and emit that warmth she recalled when she was cradled in his arms. And suddenly the air shifted around them, urging their bodies closer. She wanted to lean into his heat. She wanted to be engulfed by it. She just wanted.
He turned his palm upward to grasp her stray fingers. His rough thumb moved in languid circles over her hand, as if he was casting a spell. Stirring the thick blood that rushed up her face. Tightening her stomach. And lower. Creating a clenching in her core that pulsed to the rhythm of his mesmerizing caress. Damn it. Damn this man’s thumb.
“Do you like that?” he asked, not stopping the circular motion. “Because Jaya, the way you look right now…”
She turned up eyes that felt dazed and inexplicably heavy. “What about it?” Her voice was rasping, like she was in a trance. Or drunk on the two sips of wine that failed to dilute pure, potent lust.
He leaned in closer, his pillowy lips grazing the shell of her ear. “I could stare at you, looking just like that, all night. And I could do this, and more, all night.” It was barely a whisper, but she heard it like a melody humming through her body.
Her heart stalled and then sped up because what was she doing? She was hearing what she wanted to hear. The way he said it felt so real. So genuine. As if the surge of desire that overtook her consumed him too.
But Jaya reminded herself that this was practice. He was supposed to look at her like that. That was the plan, and he was great at executing it. A movement behind him alerted her to a group whispering and pointing. “Good one,” she murmured by his neck.
A cloud passed over his features. He seemed incensed and then, in a blink, erased the conflicted expression. “Yeah. Giving a good show, aren’t we?” Though for someone who was playing along, he didn’t sound amused at all.
A buzzing from her purse made them both jump. Jaya grabbed her phone and saw a local number she didn’t recognize. Glancing his way in apology, she answered.
“Jaya, this is Chloe,” came a timid voice from the other end. “I’m sorry I’m calling.”
“Chloe, hi! Hey, don’t apologize. What’s going on? I heard you were looking for me earlier.”
“I just missed you when you left after work. Betty gave me your number and I didn’t think I would need it but…” Chloe’s voice turned to a whimper.
“Chloe, it’s fine. I wanted you to have it. What’s going on? Are you OK?”
“Umm, I don’t know who else to call. My mom would kill me if she found out where I am. I need to get home before she ends her shift.” Panic seeped into the young woman’s voice.
“Chloe, it’s going to be fine. No one is going to be mad at you, OK? Just tell me what you need. Are you safe?” she asked while her eyes lifted to meet Sebastian’s concerned expression.
“Jaya, I did something really stupid. And I’m…I’m stuck,” Chloe’s voice choked up before continuing. “Can you pick me up?”
CHAPTER 8
“I have to go,” Jaya declared. “Thank you for dinner. I, um, I’m gonna order a car. Sorry, I have to go,” she repeated absentmindedly while looking at her phone, presumably ordering a ride and inputting the coordinates to where, exactly, she needed to go.
Sebastian was close to grabbing that phone out of her hand. He didn’t, but it bothered him that she thought she had to deal with this emergency by herself. Did she think he would let her walk out the door and not help if he could? His annoyance nudged him to action.
He stayed cool and reached out to gently circle her wrist. “Jaya, just wait a minute will you.” He estimated the cost of their meal and doubled that amount in cash. He raised his hand to make eye contact with the waiter and pointed to the money he left. Sebastian stood and slid behind Jaya, his hand on her lower back as they navigated through the busy restaurant. A low hum of tension emanated from her body. When outside, he saw the worry that seeped through all of her beautiful features.
“Fuck. The wait for an Uber is almost twenty minutes. I need to ask you a favor,” she groaned.
“C’mon, Jaya.” He let out an exasperated chuckle and ran a hand over his hair. “You don’t even need to ask. Where are we going?”
She pressed her lips together and gave a nod that was both resigned and grateful. “It’s Chloe. She just sent me an address and she’s in trouble. We need to hurry.”
They went as fast as they could, considering her bum ankle. He entertained the thought of carrying her to speed things up but having her knee hit his crotch in protest was a likely scenario. She looked like a fiend on a mission, dete
rmined and untouchable.
In the car, Jaya read him the instructions and they navigated through streets he had not traveled through before, having only moved to Cincinnati the previous hockey season. This wasn’t the Cincinnati of gentrified Victorian homes or swanky bistros and art galleries. It was not the Cincinnati by the arena, adjacent to the picturesque view of Kentucky across the Ohio River. Farther from the waterfront and along winding hills, the scenery changed.
The architecture was still remarkable. Mostly brick buildings with majestic bay windows and elaborate stone facades. Except those windows were boarded, the stone chipped by neglect, and facades stained and distressed by the passage of time. In the middle of the twentieth century, these buildings and homes were grand testaments to the aspirations of Midwest businesses and families. There remained some grandeur and substance to the edifices, though debris from wood and chain-link fences and littered trash defaced the landscape.
They stopped in front of what looked like an abandoned brownstone. No sign of Chloe, so Jaya composed a text to indicate they had arrived.
From behind a bush, the slim figure of a girl emerged. The single streetlight caught her features just as she walked to the car. Sebastian recognized the African American girl from the tour, the one who got into a verbal scuffle with another girl.
Chloe slipped into the back seat as Jaya turned around and reached out her hand. They connected and both seemed to exhale at the same time, finding comfort in their hands squeezed tight together.
“Can I sit beside you, Chloe?” Jaya asked.
“No. I mean, later. Not now. Let’s go,” Chloe said with a tinge of panic.
“Sure, no problem. If you text me your address Sebastian can head that way. Unless you want to go somewhere else?”
Chloe’s address pinged into Jaya’s phone and then the girl’s brown eyes lit up. “Can we get some food on the way home? I haven’t had dinner.”
Sebastian turned in the direction of Chloe’s house. From the corner of his eye, he saw the affection in Jaya’s face when she said, “Sure. Whatever you want.”
They drove till they were closer to the Freedom Community Center neighborhood. Chloe instructed them to head towards a corner strip mall with a Wendy’s. They ordered a burger meal with fries and milkshake, plus a couple of other add-ons of whatever it was that teenagers found to be essential to meeting their nutritional needs at ten o’clock at night.
“Thanks, Mr. Beaumont,” Chloe said sweetly when he paid for the food, pushing away Jaya’s credit card.
“Call me Sebastian. And no problem. Jaya ate at least three times more than that tonight,” he joked.
Chloe giggled and Jaya’s eyes sparkled in amusement even as she shook her head and put away her wallet. He picked up the food and passed the bags to the back. Chloe was opening the bags and said, “You can sit beside me now, Jaya. In case you want some fries.”
Jaya gave a slight tilt to her chin, indicating for him to bring the vehicle to a stop.
“I would love some fries,” Jaya said casually once they were parked. “Umm, Sebastian, do you think…” she whispered and squeezed his knee in apology.
“I’m going in to use the bathroom and order a coffee. Want me to grab dessert while I’m in there?” he responded, taking the hint that they needed to be alone.
The girl giggled again but shook her head. He left them to talk as Jaya slipped into the back seat.
He was sipping his coffee when he got Jaya’s text fifteen minutes later. We have to get her home soon before her mom finishes work. Thanks for this. Really.
Sebastian walked to the car. There was a palpable change in the air when he opened the door and slipped in, as if their conversation hatched something tangible. Both were still at the back seat, quiet and solemn. He started to drive to Chloe’s house and met Jaya’s eyes in his rear-view mirror. Her lips were pinched but she blinked slowly, purposefully, as if she wanted to convey through her eyes confidence and gratitude he wasn’t sure he deserved.
Jaya deposited Chloe at her front door minutes before her mother was supposed to return from a shift as a hygiene tech in the hospital. When Jaya sat in the passenger seat, she looked at Sebastian and said, “I don’t know how I could have helped her without you, Sebastian.”
“Is she alright?”
“I think so. She’s not…not physically hurt but there’s, umm, another kid involved. A boy. I have to call some people in my network to figure out how to help her. I’m hoping she allows me to talk to her mother, but right now she doesn’t even want to bring it up. At any rate, these problems will not be solved tonight.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. But I’m fucking glad she called me,” she said as she leaned back into the headrest and closed her eyes. For the first time all night, she looked exhausted. The need to comfort her, to ease her fatigue, was so strong it almost choked him.
He pulled away from the curb towards the direction of her house. “Do they do that a lot? Do the kids call you often?”
“No, especially since I see so many of them every day. But something about Chloe, about her seeking me out at the community center. And I guess something about how she’s been the last few weeks. I had a feeling.”
He nodded. “I’m glad I was here.”
When she said, “me too” with soft sincerity, he had to quell the urge to reach out and hold her hand.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No. I appreciate the offer, but no. This isn’t my story to tell. And things will be alright for now. Of course, other people will need to be involved eventually, but thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, though he was feeling pretty fucking useless.
***
“Good block, Sebastian.” Rick Muñoz, the defensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Thrashers, patted him on the back to accompany the praise. They logged a win but that wasn’t why the defensive coach was happy. The opponent was kept to one goal, and nothing mattered more to Muñoz than the team’s goals-against average. The guy was a surgeon when it came to defensive stats.
“Thanks, Coach.”
“Heading out tonight?” Travis asked as he walked to the locker adjacent to Sebastian’s.
It was Saturday night and Travis would normally not even have to ask. They always grabbed a drink after a Saturday game. Puck bunnies and booze were essential to getting adrenaline down to a manageable volume.
But tonight, Sebastian didn’t commit to anything. Truth be told, he was on hold. He texted Jaya earlier that afternoon and made her promise to watch the game.
Sebastian: Obviously you’ll cheer for me. That’s what a good girlfriend would do.
Jaya: I’m cheering for THE TEAM. Countdown to the playoffs and you guys need to secure that division lead. You gonna try to forecheck this time? You know, like a decent centerman.
Sebastian: Baby, I love it when you talk sexy like that.
Jaya: Forecheck is not foreplay.
Sebastian: You sure about that?
Jaya: [emoji with tongue sticking out]
Sebastian: Come out tonight after the game.
Jaya: Thought I might stay in but maybe…text me later.
He was hoping that if she decided to “stay in” she might deign to have him stay in with her. Why not? They had a few things to talk about since he dropped her off last night. People dating saw each other every twenty-four hours or so, right? Even fake daters. Maybe even more so.
“Where’d you go, man?” Travis asked as he buttoned up his shirt. “You keep staring ahead at Ben’s ass you’re gonna give him a hard-on.”
Ben McCaffery turned around and grinned while holding his limp junk. “You wish, boys.”
Sebastian shooed the vision away and turned to his buddy. “You know what, Travis, wait a sec. Let me tell Jaya where we’re going. The Union?”
“Too busy on Saturday. Tapped is better.”
“She doesn’t drink beer,” Sebastian said. Travis looked at hi
m as if he spoke in tongues before shaking his head and walking away.
Sebastian: We’re heading to Tapped…a brewery. Do you know it? I can swing by to pick you up.
Jaya: Watched the game with friends so I’m already out. See you there.
Sebastian got dressed so quickly, he ended up waiting for Travis after all.
***
Sebastian wasn’t crazy about breweries. Sitting around and consuming gassy beverages was not his first choice for a Saturday night. But in Southwest Ohio, what street didn’t have a new microbrewery? His friends loved this one. Or rather, Jake loved the beer at Tapped, and the guy was too exhausting to argue with.
Jake was already at the bar with some of his friends from the Ohio State University when the hockey players strolled in. Walking through the brewery, Sebastian, Travis, and John Romero, another centerman, took some high fives and accepted promises of free drinks. Few experiences were as awesome as being a hockey player walking through the neighborhood bar after winning your Saturday night game.
Sebastian, however, hardly appreciated his good fortune. He was too busy looking for the long, wavy hair and large doe-like eyes that immediately drew his attention the second he walked into a room she was in. He quickly confirmed that Jaya hadn’t arrived.
He accepted a beer shoved in his hand and sat by one of Jake’s friends, a young woman whose blue eyes glinted when he gave her a friendly smile. He sat by her to get a direct view of the front door.
“Hi, I’m Lorelei,” she said, holding out her hand and greeting him with a quaint British accent.
“Sebastian. How’s it going?” he said, absentmindedly meeting her smile. “How do you know Jake?”
“I’m a post-doc from the University of Leeds,” she answered, “on a two-year fellowship. Jake was nice enough to offer to be my tour guide tonight.”
The Love Campaign (Romantic Revelations Series Book 1) Page 9
