Hard Luck (14 page)

“I’m over him, but it took a while.”

“Does he live around here?” I ask, hoping the answer to this question is a big fucking no. Not sure why, but I’d rather this dude be a million miles from her.

“He lives in New York City.” I shout a silent, “yes.” He’s likely one of those educated and polished guys who wear a three-piece suits.

“Wall Street guy?” I’ve turned into one nosy son of a bitch, but she hasn’t shut me down. Maybe because I was open with her. It’s like show me your ugly love and I’ll show you mine.

“Actually, he’s in sports,” she mutters, reaching for the dessert menu. “Dessert?”

“Sports. Is that right?” No way is she changing the subject now. This is my wheelhouse. “What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him.”

The sports world is pretty incestuous. Agents change clients and teams trade players all the time. One morning a player might be swinging a bat for Cincinnati, and by dinnertime, he’s hitting homeruns for Atlanta. Change is the only sure thing in the game, so you tend to see the same faces on the merry-go-round.

“Mitchell Thomas,” she states, and returns to the dessert menu. “How does chocolate mousse sound?”

“Wait, you’re not talking about the Yanks’ Mitch Thomas, are you?” Blood rushes to my head at the thought.
That dude is an asshole. A scumbag of the worst kind. A total douche. Even his teammates hate him.

Cali

Brady exhales a couple short breaths and the veins on his glorious neck pop out. Mitchell appears to be a hot button topic for him too. This news isn’t going to be easy to break.

“Afraid so.” I glance back down at the dessert menu and realize it’s upside down. “I would rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind. He’s the past.”

“He’s an ass,” Brady spouts while he shuffles, looking like he’s about ready to jump out of his seat. “Everyone in the league hates him. Honestly, you’re way too nice of a girl to be with a fucker like him. He’ll never be a good anything, including a boyfriend or husband.”

“Believe me, I saw it firsthand. Just took me a while to get past all his charming lies. Besides, same thing happened to me that happened to you. He dumped me. I wasn’t good enough in the end.”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” Brady says way too loud. A woman at the next table gasps and I glance her way, shrugging. She ends up smiling back at me. Brady’s forgiven for everything it appears.

“What is it about him you hate so much?” I ask, my brows knitted. By the hostility he has toward him, there has to be a reason. I can’t even conjure up this type of emotion when I talk about Mitchell now.

“Well, um…I guess I don’t like the idea of him being with you. You know,” Brady lowers his voice and raises his eyebrows at the last words.

“I’m afraid I don’t. Care to explain.” I place an elbow on the table and lean my chin on a hand.

“He’s touched you and all.” I roll my eyes at his comment.

“True. You didn’t pull me out of a convent for this contract. We did meet at a bar the first time, remember?” I say, straightening in my chair. “Are all men such cavemen?”

“Yeah, well, he’s been around a lot,” Brady says in a serious tone, and I burst out laughing, like a full-blown roar. My eyes start watering and I spit out, “Oh my God,” between chuckles, not even caring that every person in this place is watching us. “Mr. Two-hundred saying this is like the pot calling the kettle black,” I whisper across the table while wiping the wetness from my cheeks.

“It’s different.” He reaches across the table and laces a hand with mine. “You’re not like those kind of girls.”

My heart does this thing at his words I can only describe as a sigh. Maybe it’s one of relief that he doesn’t see me as another bimbo he wants to get blown by, or maybe it’s feeding my fairytale fantasy that he will fall for me and I’ll be his Cinderella.

I need to derail both of these trains before I get my hopes up to only crash. It’s time to focus on the reason I have a contract for one million dollars. Brady hired me to be a good luck charm for his cock. A harsh reality when I think of it in those terms. Also, I refuse to let myself turn into a stupid girl. I’ve been down that track before—never again.

“But I’m no different,” I state in a firm tone that makes him sit back. He furrows his brows and regards me across the table.

“Of course you are,” he says in my defense. “You have an IQ much bigger than your boobs.”

“Thanks,” I scold and roll my eyes. “But you’re wrong. I may be worse. I signed my life over to you for a few months.”

I fold my hands on the table. The walls need to come back up. Even if we do have fun together between the sheets and elsewhere, he’ll forget me before the last stream of the ticker tape falls on the streets celebrating Chicago’s victories. Sure, I’ll walk away a rich loser, but he’ll have the entire world in the palm of his hands.

Brady glances over my shoulder and his eyes go wide. “Oh, shit,” he mumbles, pulling his fingers through his dirty blond hair.

I glance over my shoulder and follow where he’s looking. A gentleman dressed in a black tux, looking like he just left a performance at the symphony, is approaching the table carrying a violin.

I spin back around to face Brady, expecting him to be in his chair, but he’s kneeling on one knee beside me. He gives me a shaky smile and digs in his pants pocket, pulling out a small blue box with a silk white ribbon tied into a loose bow.

No, please no.
Fuck, this is a nightmare. Why is he proposing?

Next thing I hear is the sound of a beautiful melody from the violin man and I’ve never felt sadder in my entire life.

Brady begins to open his mouth and I brace myself for his words.

“Cali, will you marry me?”

Before I can say a word, the entire restaurant is up on their feet, clapping and whistling like Brady just scored a homerun. I lower my head, wishing I could be anywhere but here. I try not to let the tears fall, but they do. One after the other, after the other.

“Look, she’s crying tears of joy,” a woman close by to us says. Sadly, even in this intimate moment, Brady and I are like fish in a bowl for them to observe.

“Cali, what’s wrong?” Brady asks, and I realize I haven’t answered him yet.

“It's too perfect,” I blubber through my tears as I wipe my eyes.

“And that's bad?” Brady asks.

“I’ve dreamed of this moment since I was a little girl, hoping the man I love would propose like this, and you even added violins to top it off.” My crying has turned to sobbing, snot and all. I grab my napkin from dinner and wipe my nose.

“I’m sorry?” he pleads, taking my hand in his, still kneeling in front of me with the violin still playing. But it feels more like a funeral death processional. Everything is fake, and most importantly, there’s no love.

Why did he have to do this in public? Why?

Brady

Cali stares at me with big tears falling down her cheeks and it guts me to see the heartache etched on her beautiful face. Her eyes are light clouds of blue.

Tears aren’t something I experience with women. I never stick around long enough for them to cry over me. There’s no attachment, which means there’s no breakup. I’m at a loss at what to do.

Coach said for me to give her the best and make it seem real. Never in a million years did I expect her to react like this.

I wave off the violin player. What a stupid, over-the-top idea he was.
Thanks, Heather, for that last minute arrangement to further twist the knife into Cali’s heart.
Fuck, if I’d only known.

I set the blue box on the table and take her hands in mine. “Listen, we can leave now. I truly am sorry, Cali.” I mean every last word too.

Taking a deep breath, she frees a hand from my grasp, reaches up for the Tiffany box on the table, and fiddles with the bow.

“We can’t make a scene,” she says through her tears as her eyes dart around us. “Your fans expect me to accept.”

“Screw them. I’m worried about you,” I say, bringing her one hand still in mine to my lips. I kiss the soft skin and look up at her from my kneeling position.

I brush away a tear from her face and she forces a smile, though her eyes remain pained.

“Yes, Brady Luck. I’ll marry you,” she says, louder than necessary. The quiet crowd that has been watching our exchange, and likely holding their breaths, cheers once again.

“The ring, Brady. The ring,” says some fucker a few feet away. It’s like a sporting event with play-by-play commentary.

“I’ll let you open it.” I pick up the box and hand it to her. Her fingers are shaky as she takes it from me.

Slowly, she releases the ribbon and removes the outer shell to reveal the special keepsake box. Cali closes her eyes for a second and inhales before opening the lid. When she lifts the top, her eyes blink rapidly and tears form all over again.

“It’s a heart!” she exclaims.

“I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”

She nods her head, unable to speak while small rivers run over her cheeks. She holds out her hand with the ring finger and I gently lift her hand and ease the ring down over her knuckles.

“Of course it fits perfectly,” she says through sobbing breaths.

“Let’s get out of here, what do you say?” She nods her head in agreement and I throw a few hundreds on the table. It’s plenty and then some to cover the bill.

The fastest way out of here is a straight line to the hostess station, but we will have to weave through table after table of fans and neither of us are in the mood to mingle with the masses, so I scoop her up in my arms and dash toward the elevator we came up in.

“Brady,” she says as I weave through tables and people congratulating us. “Put me down.” I ignore her request and pull her even closer to me. She weighs nothing, but feels like everything in my arms.

“Almost there,” I say into the waves of her hair.
Damn, she smells good.

She wraps her hands around my neck and looks up at me. Her tears have stopped, which makes me a very happy man.

“You okay?” I ask in hopes of hearing a yes.

“Better,” she replies. “I hope you know the photos of our engagement in the papers tomorrow will be of you carrying me through this place. It’s very Notebook of you.” She smiles for the first time in what seems like forever.

“Yeah, me and Ryan, we’re good at sweeping women off their feet.”

***

“I’m curious,” Cali says, leaning against a side of the elevator as we ride up to my penthouse.

“Yes, you are,” I interrupt. “It’s one of the few things I do know about you.” She laughs at my joke, but it has a hollow sound to it. She’s still not recovered from the proposal.

“Did you pick out the ring or did Heather?” She gives me a pointed stare, daring me to tell her.

“I went into Tiffany’s and selected the ring by myself.” I turn my head a touch and nod. “I can do romantic.”

“My uncle gave me a bridal dress-up set when I was about four. There was a costume heart shaped ring in it. I’ve never forgotten it after all these years,” she says, new tears forming in her eyes. “I’ve always wanted a heart diamond, but there’s no way you could’ve known.”

I take a stride to her in the elevator and bring her into my arms. I should’ve asked before I acted, but she collapses into me.

“I thought I could do this fake thing,” she says, and I rub my arm against her back in a soothing motion.

If only I could take back the events of tonight, but there’s nothing that will put the genie back in the bottle now. To make it worse, the media will be captioning the shit out of our photos. Social media sites are likely on fire with the buzz. Thankfully my phone is turned off or it would be vibrating nonstop with notifications.

Cali looks up at me with searching eyes. I want to say something to make her feel better, but nothing comes to me, so I do the one thing I am good at with women: I react physically. Bending down at my knees, I grab her sweet face in my hands and kiss her lips, which are parted in surprise.

I expect her to back away, but she stills for a split second, then presses her lips against mine. Her reaction is like a yes for me, so I deepen our kiss. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve been with a woman, so my pent up needs are on overdrive, but I don’t remember ever having a kiss like this one.

I feel the connection of our kiss down to my fucking toes in an all-consuming sensation. My needy dick gets as hard as a rock and all I want to do is rip her clothes off, wrap her legs around my waist, and bury myself balls deep inside her.

I control the desire for more raging inside me and pull away, remembering we are in the fucking elevator where our every move is being watched by security. But holy shit, no woman has ever brought out the animal in me like Cali.

“Wow,” I say, looking down at her. She gazes up at me with hooded eyes, gone are her tears.

“Double wow,” she whispers through short breaths.

“Was that okay? I mean, I don’t want to push you.” Who the hell am I asking a woman if it’s okay after I kiss her? The thought has never crossed my mind. Well, until Cali.

“Kissing is okay, I guess. But no sex.” My hands are still holding her delicate face. I can’t seem to let her go.

“Good. I didn’t want to have sex anyway,” I say, and her brow forms a question.

“You don’t?” she asks, her voice a mix between disappointment and hurt.

“Fuck no. Of course I want to have sex with you. It’s all I can think about.”

“Oh.” A ghost of a smile plays at her lips.

The elevator stops and the door slides open. “Come on. I have something to show you.”

“Wait. What about no sex?” Cali stops in the hallway before walking toward my penthouse door. I spot a smile starting to crack on her face. She’s teasing me.

“I was talking about your new room, pervert.” I reach for her hand and pull her toward me. “But I’ll be happy to show you
that
too. Remember, I’m nine inches of fine. I’ve got a ruler in the kitchen desk if you’d like to medically verify it. Something to add to Brad Luciano’s closed file.”

“You’ve measured yourself, haven’t you?” she accuses with her words and eyes.

“Who, me?” I raise my brows and look up at the ceiling, feigning innocence. I mean, what guy hasn’t?

“I’d rather bend you over and spank you with it,” she huffs while crossing her arms over her chest.

“That can be arranged too,” I laugh and waggle my brows.