A Forever Kind of Guy: The Braddock Brotherhood, Book 2 (17 page)

“Planned on it.” Ray handed him a bottle and took one for himself. He set the rest of it in the refrigerator. He and Andre opened the bottles and raised them in a silent toast while taking the other’s measure.

Ray sensed Andre assessing him. Why? To gauge his interest in Hayley? He didn’t like feeling as if he didn’t know where he stood with her. He thought they’d cemented something between them the other night, but now he wasn’t sure. Andre had a longer history with Hayley. But exactly what that history was, Ray couldn’t quite pin down.

They sat down to dinner. Ray complimented Andre on the jambalaya, and they chatted like old friends. Andre entertained them all, sharing professional football insider tidbits and memories of other times he and Hayley had shared. He gazed at her with affection, but that was all Ray could read in his demeanor.

After dinner, Andre insisted on cleaning up even when Hayley objected. “No, girl. You sit there and drink your wine and keep Ray company. I got this.”

Ray stared at Andre as he fussed around the kitchen with precise movements, storing the leftover food in plastic containers, neatly lining up the plates and utensils in the dishwasher. What kind of guy
offers
to do the dishes and acts like he enjoys it almost as much as he does cooking jambalaya from his
mama’s
recipe? What kind of guy encourages a woman like Hayley to entertain another man?

The only kind of cooking Ray ever did was throwing meat on a grill or nuking frozen food. Sure, he could put an omelet together or make a grilled cheese sandwich and soup. Occasionally, he’d fry up the fish he caught. But he’d never aspired to anything more ambitious than that. And the only time he ever willingly helped clean up a kitchen was when it offered the added benefit of being in close proximity to an attractive woman. Mostly he left dirty dishes soaking in the sink until the sink was full of them or he ran out of clean dishes, whichever came first. That’s when he knew it was time to load the dishwasher.

He gazed at Hayley, huddled over Fletcher’s new video game with him.

An idea clicked in Ray’s brain. He rejected it as soon as it arrived, but the more he thought about it, the more he ran down the incomplete list of facts as he knew them, the more it made sense.

Ray thought back to everything he’d read online about Hayley, the insinuations the press had made about her supposed affair with one of Trey Christopher’s teammates. There’d been a photo of Hayley and Andre huddled together at a small table in the outdoor seating area of a restaurant. Hayley wore sunglasses, but her expression was intense. Ray remembered thinking she looked troubled when he’d studied the photo.

He looked at her now, absorbed as she was in Fletcher’s video game, his small hands guiding hers to the correct buttons. Then he gazed Andre’s way to find the other man taking in the same scene. Their gazes crossed and Andre winked at him.

Ray wasn’t sure what message that was supposed to send, but he went back to contemplating Hayley’s relationship with Andre. He did his best to put two and two together and come up with a possible answer of four.

The only answer Ray came up with was that Andre Tibedeaux was gay. And he was still in the closet.

It was almost midnight when Ray stepped outside with Oscar on his leash. He could hear the murmur of a male voice nearby, though he couldn’t make out the words. He turned on the flashlight he held and was almost past Andre’s Escalade when he heard a slight click, like of a cell phone being snapped shut. Ray paused as Andre stepped in front of him.

Oscar halted in his tracks and began to anxiously sniff Andre’s shoes. Andre bent down and offered his hand to the dog, talking to him in a low tone. He glanced up at Ray. “Taking him for a walk?”

“A short one.”

“Mind some company?”

“No. Not at all.”

They set off, Oscar doing his stop, sniff and pee routine every ten feet or so. Ray had discovered it was better to give Oscar a late-night walk than be awakened at a disgustingly early hour to let him out. He sort of liked being out this time of night. The heat of the day had dissipated, and though the humidity remained, the air had a softness to it that didn’t exist any other time. Quite a few stars dotted the sky, and clouds only partially hid a three-quarter moon.

They arrived at the end of the block in silence and turned the corner. “You in love with my girl, Hayley?” Andre asked completely out of the blue.

Ray kept walking, contemplating the question. Was he in love with Hayley? He might be. He could be. Maybe he even wanted to be. But it was a bit early to concede that kind of feeling.

“Hard to say,” he replied. He wasn’t sure it was any of Andre’s business anyway.

Ray could feel Andre’s gaze on him. “Not hard. Either you is or you isn’t.” Although Andre had a degree from LSU, his speech often reflected his rural Louisiana background.

“What business is it of yours anyway? You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.” Ray kept his tone mild and as matter-of-fact as he could, but inside he could feel resentment building at Andre’s heavy-handed interrogation style.

“Yep. You right about that. But I know my girl. She around you and them sparks, they is a flyin’.”

Ray couldn’t help but give a hard bark of laughter at Andre’s analysis of the chemistry between him and Hayley.

“Yeah. There’s sparks all right, but not much else.”

“She scared,” Andre stated.

“Yep.”

“Maybe you scared too.”

Now it was Ray’s turn to give Andre a brief sideways glance. He didn’t bother to dignify that last comment with a reply.

“I think Hayley’s real good at keeping secrets,” Ray said after a minute, in an attempt to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Oh yeah. She is. Sometimes to her detriment.”

“And sometimes to protect someone she loves. Like you, for instance.”

Andre stopped. They’d come to the end of the street and there happened to be a bench nearby where the local school children waited for the bus. Andre walked over to it and sat, gesturing for Ray to follow suit.

“Yep. You’re right. She did and I let her. They damn near crucified her, all that business about her and me. That damn husband of hers, he no good anyway once he got himself doped up on pills and booze. Took her and fed her to the wolves, and she like a blind, faithful dog to him all the time they married.”

“And she wouldn’t rat you out.”

“Hell no. We be friends is all. Best friends. She come stay with me when that damn Trey kicked her out. That’s how it started. I tell her, girl, it be okay if the whole world knows Andre’s gay. But she won’t do it. She afraid Phil get hurt. Don’t nobody know about him and me ’cept her. She know we don’t want nobody to know. Everyone think she cheating on Trey with me. Even when she denied it, nobody listen.”

“How does she know about you and, uh, Phil, was it?”

Andre laughed, a deep-throated sound of amusement. “She catch us. After a game. She came back to the stadium looking for Trey. He’s not there, but she sees my Escalade and she came over. Me and Phil, we were…well, it don’t matter. She embarrassed and upset. She can’t find Trey, but she sure found something else.”

He chuckled again at the memory. “That poor girl. We made her come with us back to my place and the whole story comes out. Her and Trey. That boy throwed out the best thing ever happened to him.” Andre shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe such stupidity.

Ray tried to picture the scenario Andre had drawn. A big piece of the Hayley puzzle fell into place. To protect Andre, and by extension, his lover, she had virtually sacrificed herself to the press. And probably to Trey Christopher’s lawyers and PR people as well.

“What’s Phil’s story that he’s not out either?” Ray asked. Homosexuality barely carried any of the negative stigma it once had. Or so he thought.

“You ever heard of ‘Killer Phil’?”

“Phil Branson? The pro wrestler?”

“That be Phil.”

“No shit!” Ray picked his jaw up off the ground. Appearances were most certainly not what they seemed. Here were two of the most macho-appearing guys in professional sports. And they were both gay.

“Nobody going to want to get in the ring with Phil they know he’s gay.”

“And no one wants to be in the locker room with you if they know you are.”

“You got that right.” Andre sighed, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“But how do you manage? How do you keep the press, anyone for that matter, from becoming suspicious?”

“It’s work, brother, I’m not going to lie.” He glanced at Ray. “Truth?”

“Sure.”

“It didn’t hurt me at all that everyone, the team, the press, even Trey’s people thought what they thought about me and Hayley. I had a couple of big endorsement contracts I didn’t want to lose. Same with Phil. But they expire the end of the year. And I’m retiring after this season. Phil too. So it won’t matter. We’re not going to make a big deal out of it, no press conference or anything, but we’re going to stop hiding from the world.”

“And that will absolve Hayley, as well,” Ray observed.

“Too little too late, but yeah. She lived in my guest house for a while, got a job at a gym while she waited on a settlement from the divorce. Figured that damn Trey would screw her over every chance he got, including not giving her hardly anything in the divorce. She was all set to head to L.A. and start over anyway. Had a job lined up with her friend Paige. All she wanted before Steffie died was to get as far away from Jacksonville as possible. She put L.A. on hold to look after Fletcher. She wouldn’t take a dime from me. Only thing she let me pay for was Steffie’s funeral. She moved here to get away from all the shit be pouring down on her. I guess you know the rest.”

“She says she’s not going to adopt Fletcher. But she’s still planning the move to L.A.?”

Andre lifted his massive shoulders and let them droop. “I don’t know. Be honest with you, I don’t think she knows what she’s going to do.”

After a few minutes, Ray stood and so did Andre. They began making their way back with a sleepy Oscar trailing behind them.

“How’d you know, anyway?” Andre asked.

Ray knew what he meant. “My first clue was the way you looked at Hayley.” He turned his head and caught Andre’s eye. “Not like you wanted to hook up with her.”

Andre chuckled.

“But what clinched it was when you offered to do the dishes. No straight guy ever
offers
to do the dishes. Unless there’s a pretty woman in the kitchen with him.”

Andre laughed heartily. “It’s always the little things, ain’t it, that catch you up?”

Hayley snuggled against Andre’s warmth when he settled into the bed next to her. The best part about having a gay best friend, she thought. He was a guy you could sleep with and never worry about him expecting sexual favors.

“Get ahold of Phil?” she asked sleepily. “You were out there a long time.”

Andre spooned her, his arm lying heavily across her waist. “Got hold of Phil. He says tell you how much he misses you. Bummed he couldn’t come with me.”

“Probably for the best,” Hayley murmured.

“Probably,” Andre agreed. “Had a chat with your landlord.”

Hayley stiffened, and turned her head slightly, trying to see Andre behind her. Impossible in the dark anyway. She lay back down. “What’d Ray have to say?” Andre wouldn’t have brought it up unless he had something he wanted to spill.

“He knows.”

“Knows what?”

“About me. Phil.”

Hayley turned over to face Andre. He shifted as well. Pillow talk, she thought, and smiled. “I guess I’m not surprised he figured it out. Ray’s no dummy. You told him about Phil?”

“Yep.” Andre didn’t elaborate. Hayley knew that meant he trusted Ray. “Lots of heat between you two,” Andre commented, fishing.

“Yeah.”

“I’d do him if he swung my way.” Andre’s teeth flashed white in the near darkness.

“I’m sure you would.” Hayley grinned. One of their favorite games was
Who would you do if he were gay?

“Why don’t you?”

Hayley shrugged. Andre knew her well enough, knew enough of her history. He shouldn’t ask such a question.

“Scared?”

Out of my mind.
“I guess.”

“Him too.”

“He told you that?”

“I implied it. He didn’t argue.”

“Maybe when you retire, you can go into relationship counseling.”

“Thinking about it.” Andre’s grin flashed again.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Hayley turned over again and presented Andre with her back.

He shifted closer and draped his arm over her waist again. “That’s my Scarlett. Think about it tomorrow.”

Hayley groaned as she swam up from sleep to find the bedroom bathed in daylight. She gasped before she remembered she had the morning off. Her first class wasn’t until one this afternoon. She eyed the digital alarm clock. It was almost nine. Andre slept on, oblivious, as she got out of bed and tied a bathrobe around her. She stopped in the bathroom before peeking in on Fletcher. The covers were tangled around him, his arms outflung, his bedraggled teddy bear close by. He rarely got to sleep in during the week, so she had no idea what time he’d wake up on his own if given the chance.

She’d put some coffee on, take a shower and dress. By then, Fletcher and Andre would be awake. Maybe Andre would like to cook breakfast. She grinned as she scooped coffee into the filter. It’d be nice to have a man around to cook for her all the time. Her thoughts skittered to Ray, and just as quickly, she pushed them away.

Nope. No
all the time
. No
forever
there. Ray was a distraction, a huge help with Fletcher and great company. She liked him. Liked being around him. But she wasn’t going to start a relationship that wouldn’t last. She wasn’t going to get her heart broken, and she wasn’t going to break his. End of story.

She padded back to the bathroom and turned on the shower, continuing her internal anti-Ray-involvement pep talk.

Perrish, Florida was a temporary stop for her and Fletcher. As soon as DCW got all its ducks in a row, figured out what to do about Fletcher, she’d move on. Working for Paige, she’d be able to support herself, finish college, decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. What she didn’t want to do was repeat her past. She had to protect herself.