Can't Buy Me Love (35 page)

But he wasn’t easily intimidated and he touched her chin, tipping her lips back to his. “Thank you,” he breathed across her mouth.

“My pleasure.” She kissed him back and then threw open her door, like the gates of hell. He had no choice but to open his own door and watch her walk across the
parking area toward her workshop. Leaving him to face the dragons alone.

“What the hell is going on?” Celeste asked. Waving a folded-up newspaper, she stepped down from the verandah.

“The
Toronto Star
is saying you have some kind of brain damage!” Victoria said, her arms crossed over her chest.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You’ve been saying that for two months, Luc. And you’re not fine!” Victoria’s rage gave her some weight, and maybe it was because he’d just been screwed silly, but he was happy to see her so animated.

“You won’t play again,” Celeste said, and it wasn’t a question.

It was the truth, black and yawning under his feet, and his head spun in panic. The comfort and bliss he’d found in Tara’s arms vanished as if they’d never existed and he was stumbling along in his own ruin.

Ruby stood on the porch. “A man named Beckett Jones has called for you. About eighty times.”

“You,” Victoria practically seethed, “need to give us some answers.”

So. This was it. The reckoning.

“Where’s Billy—”

“Here,” Billy said from behind him, and Luc turned to find him, sweaty and wiping his face off with a towel, obviously just coming back from a workout.

At the sight of his old friend, the anger came back. All that he’d lost was right there in his friend’s beaten and battered face.

“And I think I speak for the whole league when I say: Fuck you, Luc. Excuse my French,” he mumbled to Celeste and Victoria.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”

“So why don’t you tell us now,” Celeste said. “All of it.”

Knowing he was beat, Luc nodded and launched into the sad story of a boy with the possibility of a brain-eating protein.

“Brain-eating?” Victoria cried.

“Possibility,” he clarified.

“I can’t believe that you were still going to play.” That Billy managed to be sanctimonious was a marvel. “That you would risk the rest of your life for one more year of hockey.”

“This from the man with more hospital visits than anyone else in the league?”

“It’s not my brain, Luc! You mock those NFL guys who can’t remember where they live, but you were going to join them!”

Luc’s anger subsided, sucked down by the pinprick of shame brought on by his own blind stupidity. This, too, was the truth. He’d brought this on himself.

“I know,” he said. “But it’s not like anything is definite—”

“The headaches are definite,” Billy snapped, and Luc nodded in reluctant agreement. “And I’ll bet you don’t remember half the hits you’ve taken that resulted in blackouts. Or even the hits that didn’t result in blackouts.”

He wished he could blunt the truth, for his family’s sake. But he’d hidden enough from them, and it was a bad time to realize that he’d done this not just to himself, but to them, too.

“No,” Luc agreed, and his mother’s soft gasp tore through his belly. “You’re right. I don’t remember.”

“I was traded, man.” Billy’s soft voice was at odds with the blunt hammer of his face. “What did you think was going to happen next year? The league—”

“I was trying to get faster.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew it was stupid. “Stronger. Better.”

“You’re thirty-seven. Lashenko is twenty-four. We’re depreciating every day, Luc.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m out. They’ll drop my contract—”

“What if they don’t? It’s not like the league is known for taking care of their players. If you’re selling tickets, they’ll find a way to keep you around. They let Lindros play till he could barely stay on his feet.”

He wondered, suddenly, how Lindros was doing. If he had memory loss and cognitive lapses, all the things Matthews said would happen to him if he kept getting knocked out.

Luc glanced over at his mother and sister, standing there like worried birds, wringing their hands over his future.

“Either way, I’m out,” Luc said. “And frankly, it’s … it’s a relief. My body is tired, my head is tired, and I’m tired of keeping Gates away from the strippers.”

Billy smiled, and he felt his mother cup her hand around his elbow.

“That’s smart,” Billy said. “First smart thing you’ve done in a long time.”

“What are you going to do?” Celeste asked.

Luc looked around, at the sun, the ugly house, the rolling hills past it. Tara Jean somewhere, close enough that he could go and find her, wrap his arms around her if he wanted. And he wanted.

“To fulfill the obligation of the will, I have to stick around for another few months. I can lay low here. See what happens.”

“See what happens with Tara Jean, you mean?” Victoria asked, and Luc smiled at her scowl.

“Is that such a bad idea?”

“Yes!”

“She makes me happy,” he said with a helpless shrug. “And I haven’t been happy in a long time.”

“What’s the difference between her and Dennis?”

He blinked, stunned. “She’s not using me for money.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Yes.” He was unequivocal. He knew Tara Jean, the best and worst of her, and she wasn’t after his money. “As sure as I am that Dennis’s motives are not as pure.”

“Pure,” she scoffed. “I don’t think that’s a word that applies to Tara Jean.”

“Stop,” he demanded. “Right now, Victoria. I like her. A lot. And you don’t have to approve, but you sure as hell can keep your mouth shut about her.”

“You’re picking her over your family?”

“Oh my God, Vicks—”

“No. Fine. I get it. Go. Screw what’s left of your brains out.” Victoria turned back to the house, slamming the front door shut behind her.

He turned on his mother. “How about you, you have a problem with Tara Jean?”

“You could do worse for yourself,” Celeste murmured.

He watched her, waiting for the shoe to drop, but she was silent. “You approve of Tara Jean Sweet?”

“Who am I to approve? I would say …” She lifted that shoulder and he, thirty-seven years old, still couldn’t always read those shrugs.

Either she was about to lie or about to tell him she was hungry. “I can appreciate your interest. Your father was like her.” She lifted her hand, forestalling the argument that leapt to his lips. “Now, don’t get your back up. He was wild. And different. Like an untamed animal in a room full of domesticated dogs. And he made me feel … alive.”

“That’s exactly how she makes me feel.”

She touched his hand, kissed his forehead. “But don’t use her to fill the hole hockey has left in your life.” Her shrewd eyes saw right through him. “She deserves better than that.”

It was hours later when he got off the phone with Beckett and his coaches and teammates, and there was one niggling problem left to deal with. He shut the door to his bedroom and called Thiele.

The phone rang once before the private investigator answered.

“Thiele.”

“He’s back,” Luc said, staring out his window at the moonscape. “Dennis Murphy is back.”

“We heard,” Thiele said. “I’ve got my feelers out, but Murphy is staying low. No credit cards. No cell phone.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it’s going to take longer to find him.”

Luc paced away from the window, his tennis shoes squeaking against the hardwood floor. “I need …”

“I’m on it, Luc. Don’t worry.” He hung up.

Don’t worry
.

He could hit a hundred-mile-an-hour slap shot. Out-sprint a man half his age. Lead his team to the finals. He could even walk away from the sport that defined him. Take care of his family. Make love in the backseat of an SUV to Tara Jean Sweet.

But not worrying was impossible. Like tearing out his own throat.

“Luc?” The soft voice accompanied a scratch at the door, and he turned in time to see Tara Jean slipping through the cracked door to his bedroom.

The lamplight fell over her face in a golden veil, obscuring and highlighting her beauty. And he knew in a heartbeat that this woman was no substitute for hockey. She was an entity all her own. And he’d never had a person in his life like her. That she was here, now, when he most needed someone like her, was just his good fortune.

“Hey!” He had no interest in pretending not to be happy to see her. She brought parts of him, long dead, long forgotten, back to tingling life—and he couldn’t play that cool.

His smile split his face.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Great. What are you doing?”

“Well.” The door shut behind her with a soft click and he realized she wore a highly unlikely leather duster with red feathers at the neck. She looked like a beautiful bird. “I was worried you might be sad. Again.”

Her fingers slipped along those feathers, her smile as seductive as Eve’s, and his body, as his brain got wise, got hard in a heartbeat.

“I
am
feeling a little blue.” He closed the curtains with a hard snap. “What’s … what’s happening under that coat?”

“This old thing?” She shrugged. “Not much.”

The coat fell to the ground with a soft thud. She wasn’t naked, but she sure as hell wasn’t decent.

White leather cupped her curves, molded to her waist. Thigh-high white stockings clung to her superior legs. Her sex was barely covered by a white leather thong that couldn’t be comfortable, but he sure as hell appreciated her sacrifice.

He could love her, he realized as she prowled toward him, her high heels clicking against the dark floor.

He touched her shoulder with the tips of his fingers, the satin of her skin transforming him from a broken-down hockey player into something better. Something real. A man. With a woman. A family to protect.

A future to care for.

Grateful, reverent, and endlessly worried, he pulled her into his arms and attempted to show her the glory she made him feel.

The phone call from Dennis on Monday afternoon came as a surprise. Staring down at his number on her cell phone display, Victoria’s emotions weren’t easy to label; it was like looking at a kid’s finger painting. A big brown mess, with red and purple highlights of anger and pleasure.

She glanced up the long empty hallway of the elementary school she was checking out for Jacob. No one was around to watch her do something even she knew she shouldn’t do.

“Hello?” she said, pleased when she didn’t sound too excited or too angry. It was the perfect mix, as if she’d forgotten who Dennis Murphy was and why he would be calling.

“Victoria.” His voice, on the other hand, was the sort you’d use with a confidant. A friend. Long lost but beloved. And it was like hitting ice, making her skid. She didn’t have any friends. Not anymore. No one had said her name like that in a long time.

“How are you?”

She cleared her throat and stared into the trophy display case across the hallway. The sixth graders at Bruce Elementary School had had quite a cross-country winning streak.

“I’m fine,” she answered. “You?”

“Good. Great, actually. I’m so sorry about the way I had to leave Friday night.”

“Look, Dennis, I’m not sure this is going to work. My ex-husband was career focused and I’m not going to go down that road again.”

“Victoria, please, let’s not do this over the phone. Meet me—you can dump me to my face.” It was a joke, sweet and unexpected, and she actually smiled despite her misgivings. “Friday night.”

“Sorry, Jacob has book club.”

“Book club? For seven-year-olds?”

She sat up straighter in the kid’s red molded plastic chair she was wedged into. “We’re reading
Harry Potter
and it’s been very enjoyable.”

“Fine. Friday afternoon.”

Don’t
, she told herself.
Don’t do this to yourself again
.

But then she thought of her brother, of that light that seemed to suffuse his being. Because he was having sex. Having sex with someone totally inappropriate. Someone who was risky.

Why was Luc the only one who got to be brave? To throw his heart around the gutter just for the hell of it? Dennis made her happy. Made her smile. Wasn’t that worth something?