Feel The Fire (Unforgettable Series) (23 page)

Jonas just gave stubborn shake of his head and went back to nursing his ginger ale. This time around, he refused to drown his sorrow with alcohol. He didn’t want to forget any of his time with Toni. He treasured every memory: The good
and
the bad.

It also meant that he suffered through three months of his younger brothers campaigning to cheer him up. Q even went so far as to donate his personal black book with all his top play toys highlighted.

Sterling tried to exercise him to death, but no amount of hiking, biking or mountain climbing was going to purge Toni out of his system.

Why didn’t he chase after her that night?

The rest of the game passed was a blur. When the final score of 20-6 posted, the Hinton brothers stood and looked as if they’d survived the funeral service of a close relative.

After a quick meal, Jonas still didn’t want to talk about replacing coaches or team players. He did, however, wonder endlessly about what Toni was doing at this moment-and who she was doing it with.

He wasn’t a fool. A woman like Toni wouldn’t be alone for long. He experienced another painful squeeze in his chest. When he went to rub the ache away, it caught his brother’s attention.

“I wish you would go see a doctor about that,” Sterling said with real concern. “Chest pains are nothing to play with.”

“I will. I will,” Jonas promised for the umpteenth time in the past month.

“Please. There’s nothing wrong with him.” Q tossed his knife and fork onto his half eaten Porterhouse steak. “Just call the girl already!”

Jonas’s jaw instantly hardened as he gave Q a warning glare.

However, Quentin just waved the warning off and even rolled his eyes skyward. “Don’t give me that look. I’m tired of watching you mope around. Call her.”

“Q,” Sterling’s voice also held a note of warning.

“What? Are you going to pretend that you don’t know what’s going on, too? Or maybe you’ll just advise him to purchase the girl’s law practice so he can be close to her?”

Sterling’s face darkened from anger or embarrassment, Q didn’t know which and he didn’t care. All he knew was this madness must end. “Call her,” he said again. “Please. I’ll do anything if you’d just call. Hell, I’ll even get a job. Call her.”

“Then just call and ask her for the time,” Sterling urged. “We may never have another opportunity to get Q to actually draw a paycheck again.”

“Amen,” Q quipped.

“As tempting an offer that may be...what are you doing?”

Sterling lifted his hips and scooped out his cell phone. “I know I still have her number listed in my cell.” He scrolled through the address book.

“You
are
calling or we’re going to have one hell of a fight right here in this restaurant,” he promised.

Q looked pleased with himself.

Despite being in pretty good shape, Jonas knew Sterling, with his ungodly amount of hours in the gym, could take him. Jonas took the phone. “What am I going to say?”

He had him there. Jonas looked down at the razor-thin phone and stared at Toni’s name across the screen. Suddenly his heart raced, blood roared in his ears, causing him to feel light-headed. Maybe he was having a heart attack.

“Call her,” both brothers chanted in unison.

Jonas drew a deep breath, hit the send button and placed the phone against his ear. His heart continued to accelerate as he listened to the line ring.

Jonas shook his head. “No. No message.” He quickly disconnected the call and tossed the phone back at Sterling. “Satisfied?” He held up a hand and flagged down their waitress. “Scotch on the rocks—and make it a double.”

“Was that my phone?” Toni asked, carrying a box of her toiletries into the living room.

“It was,” Isaiah said, returning the cordless to its cradle and turned and reclaimed the box he’d sat down on the table. “Guy didn’t want to leave a message.”

Toni’s heart quickened, but before she could question Brooklyn’s husband further, he was out the door and headed toward the moving van. She was lucky that Brooklyn and her husband were back into town for the week and could help her move.

“Are you sure you want to move back to California?” Brooklyn asked. “You haven’t even been here six months.”

“I should have never came back,” Toni said, moving over to the phone to screen the caller ID. “I’m lucky that Kaplan, Gray & Kaplan wants me back.”

“So you’re giving up on your own firm?”

“For now. Way too much of a headache. And now that I’m ...well, you know. I need something with a little less stress.” She hit the button to see the last caller. Sterling Hinton.

Toni blinked in surprise. Her curiosity churned out a million possibilities for the call. She picked up the phone and started to push the talk button to redial the number, but then stopped.

For three months, she had been trying to forget Jonas Hinton. Hands down, it had been one of the hardest things she had ever tried to do. And here it was, one call and she was ready to run back to his world. Hell, he wasn’t even Jonas. It was his brother.

What did they think, that they could just keep passing her around like some kind of serving tray? Who knows maybe she’d get the trifecta and Quentin would start calling.

“Toni?” Brooklyn broke through her troubled thoughts. “Where did you go?” She laughed and slid another strip of tape across another box.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What did you say?” She sat the phone back down and returned to packing.

“I asked whether you thought about moving to Texas? I know I’d love it if you were there in Austin. If would be like old times. You and me-”

“And the kids,” Toni added. She didn’t mean for the words to have such a biting edge, but she knew the drill. Married girlfriends weren’t the same as single girlfriends. Their conversations were or would always turn into subjects about their husbands and kids. “Oh, such and such did the funniest thing to today” or “guess what my husband did today.”

Then again, retuning to California meant Botox parties, getting the pointers of the latest starvation diet and constantly having your body image accosted. And that would be within the first five minutes at Maria’s apartment.

“I don’t know, Brooklyn,” she sighed. “I just know this place holds too many memories for me.”

Sighing, Brooklyn laid down the box tape. “Toni, why don’t you just call him?”

Toni started to ask, “call whom?” but one look into Brooklyn’s serious face, and she knew playing dumb wasn’t going to work. “There’s nothing to say. It’s over.”

Brooklyn waited until he was out of earshot before returning to the subject at hand. “Come on, Toni. You’re miserable. I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I remember a time when you were trying to get me to call Isaiah when we broke up. I kept telling you I was fine when I was anything but.” She met Toni’s gaze. “I felt like I was dying inside. Slowly but surely.”

Toni was the first to look away. That was exactly how she felt.

“After what happened between me and Evan...and Macy, I was positive that marriage wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to depend on another man. Love
isn’t
a woman’s greatest downfall. It’s the inability to love.” Brooklyn stood up and walked over to her best friend. “Call him.”

After dinner, the Hinton brothers returned home to Jonas’s condo. Luckily, Sterling was the designated driver, because once Jonas started drinking, he was unable to stop. At one point when Jonas was really blitzed, he’d grabbed Sterling by his head and spoke with such pain that it nearly tore Sterling’s heart in two.

“I love her. A million times more than what’s-her-face.”

In a couple hours, Jonas had covered a gamut of emotions. One minute he was laughing and the next he would brood into his drink. Sterling considered himself lucky for not have crossed paths with a woman who could do this to him.

“That may be, but I’m not going to be like you two losers. I need something soft and warm to curl up to tonight.” He bolted toward the stairs. “Don’t wait up.”

Chapter 30

Jonas woke with a massive hangover. When bits and pieces of what happened the night before floated back to the forefront, he groaned and moaned over his behavior—and the fact he’d done it in front of his brothers. The most humiliating part had to be when he stood up and changed the words to Barry Manilow’s song “Mandy” to “Toni”.

Why did he even know the lyrics to that song?

After a quick shower and a change, Jonas rushed from the house before either of his brothers had a chance to corner him and poke funny of what happened last night.

And he certainly didn’t want to remember the man’s voice who’d answered Toni’s phone. Jonas wasn’t dumb. A relationship had to have progressed rather well for a man to have permission to answer a woman’s phone.

It was all the evidence he needed to prove that Toni had moved on.

Jumping on the back of his Harley, Jonas blinked in surprised at a brief hand written note taped on his bike.

Meet me at the skybox.

-Sterling.

What the hell? He pulled the note off and balled it up. Leave it to Sterling to anticipate his first move—and annoying habit of his.

Drawing a deep breath, Jonas glanced at his watch and started his bike. He may as well head over to the stadium; he certainly didn’t feel up to going into the office today. A light drizzle dotted his wind visor as he joined the morning traffic. Forty-five minutes later, he arrived at the stadium’s skybox, but judging how the light rain had turned into a torrential downpour, he knew practice would be cancelled. Still, he dropped into one the leather chairs and kicked back.

Maybe he needed to go away somewhere where he could clear his mind. A vacation.

A long vacation.

He certainly couldn’t go back to the Caribbean. The island would only remind him of Toni. Yet, he wanted be wanted to be reminded. He wanted to remember what it felt like caressing her skin, kissing her mouth and plunging himself as deep as he could inside of her.

A sad laugh escaped his lips, but then he sobered and drew a deep breath. Hell, even now he could recall the sweet smell of lavender that always clung to Toni’s skin.

“Haven’t you heard? I’m a glutton for punishment.” The room fell silent, and then, “I talked with Sterling. He brought me here.”

Jonas vowed to kill his brother.

“Aren’t you going to turn around?”