Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers) (26 page)

 
And to watch Cadence’s face when she bites into hers.
 

“I didn’t mention the Uggs this time.” Cadence gets two plates and sets them out on the table, moving around the kitchen lazily, like she owns the damn place. Eliza gets up from her bed and presses her head into Cadence’s hip that she almost knocks the poor girl over as she closes the refrigerator door. She stumbles and laughs, still holding the honey and fig preserves and Eliza pushes her hard, demanding her attention.
 

“Liza! Stop that. Let Cadence get that food on the table, or you’re getting no pieces of bacon. None!” Eliza looks back at me like I’m the cruelest, rudest man on the planet and backs off of Cadence for just a bit.
 

“I’ll give you attention when I sit down, girl,” she says, and the dog follows her right on over to the table. Cadence sits down on the window bench, and Eliza pushes against her again, wagging her stump hard. The dog drifts off into a state of ridiculous bliss as Cadence massages her ears and scratches the top of her head. I watch the two of them, watch as the smile forms on Cadence’s face.
 

“She really likes you.” Before I lose myself completely and let the bacon burn, I set the pieces out on a plate right before starting the omelet. The egg crisps up almost instantly in the cast iron skillet, the shallots on the bottom turning golden brown as I let the edges turn crispy and top it with dollops of fresh goat cheese.
 

“I really like her. I didn’t think I even liked big dogs. But I think she’s about to change my mind.” Cadence smiles, and I catch that glimmer again. I feel her eyes on me as I finish up the omelet and pull the bread out from the oven.
 

“She has that effect on people, especially the children we work with at Coming Home.” Her eyes lock on mine as I walk over to the table.
 

“Children?” She nearly chokes out the word, but she keeps scratching the black spot on the top of Eliza’s head. A shadow seems to pass over Cadence’s face, but she recovers quickly. “That’s your nonprofit, right? Coming Home?” Her tone is uncertain, but her face brightens when I bring the bread, eggs, and bacon over to the table. I start doling out large portions for each of us and watch her face as she starts buttering a slice of my bread.
 

“It is. I take it you didn’t look it up before signing on?” I raise an eyebrow as I sit down and try not to smile. I wouldn’t have guessed such a good artist would come out to New Mexico on a whim without looking at the project she was offered, but here she is. Everyone has their stories, I guess.
 

She looks down at her hands, her fingers flying around with nervousness. “I—uh—I
did
—but—”

“But you didn’t. That’s okay. We’ll let you stay, won’t we, Eliza?” Cadence won’t quite meet my eye, but she’s digging into the fig preserves and slathering it across the bread with gusto, so my guess is that she’s not going to dart out of the door any time soon.
 

“I needed a project. I needed to get out of the city,” she says, still looking down at her bread. She takes an enormous bite and adds, “I’m sorry, Rowan. I don’t even know you and—”

I put up my hand to stop her. “It’s fine. I was just giving you a hard time. I guess it just give us something to talk about here at the breakfast table.” She looks skeptical, but she keeps eating. And so I don’t get lost in watching her eat, I launch into talking. “New Mexico, just like every state, has its underprivileged populations. And here, we’ve got the Mescalero Reservation. Apache people. There’s a lack of resources, social services, that kind of thing, especially with an understanding of their culture. There’s also runaway kids down from Albuquerque, kids born addicted to drugs. It looks like heaven out here, and really it is, but even in the resort town of Ruidoso, there’s need for people who will care about these children—and their parents too. The ones who have parents. We do therapy of all kinds, and experimental stuff too. Animal therapy, art therapy, music therapy. We provide housing and a safe haven for all domestic abuse victims—”

“So Coming Home basically does everything?” She laughs. “Big goals, right?”

“That’s it. Big goals. My family has money, lots of it. And my brothers all do big important things. But if I can do this little important thing for this little population of people—”

“Then you’ve really done something.”

“Something I can rest my name on. That’s right. You get it. It’s something that
counts
. I give a lot of my own money to it, but in order for it to work, it has to have people from the community interested in keeping it going. People interested in working there, the best and the brightest. There’s a sister site starting up in New York City, so we wanted a muralist from the city, someone to weave the tale of Coming Home. You did that with your mural for the Children’s Scholarship Fund.”
 

“What about a local artist—why not someone from the reservation?”

“We do have an artist in residence, and she did a mural on one side of the building. You’ll do one on the other. You really didn’t read any of the documents I sent you?” I laugh out loud. “You are straight crazy for coming out here, but I like it. I really do. Why in the hell
did
you?”

That same look flashes across her face again. I want to pry it open, figure her out like the little mystery she is. But I stay silent and just watch her face while she thinks. “I needed space,” she says simply.
 

“We got plenty of that out here. Plenty.” I let it rest at that. I’ve learned from experience not to ask more when a woman clams shut like that. It’s best to come out all in its own time. And usually that time doesn’t happen within twelve hours of meeting someone. I rip off another slice of bread and smear it with butter and honey. We sit in silence for minutes—I don’t know how many—and the only sound is that of Eliza snoring underfoot.

Hesitantly at first, Cadence starts to tell me about her process, the nonprofits she’s worked with before, why she decided to become a muralist in the first place. Her words weave the tale of why she is who she is—the artist mother, the lawyer father, the sister who’s a practical pharmacist. She doesn’t say it, but to her, that family is everything. I can see her face light up when she talks about it.
 

There’s no mention of why she needed that space, and I try not to assume any damn thing. There’s hurt there. Since I started Coming Home, I’ve seen all types of hurt to the point where I can see it on people. She’s been through something dark, and something recent.
 

Maybe she’ll tell me, and maybe she won’t. I’ll bide my time.

I like this girl. I like her
. The words repeat in my brain like a chorus, and I just watch her and listen.
 

I’d thought this month might be the worst of my life.
 

But things are looking up. Oh yes. Things are looking up.

CHAPTER FIVE

Coming into this, I knew that Rowan lived in the middle of nowhere, I just didn’t know exactly what that meant. New Jersey doesn’t have much in the way of middle-of-nowhere places, and there’s exactly zero middle-of-nowhere places in Manhattan. But from the great flat sprawl of the plains the expand behind Rowan’s estate to the snow-capped mountains jutting from the horizon, this place is about as out-in-the-sticks as a person can get.

Au milieu de nulle part
. The thought comes to me randomly after ten years of being out of high school French class.
In the middle of nowhere, but prettier
. That’s what this feels like. It’s not that there’s nothing here. There’s more here than I’ve seen in a long time, more than I’ve seen walking down the crowded streets and alleyways of Manhattan.
 

The city will always have my heart
, I think as Rowan’s driver takes us down the winding driveway, down into a valley and then up over another mountain.
But all this might grow on me.

“You’re quiet,” Rowan says. Eliza Doolittle is snoring in the backseat, and she’s just about the only sound that either of us can here.

I nod. “Just thinking. And hey—how do you know I’m quiet if you’ve only just met me? I could be quiet all the time.” I glance at Rowan. He’s staring openly at me, and I’m not sure if he knows he’s doing it. It’s been
years
since a man has looked at me that way, and I’m not sure if Eli
ever
looked at me that way.

I’m imagining things. I must be imagining things. Billionaire cowboys don’t look at girls like me.
I might be going slightly insane with Rowan’s eyes roaming over me like they are. With any other man, I’d call him out and tell him to fuck off. Like the construction workers by my office—they’d gotten an earful more than once. But the way his eyes meet mine, the way he listens when I speak, the
way
he’s looking at me… it makes me want
more
, not less. And damn, that’s a terrifying thought.

If I were in my early twenties—skinnier, more confident, makeup and brows fierce as hell—I’d probably have slipped him the key to my hotel room, or my number at the very least. I wasn’t shy back then, and I never hesitated when it came to getting the man that I wanted, the man that I deserved. I might not have ever been runway material, not in New York, but I had that
flame
, the passion that Eli said had driven him wild. But the flame’s been put out by the intervening years, and all this attention is making that flame try to awkwardly re-light itself. I’m too far out of practice, and I don’t even
want
to see what happens when that fire starts, sputters, and fizzles in a big puddle of gooey shame.
 

I wonder if I can get this mural done in two weeks and then just go home before Christmas. That way, we wouldn’t be stuck together on Christmas Day. No chance for hanky-panky or any of him sweatin’ me so hard.

I gulp and look back out of the window. There are snow-capped peaks around the town of Ruidoso, and come to think of it, Anna
had
mentioned offhand that Rowan lived near a ski resort. I just hadn’t put two and two together and figured out that it might actually be
cold
here.
 

“People ski here?” The icy blue sky makes the white mountaintops stand out like something from a movie. I want to rub my eyes it’s so bright, but I’ll mess up the makeup I hastily put on.

Probably to impress Rowan. Basic as hell.

“From all over the state. And from Southern California, Arizona. They
say
there’s skiing in Cali, but I never seen anything to beat the skiing outside of Ruidoso.”
 

“You ski?” I raise an eyebrow and look back at him. He’s wearing a
plaid
shirt today. I’m sure it was hand-tailored and made from Egyptian cotton or whatever, but he seems a little down-homey to get on a set of skis. And I’m a little too city, come to think of it.
 

“Not exactly. But I’ve
seen
a lot of skiing. I’ve paid for private lessons five—no, six—times. But I’m pretty damn sure horseback riding is my only sport. My dad tried to get me into golfing. But you know what?”

“What?” I can’t keep the amusement out of my voice, and now Rowan is smiling too. The corners of his eyes crinkle, and for the first time, I see the hints of two dimples. I hadn’t noticed them, but now that I have, they might be my kryptonite. I get the urge to reach out and poke at his cheeks, to see if he’s actually real, but I settle for melting slowly into my seat. “Seriously, what?”

“Golfing
sucks
. A big dick. Golfing sucks a humongous horse dick, and I won’t lie about that.” His voice suddenly goes
very
country, and I burst out laughing, thinking of him in his cowboy boots out on the golf course. I don’t know how his dad even convinced him to do it. “My dad says I’m strong, so I can
swing
, but the damn ball always goes off in some random direction, and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. One time, I hit a senator from Texas right in the head.”

“With a ball?” I snort and keep laughing, tears popping up in my eyes.
 

“With a club.”

“No. No. You didn’t. How in God’s name—”

“I was trying to swing. I swear it. Trying to do my daddy proud. But I got the thingy—the thingy at the bottom of the club—stuck in a patch of grass. The grass came flying up into my face, and I swung that club back as hard as I could. I was going to get that damn ball, I tell you, girl. But instead, I got Senator Johnson from the great state of Texas right in the damn face. He’s a friend of my father’s—”

“You
didn’t
. Bull.
Shit.
You’re making that up.”
 

He lets out a loud laugh. “To what? Impress you? Hell naw. You aren’t impressed, are you? It’s not usually a story I use to impress women.” He’s laughing at himself now, and I barely notice that we’re pulling up to a large building that sits on the outskirts of town.
 

“I’m a
little
impressed. Senator Johnson wants to shut down Planned Parenthood, restrict immigration,
and
approve racial profiling for the police force. He’s—”

“A racist, sexist, backwards, xenophobic asshole? I didn’t exactly say I wasn’t aiming for him. I
wasn’t
, really. I’m just really big and clumsy when it comes to golf and skiing and shit. The worst thing was that I had to
act
like I was distressed, and I most certainly was not.”