Worth the Fall (14 page)

“
Let me ask Al,” Katie said then turned to her. “Door locked or anything?”

She shook her head, and Katie relayed the info to Darío. They said a few more things, then Katie giggled, said something in Spanish that Alison didn
’t want translated, and disconnected.

“
He’s just finishing up breakfast with Mark, then he’s going to head to your place.”

“
That’s nice of him.”

“
He’s a nice guy,” Katie said as she smiled a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile and lifted a forkful of nissu to her still grinning mouth. She paused and winked at Alison. “A
very
nice guy.”

Alison took another sip of her coffee, thinking it had gone a little bitter.

***

Petey woke up not knowing which was more painful—his knee or his raging hard-on. They could probably both be eased by a good rubdown, but he was pretty sure the person he most wanted as his private nurse this morning wasn
’t going to be putting her hands on either of his aching body parts.

“
Al?” he called out. He glanced at the clock—ten in the morning. Surprised that his knee had allowed him to sleep so late and so deeply, he eased his body slowly to a sitting position. He was pretty sure Lizzie said something about Alison not having patients on certain days, so she was probably just ignoring him.

Again.

“Come on, Al, I know you’re probably still pissed about last night, but we’ve got to talk about it at some point,” he boomed loudly enough for her to hear him down the hall even if she still had her door shut.

“
Do we really have to talk about it? Because I’m prepared to pretend I didn’t hear a word you just said,” Darío Luna said from the doorway, scaring the crap out of Petey.

“
Jesus Christ, you can’t just sneak up on a guy like that.”

“
Hardly sneaking. I’ve been here for nearly an hour waiting for you to wake up.”

“
Still. A little warning would have been nice.”

The Spaniard shrugged, walked into the bedroom and settled into the upholstered chair by the window.

The same chair Al had sat in last night when she’d snuggled up with that throw-blanket thing.

“
What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be painting a nursery or something?”

“
We did that weeks ago. I was out anyway, and Katie called and said to stop by to see if you needed anything.”

“
Did Alison let you in?” He was totally going to be in the dog house if Alison knew Darío had overheard him talking about what happened last night. Or what didn’t happen.

“
She’s not here. She’s at my house having breakfast with Katie.”

Oh. That little sneak had dashed out before he had a chance to…what? Talk with her? Or pin her to the bed again and not let her up this time, even if she ground her foot into his knee? Actually that sounded pretty good—the pinning her down part, not the knee-grinding part.

In fact, now that his cock had gone down with Darío’s arrival, the pain in his knee was ratcheting up. He tried to edge it off the bed a bit and hissed in pain.

Instantly, Darío was off his chair and around the bed to Petey
’s side. “What can I do to help?”

“
I think there are some of those heating pad thingies that you put in the microwave out in the kitchen. Could you put one in for about three minutes?”

Darío was out the door before Petey had finished his sentence.

While he heard the rummaging in the kitchen, Petey gently massaged his thigh above the knee, then tried again to stretch it. Probably better to wait until the heating pad did its magic.

Darío soon returned with the piping hot pad and a cup of piping hot coffee, setting the cup on the night stand and handing the pad to Petey.

“Do you need any help getting to the bathroom?”

Petey gingerly layed the pad across his bandaged leg.
“Eventually, maybe. Probably. Let me see if the heat can limber it up before I put the brace on.”

Darío left the room and came back a moment later with his own cup of coffee, which he drank from, and then sat back in the chair.

Petey leaned back against the headboard doing the tiny leg lifts the doctor had advised him to do as he drank from his cup.

“
Shit, that’s strong,” he said, to which Darío only shrugged again.

“
I’m trying not to drink it in front of Katie, so when I get a chance.…”

“
So, you’re coffee cheating on Katie with me?”

He chuckled.
“In a way. She told me she didn’t care if I drank it in front of her, but I try not to.”

“
No drinking in front of her either?”

“
Sí
. But that isn’t quite as hard.”

“
Hmmm. I don’t know. It’d be pretty hard to give up my beer.” He took another long gulp of the black stuff. “Yeah. No. Giving up coffee would be harder during the season. I live on it. Beer would be harder to give up in the summers.” He grinned. “I live on
it
, then.”

And then he remembered that every day was summer from now on, even if the wind was blowing and snow was falling as it was outside the window behind Darío.

Darío shifted forward in his chair. “Do you want to talk about it? Being done with hockey?”

Did he? Should he? Would Darío even understand? As a professional athlete, maybe. As a professional golfer who could play well into his forties and then on the seniors
’ tour once fifty, maybe not.

“
Do you ever think about life after golf? What you’d do?”

The golfer looked out the window, took a drink of coffee and slowly shook his head.
“Not much, no. At least not until lately.”

“
Why lately? You still have a lot of years left to play.” Golf. Not hockey.

He took a deep breath, let it out, then turned from the window to Petey.
“It all changed when I met Katie.”

“
You mean when you found out she was preggers.”

He was already shaking his head.
“No. No. Before that. I know it now. My life—the rest of my life—changed the moment I first saw her in the gallery on that golf course.”

“
Jesus. Whipped much?”

Darío
’s brows knitted together. “I do not undertand what is this ‘whipped’. As in a lashing?” His Spanish accent got a bit thicker, and his grin told Petey that he understood just fine.

“
Don’t play dumb Spaniard with me.”

Darío laughed.
“
Sí
, I am
muy
whipped. And happily so.”

Petey laughed along with his new friend. He didn
’t know Darío very well. He’d golfed with him this summer and hung with him a bit before he’d had to go back to training camp. He liked the guy. Certainly wished he could golf like him.

Petey had been tight with Katie
’s ex, Ron, too, but liked the pairing of Darío and Katie better. Ron and Katie had been too much alike, total king and queen of the prom. Boring in their perfection.

People would look at Darío and wonder how he ever got a woman like Katie. Petey liked that. Liked the unexpected in a couple. Added a little bit of spice.

So just when the hell was his little unexpected piece of spice coming home?

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

~ Sigmund Freud

After touring Katie’s nursery to see what had been done since she’d last visited and clearing away their dishes, Alison said her goodbyes and left.

As she pulled out of the driveway, seeing the beautiful new home that Katie and Darío had only been in for a few months, made Alison think about how quickly life could change.

This time last year, Lizzie and Finn had just gotten back together after thinking they’d never make it as a couple.

Ron had just left Katie to be with the girl he thought he
’d knocked up.

Petey
’d been in the middle of a good season, the thought of retirement still just a distant one.

And Alison? The only thing that had changed in her life in the past year was the measurement of her parents
’ downhill progression.

She
’d dated a man named Brandt, a professor at Tech, for a while the summer before that when Lizzie’d been home with her half-assed plan to sleep with Finn for a few months. But things had begun to fizzle with Brandt just a month or so into the fall. Not too long after they’d started sleeping together.

Alison drove out of Katie
’s new neighborhood near the top of Quincy Hill in Hancock, not sure where she was headed but still thinking about Brandt.

Well, not really Brandt, but about all the men she
’d dated. She was driving past the Quincy Hill roadside scenic view, when she pulled in at the last second, put the car in park, and looked out over the valley of Hancock, the canal, and Houghton below her. Though the snow was falling thickly, it was still a lovely sight, so fresh and pristinely white.

Man, she hadn
’t parked in this place in a long time. She wasn’t even sure when was the—Oh. Right. She remembered the last time she was here and decided that even picking apart the reasoning behind her failed relationships with men was better than remembering that long ago day.

So, then, things went south with Brandt after they
’d begun sleeping together. And before Brandt? There’d been Philip, a doctor from Marquette who had a satellite practice in the Copper Country. And before him? Rob, a geology consultant to one of the mining companies.

This had been over the course of the past six or seven years. Alison took a deep breath, turned the car heater up a bit, and, trying to forget it was herself she was thinking about, put on her shrink cap.

It was something she normally didn’t do, believing you couldn’t truly see yourself objectively, as an uninvolved outsider like a therapist would. But she tried now.

Was there a commonality to these relationships? All three men were highly educated and with off-the-chart IQs. Just like herself.

All three men were not from the area originally. And what inference could she take from that? Perhaps she chose to be the person she wanted to be, and not the person the small community had pegged her as for all these years?

Or perhaps she wanted to be someone else completely? Somebody different?

Crap, she really didn’t like this. No wonder she so seldom did it.

Skipping the deeper self-introspection, she tried to analyze the more surface stuff.

How long did each relationship last? Aha! No pattern after all. They’d varied pretty widely from a few months with Brandt to almost three years with Rob. Of course, when you added up all the time she and Rob were actually together, due to him living in Minnesota and only being in town sporadically for his consulting job, it was probably more like…shit.

A few months.

Philip? Yep, a few months if you added up actual time spent together.

Okay, almighty shrink. Time to pull out the big guns
. How did each of the relationships end? Okay, good. No pattern there. Brandt had dumped her, amicably. Philip had met someone in Marquette he wanted to see exclusively, which he and Alison discussed like the civilized adults they were. And she had ended things with Rob, mainly because of the limited time they saw each other. It hadn’t felt as much like a relationship as just a prolonged series of booty calls.

Which brought her to the grand finale—sex. It would take months, perhaps years, of therapy before a patient trusted a therapist enough to be really honest about their sex lives. Not just the nuts and bolts, but about understanding their desires and making sure their needs were truly met.

Or not, as the case may be.

As
her
case may be.

She
’d specifically chosen smart, educated men with whom she shared an interest in literature, the way they viewed the world—basically talked the same language.

It
’d been satisfactory, sometimes fulfilling, but ultimately pretty boring in bed.

She knew. Of course she knew. But the denial had been buried so deep, for so long, that she could easily ignore it. And she had.

But now, a few years from forty, all her friends happily settled with their men and growing families, it was time for Alison to face the truth.

Brainy, introspective, oh-so-civilized Alison Jukuri really just wanted a caveman.

***

Darío helped him hobble out to the kitchen for an actual breakfast then stood just inside the bathroom while Petey struggled to shower. After he
’d dried himself off and put on some boxers, Darío assisted him in putting a new bandage on his knee, then the ace bandage, then his track pants and then the fucking brace. At least the damn thing allowed him to stand, albeit with crutches.