Can't Buy Me Love (38 page)

In the distance a siren wailed, the sound so jarring she dropped her keys again. Dennis looked up, like a wild dog sensing trouble, and Victoria saw the hostess standing in front of the doors, her hand shielding her eyes.

“I called the cops!” she cried, and Dennis mumbled something under his breath, digging out the little bit of cash she had in her purse.

Victoria’s vision went red, her body numb with shock and adrenaline, and she didn’t even feel herself doing it,
didn’t even know she was going to, before she put her hands on his shoulders. He shrugged, looking up at her ready to spit more hate, more poison on her already poisoned face, but before he could do it, she brought up her knee, bony as all get-out, and drove it right into the soft, gooey center of his testicles.

He went blue, then red, gasping for air. The purse fell to her feet, and his body toppled soon after.

In the distance the sirens were getting closer and the hostess was cheering and for a moment, the sight of Dennis Murphy brought to the ground by her was so delicious she lifted a hand.

Took a little bow.

But she had no intention of talking to the cops, of explaining what she was doing here in her gold sandals with her hair down, with a disgusting pig like Dennis Murphy.

With hands as steady as a surgeon’s, she picked up the crumpled dollar bills that had fallen from Dennis’s fingers. Her son’s picture went into her back pocket. Like a ballast for a ship, the picture kept her steady.

“Come near me again and I’ll have you arrested,” she said, cool and calm, as imperial as she ever was without even trying. She smiled into his sweating, wheezing face, wondering how in the world hoofing this man in the balls had made her feel better than she had in a year.

Really
, she thought, sliding behind the wheel of her car, starting it up and carefully stopping at the stop sign at the edge of the parking lot, before leaving the scene of a crime.

I should have kicked a man in the balls years ago
.

Luc crouched in
front of Jacob and pulled on the skate’s laces. The familiar smells of the arena failed to make him feel better about the shit storm his life had turned into.

Celeste had called an hour ago telling him that Tara Jean had left the ranch. Up until that moment, he hadn’t really believed that she would do it.

“She looked like a hooker,” Celeste added.

“Mom—” He’d sighed, flinching on Tara’s behalf at the word choice.

“Fine. Call girl. What’s going on here, Luc?”

“She’s leaving, Mom. She’s …” Scared. Broken. “Leaving.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Me too, Mom.”

So now, he had no career.

No Tara.

But the arena was still here. Home in a way that nothing else ever was.

“Too tight?” he asked his nephew. “Can you wiggle your foot?”

Jacob nodded, his face set on perma-beam. Victoria had called Luc an hour ago, asking him to pick Jacob up from the rec center. She’d gotten held up somewhere and was running late.

The second Jacob saw Luc he asked if they were going
to go skating. And frankly, Luc couldn’t think of a better reason to step past the parasites demanding a statement he wasn’t quite ready to give and back into the arena.

“Tie them super tight, Uncle Luc,” Jacob said. “I go really fast when they’re tight.”

Luc smiled despite the hole in his chest.

“Luc?” a man’s voice asked, and Luc stood from the crouch, his head spinning slightly at the change in altitude. He turned and found Randy Jenkins, looking gray and stone-faced. Tyler stood behind him barely holding back tears.

“Go on out,” Luc said to Jacob, helping his nephew onto his feet. “Billy’s waiting for you.” He watched Jacob, one hand on the wall as he hobbled across the mats toward the ice.

Luc took a deep breath, preparing himself for the unknown, and turned around only to see Randy step back while Tyler stepped forward.

For a moment, Luc wanted to lay the kid out. Payment, perhaps, or to teach the guy a lesson. He wasn’t sure which. All he knew was that this kid was part of the end of his career and while he couldn’t fight the headaches or the doctors or the reality of his situation, it would feel good to take out his losses on the short-tempered player in front of him.

“I’m so sorry,” Tyler breathed, looking at his shoes while tears ran sideways out of the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d go down like that. I didn’t know you had a head injury. I didn’t mean—”

“It was a cheap shot.” Luc bit out the words and the kid just nodded. “Look at me,” he demanded, and Tyler finally lifted red-rimmed eyes. “Use the words, Tyler. Be a man.”

“It … it was a cheap shot.”

“You want to be a professional?” Tyler stared blankly at him. “Do you?”

Tyler swallowed. “Yes.”

“Then it’s time to grow up. Learn to control yourself out on the ice. Your temper. Your anger. All of it. Lock it down.”

Tyler nodded like an eager pupil, or a criminal being let out on leave. Randy stepped forward and clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Head on out to the car,” Randy said, and Tyler nearly ran from the room.

“He’s pretty eaten up over what happened,” Randy said.

“So is my brain.”

Randy’s mouth fell open and Luc managed to laugh. “It was a bad joke.”

“I don’t find this funny. You haven’t issued a statement. The rumors are getting worse in the press. We haven’t heard from your lawyers or from the team—”

“Lawyers?”

Randy swallowed and pulled himself up a few more inches. “Are you going to sue us?”

“Sue?” The thought hadn’t occurred to him. “God no. Look, Randy, I … this is an old injury. And if it hadn’t been your son, it would have been a player on the team as soon as we got back to practice and … you know, I might not have come away from it so well. So, no. I’m not going to sue you. But if your son wants to skate, tell him to be here at seven a.m. on Monday—I need some help with the peewees.”

“Thank you, Luc,” Randy said, relief running off the man like sweat. Luc accepted his thanks and bit back the urge to extend his own.

Because oddly enough, Tyler Jenkins might have saved his life.

The sunlight made Victoria’s face look like the scene of a battle. It was red and swollen, her eye was puffy, her lip was fat and kept cracking, spilling new blood over her teeth. There was no way she could see Jacob like this.

She needed a few hours to try to make her face look better.

She slunk into the house, surprised at the quiet. Pleased with the peace in the big rooms, filled with sunshine.

Despite the fat lip and black eye, she felt … good. Happy.

This house’s bad memories didn’t haunt her anymore.

If it wouldn’t make her lip bleed, she might actually smile. Laugh, even.

Marvelous thing, kicking a man in his balls. She would recommend it to anyone. Maybe she’d write a self-help book.

Now, that would be funny.

She grabbed a tea towel and some ice from the kitchen and found herself reluctant to hide in her room. She’d done enough of that. Instead she found her feet leading her out to the barn.

After a very slow start, Victoria had learned to love horses. Besides her brother, they were the only bright spot of her summers at the ranch.

The barn was still full of horses. And the sun sliding through the wide windows baked the hay and dirt, and bees buzzed around in low, lazy circles, and it was a lot like she remembered as a kid.

In the far corner, a black horse lifted its big head, getting a look at her as she walked down the center of the barn.

“What’s your name?” she murmured, scratching the white star between the horse’s eyes. “Star?” The horse only blinked. “How about Midnight?” The horse gave her nothing. “Black Beauty?”

“Patience,” a low, deep voice said from behind her and she jumped, startling the horse, who huffed and pranced, scattering dust motes like glitter.

It was Eli, of course. Standing in a long beam of sunshine from the open door. His hat was low over his eyes, shading his face. But the sunlight hit the skin of his neck, the bit of chest revealed by the open collar of his shirt, and turned him to gold.

He was beautiful. A perfect statue of masculinity. David brought to life and wearing cowboy boots. Did he have to be so … masculine? It was slightly vulgar. Unnecessarily earthy.

“Hey, Eli.” She ducked away from him, hiding her face.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I like it in here. It’s quiet. Is that all right? I’m not … you know … touching anything.”

“It’s fine, Victoria.” His voice straddled a weird line between fond and patronizing, and she forced herself not to care.

“I do remember you, you know,” she said, reluctant to leave even though she knew she should. She ducked around the opposite side of the horse as he stepped into the stall. “From when we were kids.”

He was silent and she, uncorked from her afternoon of violence and self-recovery, couldn’t stop talking. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You’re so different.”

“So are you.”

The wild bark of her laughter startled the horse and Eli clucked under his tongue, stroking Patience’s neck.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“It’s all right.” He was crouched, looking at the horse’s hooves, checking its shoes.

In the quiet, she knew he was thinking of that girl she’d been. Two years older than he. Glasses. Pudgy and bookish, utterly and totally intimidated by everyone
around her. A disgrace to her glamorous and hard-living mother.

He’d been sixteen the last time she visited. A boy on the edge of manhood, growing into his body and his glower. Which clearly, he’d perfected. Eli had been the object of many a teenage fantasy.

“Do you still ride?” he asked, picking up another hoof. She edged around toward the horse’s head, trying to keep her face hidden.

“Me? Oh, no. No. No riding. Not many horses in Manhattan.”

Though she could have had them. She could have had anything. But when she’d married Joel, horses, this barn, her early love affair with both, had become a part of her past. A past she had pushed away with as much force as possible.

“I wasn’t very good with them anyway.”

“That’s not true.”

She watched him with one eye, waiting, suddenly breathless for more.

“That’s what my father always told me.”

“Your father was an ass.”

She laughed, she laughed so hard tears ran down her eyes and she didn’t notice him watching her from over the horse’s back.

He pointed to her face, suddenly intent and focused. On her. That affable mystery turned predatory, and she remembered, stupidly, that she was in the barn trying to hide her busted-up lip and cheek.

“What happened?” His lips barely moved.

The ice rearranged itself in the tea towel she held up to her cheek and he reached forward as if to pull it away, but she stepped out of the way.

“Don’t,” she said, implacable. Staring at him dead center in a way she’d never been able to do before.

“Who hit you?”

If she told him, she knew instinctively what would happen. Eli would tell Luc and then, with all the best intentions, they would take care of her problem, not even caring whether that was what she wanted. Or even needed.

And the desire to tell him, to sway just slightly toward him, to have him cradle her against that admittedly handsome chest, it was a potent desire.

But it was a desire born out of habit. For too long she’d been cared for. Petted and worried over without ever once stepping up and handling her life herself.

It felt as if her bones were breaking, but not in a painful way. In an empowering way, as if suddenly she was breaking down her own prison walls, the limitations and restraints she’d put on herself for so long that she no longer saw them.

Like a woman living in a dollhouse, thinking it was a palace.

“Don’t worry about me,” she told Eli, and she meant it. Was proud of the implacable nature of her voice, like she was an authority in her own damn life.

About time.