To Love a Player (24 page)

As he turned off the ignition, he let out a tired sigh. I reached over and caressed his face, saying, "You look tired."

"I didn't get much sleep last night," he replied, his tired eyes looked softly into mine. I felt bad because I knew that it was partially my fault. If I hadn't let Scott in, then both of us would have gotten better sleep. I smiled softly at him as I said, "I'm sorry. We can tell them not to come over."

"Nah, it'll be okay," he said, kissing the inside of my hand. "They all have jobs to go to in the morning, so they won't stay too long."

"Okay," I said as he got out and practically ran over to my door to let me out. He was such a gentleman—it was too sweet sometimes. He took my hand as we walked to the front porch and unlocked the door. Turning on the light, our mouths dropped at the destruction of the house.

"What in the...?" Callen asked angrily as he looked around at the mess. The cushions to the couch were ripped to shreds, the cushions of the chairs were pulled off and thrown across the room, plants were turned over, the glass-top coffee table was smashed, it pretty much looked like a bomb had exploded inside the house.

I slowly walked around the mess and went to my room. Flipping the light on, my eyes went wide as I saw the word "SLUT" written in huge letters on each of my walls in what looked like red lipstick. Callen came up behind me and muttered, "That little bitch. I can't believe that she did this!"

"Cal, we don't know that it was her," I said, unsure of why I was defending her. Callen looked at me, anger flashing in his eyes as he yelled, "I know it was her, this is what she does."

Storming off, he went to check his room while I continued to look through mine. There were more derogatory words written in the walls of my bathroom and all of my shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothpaste—if it was liquid, it was dumped into my bathtub in a big soupy mess. My make-up had been dumped out on the floor, my tub of red lipstick was down to nothing and sitting on the counter. There was a message on the mirror that read: Keep your hands off him or else!

Or else what? I wondered, rolling my eyes. It was a cheap threat because she had already destroyed practically everything I had in the house. I waded back through the mess and went to my closet where curiously enough, it was empty. Just as I was about to ask, I heard Callen shouting my name from outside.

I went to the back door and saw my clothes had been thrown out into the pool. Underwear, bras, shirts—you name it, it was there. That was when I got mad.

I am beyond pissed. There's not a word in the dictionary that would be a correct fit for how I felt seeing my house trashed like this. Seeing Mollie's room and now all her clothes in the swimming pool sent me over the edge. I knew it was Sophie; there was no other person it could have been. My blood ran with anger at the mere thought of her. She just definitely sealed her fate with me by doing this. I never wanted to see her again.

What surprised me was Mollie's reaction; calm, cool as a cucumber. How is she reacting this way? I would be furious if someone called me all of those things, much less wrote them all over my walls. When I called her name to show her the pool, that's when she cracked. Her face was one of pure anger when she saw her clothes in the water. She dove in and started throwing her clothes onto the side. I quickly stripped out of my shirt and emptied my pockets to help her.

We had just pulled the last garment out when we heard Sam's voice yell as she asked, "Callen? Mollie? You two okay?"

I came through the door and nodded, going to my bedroom for towels. After I came back out, I went over to Mollie and wrapped her in one, hugging her close to me. Angry tears fell from her face as she looked at the damage with new eyes, clenching her fists as she did so. Kissing her forehead, I said, "It's going to be okay. I'm going to call the cops and they'll get her."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam start to pick up and I quickly said, "Don't touch anything. We need to take pictures of every room."

Mollie looked up at me, asking, "Did she do anything to your room?"

I hesitated in my response. Sophie had only written the word "Bastard" on the ceiling of my room and all of my bedding was scattered on the floor. Mollie's eyes narrowed as she waited for my response, and I said, "Not as much as you had done to yours."

"Whoa," said Kyle as he stepped through the door, followed behind Kara, Rita, and Evan. "What in the hell happened here?"

"Sophie," I muttered and Sam's eyes went wild as she stepped out of Mollie's room. I wasn't in the mood for one of her rages, so I quickly said, "I'm going to take Mollie into my room and find her something to wear. All of her clothes are sitting outside, they were in the pool."

I pulled Mollie into my room, cringing at the lack of destruction. I wished that it had been my room and my stuff that was destroyed instead of hers. I pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of shorts with an adjustable string. She was beginning to shiver with her wet clothes on, so I slowly stripped her out of them. I wondered if it was wrong that I was slightly turned on by doing this. I couldn't help it; her body was beautiful and irresistable.

"Callen, stop staring at me and give me the clothes," she said lightly, giving me a small smile. I pulled her naked body to me as I said, "I can't help it, you are so beautiful."

She groaned, pushing me back slightly and took the dry clothes from my hand. She got herself dressed and sat on the bed, her head resting on her knees while I changed out of my wet shorts. When I was finished, I pulled her to me and asked, "So, do you want to walk away now?"

Her eyes looked deeply into mine as she said, "No, I'm pissed, but I'm not going anywhere."

I leaned in for a long kiss and after we parted, I gave her a long hug whispering, "Good."

The late night swirled around me. I felt like I was on autopilot, only a pissed off version. The police came, but didn't offer any hope that they would arrest Sophie based on Callen's assumptions. They took pictures, took our statements, requested the names of the guards on shift all day, and then left. Callen called Lacey and told her what happened. She insisted that we stay at her place, but Callen said that it was late and by the time we got things cleaned up, it would be really late. I did hear him suggest that I stay there until he gets home, which I knew that she would agree to. She didn't like the idea of me being here alone while he was gone anyway.

Our friends stayed, helping us clean up. Sam was by far the funniest to listen to. She would call Sophie every bad name she could think of and blurt out ways to torture her if she ever had a chance. The hate she felt for her ran deep and I hoped that I would never see the wrath of that. After blurting out her latest one, Callen laughed "I'm glad that you said that one after the cops left. They would have taken you down to the station and keep you locked up."

"Ooh, could you imagine if I had to share a cell with her?" Sam's eyes lit up and Mike groaned, "Babe, this isn't healthy."

Sam shrugged casually as she said, "She attacked my new best friend; she deserves to get severely punished."

"Your new best friend?" I asked, looking at her in wonder. Sam nodded, crossing the room to give me a hug as she said, "Of course, why wouldn't you be?"

I shrugged as soft tears fell from my face causing her to hug me again. Kara joined in, followed quickly by Rita. Kara pulled away and said, "And we decided that Marnie rocks, too. She's in the group just by association, but we need to work on finding her a guy that can hang with ours."

I laughed, knowing that Marnie would love that. We got back to work and finished around one in the morning. The clothes that were washable, which was most of them, were either in the washer or the dryer. The few things that needed to be hand washed were drying on the backs of the kitchen chairs and the even fewer dry cleaning ones, were rinsed and hung on hangers. Sam was taking those with her so she could drop them off in the morning.

"If you need anything, you call me okay?" Sam said after giving me a hug on her way out of the door. "Maybe you can come over for dinner next week?"

"I'd love that, thanks," I said before Mike tugged her away. He gave me a quick hug and said, "Call us and I promise we'll be here in ten minutes."

Nodding my head, I waved as I watched them leave. The others left with the same sentiments and I appreciated their generosity. Callen shut the door, locking both the bolt lock and the lock on the handle, even though she was now on the list of visitors not allowed on the property. I stifled a yawn and looked into Callen's sleepy eyes as he came back over to me after locking the back door. He took my hand and led me to his room as he said, "Let's go to bed."

27

Callen

The early morning sunlight streaming through my curtains bathed Mollie in an amazing beautiful golden hue. It was such a wonderful sight to wake up to. I gazed at her fluttering eyes as she started waking up, a soft smile spread slowly across my face as she looked at me.

"Good morning," she murmured sleepily. I ran my thumb down the side of her face and grinned, "Good morning. Do you feel up for our usual morning routine?"

She stifled a yawn while shrugging her shoulders before rolling onto her back and looking up at the ceiling. I leaned in, placing a kiss on her bare shoulder and smiled suggestively, "Or we could come up with a new one?"

She turned her head, a huge smile broke out on her face as she said, "I think we did enough of that last night, don't you?"

"Are you complaining?" I asked, teasing and she laughed while shaking her head. Even though we were both exhausted from the night, we still managed to make love twice and each time it just got better than the last. We finally fell asleep around four in the morning and I was thankful that Lacey had pretty much given Mollie the day off since she was working from home today.

I pulled her over to face me, her body stretched out matching mine while our legs tangled together. I caressed her face in one hand and leaned in to kiss her lips, loving the feeling of them parting eagerly for me.

After we had made love, I pulled her tight against my chest as she planted little light kisses against the skin of my chest. Tracing the spots that she kissed with her fingers, she asked the question that I wasn't prepared to answer, "Can I ask you something? And promise you won't get mad?"

Sighing, I pulled her in closer to me and said, "You know that I will tell you anything and I promise that I will never get mad at you."

She pulled back, raising her eyebrows as she gave me a doubtful look, asking, "Never get mad?"

"Well," I cringed as I thought about it, "I promise to never be mad at you for too long. So what's the question?"

"Why did you always go back to Sophie?" she asked, looking curiously up at me. "If your friends hated her and she's cheated on you so many times, why did you keep going back?"

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly while I collected my thoughts. This was a question I had asked myself on numerous occasions. I rolled over to my back, watching her prop herself up on her elbow as she waited for my answer.

I mindlessly ran my fingers through her hair that was cascading down on my shoulder and said, "I honestly don't know. The first time she cheated, we broke up and were broken up for a long time. I ran into her the summer after my freshman year of college at a party and we hooked back up. She was in and out of town a lot so we decided to keep our relationship simple, no strings attached. When she was in town, we were together and who we dated when she was out of town wasn't important. It's a reason why I was never serious with anyone. She had this unspoken claim on me and I thought that I needed to honor it because I believed that she did."

"Last summer, she told me that she was tired of the on and off thing that we were doing and wanted something real. I bought a townhouse, she moved in and everything was good, but something was missing. We became more like roommates who slept together than an actual couple. I went out with Evan and the guys one weekend to Nantucket and when I came back, that's when I found her with some guy from one of the photo shoots she was doing. I kicked them out, threw out all of her stuff, and sold my townhouse. Lacey felt bad and let me move in here this summer after my on campus apartment expired."

Mollie was quiet after I finished, slowly letting the information sink in. I saw another question pop in her head and she asked, "Why did you get back together with her?"

Sighing, I replied, "Because you were with Ben and I needed to get you out of my heart. I thought that being with Sophie would help me not to think about you constantly and would help me stay focused to the plan I had in mind."

She gave me a curious look and I caressed her face, saying "I had this stupid plan of getting you to fall in love with me only so that I could break your heart at the end of the summer, but it had one fatal flaw that I didn't expect," I pulled her close to me as I whispered, "I didn't expect to fall in love."

Mollie melted against my lips as I kissed her with all the love that I had. It was true, when I made that plan I did it out of cockiness because who could resist me? However, the more time I spent with Mollie, the more my feelings for her rushed to the surface and I knew that breaking her heart was the last thing I wanted to do. Ever. If she was hurt by something stupid that I did, I'd never forgive myself.

She laid her head on my chest and asked, "So when do you have to go back today?"

"Eager to get rid of me already?" I asked, laughing and she said, "Heck yeah! I was looking forward to some me time. Besides, you came back and the house got destroyed."

I pretended to be offended and she kissed the pout off my face. I wrapped my arms around her and sighed, "I'm supposed to go in a few hours, but I'm going to call Eli and tell him what happened. Maybe I can get an extra day or start fresh next week."

She met my eyes and said, "I hate to say this, but you have to go back, Callen. I'm not afraid of her and besides, I'll be staying at Lacey's until they get everything fixed here. Plus I'm really looking forward to being pampered all day on Friday."

"Oh, I see what it's all about now!" I teased, brushing her hair back away from her face as she shrugged casually and grinned. I gave her a soft kiss and said, "I just don't want to leave you. It sucks when you're not there to share my morning with. I feel like something is missing and it kind of throws off my day."

She smiled warmly as she gazed adoringly in my eyes, sending warmth through my body. She pursed her lips and I gladly planted another soft kiss on them, slowly making the kiss last for a long time. I knew that I would never get tired of having mornings like this with her. Pulling away slowly, she said, "I say we go for our morning run and then maybe today will be better than yesterday."

"It already is," I smiled and she gave me a questioning look. "I woke up next to you. That makes every day better."

She gave me a heartwarming smile, and I leaned forward, kissing her softly before letting her go so we could change into our running clothes.

Later that morning, we walked into Lacey's house and were almost tackled by two excited kids. I bent down and picked up Jace, asking, "How are you feeling today?"

"Good," he smiled wrapping his arms around my neck and giving me a squeeze. Lacey sighed as she rubbed the back of his head and said, "He's back to normal. How are you?"

"I'm surprised that I'm not angrier with her, but really what would that accomplish? It was just stuff and even though I was angry about finding my clothes in the pool, I realized two things; I wasn't hurt and Callen wasn't hurt. If I get really upset about it, then Sophie wins," I said, shrugging casually. Lacey shook her head in amazement as she said, "I would want to rip her to shreds if she came in and destroyed my house like that."

Callen's phone rang and he stepped out of the room. Lacey took Jace from me and asked, "How is he doing?"

I sighed, raising an eyebrow and said, "He's pissed of course, but he is more concerned about me than anything. He keeps thinking that I'm going to leave because of it, but I'm not. I don't know if there's anything that Sophie could do to get me to walk away."

"You really love him, don't you?" Lacey smiled sweetly at me and I nodded. She hugged me and said, "Good because you have really been good for him. I've never seen him this happy, in love, and honestly, not being an ass."

I let out a laugh as I gave her a gentle squeeze and she said, "Let me show you where you are going to be staying."

I followed her up the stairs to a door at the end of the hall. She turned and looked at me saying, "This is our guest suite, we use this for out of town guests like my parents or my in-laws, but you are going to use it until Callen comes home."

My mouth dropped open at the huge room and Lacey said, "You'll have your own bathroom and there's a little kitchenette, fully stocked of course, if you need to use it. The couch does pull out to a single bed and there's a walk-in closet."

She opened the door and Marnie's face came into view. I almost screamed from both excitement and fear. She bear hugged me and I squealed, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm helping out on the project for Lacey's show, remember?" she asked, still squeezing me and then pulled away saying, "I heard about what happened and that bi...."

Lacey cleared her throat right as I covered Marnie's mouth because both Mara and Jace were in the room. Marnie's eyes went wide as she quickly murmured, "Sorry" against my hand. Lacey took Mara's hand and smiled, "It's okay, I'll let you two take a few minutes to catch up."

I smiled, watching the three leave the room and Marnie said, "If that bitch ever comes close to you again, she's going to wish she was never born."

Laughing, I said, "You and Sam should hang out. She had a whole slew of things that she'd like to do to her if she could."

"Sam?" Marnie asked confused and I said, "Callen's friend, Mike's girlfriend. You met her last Saturday."

"Oh yeah, I like her," she smiled. "She's feisty!"

"She likes you too," I said, hugging my friend again. I'd tell her later about what Sam said about Marnie being a part of the group. As I hugged her, I knew that it had only been three days since I last saw her, but I really missed not seeing her every day. I gave her another squeeze and said, "I've missed you."

"I know; I missed you, too. It's weird going from seeing you every day and then not and we have so much to get caught up on," Marnie said, stepping back to look at me and smiled knowingly. "You have a certain glow about you and I can't wait to hear all about it over a nice bottle of my favorite wine and M&M's."

"Of course!" I said as we linked arms and went back downstairs.

"Who was on the phone?" Lacey asked as she came back into the kitchen and I sighed, "It was Eli, I need to come back as soon as possible. Dad's super pissed about me leaving yesterday and even though Eli is doing a fine job in my brief absence, Dad is insisting that he meet me at the airport to fly back with me to make sure things are on track. I have to leave in an hour, a car is coming for me."

Lacey rolled her eyes letting out a long sigh. I pulled her into a hug and said, "I wanted to talk briefly with you about Eli and then whatever you decide, I want you to know that I will stand behind you one hundred percent."

Lacey's eyes bored into mine as she let out another sigh, crossing her arms and leaning back against the counter. Before I could open my mouth, Mara came racing into the kitchen with Jace, both dressed and ready to go swimming. Mollie followed in shortly after them, her arm linked with Marnie and my eyes widened in surprise. Marnie let go of Mollie and gave me a quick hug as she said, "Hey, Callen."

"What are you doing here?" I asked and Lacey replied, "Marnie is my new part-time employee. She's helping me on a project for my show in a few weeks and has to come and work at my office, so she's sharing the guest suite with Mollie."

Lacey then turned to Mollie and asked, "Do you mind taking the kids outside to swim? They have been begging for it all morning, and Marnie, you can go with her. I need to talk food ideas with Callen before he leaves and then I'll come get you to start working."

"You have to leave already?" Mollie asked, coming over to me and placing her hands on my side. Nodding my head slowly, I sighed, "My dad is very upset about me skipping out yesterday and now I only have an hour to talk with Lacey before a car comes to take me to the airport. Oh, and my dad will be on the plane with me."

"Oh," Mollie said and I kissed her forehead softly. I caressed her face with my thumb and said, "I'll come say goodbye when I'm done talking with Lacey."

"You better," she said, standing on her tiptoes and kissed me. I smiled against her lips as I kissed her back and then she stepped away to take Mara and Jace outside with Marnie. I turned to Lacey, who was beaming at me with joy on her face. I gave her a sheepish smile as I asked, "What?"