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Maverick
Three months ago
“So, big brother, how do you feel about hockey?” Luke plopped down beside me on the couch in my living room, a thick manila folder in his hands.
I raised one eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“You know, ice, skates, pucks, and so on.”
Shrugging, I said, “I guess it’s fine. Fun to watch. Fast-paced. I like the fights.”
“Good. Because according to this, you own a team in Seattle.”
“What?”
He nodded and opened the folder. “Yep, the Seattle Cyclones, to be exact. Dad left each of us something, but the bastard set this shit up like a game. I swear, he’s trying to torture us from beyond the grave.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been a year now, almost to the day, since he died. So of course, the lawyer showed up bright and early with a newly activated stipulation of the will to drop in our laps. For me, it was full ownership of a bed-and-breakfast in California wine country. For you, a hockey team.”
“What did Sutton get?”
Sutton walked through the door. “A fucking casino in Vegas.”
I laughed, thinking about Sutton and Sera’s Vegas wedding two years earlier. “How fitting.”
“Can we sell them? I don’t know anything about owning a hockey team.”
Luke sighed. “Yeah. We have to give it one year before selling, but after that, we’re free to do what we want.”
“He always was a manipulative sonofabitch,” I grumbled. “The information’s all inside?”
“Should be. It was in mine.” Sutton ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Sera thinks it’s hilarious.”
“How did we have so much fucking money without knowing it?”
Luke propped his feet up on the coffee table. “We knew we were well-off.”
“Sure, but not this kind of rich. I mean, a pro sports team? Casinos? A bed-and-breakfast? That’s not just old Hollywood money.”
“According to Dad’s accountant, there’s a lot more where this came from. Granddaddy made a ton of smart investments. We’ve always been set for life. Dad just didn’t raise us knowing it.” Sutton pulled his buzzing phone from his pocket. “Shit, I gotta go. Sera and I have supper tonight at her mama’s.”
I opened the folder and stared down at the information, chest tight. “Well, I guess I’ve got a trip to Seattle in my future. And I should probably learn a little something about hockey if I own a team now. It might only be for a year, but I’ll be damned if I don’t give them all I’ve got in the meantime.”
“Before that, you might want to focus on getting yourself a date for Hunter and Greta’s wedding next week. I heard the church ladies plotting yesterday when I stopped to get Mack some coffee.” Luke snatched my beer off the table, stretched out, and grinned like an overconfident asshole as he took a long pull.
“Just because you’re old and married now doesn’t mean you get to hold it over me like it’s some kind of prize. I’m not the marrying kind.”
“Tell that to the church ladies. They’re meddling. Mel Langston has already planned on putting you and Maggie together. She even winked at me as she said it.”
“Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I have a date secured already.”
“Who?”
“Clara.”
His eyes widened. “No shit? You and Clara are finally hooking up? That’s great news. Doc McKallister owes me fifty bucks.”
“What? No. We’re not together. She’s my date for this wedding.”
“And what about all the rest of them?”
I went with the first answer that popped into my head. “I guess she’s my date for them all.”
“You guess?”
We hadn’t agreed on anything of the kind, but now I hoped like hell she’d say yes when I talked to her this morning. The last thing I needed was for the mamas and grannies of this town to be trying to marry me off.
Cocking a brow, he gave me a dubious look. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“No.”
“No offense, Mav, but you’re an idiot.”
“Offense taken.” I snagged my beer out of his hand.
“You two have been dancing around your . . . thing for years. Why don’t you just make it official?”
“You’re as bad as Mel.”
“No. I’m just an old married guy who knows how good it can be when you find the right one.”
“Clara’s not the right one.”
“Are you sure?”
No was the first thing that flashed in my brain. “Yes. The right one doesn’t exist . . . for me.”
“We’ll see.”
An hour later, two cups of coffee in hand, I strolled toward the stables where Clara was set up and ready to administer some pregnancy tests to a few of the mares we were breeding. She smiled at me the second she turned and saw me approaching.
“My hero.”
“How’d you know I was coming?”
“Those spurs are loud, cowboy.”
I smirked and handed her the mug I knew she loved best from my stash. “You love them.”
“I’m haunted by jangling spurs everywhere I go.”
Leaning against the wall, I looked her over, putting on my most charming grin. “You ready to dance the night away with me at this wedding?”
She full on laughed at me. “I think it’s you who needs to be ready for me.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I’ve got moves. You just don’t get to see them.”
I took a drink and forced my racing heart to chill the fuck out. “About these weddings.”
“Wedding. Singular.”
“Yeah, sure, this one, but there are a shit ton of them coming up. It seems like every day I get a new invitation.”
She set her mug down on the table nearby and offered me a dubious expression. “And?”
Fuck, why did she make me nervous all of a sudden? “Well, I was thinkin’ we could make this date a standing one.”
“It’s not a date.”
“I mean wedding date. I don’t want to go to all these things alone, and the idea of taking some new girl who might think it’s more than it is, makes me sweat.”
Her sexy little giggle had me sucking in a sharp breath. “I have a feeling those girls would like to make you sweat.”
“You’re the only one I want to make me…” Jesus. What was wrong with me? “Never mind. What I’m getting at is we should agree to go to all of these…together. Why stop at one?”
Lips twitching into a cute smile, she sighed and leaned back on the wall. “So you want me to be your perma-date with no benefits?”
“Do you want benefits?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “No. No way.”
That took the wind out of my sails a little, but she was right. I couldn’t think about her like that. Clara Barnes was my friend, my colleague, and one-hundred-percent not someone I was going to fuck.
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