A few thousand dollars a month until she lands on her feet and finds a job to support herself along with the rest of her clothes and personal items in her closet and our house. She’ll arrange for movers to come pack her things. That’s all she’s asked for.
No money for a down payment for her own home.
No Bruiser.
No insisting we sell the beach house on Sanibel Island where we’ve lived for thirty days every summer to relax before training camp. And she gets half.
There’s no half of nothing.
After all she’s been through. After all the dreams she put on hold for me, insisting it was worth it. After all the years she spent crying in my arms, hurting because she couldn’t carry our own child… and she’s asking for fucking pennies.
It’s almost more insulting than demanding everything. She walks away with my name and the salary of what my father makes teaching and she doesn’t want a damn thing else from me except for my signature.
And fuck this.
Fuck it all.
Chapter Two
Gigi
My grandpa always said when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. When life handed me lemons, I stomped them into a pulp and bought myself a one-way ticket to Turkey where I spent a year and a half traveling Eastern Europe before spending another six months traversing through Western Europe, ending in Scotland before the weariness of traveling finally started getting to me.
My heart started missing my dad and home.
Despite my homesickness that took root, it still took a phone call from my aunt Pamela to tell me my dad was in the hospital with chest pains to finally get me back on the plane and on American soil. The moment I hit town, I headed to his bar to drop off my luggage in the apartment above it to clean up before heading to see him. I figured with what Pamela said, he’d be home and resting.
Imagine my surprise when I walked into the bar to grab the key for upstairs, and there he was.
All hefty, full stomach and thick head of graying hair and second chin, booming his standard and well-known laugh with a bunch of male customers.
I’d leaped over the bar, not caring about the drinks I probably spilled in my wake, and slammed my much more petite arms around him in a hug.
Since that day barely over a year ago, I’ve come to know the guys that were there that night. Most of them are team members of the Carolina Ice Kings, North Carolina’s professional hockey team.
At one point, Dad pulled me aside and said the guys found his bar a year earlier, sauntering in after a loss at home with some of their wives and girlfriends. There’d barely been a body in his bar because most young people liked to head into Charlotte to the cooler clubs. Apparently, these guys liked the quiet so much they kept coming back. He told me I was never to tell anyone they came in. They liked it here, they tipped well and didn’t cause problems, and he liked their company.
I know this because Dad introduced me to most of them that night in between the sassy shots he took at my colored hair, the mermaid tattoo I’d picked up in Germany, and the tiny nose piercing I got in the French Riviera.
There was one among them who stood out. He came in with his shaggy, dirty-blondish brown hair that had a slight wave to it. It flipped over his ears and curled over his collar. His beard was scruffy, in need of a trim. But it was his smile that pulled me in. Thick, light pink lips that were almost too feminine on his buff frame. Lips that smiled easily with a top lip that often disappeared beneath his mustache when he did.
So. Damn. Sexy.
Seeing him, I considered ignoring my dad’s warnings about them, jumping back over the bar top and planting myself in the man’s lap when I caught sight of the shimmering black ring he wore on his left hand.
His ring finger, to be exact.
Sebastian Hendrix was one of the hottest men I’d met in all my travels, and he was married.
Since I wasn’t that kind of girl, not ever, I tamped down my crush and my blooming lust for him and did my job. And I’d been doing my job for well over a year for the Ice Kings, pouring them drinks, telling them stories about my travels, some exaggerated for comedic effect.
In the meantime, I chopped four inches off my hair, got rid of the hot pink tips and went to a deep, dark purple and then red, before going back to my current vibrant purple. The stud in my nose changed much more frequently from a tiny jewel to a silver ball to a gold hoop depending on my mood.
Through it all, Sebastian laughed less. His smiles decreased in size to where now, I rarely saw a smile on his face.
Which means I’m not the least bit surprised when the door opens, and Sebastian walks in, shoulders hunched, eyes so sad it almost hurts to look at him.
A brisk breeze from the cold January air follows him. It chills me through my cardigan and George’s Bar tank top, but it’s nothing compared to the pain radiating from his posture and expression.
He walks straight to the bar, not giving any of the few people in the place a second glance and pulls up a seat at the corner near where I am.
He’s wearing a faded, old white ball cap with the Alabama logo on the front pulled down low. I lose his eyes as soon as he sits, but his hair would be enough to give him away from a distance. The curls flip at his neck and his ears, his beard is short but thick and I know it will only continue to grow longer through the season. The first time I saw Sebastian without a beard, my jaw dropped to the bar top. I’m not sure which way he looks better, displaying his square, carved chin or hiding it. Either way, the man simply does something to me.
I head toward him, dropping my black towel to the counter.
“Hey, hotshot. Happy New Year.”
Other than his strange and morose demeanor, I’m more surprised his teammates aren’t with him. Or that he’s here at all. It’s New Year’s Day and they haven’t been in since the week before Christmas.
“Shot of something strong, Gigi, and keep ‘em coming.”
He doesn’t look at me. He barely acknowledges me, although I’m used to it. From what I’ve gathered, Sebastian Hendrix isn’t the kind of man to look too long at any woman who isn’t his wife. Admirable. All women want to be married to a guy who’s so devoted. With his money, his looks, and hell, even with just his personality, men like him are rarely as faithful as he is.
I grab a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon. It’s not the most expensive bourbon we have, but I know he likes it.
I fill two shots and slide them both his way.
He takes the first, tosses it back and slams it to the counter with a heavy thunk.
“Hey. You okay?”
His head lifts minutely and slowly, like the small move takes massive effort. “No. Not really.”
He takes another shot and slides both shot glasses my way. “Like I said, Gigi, keep them coming. Or better yet, I’ll take the bottle.”
“Sebastian—” I’m not sure I’ve ever called him by his name. Not since I nicknamed him. Oddly, he’s the only guy on the team who I have nicknamed.
“Don’t. Not tonight, k? Just want to drink my bourbon and not be alone. Can you give me that?”
Someone at the far end calls my name and I glance their way, seeing Steve Shaw holding an empty bottle. Older than my own dad, I know him well enough to tell him to serve himself. Hell, the man changed my diapers in this very bar when I was that little. He likes to remind me of that frequently.