Page 18

18

LACEY

“Well, hello.”

I look up and see Everly Wynn standing next to our table. As at the party on Saturday, she’s polished and elegant, her hair in stylish layers, wearing a sleek sleeveless dress in a gorgeous coral color and nude pumps.

“Hi!” My exuberant greeting startles her. I’m just so happy at the interruption and not having to answer Aline right now. “So nice to see you! How are you?”

“I’m well, thanks.” She looks at Aline, who smiles.

“Are you here for lunch too?” Aline asks.

“Yes. I was supposed to meet a client, but he just texted me he can’t make it after all.”

“Oh, you should join us!” I pipe up.

Aline’s smile doesn’t falter, although I sense the wariness between the two women. Not dislike or even awkwardness, just guardedness. “Of course!”

Everly hesitates, then hitches one shoulder. “Okay.”

Immediately one of the café staff appears with a chair for her and she sits.

“Well, this is nice,” I chirp, guzzling my prosecco. “I get to see both of you.”

The waiter refills my glass instantly.

“Who were you meeting with?” Aline asks Everly.

“Dan Diaz.” She says to me, “The mayor of Santa Monica.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“We’re working on a new partnership between the city and the foundation,” she adds. “I think it’s going to be amazing.”

Right. Everly runs the Condors Foundation. And lunches with the mayor.

“Would you like to see a menu?” The waiter is here.

“We’ve already ordered,” Aline tells Everly.

“I’ll have the coast burger,” Everly says without needing a menu. “With fries. Thank you, Liam.” She smiles at the waiter who bears a striking resemblance to Ryan Gosling.

“Of course.” He smiles back, plucks the menu away, and disappears.

“Well.” Aline picks up her wine and drains it too. “This is so nice. Tell us more about yourself, Lacey.”

Great. Just what I don’t want to do. I shift in my wicker chair. “Um. Well, I told you my mom passed away a couple of years ago. She had ovarian cancer.” I pause. “I never knew my father.”

They both nod without judgment, so I continue. “I have a twin brother, Chris. He’s a little angry with me right now.” I drop my gaze to my wineglass. “He has a gambling addiction, and I finally refused to keep bailing him out.”

“Oh no.” Aline’s eyes warm with sympathy. “Addictions are a terrible thing. They make us feel so powerless to help someone.”

“Yes. Théo was very supportive in my decision. I know I can’t help Chris ... he has to help himself.”

“I’m glad you and Théo have each other,” Aline says softly.

“Are you planning to work now you’re here?” Everly asks me.

“Yes, I’d like to do something.” I wrinkle my nose. “I’ve definitely been feeling at loose ends this week, with Théo so busy.”

“We always need volunteers,” Everly says. “If you’re interested in getting involved. The players’ wives and girlfriends do a lot of charity work and help contribute to the foundation, and I’m sure they’d welcome your help.”

I tilt my head. “Hmm. Yes, I could do that. Obviously, I haven’t met any of the wives and girlfriends. I’ve only met one player—Manny—who lives in our building. I gather most of them aren’t around in the summer.”

“Yes, many of them go spend time with their families.”

“When does the season start?”

“Officially, October. But they’ll start arriving back in town in August for training camp.”

“That’s still so far away.”

“Yes, our activities do slow down over the summer. We can talk more about ways for you to get involved.”

“Thanks, I’d like that.”

I let Everly and Aline chat more, gradually joining in the conversation. I learn that Everly has a wicked sense of humor and I admire how she digs into her huge hamburger and fries with no shame.

“I’m on a low carb diet,” she tells me when she sees me eyeing her food. She picks up a fry in her fingers.

I raise my eyebrows.

“When I feel low, I eat carbs.” She grins.

I laugh. “Hey! Me too!”

“Why do you feel low, Everly?” Aline asks with a slight frown.

Everly shrugs. “Just joking.”

We also discover a mutual love of knitting. “It’s great for stress relief!” I say excitedly. “I wasn’t able to bring my knitting things with me.”

“Why not?” Everly’s forehead furrows.

Ugh. “Long story,” I say lightly, waving a hand. “Is there somewhere near here I can get needles and yarns?”

“Oh yes, there’s a great shop on Ocean Park Boulevard. I can take you there.”

I assume she’s throwing out a polite non-invitation, but she actually arranges to take me there tomorrow after work.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a car,” I say. “But I can probably figure out how to get there by bus and meet you there.”

I learn that she lives in a condo not that far from Théo’s place, in Venice Beach. “I’ll pick you up,” she tells me.

“Okay, thanks.”

We finish our lunches and I reach for my purse, but Aline and Everly wave at me and argue over who’s paying. Everly gives in graciously and lets Aline buy us all lunch.

“I better get back to the office.” Everly glances at her watch.

We walk through the lobby to the hotel entrance. Aline gestures to Everly to have her car brought first. “Since you have to go back to work.”

“I am the boss,” Everly says with a smile. “But thanks.” As we wait, she tips her head to one side, looking at me. “I’m glad I ran into you. It was a fun lunch.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She gives me a small hug.

With her gone, I turn to Aline, my insides knotting, knowing she’s going to bring up the wedding again. She doesn’t until we’re on our way back to Théo’s place.

“Think about the wedding idea,” she says. “It would be so much fun. I don’t have a daughter, and I’ve always waited for the day we’d have a wedding in the family.”

My heart sinks. We took that away from her. But probably someday Théo will get married again, for real, and she’ll get her wish.

Ugh.

“I’ll think about it,” I say, relieved that I don’t have to disappoint her right now.

“Everly gets to take you to the wool shop,” she says when she drops me off. “We should go shopping too. Maybe next week? We could go to South Coast Plaza.”

Yikes. I did not expect all this family inclusiveness. But it’s ... nice. I smile at her. “Okay, that would be fun.”

“Thank you. I’m so happy to have a daughter!”

My smile widens at her infectious delight. We exchange hugs too on the sidewalk in front of Théo’s condo, and I wave as she drives away.

I enjoy the feeling of well-being that settles inside me after a fun lunch with the two women as I gather up laundry from my room and Théo’s, sort it, and start a load in the washing machine, then take my Kindle out onto the patio with a glass of iced tea to read for a while and think about what I can do while I’m here.

I make dinner for two, even though I’m pretty sure Théo won’t be home until late again. He surprises me though, showing up shortly after six, just as I’m sitting down to eat.

Seeing him, my heart bumps like a teenage girl running into her crush. “Hi!” I jump up. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Awesome. I’m starving.”

I hustle over to the stove and fill a plate for him with the pasta dish I made, linguine with red peppers, asparagus, and parmesan. I even whipped up some garlic buns.

When I turn back to him, he’s holding up a ... penguin.

I halt in place. I blink. “What’s that?”

“It’s the mascot for the team I used to play for. I brought it home for you.” He grimaces. “I know it’s not Pete, and it’s not from your mom, but I thought you might ... like it.”

My chest swells and tightens. I can’t breathe as I stare at the soft stuffed toy. I set his plate on the counter and reach for the penguin. “Thank you.” My mouth quivers as I stare down at it. It’s not Pete ... he’s right. But I almost can’t bear the emotion filling me because he brought me this.

I blink back tears, set the penguin on the counter, and pick up Théo’s plate. Like a happy housewife of the 1950s, I set the plate in front of him and fetch him a glass of water. “Here you go.”

He eyes me. “You don’t have to wait on me.”

I roll my eyes. “Please. I know that.” I sit and sigh. “I have nothing else to do.”

His lips twitch. “Bored?”

“A little.”

“I hear you had lunch with my mom today.”

I frown. “How did you ... oh. Everly?”

“Yeah.” He twirls pasta onto his fork. “The foundation offices are in the arena too. She stopped by to give me shit for working late.”

I blink.

His smile is crooked. “She said I shouldn’t ignore my new bride, especially since you don’t know anyone here and you seem a little at loose ends.”

“I’m fine.” I pause. “But I am happy you’re here.”

Our eyes meet. Heat fills my belly and my skin tingles.

His slow smile has my panties dampening. “What do you want to do after dinner?”

My mind goes straight to the gutter. Or rather, the bed.

“Maybe a walk on the beach?” he suggests, eyes gleaming.

I smile back. “I never turn down a walk on the beach.”

“You’re obsessed with the ocean.”

“Yeah, I kind of am.” I stab a piece of asparagus with my fork.

“This is really good.”

“Thanks. Um. Your mom wants to give us a wedding.”

He freezes. “She wants what now?”

One corner of my mouth lifts. “She wants us to have another wedding. She took me to Shores for lunch and told me what beautiful weddings they do there and that she’s been waiting and waiting for a family wedding and missed out on ours.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know.” I poke at my food. “I didn’t say yes or no. She asked me to think about it. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah.” Then he shakes his head. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Whew. Okay.” I blow out a quick breath of relief. “How was your work today?”

“Well, I’m learning a lot.”

“About the team?”

“Yeah. I’ve been watching tons of video and crunching numbers.”

“The night I met you, I thought you were an accountant. Then I thought you were a hockey player. Turns out you’re a number cruncher after all. But I don’t get what kind of numbers you’re crunching.”

“All kinds of things. Analyzing the video and then the data helps us know more about individual player performance, also how specific lines perform together and how the team performs.”

“It’s so technical.” Once again I feel a surge of admiration for him.

“It is.”

“I guess when I think about hockey or sports, I just think about how many goals they score or how many games they win.”

“Yeah. That’s what it all comes down to. But I’m trying to make decisions like how much a player is worth paying or if the player is even worth keeping on the team. And when we get into the season, the numbers will help the coach make decisions like which players should play together, who should kill penalties, who goes on the power play. We can use stats to predict what will happen with teams we play against—which ones are likely to outscore us. Or not.”

Honestly, talking about numbers and stats should make my eyes glaze over, but I find I’m fascinated by this. When I thought about hockey (not that I ever thought about hockey much) it was as a fast, physical sport with guys slamming each other into the boards and taking pucks to the teeth. I had no idea there was so much strategy to it.

I let Théo keep talking about it as we clean up then go for our walk, asking probably stupid questions and letting him patiently explain things to me, like what Corsi and Fenwick and expected goals scores are.

“But you can’t rely on just numbers,” he adds, my hand clasped in his as we stroll along the sand. “You have to rely on your eyes too, to get a complete picture. There’s a saying about stats ... they’re like a bikini.”

“Uh ...”

“What they reveal is interesting ...” His eyes wander over me, leaving heat in their path. “But what they cover up is crucial.”

“Ha.”

“Sometimes our eyes lie ... and the numbers prove it. But sometimes the numbers are misleading too.”

“And you know hockey, so you can use your eyes too.”

“Yeah.” He swings my hand and gives me that slow, sexy smile. “Even though I have one shitty eye.”

My heart bumps. “But you can see fine with your glasses.”

“Yeah, I can.”

“Your mom said that kids bugged you about being smart when you were a kid.”

He grimaces but shrugs. “Yeah.”

“But you showed them.”

The smile is back. “Yeah, I did. But you never totally lose that feeling of being ... different. I felt like something was wrong with me.”

“I can’t imagine you feeling that way.” I eye him. The sun is low in the sky, making his tanned skin golden, emphasizing his strong bone structure. Our shadows stretch long across the sand. “You seem so confident and together.”

“Well.” For a moment he says nothing. “I am confident in my abilities. But I like to analyze things—maybe too much sometimes. I always want to understand why things happen. Why kids bugged me when I was younger. Then when I got injured, I couldn’t figure out why that happened to me. Why something I loved was taken away from me. Then it happened again ... with Emma.”

I flinch at hearing that he’d loved Emma. But I try to keep my face composed.

“And with JP,” he adds. “He was my best friend. He…stuck up for me when kids teased me. He was there for me when I got hurt. I couldn’t figure out how he of all people could have done that to me.”

My chest aches for him, for the hurt he felt.

“So in the end, what I came up with is ... I don’t deserve the things I want.”

I stop walking, my mouth dropping open. His hand tugs mine and he stops too, turning to face me. “That’s crazy,” I announce.

He gives a soft laugh. “You have a better explanation?”

“No.” I frown.

“I know, I know. It’s hard to stop those thoughts sometimes. I try not to want things too much, in case they get taken away. But ...” His eyes shadow. “I really want this job. And I want to do well at it.”

My heart squeezes almost painfully at the hints of vulnerability in his words, his fear that this too will be taken away from him, his hesitancy to even say it out loud. “You will.” I reach up to cup his face with both hands and go onto my toes to kiss him. “You will.”

He clasps my waist and says lightly, “I appreciate your faith in me.”

I wind my arms around his neck and kiss him deeper, the ocean breeze blowing my hair all around us. He pulls me closer against him and I exult in the feel of his big, hard body against mine and his arms around me. I can’t explain why I have faith in him. But I guess that’s what faith is, believing in something without any real evidence. I don’t really know if he’s good at his job, despite how smart he seems and how his family listened to his every word when he talked about hockey and how his grandfather hired him for a reason.

But I do believe in him.