She tapped her foot while a few more players greeted the kid, and then ran out of patience. “Silas, I’m Lauren,” she said, elbowing her way toward him again. “I’m filling in for Becca while she’s out.”
“Nice to meet you, Lauren,” he said, giving her a sweet smile and a handshake.
Aw, at least the kid had manners. “Here is your team ID,” she said, handing over a laminated badge that would get him into the stadium in D.C. “And your boarding pass. If you have any questions, you’ll find me in your Katt Phone under Lauren. And welcome back to the Bruisers.”
“Thank you, miss,” he said, taking the documents. “It’s good to be back.”
The kid looked nervous, though, and she didn’t blame him. Backup goalie was a tough job, and the team had struggled with the position this season. The gossip Lauren had heard was that Silas had played well in the fall but then lost his nerve as the team got closer to the play-offs. He’d been replaced by Sullivan, who hadn’t satisfied Coach, either. Just after the team clinched the play-offs, and the pressure was off, Sullivan had played badly during the two games they’d given him in order to rest Mike Beacon.
And speaking of Mike Beacon—he was one of the names on the clipboard who hadn’t arrived. There were just eight minutes until boarding time. Lauren did another lap of the room and pretended she wasn’t looking for him.
Castro appeared in the doorway next. Relieved, Lauren trotted over to deliver his documents and check him off the list. That’s when she felt Beacon arrive. She couldn’t even hear whatever it was he was saying, but just the timbre of his voice made her skin feel prickly with awareness.
That’s why this was so hard. Her subconscious was still tuned to the Mike Beacon wavelength. This past week had been a long series of uncomfortable moments. The sound of his laughter gave her goosebumps. Whenever they were in the same room, she didn’t know where to look.
Now she turned around and peeked over the top of her clipboard. Mike wasn’t alone. He’d been accompanied to the airport by a blond guy she’d never seen before and by an impossibly grown-up looking Elsa. Gone was the skinny little imp that Elsa had been when her father and Lauren had begun seeing each other. In her place stood a tall young teen whose sharp angles had morphed partway toward womanliness. Elsa’s cheekbones were shapely and her skin glowed.
Even though Lauren had been trying not to stare, the sight of Mike’s daughter was completely disarming. Time had marched on whether Lauren had made her peace with it or not.
“. . . To a dance party with my friends from my old school,” Elsa was saying. “Hans is driving me out to Long Island. It’s my BFF’s birthday today.”
“Well you look amazing,” O’Doul complimented his teammate’s daughter. “Don’t dance with any boys or your dad will have to fly back from D.C. and knock some heads.”
Elsa gave the team captain an eye roll, and a couple of other players laughed.
The loudspeaker crackled and then a representative of the charter company announced the boarding of their flight. As Lauren watched, Mike put a hand on his daughter’s head and said, “Be good for Hans.”
“Don’t blow game five,” was her reply, and everyone laughed again.
Smiling, Mike gave his daughter a quick, hard hug, and Lauren’s heart skipped a beat. As angry as she was at him, he was a good dad. Watching him with his child made her heart sting. It hadn’t been too long ago when they’d whispered together in his bed about having a child of their own.
Ouch.
Spending time within range of him had made it painfully clear to Lauren that she was still upset about the cold way he’d broken things off. She didn’t like to think of herself as bitter, but there it was. Seeing him with Elsa helped a little, though. At least he was there for his daughter. Lauren couldn’t imagine what the last year of this girl’s life had been like. Nobody should bury her mother at age twelve.
Now Elsa waved to her father. Players were moving toward the Jetway now, so Lauren took a couple of steps toward Mike, because his was the last boarding pass she held in her hand.
Elsa’s gaze turned in Lauren’s direction. The teen gave a little jerk of surprise, and then her eyes narrowed. “What’s she doing here?” she demanded. Loudly.
Stunned, Lauren froze right there on the institutional carpeting, the plane ticket in her hand.
Mike’s head whipped around, and when he saw Lauren, his eyes widened. “Elsa, Jesus,” he scolded. He palmed his daughter’s shoulder and turned her toward the door, whispering something in her ear.
Embarrassment crept up Lauren’s neck. She fixed her gaze on her shoes. There had been a time when Lauren was good at ignoring any of the stares she received for being the Other Woman. Not that she ever was the other woman, but that’s what many people had assumed.
She hadn’t cared about the stupid rumors, though. She was too busy being happy. When she and Mike were a couple, they behaved as if there weren’t any other people in the world.
There were, though. And some of them were staring at her right now. And the damn plane was boarding.
A large body moved into Lauren’s line of sight and she looked up to find Patrick O’Doul watching her with a soft expression. “Can I take that?” he asked.
“What?” she croaked, her cheeks still flaming. He pointed at the boarding pass in her hand, the one reading MICHAEL BEACON on it. “Oh. Yes. Please. Thank you,” she stammered.
Doulie slipped the paper from her hand, gave her elbow a quick squeeze, then turned toward his teammate.
Lauren took a deep breath and gathered her wits enough to turn toward the boarding plane, handing over her own pass and then following Leo Trevi and Georgia Worthington down the Jetway. Nobody batted an eye when those two got together. Then again, neither of them had a not-yet-final divorce or a kid at home.
Really, she knew better than to let a grieving child upset her. But April wasn’t over yet, and if the team did well the play-offs season could run until the second week of June. It was going to be a long month in close quarters with Mike Beacon.
It had been years since she read Dante’s Inferno for a high school literature class, but one of the nine circles of hell had probably been a place where you saw your ex every single day.
On the jet, she took the first empty row of two seats to herself. It was doubtful that anyone would sit beside her, but she put her briefcase onto the empty seat just in case. The jet was a good place to get some work done—and not just for the team.
As soon as the flight took off, Lauren slid a file folder from her briefcase. This was her secret project, and exactly what she needed to get the taste of unhappiness out of her mouth. She held the folder close to her body, even though nobody could read her pages from this distance. But this was her private endeavor, and she sure as hell didn’t need any prying eyes on it.
Inside were five profiles of sperm donors. Lauren intended to become a mother next year, without a man’s help. No man she knew, anyway.
In the next two weeks, she needed to select one of the donors on her short list and have the surprisingly expensive vials of sperm shipped FedEx to the clinic of the reproductive endocrinologist she’d been seeing in Manhattan.
And truly? Shopping for your baby daddy was a pretty weird experience. Take donor number 87455, on top of the pile. The fertility lab didn’t provide a name or a recent photo—those were kept private. But there was a picture of 87455 at age four. He’d been a cute preschooler, with shiny brown hair and a slightly devious smile. Currently twenty-four years old, he was pursuing a graduate degree in chemical engineering. He’d played lacrosse for a division III school. His parents were of English, German and Latvian descent. His hobby was playing the ukulele.
He was 5’11”, dark brown hair, 187 pounds. His father had been treated for prostate cancer, but there were no other significant medical issues in the family. Her gaze lingered on
that baby picture. A science nerd who liked music—that was appealing.
The process was oddly like reading profiles on a dating site. No matter how cute he’d been as a toddler, donor 87455 was a real, flawed person out in the world somewhere. He might be charming and kind. Then again, he might have an irritating laugh and a mean streak.
Did it matter, though? If she had a baby, it would be the two of them against the world. She squinted down at the smiling boy on the page, imagining what a blend of her genes and his would look like.
She turned the page and read the next profile again. She’d narrowed it down to these five finalists, out of the thousands on the sperm bank’s website. Once she made a decision, the winning sperm would be FedExed to her doctor in time for her ovulation date.
Each vial of sperm cost a whopping $600, and the insemination procedure itself would set her back more than a thousand more. Luckily, the Kattenberger corporation had excellent health benefits, including fertility coverage. During the open enrollment period last fall, she’d switched to the Platinum plan specifically with this strategy in mind.
A shadow fell over her page. Lauren slammed the folder shut and glared in the direction of whoever had disturbed her.
Of course her visitor turned out to be Mike Beacon, who didn’t seem to take notice of her obvious wish to be left alone. The jerk even lifted up the satchel she’d left guarding the empty seat and tucked it under the chair in front of him, sitting down beside her.
Damn. It. All.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
Lauren spread her hand onto the cover of the folder and stared down at her shiny fingernails. If she had a child in a year or so, weekly manicures would have to fall by the wayside. But she was ready for a change.
“Lauren,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry for Elsa’s rudeness. I chewed her out, and I’m going to make her apologize to you.”
“Don’t,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Lauren,” he whispered.
The sound of her name on his lips scraped her insides raw. And when she lifted her chin to meet his dark eyes, she got a little trapped in the warmth she found there. “What?” she said a little sharply, if only to break the spell.
“It’s not nothing. You shouldn’t have to take any flak for what happened a long time ago.”
“Seriously?” She shouldn’t pick a fight with him. That way lay the abyss. But could he really be so clueless?
He blinked, and the light in his eyes dimmed a little. “Yeah. I don’t want her making you feel bad.”
“Riiiight,” Lauren said slowly. “Elsa is a child, and I feel nothing but sympathy for her. Whatever angry thoughts she has, I don’t blame her. But you have no idea what other people said, Mike. What they still say.”
His rugged brow furrowed. “About what?”
“About me.” She knew she should just let this go. But discomfort had churned in her gut for weeks now. “Last night I went into the reception room”—that’s where the wives and families wait for the players after the game—“to distribute the comp tickets to game six. Those women still look at me like they smell something rotten.”
“Why?”
Why. Jesus. “Because I’m their worst nightmare. The other woman. I’m the evil bitch who nearly wrecked your fairy tale.”
Mike’s jaw dropped. “What fairy tale? And you were never the other woman.”
“Please,” she hissed. “They don’t care about the timeline. The minute you walked out on me you became the hero who went back to his family. To everyone else I was proof that karma is real. My own father looked me in the eye and said, ‘That’s what you get for messing around with a married man.’”
He gaped at her. “That’s obnoxious, Lauren. He should have never said that to you.”
“How big of you to say so,” she snapped, realizing with horror that she was about to cry. “You’d like to correct my father’s behavior. And you want to make your thirteen-year-old apologize to me, too. That is hysterical. Because”—She gulped back her tears and looked him straight in the eye—“who’s the only one who really harmed me?”
She knew her point hit home because his face went absolutely pale. “I am.”
“Good guess! And two years later I’m still waiting for the only apology that ever mattered.” Now her eyes were stinging and her throat was closing up. Lauren stood up in a hurry, but his giant body was in the freaking way. “Would you just . . . move,” she whispered hoarsely.
He leaped out of the seat and into the aisle.
Without another glance at him Lauren exited the row and darted forward, into the bathroom at the front of the plane. It was—thank the sweet heavens—unoccupied. The moment the door clicked close, the tears came like a fountain. She yanked a paper towel from the holder and pressed it forcefully to her mouth.
Alone at last, Lauren clung one-handed to the grab bar and cried absolutely silently in the charter jet’s bathroom.
SIX
“Beak—what the fuck, man? It’s only an hour flight,” Patrick O’Doul complained. “Sit still already.”
Mike dragged his eyes off the bathroom door at the front of the jet and sat back. He tipped his head back and sighed. “I don’t know if Lauren is okay.”
“Yeah? I’m sure hanging around the team is hard for her. It would have to be.”
“Not necessarily,” Mike argued. “If she found a great guy and had a happy life, it wouldn’t be hard at all. It’s been two years, right? By now I should just be some hockey punk she used to date.”
O’Doul made a little grunt of half-assed agreement. “Maybe. But can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“It’s been two years, as you point out. When you look at Lauren, do you see just some girl you used to date?”
“No! No way. She’s . . .” She’s still the woman I love. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah, exactly.” And—damn him—O’Doul sounded a little smug, too.
“But, Jesus. I am really not worth the heartache.”
O’Doul chuckled. “You’re not my type, so it’s kinda hard for me to say.”
“She’s still so angry,” Mike admitted. “Maybe when she’s not trapped on a jet with me, it’s easier for her.” That had to be true, right? For two years he’d assumed that she was in a better place than he was—that his sacrifice had been something she could grow to accept.
But the look on her face when he sat down beside her was pure devastation. “I fucked up with her,” he admitted. “Big time.”
“Today?”
He shook his head. Today was just a ripple effect.
“So you’re saying you fucked up two years ago, and you’re just figuring that out now? And I thought I was dumb.”
Mike snorted. “You are, but I’m dumber. I thought we would all be okay, you know? I did what I had to do, but I handled it badly. I knew she’d be mad at me, and I couldn’t stand to disappoint her. So I sort of went quiet at the end.”
O’Doul gave him a sidelong glance. “You shut her out?”
“Yeah.”
“Women hate that.”
“Thanks for the update, captain, seeing as you’re an expert these days.”
O’Doul grinned. “I never broke anyone’s heart.”
“Uh-huh.” It was true, but only because Ari was the first person he’d ever dated. And that relationship was about a month old. O’Doul would learn how fricking complicated it could all become.
“So why’d you do it?” the captain asked.
“Why did I shut her out? Panic, my man. Sheer and total.” He closed his eyes and let himself remember the most painful time in his life. “It was two or three months after Kattenberger bought the team. Lauren and I were planning to move into the city together. The lease was coming up on my rental house, and Nate was moving the team to
Brooklyn. Then Shelly got her diagnosis in February. It didn’t seem like a big deal at first. Hell, I assumed she had manufactured a little extra drama around the whole thing.”
He still remembered getting that phone call. He was in his car after practice, waiting outside the clubhouse office for Lauren to get off work. “I have something to tell you,” his ex had said.
“Yeah? Make it quick.” He’d been eyeing the door, watching for Lauren’s shapely legs.
“I have . . .”
There had been a long silence, and he’d been annoyed. “What?”
“Ovarian cancer,” she’d said in a big, breathy rush.
“What?” He didn’t think it was possible that she’d just used the word “cancer.” She wasn’t quite thirty.
“It’s bad, Mike,” she’d said quietly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Her tone made his gut turn sideways.
But even after that, it had taken another couple months for him to understand how it would all play out.
O’Doul was waiting for him to finish the story. But now he didn’t really feel like it. Too painful. “So, uh, nobody knew how sick Shelly was when I left Lauren.”
“Except for Lauren, right?” O’Doul asked.
He shook his head slowly.
O’Doul’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell her Shelly was terminal? That’s insane.”
“Is it? I had to take a wrecking ball to all our plans either way. I didn’t want to make her feel sorry for me.”
“You wanted her to . . . hate you instead?”
Yes. “Not exactly. But I had a choice—I could either be a martyr or an asshole. I thought it would be easier to get over the asshole than the martyr. And I wanted what was best for her.”
O’Doul lifted his fingertips to his temples and rubbed. “That’s complicated, man. Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.”
“Yeah? How do you think mine feels?”
“I can’t even imagine.”
He eyed the door at the front of the plane again. Still closed.