Fake Shot (Boston Rebels Book 2)

I glance at my phone again as I wait for Graham to finish drying off after his shower. He managed to be in and out in ten minutes, which must be some sort of record. When he lived with me, it was a miracle if we could get him out in under half an hour. I guess the fact that I took him out to eat, and we got back later than planned, combined with him not wanting to miss any of his dad’s first playoff game, lit a fire under his ass. I’ll have to share this new strategy with Audrey when she gets home.

Colt

Tell me you don’t have any plans tomorrow night.

He sent me the text an hour ago, but I didn’t see it until we got home. In the living room, the TV’s on and the players are already on the ice, so I haven’t responded yet. He won’t see my message until after the game anyway, so I have some time to figure out what I want to say.

I don’t have any plans tomorrow night, but spending any more time with him than absolutely necessary feels like I’m inviting disaster. If I’ve learned anything in the last week, it’s that I still make terrible decisions when he’s around. Last weekend could have cost him his career, if AJ was mad enough, or cost me my professional reputation.

So no, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to do anything with him beyond what’s required for our engagement to appear real.

I stand in the kitchen, close enough to hear Graham singing to himself in the bathroom, while I keep half an eye on the TV so I can give him a warning when it’s about to start.

The camera zooms in on Colt as he does his warm up stretches. With his knees spread and ass out, Colt bounces lightly from side to side, stretching his inner thighs.

Why is that so hot?

“What are you looking at?” Graham’s voice comes from right beside me, and it’s so unexpected that I jump, sending my phone clattering to the countertop.

“Just checking how much longer until the game starts.” Glancing down at the towel wrapped around his waist, I ask, “Are you going to get your pajamas on?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to make sure the game hadn’t started.”

“I promised to tell you if it did,” I remind him. On the TV, the players start leaving the ice. “Oh, you better hurry up. They’re going to do the pre-game stuff soon.” I realize that I don’t even know if there’s a name for the players’ entrance onto the ice, with lights and music, before the national anthem and the puck drop.

The buzzer rings, and I tell him, “And Morgan and Lauren are here.”

“When’s Mom going to be home?” he asks.

“In less than half an hour,” I say as I reach over to buzz my friends into Audrey and Drew’s place.

“I can’t believe she’s missing the beginning of the game.”

“She’s got her dance class, but she’s leaving early so she can be home to watch some of the game with us before you go to bed. Better go get your pajamas on, or you’re going to miss the beginning of the game.”

Audrey’s weekly Wednesday night dance class used to be a guaranteed time each week that I got to spend hanging out with my nephew. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss that now that they live with Drew, and I only need to watch him when Drew is traveling. And once the playoffs are over, Drew will be home all the time, so I’m going to have to be even more intentional about scheduling time to see Graham.

Morgan and Lauren enter with a wide array of snacks and drinks and start setting them out on the kitchen island as we listen to the sportscasters talking about how Boston won the first game of the series two nights ago and speculate whether Florida can bring home a win on home ice tonight, before the series moves to Boston for Friday night’s game.

“Where’s Graham?” Morgan asks.

“Getting his PJs on.”

“Okay, so once Audrey’s home and he’s in bed, we have a lot of questions about this whole fake engagement situation,” she says. I’d explained everything to my family on Sunday night at our weekly family dinner, which I’d invited Morgan to so that everyone who had to know the truth was there. Except Colt and Drew, who’d already left for Florida. Colt said he’d talk to Drew on the flight down, given that they normally sit together.

“The types of questions we weren’t going to ask in front of Jameson,” Lauren adds. “Because we love you, and him, and don’t want to embarrass you or send him to the grave early.”

This is all fake—it’s not like Colt would ever have feelings for me. So as long as I can keep my own feelings and thoughts under control, everything will be fine. This shouldn’t be a big deal.

“Okay,” I say, dragging the word out tentatively.

Graham comes running down the hall. “Auntie Lauren, why didn’t you bring Iris and Ivy?” That kid loves his little cousins so much. He’s going to be a great big brother someday.

Lauren bends down and kisses Graham on top of his head, reminding him, “Because they’re already in bed. They don’t get to stay up late to watch hockey games.”

“But it’s still light out,” Graham says, clearly not remembering that the sun sets later in the spring. “And it would be more fun if they were here.”

“Trust me, you don’t want overtired three-year-olds around. They’re not very fun.”

The players take the ice and I try not to focus on the way Colt’s moving around the crease, using the edges of his blades to rough up the ice so he doesn’t go sliding across it when he tries to make a save. He’s doing it in time with the music, like he’s dancing, and even though it’s an away game, a segment of the crowd is cheering and clapping along with his antics. He’s hamming it up for the fans, like he always does, and it’s a good reminder that everything with Colt is for show. Just like our “engagement.”

During one of the commercial breaks, Morgan looks over and says, “Oh, I meant to tell you. I was able to schedule that interview with Rosie. This is going to be so amazing for getting some donors for the mentoring program. We can film it the week after next, but where would you like to do it? On a job site? In the Our House office? Your house?”

Morgan has done amazing things for our social media platforms and website since she took over our marketing six months ago. She seems to have a real knack for what will connect with potential clients.

“I’m fine with whatever makes Rosie feel most comfortable. Did she mention about her face?”

“No, what about it?”

“One side of her face is . . .” I don’t know the right words to use here. Rosie refers to her face as “fucked up,” but it’s so much deeper than that. “. . . permanently damaged because of an abusive situation with her daughter’s father.”

“Oh my gosh,” Lauren says, and I can tell she’s doing that thing she does where she catalogs all the ways she could have had it worse with her late husband. His death uncovered a whole secret life he was leading, but thankfully, it also led her back to my brother.

“Yeah. He’s in jail now, but she wears a permanent reminder of him. She’s such a badass, but she’s secretly really self-conscious about the scars. If we can film it so that we’re focused on her at an angle that doesn’t show that side of her face, that would be perfect.”

“Of course,” Morgan says. “I’ll take some test recordings, too, and show them to her to make sure she’s happy with the setup before we start.”

“Okay. Just let me know where and when, and no matter what else is going on, I’ll make sure I’m there for the recording, too.”

“I didn’t realize you guys were already at the point of looking for donors until you told us what happened at that dinner,” Lauren says.

“We weren’t, really. But the opportunity to present at that nonprofit pitch fest felt like it would be a good chance to practice talking about the mentoring program and gauging interest. Turns out, I really wish we’d waited until we had the testimonial and had thought a bit more about how to strategically find donors who would be a good fit.”

Morgan’s laugh is more of a cute little snort. “Yeah, but if that hadn’t happened, half the girls in Boston wouldn’t hate you.”

“Half the girls in Boston hate me? Why? Because I’m ‘engaged’ to Colt?”

“Pretty much,” she says.

Graham comes back from the bathroom then, cutting our conversation short, and Audrey gets home shortly after. The rest of the first period is frustratingly uneventful, and by the time both teams head toward the locker room, the score is still 0-0. After their 5-2 loss earlier this week, Florida is apparently fighting back with a vengeance.

Graham is predictably whiny about having to go to bed with a 0-0 score, since he wants to know what’s going to happen. It was easier to put him to bed mid-game at the beginning of the season when he just loved hockey, but now that he knows his dad plays for the team, he doesn’t want to miss a minute. And if it was a weekend, Audrey would let him stay up even though he’s a nightmare the next day when he’s overtired. But it’s a school night, so Audrey puts him to bed with the promise of waking him up at the end of the game to tell him the outcome.

“Are you really going to wake him up?” Lauren asks when Audrey comes back into the living room.

“Yeah. He’s such a sound sleeper that I’ll tell him, and he’ll go right back to sleep. He won’t remember in the morning, so I’ll have to tell him again.”

“Okay,” Lauren says decisively as she pulls her long red hair over her shoulder and starts braiding it. “Graham’s in bed, so let’s talk about the HUGE elephant in the room.”

I can’t help it that my mind immediately jumps to wanting to make a dirty joke about how huge Colt is. That’s got to be a perfectly normal reaction to having felt him pressed up against me in the alley, right? The heat runs along my skin as I remember the delicious feeling of being trapped between him and that wall, with my legs wrapped around him and nothing but the fabric of our pants between us. The way he was thrusting against me, running his hard length along my clit . . .

“Oh my god,” Audrey says with a laugh. “What the hell are you thinking about right now?”

“What?” I shake myself out of that memory as quickly as I can, but the flush I can feel on my cheeks is evidence that I was just thinking about something that got me all hot and bothered.

“Holy shit,” Morgan says. “Is this thing between you and Colt even fake? Because there was nothing fake about that look.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, and then realize that’s about the most incriminating thing I could say in response.

“I think you do,” Lauren chides. “This whole time, I thought it was Colt who had it bad for you, but⁠—”

“Yeah, about that . . .” I’ve been meaning to ask her about that comment since we were on the phone Saturday night and haven’t had a chance yet. “What the hell are you talking about? Because if there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain about, it’s that Colt doesn’t have any feelings for me.”

Audrey knows exactly what I mean, and why. But Morgan and Lauren both look at me skeptically, before Morgan says, “And you know that, how?”

I look toward Audrey for backup, because she knows I can’t tell Lauren about what really happened in Vegas. I don’t want Jameson to find out, and I don’t want Lauren to have to lie about it. Audrey was in a similar situation this past fall, when Lauren figured out Drew was Graham’s dad before Jameson did. I hate having secrets from my brother, but I also respect the fact that Colt is his best friend, not to mention his most lucrative client, and neither their friendship nor their business relationships should suffer because of my immaturity and inability to make good decisions when I was nineteen.

“Let’s just say Jules had a little crush on Colt when she was younger, and it was clear that he didn’t return the feelings,” Audrey says. “And no, you cannot tell Jameson that, Lauren. Sorry. Hate to make you keep secrets, but teenage crushes are something only us girls should know about.”

Okay, so I guess we are telling her at least part of the story.

“So you’re telling me,” Lauren says, with a tilt of her head as she narrows her gaze on me, “because he didn’t return Jules’s feelings when she was a teenager, that he couldn’t possibly have feelings for her now?”

“Trust me,” I say, thinking about the way Colt looked at me when Zach interrupted us in the alley, all that regret I saw before he opened his mouth to say it didn’t mean anything. I would have known based on the look alone, but his words were the nail that sealed the coffin. His words only confirmed what I already knew. “He doesn’t have feelings for me.”

“Okay,” Morgan says, but it sounds wholly unconvinced. “Maybe not the kind of feelings you had for him as a teenager. But the way he was looking at you at Audrey’s engagement party?” She fans her face and collapses back against the couch cushion as she giggles. “Girl, he wanted you.”

I’d been so focused on what happened between us in that alley that I’d forgotten the way he was staring at me from across the condo earlier that day. I hadn’t recognized it as lust at the time, but given what happened that night, maybe it was?

“Regardless”—I shake my head—“whether he’s attracted to me or not is irrelevant. If his ‘recreational activities’ are any indication, that man’s attracted to every person with a pair of boobs. It doesn’t mean there are actual feelings involved.”

“And there’s no way,” Audrey adds, laying her hand on my thigh and giving it a squeeze, “that Jules would ever have feelings for Colt again.”

Shit. I’m sure she meant to be supportive, assuring Morgan and Lauren that this is all fake, but if their looks are any indication, she’s sparked their curiosity further.

“And why not?” Lauren asks.

“Because I’m not interested in dating, much less marrying someone with his reputation,” I say, hoping that sounds believable. It’s a huge part of the truth.

“Oh shit!” Audrey says. “Florida just scored.”

We all turn toward the TV in time to see the opposing players huddled together with their sticks in the air. Colt turns toward the goal and grabs his water bottle off the top of the net, and when the camera zooms in on him, he looks more pissed off than I’m used to seeing him, even during a game.

Fortunately, that goal and the subsequent fast-paced nature of the second and third periods have us so focused on the game, no one brings up the earlier conversation about Colt and me again. And I leave before the game is over, claiming that I have to get up early tomorrow, but really, I just want to make sure I’m not dragged into another interrogation about my past. Audrey is the only person who knows everything that happened in Vegas. And it needs to stay that way.