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And murder raged behind his eyes.
At once, a thought I’d never before popped unwittingly into my mind: thank fuck for Thatch. Years of standing unblinkingly in the face of the big, bulky giant’s threats had prepared me for this moment.
The answer to Remy’s question didn’t come from me, though. And it didn’t come from Winnie either.
“You’re Wes Lancaster,” Winnie’s daughter stated boldly into the tense room. Remy’s surprised eyes left me immediately, but I didn’t take notice for long. My gaze followed his to the source, and at roughly three-and-a-half-feet tall, Winnie’s daughter, Lexi, made a far more imposing sight than I would ever have expected.
With a rough swallow to suppress my nerves, I jerked my head up until my eyes found Winnie’s. She smiled a little, unsure but confident all at once. “Lexi is pretty into the Mavericks,” she explained, tilting her head down to look at her daughter. “Right, Lex?”
Lexi looked up to me and back to her mother quickly. I expected her to meet my eyes again, but they never quite made it back, instead focusing vaguely on the column of my throat.
God. I wonder if she noticed the nervous swallow.
“Self-made restaurateur, one of Forbes’ wealthiest men under thirty-five with a net worth of four-point-six billion dollars, owner of the New York Mavericks for six years with a five-year stretch including five NFC East titles, two NFC Championships, and three trips to the Super Bowl with one Super Bowl victory,” she rattled off easily, counting off each number she said with a flick of the appropriate number of nimble little fingers.
Apparently, when your eyes almost bug out of your head, it makes you stutter. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah. That’s…that’s me.”
Remy’s assessing gaze found mine again immediately. I avoided his eyes in all the ways I could think to—by looking at literally every other person in the room.
I glanced up at Winnie, but her face was hidden as she put some cookies out on a plate on the counter, so I forced my awkward attention back to her daughter. Her attention was so intimidating, I found myself considering looking back to the angry, two-hundred-or-so-pound man.
“Do you have a favorite player?” I asked, trying to be normal and thanking my lucky fucking stars I had knowledge of the subject matter.
“Quinn Bailey went for over five thousand yards in the regular season last year, fifty-five touchdowns, and only threw ten interceptions.”
I looked to Win again as my eyebrows shot to my hairline. Her daughter was fucking incredible.
“Where does she go to school, Win? College?”
A blush flushed the apples of her cheeks before trailing slowly down the line of her neck. It was unbelievably fucking inappropriate, with her brother and her daughter in the room, but I couldn’t steer my mind away from one thought.
I hope to God she’s turned on.
You’re such an idiot, my brain rebuked. And I knew it was right. I cleared my throat in an attempt to banish any such inappropriate thought.
Tipping my gaze back down to her daughter, I found Lex looking at me intently, her intelligent eyes like laser beams straight to my insides. I hoped like fuck she couldn’t read minds.
“So…” I ventured. “Quinn Bailey is your favorite?”
She blinked, her chin tucked to her chest as she peeked up at me from below. She looked slightly evil and like she might eat my soul. Which, ironically, was exactly how I’d been picturing children for years. My illusions of them weren’t nearly this smart, though. Fuck, I wasn’t this smart.
“No.”
Done with me, she turned and walked right out of the room without looking back. I half expected her to give me the old middle finger salute over her shoulder as she left.
I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but I thought, maybe, just maybe, Winnie’s six-year-old daughter had just schooled me. Hard.
It took me a minute to turn around as I stood there staring after her retreating form.
Winnie spoke hesitantly from behind me. “I’m sorry. She’s…well, Lex is different.”
Her voice sounded funny, and not the kind that made me laugh. I turned to face her in the hopes that visual cues would provide some kind of clue as to the reason.
A line pinched the skin between her brows, and the corners of her lips turned up. It was a self-conscious mix of embarrassment and pride. And for the life of me, I couldn’t understand the first.
“Don’t apologize to this guy,” Remy told her caustically.
Unflaggingly, I agreed with his message, but unlike Remy, I had no plans to address it directly, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t have used that tone.
Working hard to turn my glare down to a simmer, I looked from Remy to Winnie and softened everything about myself when I saw the insecurity on her face.
Winnie was a brilliant woman—one who didn’t need me or her brother or any-fucking-body telling her anything about the way she raised her daughter or didn’t. She could draw her own conclusions from the awe in my voice.
“She’s awesome. I can’t believe she knows all that shit,” I told her, confessing, “I don’t even know all that shit.”
Remy nodded, seemingly satisfied with my response, and turned back to his sister, his hands going accusingly to his hips when he noticed something other than his night of crisis and the “stupid fuck” her sister had brought home for the first time. At least, that’s what I figured he thought of me.
“What in the fuck are you wearing?”
She rolled her eyes and waved him off. “It’s a long story.”
When he raised his eyebrows like he was waiting for her to tell it, she went on, “One I’m too tired to tell.”
I watched like a ping-pong ball, oscillating back and forth from one to the other as they exchanged an entire additional conversation with just their eyes.
“Thanks for everything.” Her eyes flicked from him to me and back again. “You can go now.”
“Him or me?” her brother asked, outraged, and fuck if he was the only one wondering. Still, I said nothing. I figured silence was my best bet.
She seemed to make a decision then, and I didn’t even have to guess if I was going to like the answer—I wasn’t.
“Both of you, actually. It’s been a long night. I just want to get Lex to bed and me to bed, and I’d really like to do it not in this costume.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I’d be happy to assist in ridding her of any and all apparel when her brother’s knowing eyes jerked to me.
I kept my face carefully blank.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she told us, ushering us toward the door. “And before you ask, I mean both of you.”
As we stood shoulder to shoulder on her porch, Winnie shut the door with a smile and a wave. Neither her brother nor I moved an inch for several, long seconds.
Remy’s body seemed to hum with what was coming, the very energy of his words reaching out in warning before he uttered even the first syllable.
“I own a shotgun, a shovel, and have three very eager helpers for the disposal of your body.”
My eyes closed in a mix of everything at once—humor, surprise that the first threat of this kind was coming to me at such a late age, and uncertainty about whether or not I could be the man who didn’t deserve a body bag.
“Noted,” I replied finally, but he was already on his way down the steps and he didn’t look back.
Way to go, Wes, I told myself as I descended the stairs slowly. Years of sleeping with anything that moves, and you’ve chosen to become obsessed with a woman with a child and four brothers.
Goddammit.
“Here, Lex,” I said as I handed her a calculator from my desk to fool around with. “Work some numbers while I finish up a little paperwork, okay? And then we can go grab something to eat.”
Her blond hair shifted off of her shoulders as she moved across the room and snatched the calculator out of my hands with excitement. My little Lexi was a numbers girl through and through. Hell, she could probably teach mathematics to high schoolers at this point. Which was why a calculator came in handy when I was in the process of trying to occupy her and finish up some work.
I rarely considered bringing my kid to work, but this actually made the second time in a week. Her nanny, Melinda, who attended NYU, had fall break last week and a huge economics exam to study for this week, and I tried not to rule her like a fucking dictator. She was a young girl, working her way through school and doing her best to straddle the line of adolescence and adulthood. I could see her clear as day, her struggles and determination, and when I looked really closely, I saw a younger version of myself rather than Melinda.
My mom had worked like a dog to support the five of us after my dad left, but there were only twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and fifty-two weeks in a year—and a very finite amount of money to be made.
So I’d been that girl, working my way through college and medical school with two jobs, fighting to find the light at the end of the tunnel that would afford me the ability to juggle one life instead of three.
When Nick Raines had shown up with his quick smiles, easy attitude, and life-lightening humor, I’d grabbed on as tight as I could and ridden the ride as long as he’d let me.
Of course, as all roller coasters do, the one with Nick had come to an abrupt end, and when the high wore off—and the pregnancy test read positive—I’d added responsibility to my life rather than absolved it.
