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His words rang out, stark and unrelenting in the quiet stillness of the penthouse. The silence between them stretched to deafening. He spun on his heel and stalked toward the kitchen.
* * *
Alex pulled two champagne flutes out of the cupboard, set them on the counter and leaned his forehead against the cool wood. What was he doing? Izzie hadn’t deserved that. But that tabloid had set him off. On the heels of everything else he was dealing with, after that unexpected phone call from Jess this week, it was just too much.
Jess’s voice had been raw, thick with tears when she’d caught him on his way out of a meeting. Her marriage to Gerry was falling apart. She needed him. And fool that he was, he’d canceled on Izzie and agreed to meet her for dinner, because no matter what she’d done to him, he’d loved her once and she needed him.
Pressure built in his head, the kind before a thunderstorm that held you in its vise. Once he would have died to hear Jess tell him she still loved him. That she’d made a mistake. Instead it had seemed like some cruel joke that was ten years too late. Because he’d stopped missing her, needing her a long time ago.
Because he was falling for another woman. Hard.
He pressed his palms against the wood and levered himself away from the counter. Pulled the chilled champagne out of the wine fridge and started unpeeling the foil. Anything to avoid the truth. That he was terrified of falling so hard again, of putting that power in another person’s hands that it was almost blinding.
He worked the cork out of the bottle. The thing was, Izzie wasn’t anything like Jess. Sitting across from his ex it had become crystal clear for him. With Izzie, honesty was like a truth serum she’d drunk at birth. Whereas Jess had spun lie after lie, abandoned him when he needed her most, Izzie had given up that story for him. She was strong and she was courageous. And yes, a little neurotic and insecure at the same time. But weren’t they all human? Didn’t they all have their weaknesses?
The cork hit the ceiling with a resounding thump. The question was, could he offer Izzie more than a brief, few-month affair? Had Jess’s betrayal rendered him incapable of trust again?
He picked up the bottle and poured the champagne. His overwhelming instinct was to walk in there and finish what he’d started so she’d call it quits for him. Yet something told him if he messed things up with Izzie, it would be the biggest regret of his life.
Which left him exactly where?
Scooping up the bottle and glasses, he found her on the terrace, looking out at the floodlit 843-acre New York landmark that was Central Park. Her shoulders were straight as a board, her hands curled into fists at her sides.
She turned around. “Alex, I—”
He waved her off. Handed her a glass. “I need to tell you about Jess. About that night...”
Her eyes widened. He walked to the railing, turned and leaned back against it. Started talking before he changed his mind. “I met Jess in high school. She was smart, strong, working two jobs to keep her family going after her mother walked out on them and her dad fell apart and started drinking. I was from a wealthy family. I could help them, so I did. She was determined to keep her brothers and sisters together and not let the family get split up by social services.”
“And trying to get through school at the same time,” Izzie added quietly. “That must have been tough.”
He nodded. “When I finished college and went to play in New York, Jess came to live with me and my sisters. At first things were great. She loved New York, she loved living the life of a professional football player’s girlfriend, and I loved indulging her. But then I got injured.”
He pulled in a breath at the sudden tightness in his chest. “It’s never a good thing when a quarterback tears his rotator cuff, but my physical therapy was going well and there was every indication I’d recover. Jess, on the other hand, wasn’t handling it so well. She couldn’t handle any kind of uncertainty in her life and the thought of me losing my career made her nuts.”
“Because of her past.”
He nodded. “She’d heard they were worried about my arm. There was speculation in the press they were grooming Gerry Thompson, the backup quarterback, to take my job. We had a big fight the night before a qualifying game for the playoffs. She said I was being naive. That I didn’t see how management was writing me off.”
He pulled the top buttons of his shirt open and paced across the terrace. “I went out and had a few too many drinks...wondered if she was right about Gerry.”
Izzie pressed her fingers to her temples. “And you decided to play.”
He nodded. “I’d been so nervous about my arm and trying to speed my recovery, but I was hurting. A friend told me about this guy who had high-level street painkillers that had helped him through an injury. They worked well, too well for me, and I started to take them regularly, telling myself I could stop when I needed to. That night, when I decided to play, I double dosed. I felt amazing. I was so high by the third quarter I felt invincible. And then I threw that pass.”
“I saw the tapes,” Izzie said huskily. “It was so perfect.”
It had been perfect. It had also been his last. His throat constricted, threatened to cut off the air he so desperately needed. The memory of the ball leaving his hand, sailing through the air in a perfect arc and landing in Xavier’s outstretched arms would forever be burned into his mind. The roar of the crowd, the glare of the lights as Xavier dove into the end zone for the touchdown. He was back. They were winning. And that was all that had mattered.
The illegal hit, long after the play, had been unexpected. The weight of the defender crashing into him, taking him to the ground until all he could feel was the searing pain in his right arm. His throwing arm. The indescribable white-hot burn that had pushed him to his knees. The hush that had fallen over 60,000 fans...the most eerie sound he’d heard in his life.
He blinked hard. The humiliation of being lifted off the field in a stretcher had been the most helpless feeling he’d ever experienced. The knowledge that that night had been the last time he would ever lead his team onto the field excruciating. Because he’d known. He’d known.
The weight of Izzie’s hand on his forearm brought his gaze up. “There was nothing the doctors could do?”
He shook his head. Each surgeon’s diagnosis had been the same. It’s damaged too badly, Alex. Your career is over.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t go to my father and plead for a job. Jess left me and married Gerry a few months later.”
Izzie’s fingers tightened around his arm. “She wasn’t worth half of you, Alex.”
He’d felt as if he wasn’t worth anything in those months afterward. His body broken, his future in tatters, it had taken him a year to pull himself together.
He shrugged her fingers off. “I didn’t tell you this for your pity. I told you because I need you to understand what happened between Jess and me. I can’t be with someone with those types of insecurities.”
“How could you not want her back?” She said it as if she couldn’t help herself. “She’s so stunning. You have so much history together.”
“Because I want you,” he said quietly. “And if you’d ever stop comparing yourself to that mother and sister of yours, you might actually see why.”
A dull red color stained her cheeks. “I know, it’s just—hard to break old habits.”
“You’re going to have to or this isn’t going to work.” He stepped closer and ran his thumb over her cheek. “There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe it has to be the same as it was for our parents.. They made choices. We create our own destiny. But, I am only one-half of this equation, Iz. I need you with me.”
Her gaze darkened. “I can, I promise you I can. I just may not always be perfect about it. You’ve got to cut me some slack.”
He let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. Hadn’t realized how important her answer was to him. He dragged his thumb down over the soft flesh of her bottom lip. “Prove it.”
Her eyes widened as she registered what he was asking of her. She pressed her lips shut and took a step backward and he wasn’t sure if she was going to run or stay. Then she deposited her glass on the table and moved her fingers to the buttons of her blouse.
She was shaking, her hands fumbling with the tiny pearl buttons. But he held himself back. This had to be all Izzie.
She released the second, the third button; exposed the rounded curves of her breasts. The dusty blue of the silk that encased her flesh made his throat go dry. Down her hands went, dispensing with the rest of the buttons. She pulled the shirt from the waistband of her skirt, shrugged out of it and dropped it to the ground. The dusky imprint of her nipples protruding through the silk made him pull in a breath.
Kill me now. Except he’d asked for this. Some strange, demented part of him needed to see that she had the self-confidence to be with him.
Her hands slid to the zipper of her skirt. She undid it and pushed it down over her hips. Her curves in the almost-there underwear were pure perfection, the dark shadow of her feminine curls drawing his eye. He ached to bury himself in her. Now.
