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“No,” she insisted, now sounding annoyed with him.
“Okay, Liv, who brought you?”
“Come on.” She held out a hand to him, and he eyed her suspiciously.
The last thing he needed was a random reporter walking around finding him with a girl who wasn’t related to him in any way. But this was Olivia. This was a child he knew and cared deeply for, and not to take her hand was worse than any assumptions people might make about their relationship.
He took her offered hand, and she set off in the direction Chet had gone. They were barely out of the players’ hallway when he spotted another familiar face, but not the one he’d expected to come along with Liv’s appearance.
Waiting on the concourse to the spectator seats was Ricki, her arms crossed and a typical unsmiling expression on her face as she scanned the empty halls.
“Ricki? What the hell?”
“Language,” Ricki scolded. “Bad enough we let the kid go back there alone, we don’t need her picking up on your foul habits.”
Alex turned from his sister to Alice’s daughter, and there was no logical connection between the two he could make.
“What’s going on?”
“Come on,” Ricki insisted. “You know I hate long stories.”
Olivia wrenched her hand free of Alex’s and skipped ahead, staying in sight, but barely. She was so comfortable on the concourse it was like she owned the place.
Then she spotted something and ran off full tilt, disappearing from sight.
“Liv,” Alex called, terrified of being responsible for losing her. Alice already hated him, and if he lost her daughter, not only would she never forgive him, she’d probably find a way to murder him.
He went to run after her, but Ricki grabbed his arm, holding him back. “She’s okay.”
“Ricki, start talking. What the hell is going on?”
“I think someone else is better suited to explain.” She jerked her chin to the end of the concourse, where he now saw Liv standing next to a shuttered hot dog vendor, bouncing energetically in front of another familiar figure.
This woman, though, was the one he’d dared not hope to see again, but the only one who made sense given Olivia’s arrival.
Alice stood in the middle of the concourse, brushing Liv’s curls back under the cap and listening intently to whatever her daughter was telling her. When she lifted her face and met Alex’s gaze, his heart stopped beating.
He’d always thought that was a clichéd notion, how one look could make a heart stop working, but the moment her eyes locked on his he was a goner. She might have sent him into full cardiac arrest with the perfect way her lips curved into a smile. It wasn’t the joyous, beautiful smile he knew Alice was capable of. This one was hesitant, apologetic and a little sad.
But it was still Alice standing there smiling at him.
“Ricki…”
“Jesus, you idiot, go on. She’s not here for me.” His sister gave him a shove.
He stepped forward, but his feet felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each. The relatively small distance between him and Alice might as well have been miles for all the time it took to reach her, but once they were within a few feet of each other, she smiled again, and this time it lifted all the weight off him.
He touched her cheek, running his fingers through her hair. If she was going to vanish soon—which was how every dream he’d had like this had ended—he wanted to remember the feel of her before he woke up.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi, yourself.”
“You’re a long way from Florida.”
“I know.”
“And you’re with my sister.”
