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“I do. He’s the one who saved my ass after the accident.” Then made me fall for him so he could shatter me into a million pieces, much like when a star explodes and particles go all over the universe, never to be put back again.
He stood there for a moment. A single, blissful, silent moment. Before he shook his head like he was concerned he’d misheard her.
“Rock Falls? As in, the one who you shared a room with? Got up close and personal with? All of that? Staying at his house?”
He yanked out his phone and messed with it until he’d pulled up a photo. João turned the screen toward her.
“This guy? This is the guy you’re talking about?”
She licked her lips and glanced at the photo before her. God, her heart hurt merely looking at him. It was a photo from when he was still active in the league, but it was the same man who’d not only rocked her world but had turned it on its head.
His shaggy blond hair came off as stylishly rakish. The brown eyes that had burned her sparkled with trouble in the image. Bad boy of the league.
João shook the phone, demanding a verbal response from her.
One she gave with reluctance. “Yes. That’s him.”
He drew it back and seconds later had another photo in front of her. This time it was a shot from the local paper of Rock Falls showing him with his best friends. Tully Faulkner and Linc Conner.
“Yes,” she said before he could even speak. “I met them as well.”
He huffed and yanked his phone back once more. She waited for it to be thrust back in her face. He didn’t disappoint.
This was a photo she’d not seen of him before. This was Mitchell Anderson in a tuxedo. A thin woman stood at his left, her hand on his arm. Hope narrowed her eyes slightly as she focused on the way the woman’s nails curled into the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. She was a beauty, but Hope didn’t want to think about him having moved on. Even though she’d left.
He told me to get the fuck out.
“Did you know he had a computer company?”
“Yeah, I did.” She pushed the phone out of her face and started down the path.
“I’m coming with you.”
“João.” Hope didn’t slow down to look at him. Right now, she had to get that image of Mitchell with another woman on his arm out of her mind. “I’m going to meet this Mr. Garfield, not to introduce you to a couple of sports stars.”
“I’m going as your moral support.”
She snorted. “Right.”
“Besides, I could just go to the community center. Seems like they hang out there.” He hurried to catch up to her. “I can play your boyfriend.”
Absolutely not. “No. I am not having a fake boyfriend.”
“Fine. I’ll be moral support, like I said initially. It’s been a while since I’ve been in the US. Perhaps I’ll find something nice to photograph.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I do have all of those of you in the water in your tank top, you know.”
“I know where you live, João. Don’t make me kill you in your sleep.”
“You love me,” he chortled with assuredness.
Damn it, he was right. She did.
As they walked up the trail, she ignored the tingle which grew from her gut and spread throughout her body. Rock Falls wasn’t that large of a town. Chances were she was going to run into him. Or the malicious cow who posed as his mother.
She wasn’t ready. There weren’t many things in the world that could make her so anxious. But at the top of that list was a lone name.
Mitchell Anderson.
Chapter Nineteen
The persistent ring of his phone wouldn’t stop. And it was fucking annoying. Mitchell kicked his blanket off and lurched to a seated position, squinting through his blurry eyes to find the offender.
Nope, it wasn’t on his bedside table. Only his watch that he knocked to the floor. Angling his head toward the other side of the bed, he swore when he saw it lying there.
Why was it all the fucking way over there? He glanced down and realized the answer.
He had made his way over to the side of the bed that Hope had slept on while she was in his home.
And life.
Releasing a string of curses as he lunged over the mattress, he slapped his hand over the phone and swiped accept.
“What?” He was short and rude. Did he care?
Not in the least.
By his estimation, there was about another two days left in his personal circle of hell to work off this hangover he had bestowed on himself.
“Uncle Mitchell?”
Look at that. He hadn’t needed two days. It had only taken two words from a little girl. Greer Henricksen, daughter of Linc’s woman. He loved her like she was his own.
