The Game

Chapter 6-2

I shook my head with a smile. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

He grinned. “Probably not.”

Miller and his boyfriend walked over, with Travis in tow. I could see the stars in their eyes, so I made the introductions. “Christian, this is my friend Miller, his boyfriend, Trent, and Trent’s brother, Travis.”

Christian shook everyone’s hand.

“I’m a huge fan,” Miller said.

“Yes, huge fan.” I rolled my eyes. “He asked me what inning we were in earlier.”

Christian chuckled. “Well, at least they stock these things with alcohol and food.”

Miller leaned down and picked up a serving dish full of hors d’oeuvres. “Not just food. Caviar and champagne. If I had known this is how games were, I might have tried out for the football team instead of the badminton team.”

“Um…you didn’t actually try out for the badminton team,” I reminded him. “You were the water boy because you had the hots for the twenty-five-year-old coach.”

Miller waved me off. “We don’t need to be all technical now…”

I took the pizza boxes from Christian with a laugh. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

“She drinks Mike’s Hard Lemonade,” Miller said. “I had to smuggle them into the stadium. I figured they didn’t stock them in their fancy wine fridges up here.”

Christian looked amused. “I don’t think I’ve had one of those things since high school. But I’ll take one.”

Travis turned his head and sneezed. He was five feet away from me and covered his mouth, yet I held my breath and started to count anyway. Miller caught what I was doing and smirked, while Christian glanced back and forth between us.

“What am I missing here?” he said.

I pointed to Miller since I hadn’t reached fifteen yet.

He rocked back and forth on his heels. “She holds her breath for fifteen seconds after people sneeze.”

Christian’s smile was crooked. “Why?”

“Germs.”

Christian chuckled, but didn’t pursue it further.

For the next half hour, my guests pretty much formed a circle around Christian. If he minded, no one would ever have known it. He was gracious as could be. At one point, he excused himself to go to the bathroom, and when he came out, I was packing up my things.

“Did you drive here?” he asked, rolling up the sleeves on his white dress shirt.

My eyes snagged on his muscular forearms, and by the time I tore them away, I’d completely forgotten what we were talking about. “Umm... I’m sorry. What did you ask?”

The corner of his lip twitched. “I asked if you drove here.”

“No, I actually don’t drive. I came with Miller.”

He looked over at the three men now talking with Coach. “Double date?”

“No… Well, at least not that I was aware of. Though I think Miller might’ve had other ideas.”

“Can I drop you home then? We can take Coach first.”

“I actually live in the City.”

“So do I.”

“Oh. Then I guess yeah, sure.” I smiled, but felt a bit nervous. “I need to let Miller know.”

Miller was still standing with Trent and Travis when I walked over. “Hey,” I said. “I’m going to go with Christian to drop off my grandfather. He’ll give me a ride home after.”

Miller’s eyes sparkled with excitement, and I noticed Travis’s smile wilt a bit. When I went out to the seating area to double-check that I hadn’t left anything behind, Travis joined me.

“Hey.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you think maybe I could get your phone number? Take you out to dinner sometime?”

I always felt terrible saying no when a guy asked me out, especially when he was nice. In fact, I’d gone on a few dates solely because I’d felt bad declining. At least this time I had a reason to give him, not that I needed one.

“I’m sorry. I recently started seeing someone I used to work with, and I have so much going on at work these days, I just don’t think it’s the right time.”

Travis forced a smile. “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

“But it was really nice meeting you.”

“Sure. You, too. Thanks for having me today. I had a great time.”

When Travis turned away, I noticed Christian watching me through the glass. Unlike when most people get caught staring, he didn’t look away. Instead, he smirked and kept his eyes trained on me as I approached the door and opened it.

“Broke his heart, huh?” His grin widened as I walked through.

“How do you know what Travis and I talked about out there?”

“I know the look of defeat.”

“Oh really? So a lot of women turn you down?”

“Nah.” He grinned. “I’m usually the reason they’re turning down some other guy.”

I rolled my eyes. “Full of yourself much?”

Christian shrugged. “Just being honest.”

“Come on, honest Abe. Let’s get out of here. The cleaning crew has looked in a few times to see if we’re still here. I’m sure they’d like to go home in the near future.”

An hour later, we’d dropped off my grandfather, and Christian and I were alone in the van.

“So today was your first time sitting in the owner’s box, right?” he asked.

I nodded. “I went to all the team’s games over the last two years, but I sat in regular seats. My sisters weren’t going to welcome me unless they had to.”

Christian was quiet for a moment. “It must’ve been crazy to find out who your father was and that he’d left you a football team, both on the same day.”

I nodded. “It was. Most people probably think I won the lotto by inheriting the majority of shares of a professional football team, but it didn’t feel like that at all. It made me sad to realize my father had known I’d existed and didn’t bother to get to know me.”

“You really had no idea he was your dad, huh?”

I shook my head. “My mom was only nineteen when she had me. She always said my father was a guy she met at a concert out of state, and she didn’t even know his last name. After she died, I went to live with my aunt for a short time. I asked her if she knew more about who my father was, and she admitted that my mother had confided that he was a married man. But she didn’t know his name, and she suspected my mom might not have told whoever it was about her pregnancy.”

Christian’s eyes slanted to mine. “But John obviously knew, if he wrote you into his will.”

I nodded. “Though I have no idea if he knew from day one or found out years later. My mom was a hostess in the luxury boxes at the stadium for sixteen years, from the time she was eighteen. She sometimes worked in the owner’s suite. They could’ve had a long-term affair or only a night together. When I first found out, I tried to talk to my half-sisters and find out what they knew. But they weren’t exactly amenable to speaking to me, much less sharing anything personal they knew about their dad.”

“Not surprising, knowing Tiffany and Rebecca.”

“Yeah.”

“They must’ve freaked out when the will was read.”

“I would imagine. I wasn’t there for the actual reading. One day a lawyer knocked on my door and said a bequest had been made to me from John Barrett. I didn’t even know who that was until the attorney explained he owned the Bruins. I figured maybe he had been friendly with my mom.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I had to work, so I didn’t go to the reading. I found out what I’d been left that night on the news.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. It was a crazy time. One day I was living my quiet life, and the next I couldn’t go anywhere without a reporter sticking a microphone in my face. And my lovely new half-sisters held a press conference saying I was a gold digger who’d manipulated a sick man, even though I’d never met John Barrett.”

“Jesus, and I thought I had a lot of pressure.”

“My grandfather likes to say pressure makes diamonds. He forgets it can also cause a nervous breakdown.”

Christian looked over once again and smiled. “Nah…you got this.”

A little while later, we pulled up to the address I’d given him. Christian’s brows dipped as he looked over at the crappy old building. “Do you need to stop at the store or something?”

I laughed. “No, this is where I live.” I pointed up to the third-floor window, two stories above the fruit stand downstairs. “It’s a walk up, but it’s rent controlled, and I have a skylight.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Since I was sixteen. I worked for Mr. Zhang, the owner, in exchange for a place to stay until I finished college and got a full-time job.”

“You said your aunt took care of you after your mother died, right?”

I nodded. “She did, but she died during a routine hernia surgery six months after my mom. She had a reaction to the anesthesia. So the state placed me with a cousin of my mom’s. That didn’t work, so I moved out on my own.”

“At sixteen? The state didn’t care?”

“They didn’t know. Social services is so overwhelmed with people who don’t have places to stay that they don’t check on people too often who are taken in by family.”

Christian was quiet as he glanced toward the grocery store again. “I guess it’s convenient to get fresh fruit.”

I smiled. “That it is. And I’m guessing you live somewhere a little more swanky?”

Christian squinted at the building. “How do you get in?”

“Through the store. There’s a door in the back that leads upstairs to the two apartments.”

“What about when the market is closed?”

“It’s open twenty-four hours. So it’s never been a problem.”

Christian grinned. “You really jumped into the billionaire lifestyle, huh?”

“Totally.” I chuckled. “Well, thank you for the ride home—and for dropping off my grandfather.”

“Hang on. Let me find a parking spot, and I’ll walk you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Maybe not. But it’s dark out, and I’m going to do it anyway.” He looked around. The street was lined with bumper-to-bumper cars, so he hit the button for the flashers. “On second thought, right here looks good.”

Christian got out of the van and jogged around to my side to open the passenger door. He held out a hand to help me. Being the klutz I am, I somehow dropped my binder as I stepped to the curb. It fell to the sidewalk and bounced, spilling the contents all over the street.

“Shit.” I bent to scoop up the papers, but the breeze caught a few pages and sent them sailing down the street.

Christian chased those down, while I corralled the others. When they were all cleaned up, he went to hand me the ones he’d gathered, then pulled them in for a closer inspection. “You’re keeping your own stats? You know there’s a team analyst who does that—more than one, actually.”

“I know. I used their stats to build an algorithm to try to predict the success rate of certain plays in the future.”

“Really? You can do that?”

“I thought so. It worked pretty well for some players, but not so much for others.”

“Which ones?”

“Which ones what?”

“Did it not work for?”

I shuffled the loose papers around until I found the ones with the most red ink. “Yates, for one. His was completely off. And so was Owens.”

Christian smiled. “Ah, you’re missing the human factor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yates’s girlfriend dumped him this week. He’s a great player, but he’s also emotional as s**t. He was off his game at practice all week, too. And Owens is worried about his contract renewal. His wife recently found out she’s pregnant with their fifth kid, and he’s in his early thirties. He’s got a lot riding on his shoulders with an uncertain future.”

“Oh wow,” I said. “I didn’t know any of that.”

Christian extended the papers in his hands to me. “Numbers are only half the equation. You need to get to know the people, too.”

I scrunched up my nose. “I’m not so great at that.”

He smiled. “I can help, if you want. I’m benched for a while still and mostly sitting around twiddling my thumbs.”

“That’s kind of you to offer. Normally when I tell people the things I’m doing for fun, they just look at me like I’m nuts.”

Christian walked me to the entrance of the fruit stand, which was only twenty feet away. “By the way, what was the reason you shot down the guy who asked you out earlier?”

“Umm… I recently went out on a first date with someone I used to work with, and my life is kind of busy right now.”

His eyes dropped to my lips for a half second. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. “You and the guy you worked with exclusive?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not yet anyway. But I also think I need to get settled in my new role and let that be the focus for a while—at least get to know all the different people in the organization and learn who I can trust and who I need to look out for.”

Christian rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. “Alright. I get that. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I know everyone in the corporate organization pretty well, and all of the players. I’ll come by after practice and help you figure it all out.” He shrugged. “Sooner you’re settled, the sooner you can have dinner with me.”

“I never said I’d have dinner with you.”

Christian leaned in and kissed my cheek. “We’ll work on that, too. ’Night, boss lady.”