A shadow fell over her page. Lauren slammed the folder shut and glared in the direction of whoever had disturbed her.
Of course her visitor turned out to be Mike Beacon, who didn’t seem to take notice of her obvious wish to be left alone. The jerk even lifted up the satchel she’d left guarding the empty seat and tucked it under the chair in front of him, sitting down beside her.
Damn. It. All.
“Hi,” he said quietly.
Lauren spread her hand onto the cover of the folder and stared down at her shiny fingernails. If she had a child in a year or so, weekly manicures would have to fall by the wayside. But she was ready for a change.
“Lauren,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m so sorry for Elsa’s rudeness. I chewed her out, and I’m going to make her apologize to you.”
“Don’t,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Lauren,” he whispered.
The sound of her name on his lips scraped her insides raw. And when she lifted her chin to meet his dark eyes, she got a little trapped in the warmth she found there. “What?” she said a little sharply, if only to break the spell.
“It’s not nothing. You shouldn’t have to take any flak for what happened a long time ago.”
“Seriously?” She shouldn’t pick a fight with him. That way lay the abyss. But could he really be so clueless?
He blinked, and the light in his eyes dimmed a little. “Yeah. I don’t want her making you feel bad.”
“Riiiight,” Lauren said slowly. “Elsa is a child, and I feel nothing but sympathy for her. Whatever angry thoughts she has, I don’t blame her. But you have no idea what other people said, Mike. What they still say.”
His rugged brow furrowed. “About what?”
“About me.” She knew she should just let this go. But discomfort had churned in her gut for weeks now. “Last night I went into the reception room”—that’s where the wives and families wait for the players after the game—“to distribute the comp tickets to game six. Those women still look at me like they smell something rotten.”
“Why?”
Why. Jesus. “Because I’m their worst nightmare. The other woman. I’m the evil bitch who nearly wrecked your fairy tale.”
Mike’s jaw dropped. “What fairy tale? And you were never the other woman.”
“Please,” she hissed. “They don’t care about the timeline. The minute you walked out on me you became the hero who went back to his family. To everyone else I was proof that karma is real. My own father looked me in the eye and said, ‘That’s what you get for messing around with a married man.’”
He gaped at her. “That’s obnoxious, Lauren. He should have never said that to you.”
“How big of you to say so,” she snapped, realizing with horror that she was about to cry. “You’d like to correct my father’s behavior. And you want to make your thirteen-year-old apologize to me, too. That is hysterical. Because”—She gulped back her tears and looked him straight in the eye—“who’s the only one who really harmed me?”
She knew her point hit home because his face went absolutely pale. “I am.”
“Good guess! And two years later I’m still waiting for the only apology that ever mattered.” Now her eyes were stinging and her throat was closing up. Lauren stood up in a hurry, but his giant body was in the freaking way. “Would you just . . . move,” she whispered hoarsely.
He leaped out of the seat and into the aisle.
Without another glance at him Lauren exited the row and darted forward, into the bathroom at the front of the plane. It was—thank the sweet heavens—unoccupied. The moment the door clicked close, the tears came like a fountain. She yanked a paper towel from the holder and pressed it forcefully to her mouth.
Alone at last, Lauren clung one-handed to the grab bar and cried absolutely silently in the charter jet’s bathroom.
SIX
“Beak—what the fuck, man? It’s only an hour flight,” Patrick O’Doul complained. “Sit still already.”
Mike dragged his eyes off the bathroom door at the front of the jet and sat back. He tipped his head back and sighed. “I don’t know if Lauren is okay.”
“Yeah? I’m sure hanging around the team is hard for her. It would have to be.”
“Not necessarily,” Mike argued. “If she found a great guy and had a happy life, it wouldn’t be hard at all. It’s been two years, right? By now I should just be some hockey punk she used to date.”
O’Doul made a little grunt of half-assed agreement. “Maybe. But can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“It’s been two years, as you point out. When you look at Lauren, do you see just some girl you used to date?”
“No! No way. She’s . . .” She’s still the woman I love. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah, exactly.” And—damn him—O’Doul sounded a little smug, too.
“But, Jesus. I am really not worth the heartache.”
O’Doul chuckled. “You’re not my type, so it’s kinda hard for me to say.”
“She’s still so angry,” Mike admitted. “Maybe when she’s not trapped on a jet with me, it’s easier for her.” That had to be true, right? For two years he’d assumed that she was in a better place than he was—that his sacrifice had been something she could grow to accept.
But the look on her face when he sat down beside her was pure devastation. “I fucked up with her,” he admitted. “Big time.”
“Today?”
He shook his head. Today was just a ripple effect.
“So you’re saying you fucked up two years ago, and you’re just figuring that out now? And I thought I was dumb.”
Mike snorted. “You are, but I’m dumber. I thought we would all be okay, you know? I did what I had to do, but I handled it badly. I knew she’d be mad at me, and I couldn’t stand to disappoint her. So I sort of went quiet at the end.”
O’Doul gave him a sidelong glance. “You shut her out?”
“Yeah.”
“Women hate that.”
“Thanks for the update, captain, seeing as you’re an expert these days.”
O’Doul grinned. “I never broke anyone’s heart.”
“Uh-huh.” It was true, but only because Ari was the first person he’d ever dated. And that relationship was about a month old. O’Doul would learn how fricking complicated it could all become.
“So why’d you do it?” the captain asked.
“Why did I shut her out? Panic, my man. Sheer and total.” He closed his eyes and let himself remember the most painful time in his life. “It was two or three months after Kattenberger bought the team. Lauren and I were planning to move into the city together. The lease was coming up on my rental house, and Nate was moving the team to Brooklyn. Then Shelly got her diagnosis in February. It didn’t seem like a big deal at first. Hell, I assumed she had manufactured a little extra drama around the whole thing.”
He still remembered getting that phone call. He was in his car after practice, waiting outside the clubhouse office for Lauren to get off work. “I have something to tell you,” his ex had said.
“Yeah? Make it quick.” He’d been eyeing the door, watching for Lauren’s shapely legs.
“I have . . .”
There had been a long silence, and he’d been annoyed. “What?”