Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HUGO
I hand Mario two bills that amount to double what he charges for Boston’s best hot dogs and turn to face the best view in the city—the back of Wilcox’s head.
Well, the front of it is better, but the back is all I can see right now, so I’ll take it.
She sits where I left her, at a picnic bench, her back to the table, facing an open grassy area of Boston Common, framed by the bright green trees and city buildings gleaming against a clear blue sky.
She leans back and rests her elbows on the table, stray hairs that have escaped her ponytail waving in the gentle breeze.
What the fuck has gotten into me? I’m noticing the movement of strands of hair, the greenness of trees, and sun bouncing off buildings. Either someone crept in the other night while I was sleeping and made some adjustments to the wiring of my brain, or—more likely—it’s all Wilcox’s fault .
How has this woman affected me so deeply? I want to be around her as much as possible, I want to talk to her as much as possible, and I definitely want to do what we did in the pub on Saturday night as much as possible.
I’ve heard talk that these are all symptoms of “falling for someone,” but I never expected to contract the affliction.
And if I were going to fall for someone, Wilcox should be the last name on the list. How am I supposed to battle against her for this job when her smile makes my stomach feel funny and Mr. Happy do a little jig? Putting her out of the job would make her miserable. I don’t want Wilcox to be miserable. She deserves all the joy in the world.
“Don’t let them go cold,” Mario says.
I turn back to see him pointing at the two giant delicious hot dogs sitting on the counter of his cart.
“Never, Mario. Thanks.” I shove a handful of condiment sachets into one pocket, napkins into the other, and head back to Wilcox.
This really is the perfect early summer evening. And I’m lucky enough to spend it with the perfect woman.
“Whoa.” Her eyes widen when I hand her the veggie dog she asked for. “Maybe we only needed one of those between us.”
As she takes it from me, a couple bits of fried onion land in her lap. If we weren’t in a public place, I’d dive down there headfirst and lick them off.
“Like Lady and the Tramp you mean?” I empty my pockets onto the table and straddle the bench beside her. The perfect position to admire her profile. “You start at one end, me at the other, and we meet in the middle?”
“Then their lips touch, right?” She side-eyes me with the most delicious sarcastic pout. “I’m not kissing you with onion breath.”
On paper, they might not look like the most romantic words on the planet. But falling from her lips, they send a surge of desire through me that tips me over the edge. I’m certain she wouldn’t have mentioned kissing if she didn’t actually want to kiss me. And I can’t wait another second to have my mouth on hers.
“Then you’d better kiss me now.”
Leaning over our hot dog-holding hands, I capture her sweet, delicious cupid’s bow between my lips. She tips her head, her mouth welcoming me, our tongues finding each other.
Jesus Christ, this woman has my groin permanently ready to be called off the bench. She only has to look at me and my balls start their warmup stretches and lunges. The brush of her lips gets them jogging, and when her tongue touches mine the ref might as well blow the whistle because it’s game over.
It’s all I can do to stop myself tossing my dinner over her shoulder and dragging her onto the table.
“Excellent appetizer.” She smiles against my lips. “Ketchup or mustard?” Her eyes don’t leave mine as she reaches for the condiments and holds up a handful of sachets next to my face.
“Oh, you romantic old devil.” I take one of each. “I have to stop kissing you now anyway. My hot dog is getting cold.”
“Is that one of those odd British euphemisms?”
“Fuck, no. That dog is always hot.” I give her a cheesy wink. “For you, anyway.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“I usually don’t say much to girls at all. ”
“Your reputation is all true then.”
“Nah. Way worse.”
She half rolls her eyes, the spark in them my favorite thing about teasing her—like she wants to be pissed off with me but can’t bring herself to be.
“You mean there could be a bunch of little Hugos running around across the globe?” There’s a hint in her voice that she might actually be concerned about that.
“Not a chance. I keep Mr. Happy fully wrapped at all times.”
“ Mr. Happy? ”
“Yup.”
“Are you fourteen?”
“No. But I was once. And you should have seen how happy he was then. All the time.”
She shakes her head like she’s given up on me as a lost cause and twists to face me, tucking one leg underneath herself. We set our dogs on the table and squeeze on the ketchup and mustard.
“You’re right about this, though,” she says. “The common is a good place to blow away the cobwebs of a shitty day. I haven’t been here since I’ve been back in the city.”
“And I didn’t bring you here just for the scenery.” I lick my fingers and turn to face the view. “See those kids over there?”
I point toward the open grass in front of us, where a group of ten boys, agesabout thirteen or so, are pacing out a rectangle and placing their backpacks to mark the corners.
“Yup.” She picks up her hot dog like she’s wrangling a writhing snake. “Christ, I need two hands for this. ”
“That’s what she said.” I couldn’t help myself and fully deserve her exaggerated groan. “Sorry. It just slipped out.”
“ That’s what she said.” Her cheeky smirk is a fucking delight. Wilcox looks at the boys. “So what’s the deal with these kids?”
She opens her mouth so wide it looks like her jaw might dislocate, and shoves in the end of the hot dog. Okay, so this was a bad idea. I should have gotten sandwiches, or chips, or bloody salads. Because I have no fucking idea how I’m supposed to keep Mr. Happy under control when she’s shoving a gargantuan sausage into her mouth.
I unstraddle the bench so I’m also facing the kids, and cross my legs. “Watch them.”
“Wow. This is a great veggie dog, by the way. Usually the carts dish up something closer to tepid, moist cardboard.”
“Yup. Mario is the best.”
“You’re a regular then?”
“Regular enough. I don’t know anyone in Boston outside of work. So I sometimes just wander around.”
“And into random Irish pubs?”
“ Lucky Irish pubs, you mean.” I take a bite of my dog and give her the old Powers eyebrow wiggle.
She ignores me and turns her attention back to the boys, who’ve now marked goalposts with piles of their sweaters. And one of them has just dumped a football out of a bag.
“You’ve brought me to a kids’ five-a-side soccer game?” She scoops up some ketchup that’s about to drip off the end of her sausage and wipes her finger on her tongue .
I cross my legs the other way. “Would you rather I’d said let’s get dressed up and go back to Pulacini’s?”
“God, no.”
“Exactly. I know very well you’d rather be here, unshowered, in sports gear, no makeup, and eating dinner you can hold in your hands while watching a ball being kicked.”
“Hey, I’ve got mascara on.” She nudges me with her elbow. “You are annoyingly right about the rest of it, though.”
“Why is it annoying? Isn’t it good that I get you?” It is. Not only good. But really bloody special. I know it is.
She might not know it yet, but if her presence has made me notice leaves fluttering on branches, birds twittering as they hop about on grass, and, Lord of all horrors, singing along to Taylor Swift the other day, then it’s my life’s mission to convince her of it too.
“Do you think I get you ?” she asks, then runs her tongue through a line of mustard oozing from the top of her bun.
For fuck’s sake, there are only so many ways a man can cross his legs.
I grab a napkin and wipe my mouth. “I think you think I’m annoying. Not cute annoying. Not amusing annoying. And not so frustratingly hot annoying that you want to drag me onto this table and bang the annoyance right out of me.”
“Well, not in front of the children.” She gestures to the young footballers and takes another bite of sausage.
“Whoa.” Her cry is muffled by whatever it is they make veggie dogs from. “Did you see that?” She points at the game and looks at me, eyes wide, one cheek stuffed full like a lopsided hamster .
There we go. I knew she’d spot him straight away. Just like I did. The kid who passes with the effortless accuracy of Beckham or Messi.
“I did.”
Her eyes go back to the boy. “And look at the way he moves.”
“Yup.”
“He handles the ball like an adult. Like he came out of the womb with cleats on.”
“Yup. That’s Jordan.”
“You know his name?”
“Yeah. They play here every Wednesday. The first time I stopped to watch them he recognized me and came over to say hi.”
“Didn’t that piss you off?”
“Why would it piss me off? He’s just a kid. And a football-mad kid. The best kind.”
“Because you hate people bothering you. The press, the public, Sonya in accounting when she complains your receipts are too scrunched up.” She tilts her head the same way she did when I kissed her a few minutes ago. “See, I do get you. Well, parts of you.”
“Any particular parts?”
“I’m ignoring that.” She returns her focus to the kids. “Anyway, so Jordan’s the reason you brought me here?”
I love her expression of self-satisfaction when she works stuff out—she sticks her chin up a bit and screws up one corner of her mouth. Like the other day when she was trying to fix one of her broken shelves. It took all my willpower not to dive in, take over, and do it for her, but I thought I should give what Tom said a go and leave her to it. Eventually she realized she was screwing the new bracket on upside down, and the look of pride on her face when she made it work was totally worth it.
“Yup. Well, that and the gourmet meal.” I hold up the remainder of my hot dog. “And the, you know, scenery.” I gesture at my own face.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” She turns her attention back to the game and her dinner.
Winding her up is the hottest foreplay imaginable.
“Told you I understand you. I mean, what better first date could you wish for than to find someone who could be the future of the Commoners? You’re always talking about the sustainability of the team. Nurturing players. Planning for the future. Starting an academy.”
“Hold on.” She wipes a mustard-ketchup combo smear from the side of her achingly delicious mouth. “ This is a date? A first date ?”
“Gotta say, Wilcox, that hurts a little.” I mime knifing myself in the chest. “Is that not what this is?”
“You don’t strike me as the dating type.”
“I’m not. At least I wasn’t. But?—”
“See that cross?” She jumps to her feet. “From Jordan? That kid’s a star in the making.”
Watching her watch the game is mesmerizing. Her eyes are everywhere, her mind ticking over a mile a minute. I’m witnessing her thought processes and ideas happening in real time, and it’s a beautiful thing.
She finally takes her eyes off the kids and discovers me silently staring up at her.
She smiles and sits back down. “You brought me here because you thought he’d be a good recruit if I can get an academy off the ground, right?”
“Of course.”
“Very thoughtful.” She taps my knee. “Anyway, I interrupted. Sorry. Continue with the dating thing. That boy’s a dynamo, though.”
No one single person has ever made me smile as much as Wilcox does. “I love that you love footy this much.”
“I was reared on it. Just like you were.”
“Yeah. But in a different way.”
“What is your story?” she asks. “I mean, I’ve read your PR stuff, but what’s the real story? You know about my shitty family now, so what’s the deal with yours?” She takes another bite of hot dog.
“Football’s always been the most important thing in my life. That’s it.” Telling her the whole thing would only make her think badly of me and right now that’s the last thing I want.
“Oh, come on.” She nudges me and swallows her mouthful of food. “You can’t do that. When I said my dad didn’t want me and that was it, you got me to tell you the rest. So now it’s your turn.”
She’s right. Why is she always so irritatingly, sexily right? It’s not fair to expect openness from her and give her none in return.
“Okay.” I wipe my greasy mouth with the back of my hand and keep my eyes on the game. It’ll be easier to tell her if I’m not looking at her.
“I’m from a not-well-off part of east London. But as long as some kid on my street had a ball we could play a game. It cost nothing. Then when I got a taste for it and wanted to practice on my own, I found an old chewed-up tennis ball abandoned by a dog and kicked it for hours against the side of our house. We had a council house—public housing, you’d call it.”
I can still hear the sound of that dirty ball hitting the wall and bouncing onto the cracked concrete. “I didn’t know anything about training, but I figured if I could control a small ball coming at me quickly, I could control a bigger ball coming at me slower even better.”
“Natural instincts,” Wilcox says. “Few kids are born with that.”
“Yeah, well, my parents and two brothers always mocked me for never wanting to do anything but kick a ball. And I almost stopped playing because I was tired of the teasing.”
She turns her head to look at me. “That’s terrible.”
Her brow is furrowed over worried eyes. Such a small thing, but to see her concern for little-kid me sends me skittering toward the brink of emotional. No one needs that, least of all me, so I refocus my attention on the remainder of my food.
“Maybe, but I always knew the football thing was my only chance of getting away from that life.”
“Then at some point you got spotted by a Man U scout?”
“Yeah, when I was playing for a local youth team. And when they picked me up and I started getting paychecks bigger than anyone in my family could ever have dreamed of, their attitude flipped on a dime. Except it wasn’t me they were interested in. It wasn’t me that they were proud of. It was the money.”
Jordan shouts at a teammate for an atrocious pass. He reminds me of myself at that age. Actually, at all ages. “For a while there, I was the idiot who thought he could buy his parents’ affection. I gave them everything they wanted, spent every penny on them and my brothers. But it was never enough. They thought I was a bottomless pit of cash, a slot machine that they could keep pulling the lever on and money would keep falling out. ”
“God, that’s awful. I hate the thought of anyone treating you like that.” She checks herself. “Of treating anyone like that.”
“It took a financial adviser to get me to see the light. I resisted at first, but finally realized I had to draw a line. Now, I make sure they all have what they need, but in a more regulated way. A payment of the same amount every month. I do right by them.”
“Do you see them?”
“Yup. I was there at Christmas. I’m not going to be the rich son who fucked off because he thought he was better than them. That would only lead to more criticism. I mean, visiting them isn’t exactly the most fun I ever have. But they’re my family. So I do it.”
“Sounds familiar,” she says.
“Exactly. See, anyone can have family bullshit. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich and own a soccer team, or poor and your kid plays in the street in clothes passed down from his two older brothers. Family bullshit is family bullshit.”
We turn to look at each other at the same time. Her eyes lock with mine, and the more I stare into them, the more I see my childhood angst reflected back at me. “The pain of your family bullshit is no different from the pain of my family bullshit, Wilcox.”
When her eyes gloss over and shimmer in the warm evening sun, I slowly peel my gaze from hers and look back at the five-a-side game.
It takes a swallow and a sniff before I can speak. “Anyway, your dad was an asshole for selling to the Fab Four and not giving the club to you.”
“That’s not fair.” She coughs, like having to defend him chokes her. “I told you, he needed the money to retire. So he couldn’t give it to me. And it’s fine. I get it.”
I shove the last chunk of hot dog into my mouth and scrunch up the wrappings.
“Seriously?” She looks at the ball of napkins and paper in my hand. “How have you finished that when I’m not even halfway through mine?”
“The best thing—actually, maybe the only good thing—about not playing anymore is being able to eat what the fuck I like, when the fuck I like.”
“And there I was, thinking it was getting to work with me.”
My heart does that skippy thing again. The one that sends prickles down my arms and legs.
“Careful.” I point at the boys. “You’re going to miss Jordan’s free kick.”
When the game’s over, I’ve finished teasing Wilcox mercilessly about her hot dog-eating capacity, and we’ve had a chat with Jordan, we gather up our garbage and toss it into the trash can.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she says. “I’m going to walk home.”
I want to say goodbye about as much as I want a kick to my bad knee. But although we kissed earlier, I can’t be sure she wants any more than that tonight. It’s obvious there’s still a part of her that thinks this is a terrible idea.
And, I mean, objectively, that’s absolutely right.
But if you take stupid objectivity out of the way, the right thing is for me to peel her clothes off agonizingly slowly, kiss every inch of her skin, and do all manner of things with my tongue and my fingers until she’s at the point of frustration where she begs me to be inside her.
Even if that’s not on the cards tonight, there’s something I need to get off my chest that will at least keep her here next to me a little bit longer.
“Look,” I tell her, my heart in my mouth at the thought of cracking this open again, but I have to say it. “About the whole Ramon thing.”
“It’s okay,” she says, waving and turning to walk away. “Forget it.”
“No, I know a cup of tea isn’t the answer to everything. I want to explain.” I close the gap between us, put us within touching distance. “I want you to understand.”
I look down at the grass between my black sneakers and her white ones. “I really was trying to help. If I’d thought for a single second you didn’t want me to do that, I would have stayed outside.”
I can’t help but chuckle when I look up and meet her suspicious wide eyes and raised eyebrows.
“Okay, that might be hard to believe,” I admit. “I would have found it difficult, yeah. Because I would have wanted to march in and punch him into next week until he stopped speaking to you like that. But if I’d known you wanted me to stay out of it, I would have.”
Her expression morphs into something softer. “Would you really? Or are you just saying that?”
“I’m not just saying it.”
She sighs. “This whole job situation was weird and confusing enough to start with. But now…with this…” She points from her chest to mine, her finger brushing my T-shirt. “It’s so hard to know what to believe. Or what’s real.”
I reach around her waist and ease her toward me, leaving space for her to withdraw if she wants to. She doesn’t.
We both take half a step forward until we’re one deep breath from our chests touching.
Her eyes wander over my face. Whatever she’s searching for, I hope I’m the answer.
I slide my fingers from her temple to her jaw and she gives way beneath my touch, letting her head fall forward onto my chest. I would gladly be this woman’s leaning post any time she needs support.
“Oh, Hugo.” Her words drift out gently on a sigh.
I wrap my arms around her shoulders and drop my face into her hair, inhaling that familiar zesty scent. “Does that mean you’re giving in to my irresistible charms? Or that you find me as frustrating as hell? Or that you don’t know what on earth to do?”
“All of the above.” Her breath is warm through the fabric of my T-shirt.
“I have a suggestion.” With a mind of their own, my hands drift down her back and come to rest on her butt, pulling her hips toward mine.
“How about you come home with me?It’s more comfortable than the pub. I have a bed and everything.” There’s no way she didn’t just feel Mr. Happy twitch.
She says nothing, but slips her arms around my waist. That has to be a good sign.
“So, what do you say, Wilcox?” I slide a hand up her side, grazing the curve of her breast, and tip her beautiful face up to look at me. Instantly I tumble headfirst into those green eyes, like they’re a bottomless pit I could get lost in forever. “Fancy a sleepover?”
She says nothing but nods slowly as her lips curl up at the corners.