5. Bliss
Bliss
Every Wednesday, my sisters and I had a standing catch-up date.
We usually met for coffee before doing some shopping or getting our nails done, and then we ended the day with a late lunch.
In the past, when Arella was off on location for whichever movie she was filming, she’d sometimes video call one of us while we were eating.
It was a sisters-only day—no husbands, and definitely no little brothers.
Heavenleigh was still breastfeeding Truly, though, so she’d brought my niece along today.
Truly was only three months old, Heavenleigh and Jake’s second baby.
Like all the other grandkids who weren’t in school, Daniel, Heavenleigh’s son, was with our parents.
All the grandkids loved spending as much time with their G-Pop and G-Mom as possible.
They would help our dad tinker with his newest car project or learn to play the guitar and pretend they were mini rock stars.
After my sister was done feeding her daughter, I took Truly from her so she could eat. Cradling my niece against me, I made silly faces at her until the other three women at the table turned the conversation to the one I’d been avoiding all day.
“Damien asked me the strangest question this morning,” Nevaeh commented, adjusting her glasses on her nose.
I huffed dramatically, causing Truly to coo happily. Her chubby hands clasped my nose until I made her favorite sound, a goose honking.
“He wanted to know if Bliss had ever mentioned Noah Kavanaugh.”
Arella paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, her brows pulling together in confusion. “Who is Noah Kavanaugh?”
“Oh, I know this one!” Heavenleigh said excitedly, holding up her hand like a student desperate to be called on by the teacher.
“He’s the new head coach for the Titans.
Jake gave me a crash course on the man’s entire career.
Played four years in college, then was drafted to Boston.
I forget how long he was there, but he won a championship with them before he retired from playing and moved straight into coaching.
After working as an assistant coach for about five years, he was offered the head coach position in North Carolina.
He was there for seven years and won five championships. Now he’s in LA coaching the Titans.”
“He’s Evan’s coach.” Arella’s frown only deepened, her blue-gray eyes focused on me. “Why does that concern Bliss, though? She hates sports, especially basketball.”
“That’s what I was wondering. But Damien said our dear sister had an odd reaction when she met the new coach last night,” Nevaeh said in that sweet voice that hid how dangerously smart she was.
At least she wasn’t word-vomiting all over the place.
Although I would have preferred that to this conversation.
“Okay, I have so many questions and no idea where to start.” Heavenleigh squeezed the bridge of her nose like all the information she didn’t have was giving her a headache.
“Well, the obvious first question should be why was Bliss at the same place with this coach and our baby brother?” Arella picked up her water goblet, the frown switching to raised brows.
I told them about the SOS text from Damien and how I’d had to rescue him from the party he’d gone to with Evan and Caprice. As expected, that got a chorus of groans and grumbled curses.
“The party was to welcome the new coach,” I confirmed.
“And after being introduced to him, I got Damien the hell out of there. Evan tried to catch a ride with me, but there was no way I was going to allow Caprice in my car. I ended up calling Hayat to deal with him and was able to get away before he could make himself at home in my back seat, because Cap was busy puking her guts out on the front lawn.”
“Gross,” Heavenleigh muttered.
“Of course, Evan had to play her white knight,” Arella said with a roll of her eyes. “Can’t we arrange to have her relocated to Siberia or something? I mean, would anyone actually miss her, besides her parents?”
“Hayat tried that already. She couldn’t get enough signatures on the petition,” I reminded her, hoping that would redirect the conversation.
It had been a joke. Kinda. Hayat had started an actual petition, but her mom had shut it down, albeit reluctantly.
Truly squeezed my nose again. When I didn’t give her the goose honk she wanted, she made a displeased sound somewhere between a grunt and a yell. Her communication skills were developing quickly. Instead, I pretended to eat her hand, which got her to squeal in delight.
“Damien said—”
I cut Nevaeh off before she could dive deeper into what our brother had told her. She was his favorite sister after all. The one who babied him the most. Yet she was never the one he called to bail him out of trouble.
“Did he also mention that he’d been drinking at that party?” Her nose scrunched up, and I took that to mean he hadn’t. On either side of me, Heavenleigh and Arella both tensed. “Yeah. Think about that while your big fat brain dissects the two-second interaction I had with some random guy.”
“Damien’s a grown man,” Nevaeh said after a moment of thick silence. “We can’t micromanage his life just because we feel a certain way about consuming alcohol. Besides, he’s careful. And responsible. Mostly.”
“The next time that grown man sends me an SOS, I’ll forward it to you. And then you can deal with his careful, responsible self,” I snapped at her.
“You are trying to start a fight with me just so you don’t have to explain why you reacted to some random guy.” Damn her and her brilliant brain. “Which only makes us more curious, Bliss. You need to start explaining.”
“Pass.” I shifted the baby in my arms.
“Bliss—”
“Speak of the devil,” Heavenleigh announced, her attention lifting over Arella’s shoulder. The widening of her eyes caused me to follow her gaze. “Two devils, to be exact. Evan and I think that’s the new coach, Noah Kavanaugh. Huh, his hair was longer in the pictures I saw on ESPN.”
I spotted him before she’d even stopped speaking. Evan and two of his fellow teammates were being shown to a table nearby, with Noah bringing up the rear.
Every eye in the restaurant turned to watch the four giants as they took their seats and the hostess passed out menus. While everyone was looking at the seven-foot-plus men, one of them zeroed in on our table. Noah’s light eyes found me, and he winked.
Cocky son of a bitch!
Something warm uncurled in my chest, but I quickly squashed it before it could fully heat up. A wink was not going to turn me into mush.
He’d never once looked at me like that in public. Those flirty winks or the smoldering appraisals or that hungry kind of need that promised a night full of orgasms were only for behind closed, locked doors.
And now he had the audacity to wink at me in that way that he knew—that prick fucking knew—made me ache for him.
In a busy restaurant, the same one where I had lunch with my sisters every week.
Right in front of those same sisters for them to witness and speculate about.
Nevaeh was already doing calculations in her brilliant mind.
I didn’t have to look at her to know that.
Gods, this day needed to be over now.
Shifting my focus to the other basketball players, I noticed the team captain was with them.
I knew him because of his daughter. She was eighteen, and I’d mentored her during her junior and senior years of high school, helping her get in her community service hours at places that looked great on college applications.
As hard as I tried not to look more than a few seconds at Noah, my eyes drifted back to him repeatedly.
“That’s the guy Bliss doesn’t want to talk about?” Arella hissed, her mouth gaping as she stared at him. “Holy gods. Are those eyelashes real? And that can’t be his actual eye color, right? Why is he so damn pretty to look at?”
Before I could stop myself, I kicked her under the table. “Does your security team report back to your obsessively jealous husband when you react to other men like this?”
“I never react to other men,” she denied, shooting me a scathing glare before she returned to watching Noah, almost as if she couldn’t help herself.
Which was fair, because I had the same trouble.
But also, she needed to stop looking at my Noah.
Ugh, nope. I shut that thought down fast. He wasn’t my anything. Not anymore.
“How old is he?”
“Thirty-nine, forty on his birthday in a few weeks,” Heavenleigh answered, her attention on her phone.
I glanced at her screen and swallowed a groan.
Of course she was Googling him. “He’s an only child.
Raised by his maternal grandmother, who was Turkish, which he supposedly speaks fluently. And… Oh.”
“What?” Nevaeh and Arella asked together, their voices harmonizing.
Heavenleigh turned her head to look directly at me. “He was an assistant coach at your college, while you were attending. Your senior year, that’s when he left and took the head coaching job in North Carolina.”
“Really?” I feigned surprise. “Huh. That’s cool.”
“Bliss.” All three of my sisters gave me the look, the same one our mom gave us when she was done with our bullshit.
“Uh-oh, it feels like Truly needs a diaper change. Come on, precious baby girl. Let’s get you a dry tushy.” I stood, holding her securely against me, and bent to grab the diaper bag from the stroller parked off to the side so it was out of the way. “Be back in a few.”
“She thinks she’s going to get out of discussing this,” Nevaeh predicted.
“Maybe we should put it on hold until she’s ready to talk about it,” Heavenleigh reasoned just before I was out of earshot, reminding me why she was my favorite sister.