Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Social conduct for hate-free inter-colleague teamwork
For short: SCHIT
The contracting parties try to acknowledge that they are fundamentally decent people.
Maddie and Matt were getting married on the beach.
Hazel thought it was a terrible idea. High heels and sand went together about as well as she and Gareth did.
However, as they walked onto the promenade at Sunshine Pier, it occurred to her that the wedding could only have been held outdoors — no hall would have been big enough for the number of guests.
Apparently, Matt had invited every hockey player he’d ever played with, and thanks to Maddie’s gigantic heart, everyone who’d ever smiled at her was probably there.
The only thing bigger than her heart was the enormous white carpet covering the sand.
Pink petals led to a gigantic wooden arch hung with hundreds of white flowers, under which the couple would surely be married later. Hazel, however, was irritated…
“Is that a petting zoo?” she asked, puzzled, nodding toward a fenced-off area to the right of the endless rows of white chairs. It contained a chicken, a goat, a giant goldfish bowl, and a terrarium for a turtle.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Fox replied, perplexed.
“Dad! I want a goat too. And a chicken. And a dog.” A familiar, excited voice wafted over to them and they automatically turned.
“No,” a dark, male voice replied sharply.
“Why not? Anna probably wants that too. I’ll ask her.”
“Look, Melody, Aunt Hazel and Uncle Austin are up ahead.”
Hazel chuckled softly. Moreau’s diversionary tactic wouldn’t work forever, but for now, the five-year-old girl threw herself at her leg.
“Will you buy me a goat, Aunt Hazel?” Melody asked, looking up at her wide-eyed.
Well, so much for that.
Hazel’s heart grew three sizes as she ruffled her quasi-niece’s hair. “Right away!” she said earnestly.
“Hazel,” Moreau growled, giving her a dark look. That was his standard expression, though, the one he wore while eating ice cream and gazing at a rainbow, so it didn’t impress her much.
“She can already count to fifty, Moreau. I think she deserves a goat.”
“Yes!” Melody agreed, beaming, and the grin alone made Hazel’s abdomen ache. “Dad, may I look at the goat?”
Moreau sighed. “All right. Go see Leon, okay? He’s right outside. Tell him it’s his job to look after you.”
“Leon is funny. He says a lot of bad things,” the girl remarked with a giggle, before running off toward the petting zoo.
There, Moreau could keep an eye on her in case Leon Alvarez violated his supervisory duty.
The young player certainly didn’t impress with his sense of responsibility — Hazel still wanted to sign him as a client.
He was ridiculously talented and ridiculously handsome, a dream for any agent who made most of their money from endorsement deals.
Melody hopped in the sand, fell to her knees, got back up…and Hazel felt an internal sigh of longing.
“Oh man, I think I want kids,” she said.
“You’re not having mine,” Moreau replied dryly, but greeted her with a quick hug.
Warmth flooded her…chased by a little emptiness. There were indeed many great men in her life. Unfortunately, she wasn’t attracted to any of them.
“I’m just saying. I’m over thirty, and I want a family.
Maybe I really need to start working a little less…
Make more time for personal stuff and eliminate stress by hiring another agent to take some of my clients off my hands.
They could open an East Coast office under my guidance, so I’d have to fly less. ”
Her current life didn’t leave room for anything more. She wanted to be successful. She wanted to continue running her own business and make more money than anyone had ever believed she could. But she also wanted love, and children, and someone to come home to…
And if men could have all that, then she certainly could, too.
“You have a family,” Fox murmured, putting an arm around her shoulders.
Grateful, she smiled at him. Obviously, he was right. But, being loved by blood relatives and your best friends, and being…the most important person in someone else’s life wasn’t the same.
She took a deep breath and pushed the thought away. “Where’s Anna?” she asked instead, looking at Moreau. She liked the new female lead in their little family.
“She’s treating her brother.”
“What? Who?” Fox asked, confused. “Dax or Jack? And for what? We’re not playing hockey right now, so how did he get injured?”
Moreau squinted against the sun. “It's Jack. It was probably a…household accident. This morning. In the bedroom. And, yes, I wish I’d been given less information too, but Anna likes to talk.”
“Holy shit.” Fox grimaced in pain. “The mental images. Why did you have to plant these in my head? So, where exactly did he hurt himself?”
“I didn’t ask, and I don’t want to know!”
Hazel laughed…but the sound caught in her throat as she glanced over Fox’s shoulder.
Gareth was standing less than twenty feet behind him, staring at her.
The bastard was wearing a tuxedo.
Her heart skipped a beat.
It was habit. Pure habit. That self-indulgent, inappropriate behavior had developed almost ten years ago and Gareth had always looked better than was good for his ego.
When she'd first seen him in the lecture hall years ago – when he gave an incomplete and incorrect answer, and she loudly corrected him – his expression had been as blank and intense as it was now. Then too, the seconds had dragged on indefinitely when their eyes locked. Barely perceptible, he lifted one corner of his mouth, as if he’d been impressed.
As if he’d accepted the challenge she’d unknowingly issued.
As if he didn’t mind a bit of competition. As if he were even happy about it.
Hazel had felt goosebumps all over her body just from his slight smile. Her gaze had wandered over his slightly too long, light-brown hair, his fair skin, and his dark blue eyes…and had simply ignored her professor’s follow-up question, until Gareth turned from her and gave the correct answer.
To this day, she didn’t know if he’d deliberately distracted her to score points in class. Probably he had. The thought had made her smile and ultimately led to them starting a game without rules.
A game they’d both lost.
She blinked, pulled herself out of her thoughts, and focused on present-day Gareth, who wasn’t smiling, not even slightly.
He’d probably become a grown-up. She just wished his body hadn’t.
If twenty-five-year-old Gareth had put women’s hearts within a two-mile radius in jeopardy, thirty-two-year-old Gareth was a pure imposition.
His hair was now razor-short. His face was narrower, his stubbly chin more chiseled, and his shoulders broader…
and it didn’t help that she knew he looked even better without clothes.
What did help was that she was incredibly angry at him.
How could the asshole believe she’d tell her clients to badmouth him in interviews? Yes, they had a…complicated relationship, but she wasn’t that type of person. Until yesterday, she would have claimed that Gareth knew that. Because he knew her.
She swallowed and abruptly turned her face away. No, that wasn’t true. He had known her. There was a difference.
“Oh, the boss is coming over,” Moreau muttered. “This can’t be good.”
Hazel’s back tensed and she clenched the fabric of her dress.
“What did you do wrong, Fox? He certainly won’t talk to Hazel voluntarily.”
“Nothing!” The center shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Maybe he heard you say that he sleeps in a suit.”
“That couldn’t have made him angry,” Moreau replied dryly. “It’s certainly the truth.”
No, it wasn't. Gareth slept naked.
“I don’t care,” Fox hissed through clenched teeth. “He’ll be here in a second, and…”
He fell silent because Gareth had reached them — and completely ignored the two players. Instead, he leaned over her shoulder.
She felt it more than saw it. The warmth radiating from his body competed with the bright August sun. His toes touched her heels. His breath was feather-light against her ear as he whispered, barely audibly, “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. I went too far. That wasn’t fair of me.”
Hazel’s breath caught in her throat. He didn’t touch her. His hand hovered over her shoulder, but his fingertips never reached her skin. His lips were close enough that his words tickled the delicate skin behind her ear but didn’t touch it.
It felt intimate. Far too intimate.
“Okay,” she whispered, hating how breathless she sounded.
Gareth nodded. His rough chin brushed her cheek for a second, barely perceptibly, but he didn’t reply. He leaned back, and then just kept walking as if nothing had happened.
Hazel’s shoulders sagged, and she let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “He could have said hello,” Fox complained.
“Yeah,” Moreau agreed. “The boss is rude.”
Hazel swallowed and turned her gaze to the spot where Gareth had disappeared into the crowd. Yes, Gareth didn’t care what people thought of him, but apparently, he did care what she thought of him.
She rubbed her tingling neck and massaged the slight tug in her diaphragm. Then, she took a deep breath.
He had apologized. Who could have expected that?
Now she almost felt sorry for denigrating him to his sister.