Chapter 1 #2
She had a point. My brother was one of the ten richest men in America, employing thousands of people all over the world, and establishing his international conglomerate, Knight Corp, at the top of the Fortune 500.
And all before the age of thirty-five. Andrew had started his tech company in his dorm room at U of M.
After he relocated to Austin, one of the fastest growing tech spots in the country, the whole thing had just exploded.
He'd added real estate holdings and God knows what other major investments to his massive financial empire.
It was one of the great business success stories of the decade, according to the dozens of magazines that had put him on their covers—made all the more impressive by our less than humble beginnings.
My twin was kind of my hero.
“But speaking of Andrew,” Peyton went on, eyes glinting with familiar mischief, “according to Twitter, a bunch of hot hockey players have been descending on our fair city for the past few weeks. Maybe you’re just the girl to make a few of them feel welcome.
” She waggled her eyebrows. “If you catch my drift.”
“Because you’re so subtle, Peyton,” Rosa muttered.
I hid my face in my martini glass, not wanting them to see the blush I was sure was drifting up my neck.
I had never told the girls about my years-long obsession with Liam O’Conner, Austin’s brand-new star center.
There wouldn’t have been much to say, in all honesty.
“Yeah, I used to tutor this jock in high school and developed a huge, pathetic crush on him. I even convinced myself that he wanted to take me to prom, but he ended up going with someone else, breaking my poor little teenage heart.”
The fact that I had spent so much of the last decade thinking about him—and shamelessly stalking his hockey career—was just too depressing to share.
Oh, who the hell was I kidding? It hadn’t just been his career I’d stalked online.
I’d kept up with whatever gossip I could find on the hockey blogs, and there was plenty of it.
Realizing he had married her right after college had been a punch to the gut, and when they’d had a baby just a few months later, I tried to put him out of my mind for good.
Fat chance.
“I’m not going to hook up with one of my brother’s players,” I told them instead.
“Why not?” Peyton asked. “The paper had pictures of some of these guys.” She made an exaggerated fanning movement by her face. “Come to mama.”
“It would be inappropriate.”
Peyton threw up her hands. “You need some inappropriate in your life, girl!”
I looked to Rosa for support and was shocked to see a dreamy expression on her face. “I saw those pictures,” she murmured. “A few of them have beards.”
“Beards aren’t bad,” Peyton agreed. “The whole lumberjack thing can be hot. I bet one of those beards would feel particularly nice scratching between my thighs.”
We all burst into laughter. “I cannot believe you’re responsible for raising a child,” I muttered, wiping at my eyes. “You’re a menace.”
Peyton sighed. “I’m pretty sure my menacing libido is the reason why I have a child.”
“Poor Elliot,” Rosa said. “You’re going to be giving him hook-up tips as soon as he gets to high school.”
Peyton gave an exaggerated shudder. “Please don’t talk about him going to high school. I refuse to believe that I will ever be old enough to have a kid in high school.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “You have many years of being the hot cool mom ahead of you.”
She pointed at me. “You’d think the hot cool mom would get laid more often, wouldn’t you? Another reason for you to go out and get some—I need to live vicariously through you.”
Rosa laughed. “Give me a break. You get more action than the two of us combined.”
“That’s really not saying much,” Peyton shot back.
Rosa looked at me. “She has a point. If this dry spell gets any worse, I think my hymen might grow back.”
That had us giggling into our martini glasses again. Still chuckling, Peyton raised her hand, catching the eye of a nearby waitress. “We’re going to need a few more of these.”
“Yeah,” Rosa agreed, handing the waitress her empty glass. “You should probably just keep ’em coming.”
An hour later and I was well past tipsy and quickly on my way towards being flat-out drunk. My copious alcohol consumption was my only excuse for not running the hell away when Peyton pulled a single dice from her purse.
“I’m not playing Truth or Dare or Drink with you,” Rosa muttered, her voice already a little slurred.
“We have to play!” Peyton argued. “This is the first night I’ve had a sitter in weeks. And it’s Grace’s last weekend of freedom before she becomes a slave to all those little demons.”
“My students aren’t demons,” I protested, but Peyton was busy taking the shot glasses and bottle of whiskey she’d apparently requested from the waitress while Rosa and I were too tipsy to notice.
“Why does the start of the school year mean we have to play this dumb game?” Rosa pressed.
Peyton glared at her. “I thought we agreed that our girl needs to let her hair down. What better way to do that than to get her hammered and dare her to do a bunch of slutty stuff?”
“Good point,” Rosa agreed and I sat up straighter, an alarm bell going off in my head.
“Hang on a second—”
Peyton ignored me. “Okay, we remember the rules?”
“Wait,” I tried again. “I don’t think I like this plan.”
Rosa patted my hand. “Just trust us.”
Peyton continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “You roll a one or a five and you have to tell the truth. Two or a four gets you a dare.” She grinned. “Three or six means you’re drinking, baby!”
“There’s no way I’m getting out of this, is there?” I asked.
“Nope,” Rosa replied cheerfully, filling each of our shot glasses with the whiskey.
“I’ll go first,” Peyton said, rolling the dice around in her palm before dropping it on the table. A three. “Bottoms up!” She grabbed her shot glass and downed it before wiping her mouth. “Who’s next?”
The first few rounds were pretty benign. I took a truth on my first roll and was relieved when it was Rosa asking the question. Peyton thought a truth was wasted if she didn’t ask an uncomfortable question about sex. With Rosa I merely had to state what I’d do if I won the lottery.
“I’d fund the STEM Gems for the next decade and try to expand it to more schools,” I answered without hesitation, referring to the science club I ran for girls after school.
“God, you’re such a nerd,” Peyton muttered, taking the dice back for her turn.
Two shots and three truths later, I finally rolled a dare.
Peyton rubbed her hands together. “This needs to be good.”
I sighed, already resigned to the fact that I was probably about to sing on the bar top.
Instead, Peyton’s eyes fixed on a point behind my head.
“There’s a really hot guy over there,” she began, and right away Rosa and I turned around.
“Don’t look!” Peyton hissed, too late. She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “I am dealing with such amateurs.”
“He is pretty cute,” Rosa mused. “And he keeps looking over here.”
“He’s been looking for the last half hour,” Peyton informed us. “And now Grace is going to go make his night.”
“I’m not kissing a stranger,” I said automatically.
“I’m not going to make you kiss him,” Peyton assured me. “I just want you to go sit on his lap—”
“Absolutely not.”
“—and give him your number.”
I groaned. “Peyton.”
“That’s your dare, babe. You know the rules.”
I bit back a curse. In Peyton’s messed up version of this game, refusing a dare meant doing a shot every time anyone else at the table rolled a drinking number. My liver wouldn’t be able to take it.
“Oh, come on,” Peyton said, reaching over to smooth my hair—which I’m sure was looking pretty crazy by this point in the evening. Late summer heat in Texas was a nightmare on my frizz prone curls. “You’re a gorgeous, intelligent, funny woman. You can approach a hot guy in the bar.”
“Definitely,” Rosa agreed, attacking my mouth with a tube of lipstick.
“Get off,” I muttered, trying to brush her away, but the girl was stronger than she looked.
“This isn’t hard,” Peyton said. “You just walk over there, giggle, ask if you can have a seat, and give the guy your number.”
I looked to Rosa, hoping for some backup, but she merely shrugged, grinning. “It’s Peyton’s dare.”
“I hate both of you,” I muttered, standing. They both cheered and I closed my eyes, knowing we were attracting attention now. “I mean, I really hate you.”
“We love you too,” Peyton said. “He’s the one in the blue polo shirt. Brown hair. Get to it.”
I downed the rest of my martini, took a deep breath, and turned to the table in question.
I knew who she was talking about right away.
Halfway across the bar, two men were sitting at a table.
The blond one had his back to us but the guy in blue was still shooting little glances our way, smiling.
As I watched, the blond guy stood up and headed off in the direction of the bathrooms.
“Now’s your chance if you don’t want his friend to be your audience,” Rosa said, pushing on my back to make me stumble forward. Certain you could fry an egg on my face, I set off towards his table.
“Hey there,” I said, doing my best to sound friendly and not like I wanted to jump off the side of a building.
“Hey.” The guy’s voice was pleasantly warm. Deep. Even from that one word I could tell he wasn’t from Texas. And he was grinning in a way that told me he knew exactly what was happening here.
“So, my friends over there…” I trailed off, not sure how to continue.
“You girls look like you’re having fun,” he said, nodding at my friends.
I glanced over my shoulder to see them both watching intently, Rose kneeling on her chair for a better look.
Real subtle. I rolled my eyes before turning back.
The guy looked like he was trying not to laugh now.
“Let me guess—they dared you to come over here?”
“That they did,” I said, rubbing sweaty palms down my jeans.
“And what else do you have to do?”
I squared my shoulders. I could do this. “I’m supposed to give you my number.”
His chuckle was warm. “I will gladly take it.”
“I’m also supposed to, uh, sit down.”
His eyebrows went up. “Well, my friend will be back from the john soon but you’re welcome to take his seat.”
I closed my eyes. “Imsupposedtositinyourlap.” It came out in a rush, all one word, but from the twinkle in his eyes I knew he’d understood. He slid his chair back, patting his knee.
“Here you go. I promise I won’t bite.”
“This is so embarrassing,” I muttered. I started to back away from the table. “Sorry, I don’t need to drag you into this. You can just pretend you never saw me.”
He laughed and reached for my hand. “That’d be tricky, seeing as how you’re the prettiest girl in this place.”
“Are you flirting with me?” I blurted out, and the guy grinned.
“I think you’re supposed to be flirting with me.” His gaze went over to the girls. “Come on, they’re still watching. You just sit for a minute, put your number in my phone, and you’ll be all set. You don’t even have to use your real number if you don’t want to—I won’t be offended.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not one bit.” His eyes twinkled up at me. “What’s the penalty if you don’t do it?”
“Shots,” I told him. “So, so many shots.”
“Come on then,” he said, patting his knee again. “I won’t get fresh.”
Now that I was actually doing this, the guy didn’t seem all that scary. He seemed nice, in fact. And he was handsome, with his wavy brown hair and dark chocolate eyes.
“Would it help if I introduce myself first?” He held out a hand. “I’m Jason.”
I shook it. “Grace.”
“Let me help you win your game, Grace.”
Taking a deep breath, I lowered myself awkwardly to his knee, trying to keep the majority of my weight on my feet.
“That’s not so bad, is it?” he asked, clearly amused
“If it wasn’t for the soul crushing humiliation, no, not bad at all.”
Jason laughed, plucking his phone up from the table. “Put your number in and—”
“Jesus, Jay, do you move fast or what?” another male voice asked from behind us. “I leave you alone for two minutes and you already—”
The voice cut off sharply when Jason and I both turned around to look.
It was the blond man who’d been sitting here.
For a second, I was distracted by how big he seemed.
The mountain of a guy practically took up my entire field of vision with his broad shoulders and muscular build.
He had to be at least six foot five, maybe even six-six.
And then my eyes landed on his shocked face and the entire bar seemed to go very still.
“Gracie?”
Oh my God. It was really him.
I stared for a long moment, my mouth hanging open. It wasn’t until Jason turned a confused gaze in my direction that I realized how stupid I must look.
I swallowed, hoping my voice wouldn’t fail me.
“Hey, Liam,” I squeaked out. “Long time no see.”