Chapter 5
As far as investment opportunities went, the party was a nominal success. While Alec didn’t come away with anything worth throwing money at, he did leave a bit more attached than when he’d arrived.
All things considered, there were worse things that could have happened than landing himself a girlfriend for the holiday season, and a bonny one at that.
Alec closed the door to his brother’s apartment and emptied his pockets into the bin on the foyer table. “Hugh! Where are you, you good-for-nothing bastard? Get your arse over here before I—”
Alec’s phone on the table began to dance toward the edge, shimmying dangerously close to tumbling onto the floor.
In the sink, a couple of spoons and dishes from earlier rattled awake against the metal basin.
Amusement pushed Alec’s spirits higher as he crouched into a squat, straining a few of the precious trouser seams that hadn’t signed up to hold in that much tensed muscle.
From within the shadows of the hallway, four paws as big as saucers hurtled across the hardwood.
The black face mask and twinkling mahogany eyes barely came into focus before two hundred and thirty pounds of purebred mastiff tackled Alec to the floor.
The tongue bath came next, a favorite pastime of the massive mongrel, but with Hugh’s paws firmly set on Alec’s shoulders pinning him in place, there wasn’t much he could do but throw his arms around the beast’s bulk and close his eyes.
“All right! All right! I’m home now. You can stop your fretting. Oh, bloody hell! Your damn tongue touched my teeth!”
Caring not a whit, Hugh continued to deliver his favor all over any available patch of skin in sight and a fair bit of Alec’s ruined silk shirt collar.
It was only when Alec got his fingers good and buried into the wrinkles surrounding Hugh’s ears that the dog eased off him, obediently melting into the head massage that always greeted him whenever Alec was in town.
“That’s right. You’ve got your scratches. All’s right with the world.” Then Alec leaned closer and whispered, “I know you like my massages better than Cal’s. It’s okay. We’ll just keep that between us.”
Hugh barked his agreement and immediately went onto his back, exposing his brawny frame, smooth belly, and the most impressive set of balls Alec had ever seen—no small feat considering the locker room tours Alec had done—and stared up at him with expectant yet patient eyes.
“Fine. A few more rubdowns and then I’ll call your dad. Do you want to speak to Cal? Do ya? Do ya?”
The dog’s vacant stare and lack of enthusiasm about anything other than a belly rub were unsurprising.
Once Alec had gotten Hugh to resume his usual seat on the dog’s personal couch, he’d changed into a T-shirt and sweats and fired up Cal’s name on his phone.
The video call connected two rings later, and Alec immediately wished it hadn’t.
Far too much of his brother’s pale Scottish skin filled the screen before Cal managed to prop the phone up and stand back from it.
The retreating view was far worse, however.
Where Alec hoped to see jeans or literally any other pair of trousers appropriate for a man, he instead was met with white tights hugging his brother’s meaty legs before cinching him snugly at the waist. To add to the grisly effect, Cal still wore his character’s wig: a white powdery number that was pulled back in a neat queue.
“Och, come on, now, Callum. You look like one of those white sausages I had the last time I was in Bavaria. You could have just called me back after you were finished changing.”
“And miss the look on your face when you first got an eyeful of my belly lint after wearing a tweed waistcoat for two and a half hours? Never, my man. It was priceless.” That familiar gap between Cal’s two front teeth made an appearance as he grinned even wider, taking no small amount of pleasure in Alec’s discomfort.
Par for the frickin’ course, that.
“All right, enough. I figured you’d wrapped for the night already.”
“Oh, I did. Just chatting a bit with the crew before I made it back to my dressing room.” Cal rooted around at his scalp and pulled out a pin or two before yanking off his wig and placing it off-screen.
The bald cap went next, and Cal promptly got to work roughing up his shaggy blond hair.
“I tell ya, Jacob Marley is one of my favorite characters to play, but his costume’s not made for burly Scotsmen.
I popped two buttons today, and Carolyn in the wardrobe department was none too happy pinning things together fifteen minutes before the show started. ”
“Did she leave a few of her pins in you to express her displeasure?”
“I won’t have full circulation back until I get these bloody tights off, so I’ll let you know then,” he said, laughing.
“I wouldn’t put it past her, though. This is her twenty-third season costuming A Christmas Carol for this tour, so no one wants to get on her bad side and risk any curses, you feel me? ”
“Makes perfect sense, especially considering all those ghosts you already have to deal with.”
“Exactly. Thanks for staying at my place and taking care of Hugh during the tour, by the way. Show’s due to wrap December twenty-third, so I’ll be home for Christmas Eve.”
“Hugh misses you. Terribly. I don’t know how we’ll get along without you.” Alec positioned the phone so he could get as much of Hugh in the shot as possible, who had already fallen deep into sleep and was hard at work creating a pool-sized drool puddle on the hardwood floor.
“Traitor. Oaf doesn’t know what’s good for him.”
“Clearly.”
Cal dabbed some makeup remover onto a cotton pad and started wiping his face. “So, how’s Jersey treating you so far? Is it the refuge you hoped it would be?”
Alec took a seat on the couch opposite Hugh—the smaller bloody couch—and considered his words carefully, debating how much he should tell Cal. Despite the two years Alec and Phoebe were together, his brother had never warmed to her. Cal had told him so. Often.
“I ran into Phoebe. Or more accurately, I was caught staring at a woman who, in turn, ran into Phoebe. Literally.”
Cal paused in his makeup removal, leaving the ghostly pallor and haunting shadows of Marley’s eyes to bore into Alec through the phone, reminding him of all his fuck-ups of Christmas past. “I don’t know what I should be asking about more. Your ex or the woman who stunned you stupid.”
“That woman, believe it or not, is now my fake girlfriend.”
“What the bloody hell does that mean? Fake girlfriend? Does that come with all the perks of the regular kind?”
“Don’t be an arse. Her name’s Marisa, and we’re meeting up in a few days to discuss things. Nice girl. Ran into a bit of trouble because of me.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“What is?”
“That you’re causing nice girls all sorts of trouble.”
Alec sighed and launched into the whole messy story, standing and pacing at points when the absurdities became too much to share sitting down. By the time he finished, Cal had changed fully out of his costume and was looking at him with a grim sort of wariness.
Alec knew that look. Hated that look. Wanted to punch the ever-loving shit out of that look.
It was their mother’s look. The look of quiet consternation and worry over the hurdles ahead.
“Have you spoken to Dr. Campbell yet?” Cal asked.
The change of topic wasn’t entirely unexpected, but Alec had hoped he’d have at least a few more minutes of shooting the shit with his brother before Cal dragged the infuriating sensible storm cloud into the room.
Alec nodded, suddenly wishing he hadn’t just mentioned the fuss made about his rugby fame drawing a crowd. But this was Cal. Not his agent or teammates. If there was one person he could talk to about this stuff, it was the man who’d offered him the reprieve of his home to sort through it all.
“I talked to her a few days ago. I’ve still got some pain in my neck and jaw, but the headaches aren’t as bad.
Sleeping’s a bit tricky, and I do have a bit of double vision at times, but she gave me some prescriptions that should help.
Otherwise, I’m to keep at it with my home exercises and call her if anything changes or gets worse. ”
“Good. That’s good, Alec. Really good.”
“I—” Alec broke off and shook his head, not wanting to think about what had chased him to the States in the first place but finding it impossible. “I— Look, I’m fine. Everything will be all right.”
“I know it will. Eventually. We just don’t know what all right looks like quite yet, you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Alec said, resigned to being stuck in the mire of his present circumstances.
“I just wish I knew what was coming for me. In the future, I mean. I’m not ready to stop playing.
Not yet. Rugby is—” His life? His career?
His purpose? After he’d given so much of himself to the game, was there even a possibility of life without it?
On some level, he knew he couldn’t play forever—that was why he was looking at investment opportunities in New Jersey—but that had always been a tomorrow problem.
And now that tomorrow was at his doorstep, what the hell was he supposed to do with today?
“Go on a date,” Cal said, shifting his duffel bag over his shoulder, readying to leave. “With your girlfriend. The one you can’t stop staring at, if I remember correctly. Sounds like you both could use a bit of company, anyway.”
Alec hadn’t realized he’d spoken his worries aloud, but it was the lighthearted jest in Callum’s tone that softened the grim harshness on the horizon and turned his attention toward far more festive offerings.
It was the holiday season, after all. December held loads more than a weekend rugby tournament he was exempt from playing in anyway.
It held a date. Many, if fake relationships followed similar paths as real ones.
“Maybe you’re right,” Alec mused, trying the cheerful offering on for size while remembering how Marisa’s warm hand had felt in his. Surprisingly, he didn’t hate the fit of either.
“Of course I’m right. I’m the oldest.”
“That literally means nothing.”
“Sure it does. You wouldn’t understand, because you’re not the oldest,” Cal whispered out of the side of his mouth, his gap-toothed grin on full display.
“Good night, Scrooge,” Alec said.
“It’s Marl—”
Alec ended the call before Cal could get the last word in and looked over at Hugh. The dog was nestled in his couch divot, snoring away without a care in the world. No worries about his future. No cares about anything other than the cushions beneath him.
For once, a present-minded focus didn’t sound half bad. If it was good enough for an occasionally ornery mastiff, it could be good enough for Alec as well.
The only worry he couldn’t shake, however, was whether he’d be any good at this whole fake boyfriend thing. His career wasn’t the only one on the line. Marisa’s candy making business relied on their deception just as much as his.
He couldn’t change what he’d agreed to tonight, but if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was to strategize as a unit. He hadn’t been chosen as captain of first Scotland Sevens and then Great Britain’s Sevens teams for the past several years for nothing.
It was no different than a match, really, with the Crystal Christmas Ball serving as the pitch he and Marisa would play on, while Phoebe and her plant army stared them down from the other side.
The only thing that remained to be seen was the sort of tactics Marisa was poised to employ.
Because he could think of several that would knock Phoebe down a peg or two.
But first, he needed to meet with Marisa. The thought of it made his chest lighter, and he couldn’t help but smile thinking about the tiny woman who’d dragged him by his bulk and chucked him into a stairwell to let him have it.
There was a whole lot of fight packed into that curvy frame, and he couldn’t wait to learn what it would be like to fight alongside her.