SCORE (A Stepbrother Sports Romance)(91)

I was doing just that when my cell phone rang. I sent it to voicemail because I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, and I was enjoying watching some of the main characters being particularly despicable to each other. It rang again, an 831 area code. I had no idea where that was and was sure I didn’t know anyone there, so they could suck it. It rang again. That was it. Whoever it was clearly thought their issues were more important than mine, so I answered it to tell them otherwise.

“This had better be good,” I demanded.

“Summer.” It was him, and it sounded like he was driving. “Can I talk to you?”

“I don’t want to speak to you right now,” I said and hung up. Wow, I hadn’t expected to hear from him. I’d drawn a line emotionally through us, I thought. Yet, an annoyingly large part of me was happy to hear his voice. So happy that I started shaking. Given these conflicting emotions, I wasn’t ready to decide how I felt just yet. I wanted to forget about everything for a while and figure out what to do another day, but my phone kept ringing. He was not going to let it be, so I let out a long breath to calm myself, steeled my nerves, and answered him.

I let him say what he needed to. It was hard to stay mad, considering I had had sex with someone else as well. And then, not directly, maybe even accidentally, he said he thought he was in love with me. My heart leapt. I sat up in bed and my breathing sped up to match the pounding in my chest. My head swam, and I couldn’t think about anything else, couldn’t listen to the other things he was saying.

I did make out that he asked me to visit him at his home in California. There was no way I could give him an answer to that right now, so I told him I’d think about it. We hung up, and I stayed still and quiet for a while, trying to decide what to do but failing every time my heart screamed at me to go see him. Part of me longed for him, longed for his touch, but another part of me was so scared, terrified about how this could turn out. The only thing was I couldn’t figure out if I was scared that we’d hurt each other or scared that we’d actually work as a couple.

The day drifted into the next, and I was woken around mid-morning by a knock at my door. It had to be a delivery, so I yelled to leave it on the porch. I was in no way presentable to the world, even to a UPS delivery man. I had to fix myself up, anyway, so I showered, put on some fresh, comfortable clothes, made some coffee and toast, and went out to see what had been left for me.

Waiting outside was a wicker basket containing two bottles, some small tins, and an envelope, all wrapped with a big red bow.

Really? If he was sending me gifts, he really had no idea who he was dealing with. Maybe we wouldn’t work as a couple after all. I brought it inside, set it on my kitchen counter, and stripped off the plastic wrap. I looked at a Lagavulin 37-year-old single malt and a bottle of The Balvenie 40-year-old— about ten thousand dollars’ worth of scotch. There was also a selection of fine cheeses and crackers and a white envelope. I opened it, and out fell an airplane ticket. One-way, first class, to Monterey via LAX.

I wasn’t about to let him buy me off with baubles and fancy gifts. I needed some time before I even thought about meeting him at his home, and I needed him to know I wasn’t the kind of girl who was impressed by shiny things. Part of me was actually a little angry that he thought presents might sway my decision, but I was impressed with his choice of gifts.

The next day, I went to work, but when I got home in the evening, my front lawn had been covered with flowers. I wasn’t a savage, so while flowers were a clichéd romantic gesture as far as I was concerned, I could appreciate their beauty. And the selection I’d come home to was astonishing. So many colors and forms…I didn’t know enough about them to know what they were, or how much they cost, but I knew they were expensive.

I felt like he genuinely wanted me for a second, but then I felt insulted again. I knew James was a wealthy playboy racer, but I was starting to wonder exactly how wealthy. If he was obscenely rich, which it looked like he might be, this seemed like just another example of how the rich thought they could buy whatever they wanted, including people’s feelings. If he could afford to send me ten thousand dollars’ worth of whisky, it meant that ten thousand dollars’ worth of whisky was no big deal to him, which made it basically worthless. I made a call.

“Are you home yet?” I asked him as soon as he answered.

“Yup, safe and sound.” He sounded so damn cocksure, like he was ready to receive a big ‘thank you’ and an ‘I love you.’

“Good,” I said, “then you have time to stop whatever other crap you have heading to my house.”

“What?” he sounded confused and disappointed. “You didn’t like the whisky? The flowers?”

“I’m not a hooker to be bought with your great wealth, James,” I spat at him. “I poured the scotch down the sink. I need you to come up with something real, not a gesture you can simply pay someone else to arrange.”

I hung up and turned my phone off. If we were going to have a relationship, I wasn’t going to let his money put him in a position of power. I needed to know he wasn’t going to treat me badly before I let him into my heart, and I needed him to know he wouldn’t be able to just say sorry and by me a rose if he did betray me. I wasn’t going to end up crying over him for days at a time like my mom did for my father.

I took the rest of the week off and left town. I headed across Texas towards the mountains, into New Mexico, and climbed up to Santa Fe. It was a good ten-hour drive through a lot of bare, scrub-covered fields broken up by small, poor towns that had grown up around enormous grain silos. But it was also beautiful, with mountains in the distance on three sides. I loved driving through the old Santa Fe town where the buildings took on the orange clay, adobe shapes and looked like nothing else in this country.