Legend (Arizona Vengeance #3)(7)

She waved jauntily at me and walked over to introduce herself. I’d caught a glimpse of her before in her backyard through the bushes that separated our properties and knew she was striking. Up close, though, her beauty knocked the wind out of me, which was odd. She’s not my type.

First, her hair is short…and yeah,…I’m a dude. Who doesn’t love wrapping a hand around long locks of hair while fucking. But her face wasn’t made for anything else but those dark wispy pieces that frame delicately arched eyebrows, high cheekbones, and sparkling blue eyes about ten shades lighter than my own and filled with a seemingly internal light.

    And those fucking lips.

Puffy, silky smooth, generously formed, and made for kissing and sucking and…

I growl and grab a mini bottle of bourbon. I don’t even bother with a glass but twist the cap and suck it down. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to dispel the memory of just how goddamn good that kiss was from Pepper.

My body responded. My brain responded. Every fiber in me responded, and I kissed her back. I found the benefits of running my fingers through hair that wasn’t long, but so soft it felt like gentle rain on my hands.

Pepper told me it was to loosen me up, but fuck if it didn’t make me rock hard.

Sadly, I shut it down before it went anywhere because Pepper was a complication in my life that I didn’t need.

And she spelled “complication” with a capital “C.” Fuck if Lida hadn’t given me the world’s biggest complication and I didn’t need any others.

The knock on my hotel room door startles me, and I drop the empty mini bottle in the garbage. I shrug out of my suit coat as I make my way there, dropping it on the bed.

A quick look through the peephole and I see Dax.

Swinging the door open, I greet him. “What’s up, man?”

Dax Monahan and I go way back from before we came to play for the Arizona Vengeance as teammates. He, Bishop, and I played one season together for the New York Vipers before I was traded to the Florida Spartans, but we became close friends in that time.

    Dax steps past me into the room and I note he’s carrying a six-pack of beer. “Just checking on you. Figured we’d toss back a few beers.”

I smile as I close the door. Of course he’s checking on me. While I’ve not told the team as a whole about the baby, I told Bishop and Dax. I have history with them.

Setting the six-pack down, Dax nabs two of the bottles and hands me one. “You played like shit tonight.”

“Don’t I know it,” I mutter as I accept the beer and twist the cap off. Dax has never been one to mince words or sugarcoat things.

“A win’s a win,” he adds, but it’s of little comfort. I’ve got the makings of having the best season of my life going on here. I’m with a hot new franchise, we’re clicking together as a team, and we have phenomenal coaching staff. If I don’t get my head back on straight, I’ll lose my momentum.

“Take a load off,” I tell him with a nod to the guest chairs flanking a round table by the window. Dax takes a seat and I plop down on the bed closest to him. The other will remain empty tonight as Erik—who is my travel roommate—always gets his own room to spend the evening with Blue, who is one of the team’s flight attendants.

Can’t say I blame him.

Dax kicks his feet up on the end of my bed and I push myself up so my back is against the headboard. Crossing one leg over the other, I take a long pull from my beer.

“Have you heard anything yet from the social worker?” he asks me.

I shake my head. “Nope, but didn’t really expect to. She said the results would take a bit longer because of the weekend.”

    Dax rests his open beer on his stomach. “What do you think they’ll be?”

I give a slight shake of my head and stare down at my own beer. “I don’t know. I mean…the timing would be right. I was with Lida in the time period she would have gotten pregnant. I don’t think she was with anyone else. We were exclusive, but who knows.”

“Was she always crazy or is this a recent thing?” Dax asks with a grin, meaning what kind of fucked-up bananas shit was going through her head to just drop a baby off on a doorstep.

I can’t help but laugh. “Never thought of her as crazy. More like…super passionate. She did everything to the extreme.”

And I mean everything.

Sex with her was like a turbo roller coaster, sometimes traveling at such an insane pace with twists and turns, I felt off center.

But good sex was good sex, so I rode that coaster until it was time to get off. Lida was a party girl and at first it was a lot of fun. But I’ve found that at the grand old age of twenty-seven, I didn’t want to spend all my nights at clubs getting wasted and then going back to my place or hers and fucking like fiends.

It seemed…rootless, and I’ve always been a grounded type of guy.

“If the kid is yours, what’s the game plan?” Dax asks, refocusing my attention on the most worrisome issue on my plate.

“I’m going to have to hire a nanny,” I tell him. “Pepper is going to help me out with interviewing them.”

Dax’s eyebrows shoot straight up. “Pepper?”

    I evaluate everything about his demeanor in this moment. Tone…posture…facial expression. I try to figure out exactly how Dax feels about this, because if I’m being totally honest with myself, the real reason I stopped that kiss Friday night is that Dax and Pepper are together.