Risky Play (Red Card #1)(68)

I hadn’t told him I loved him.

And he didn’t care.

He just kept telling me he loved me over and over again, and he never hesitated, he never waited for me to say it back.

It was like he couldn’t help but love me.

And the very idea of that terrified me.

Because it was the first time in my life that I felt like maybe I was enough—even though it happened to be with a guy who Jagger said not to trust, who’d already proven himself once to be the kind to just leave.

It wasn’t fair to hold his past over his head.

I dropped my phone back in my purse with purpose. No more. I wasn’t going to do that anymore. It wasn’t fair.

“Mackenzie!” Dad stood in the main lobby, his arms opened wide. The room had exposed beams above, with floor-to-ceiling windows on the north end. The patio boasted several outdoor fireplaces. It was both cozy and modern at the same time. And the tasting room? It had leather couches, snacks, and my favorite desk, where I sat and played chemist. “I’m so happy you’re home.”

He hugged me.

There it was. Home.

Funny how home used to mean my father’s arms—it used to mean this winery.

And now? Now it meant Slade.

“I missed this place,” I said honestly as Dad weaved us through a small crowd of people. I did a double take when I saw my face briefly on the flat-screen TV. But it was so fast that I told myself I was imagining things.

With a shrug, I followed him through the back to the tasting room, set my purse down, and got to work.

A few hours later my phone went off. I was so immersed in the tasting and feeling this rightness in the world that I ignored it.

It went off again.

Frowning, I looked at the screen.

Slade: Whatever you do, do not turn on the TV.

Slade: It’s all just BS.

Slade: I have no idea how they have this information, but I’ll get to the bottom of it, I swear. Matt is working on it for us.

Jagger: Are you okay?

My heart sank, I stopped reading texts and just called Slade. His phone went straight to voice mail.

Matt’s went straight to voice mail.

So did Jagger’s.

Slade: Sorry, was on the phone with Matt. We’re fixing this. It looks bad, fuck I don’t know how the press knows these things, I don’t even know how they know where I live, let alone anything else. Text me when you get off work.

I was shaking by the time I put my phone back in my purse. Tempted to look at the TV or at least search Slade’s name on the internet and see what was going on.

But I trusted him.

And if he told me not to look.

I wasn’t going to look.

Not until he had time to explain to me why he was freaking out and why, an hour later, his phone still went straight to voice mail.





Chapter Forty-Nine

SLADE

“It’s going to be fine,” Matt said smoothly as he sat in my kitchen with a cup of coffee. Paparazzi lined up outside the gate.

And words were getting thrown around that made me want to puke. And her name. Her name was everywhere.

Britney Townsend.

And in every fucking article, every newspaper, all I saw was her teary-eyed confession that even though she cheated on me the baby was mine, which was a lie. The baby was Hawk’s, but now the press was also under the impression that while she was still engaged to Jagger, I’d swept in and basically stolen her out from under him. Jagger and I had sworn not to discuss her publicly. It wasn’t worth the drama or media firestorm that would follow—besides, it had been water under the bridge, they were broken up. Why would someone leak such lies now?

“She’s on her way.” Matt sighed. “How do you want to handle this?”

“We can sue her for breach of contract. She signed an NDA.” I took a sip of the whiskey he’d put in front of me. Damn it, did it always come back to the NDA? “She has pictures of us, man, intimate pictures. Pictures of me naked in bed with her, pictures of Jagger naked with her. It looks bad. She has pictures of my dad she’s trying to sell, my family in intimate settings—she’s—” I growled low in my throat. “None of what she’s saying is true. She didn’t cheat on Jagger with me. That’s bullshit. They were completely broken up by then!”

Matt sighed. “Does it matter anymore? She’s pregnant, she paints a damning story basically making you look like the guy who steals another guy’s fiancée, gets her pregnant, then abandons her in order to get a bigger contract. And your old teammate, Hawk, isn’t helping things. He’s claiming that the breakup was all a publicity stunt you created to get more money and marketing campaigns.”

I swiped my hand across the flowers Mack had put in the middle of the table. They went crashing to the hard tile floor. The sound of glass breaking was almost as piercing as the buzz of the gates as they opened.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Jagger was the first to walk in the room five minutes later.

Followed by Britney.

She was still beautiful, with long, pitch-black hair, blue eyes, a wide smile, and a dusting of freckles across her nose. She was at least seven months pregnant, but I wanted to throw her out of my house the minute she smiled in my direction.

“Hey, baby.” She grinned and rubbed her swollen belly.