Bound (10 page)

Her face relaxed into a wide grin as she looked up at me. “Okay.”

“Ryke!”

I glanced over and saw Jan, the wispy brunette who did public relations for the team, hustling toward me.

“Hey, Jan,” I said. Her eyes widened into the frantic look I’d grown used to. Jan wanted everyone to think her workload was overwhelming all the time. Job security, I supposed. It got on my damn nerves.

“
We need to take the photos we auctioned off!” she said, waving her hands around in a frenzy.

“Right now? I just walked in.”

“Yes! While I have everyone I need, I want to get it done.”

She reached for my hand and pulled me toward her. “Hey. I’m coming,” I said, a gruff twinge in my tone. I held my hand out to Kate.

“He’ll be right back,” Jan said to her.

“No, she’s coming with me.”

“I’m okay. It’s fine, Ryke,” Kate said. “Just find me when you’re done.”

I scowled at Jan. “This better take five minutes or less.”

She said something, but I wasn’t listening. I was looking over my shoulder at Kate, who was glancing around the room. Hopefully she wouldn’t be lonely while I was gone.

***

Kate

The tall, lanky businessman with short copper curls had a fire in his narrowed eyes that made me feel like he literally wanted to eat me up. He was creeping me out.

“Let’s get you a fresh drink, Kate,” he said in a clipped accent. Chad had struck up a conversation by saying I reminded him of someone he knew in his home country of Zimbabwe. Now he lived in New York, where his business was headquartered.

“I’m good with this one,” I said, tipping the champagne flute up to my lips. Where the hell was Ryke? I was glad I wasn’t standing alone anymore, but Chad was only looking for one thing, and he wouldn’t be getting it from me.

“Are you hungry? We could get room service in my room,” he offered, smirking and raising his brows.

“I’m here with someone,” I said. For the third time. He opened his mouth to
respond but stopped when a tall blond man with pale blue eyes approached, reaching a hand toward me.

“Kate?” he said, grinning. “I’m Luke Warner. I saw you come in with Ryke. We’re teammates.”

“Luke?” I said, giving him a big smile. “He talks about you all the time! Great to meet you.”

“Hey, come join us in the bar. He’ll be in any minute.” Luke held an arm out to me
and I sighed with gratitude and took it. I turned to tell Chad it was nice to meet him, but he was already walking in the other direction.

“Thanks,” I murmured to Luke.

“Just be glad it was me and not Ryke. He would’ve had that guy on the floor if he’d seen that.”

I shook my head and laughed. “Uh, I doubt he’s that possessive of his assistant. Or is it just that he’s a hothead?”

Luke pursed his lips, considering. “He can be. I noticed his aggression got a lot worse when . . . um . . .” He looked like he wished he’d stayed quiet.

“When Maggie died?” I asked. “I’d never tell him you said that.”

“No,” he said, his brows pinching as he looked almost confused. “I was gonna say when he married her.”

I looked up at him, surprised by his words.

“Ryke’s like a brother to me,” Luke said, winking. “Otherwise I’d probably be hitting on you right now, too.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Good luck. I’m unavailable.”

“You’ve got a boyfriend?” Luke’s brows shot up with surprise.

“No. I’ve got . . . baggage.”

“Ex-husband?”

“God, no. I’m 22. Ryke didn’t tell you where we met?”

Luke shook his head. “That’s how I know he likes you. He won’t tell me anything about you. Said he hired an assistant named Kate and you were coming with him tonight. That’s it.”

His words made my stomach flip nervously. Surely Ryke just
hadn’t mentioned me because he didn’t think his teammates wanted to hear about the woman who picked up his dry cleaning.

“Guys, this is Kate. She came with Ryke,” Luke said as we arrived at a large round table in the bar. It was filled with several strapping men in tuxes and two women.

I eyed the dark sequined gown on one of the women and the shimmery pink one the other wore. These women oozed money, their hair and makeup perfectly styled. I felt like a cheap knockoff. Surely I looked like I’d consulted a magazine that told you how to look like they did for pennies on the dollar – and it showed.

“Nice to meet you, Kate,” the dark-gowned woman said, pulling up a chair next to her. “I’m Dawn, Victor’s wife.”

There was nothing catty or judgmental about the way she looked at me, and I exhaled with relief.

“Thanks,” I said, moving to sit down. “Nice to meet you.”

“Where the hell is Ryker?” one of the men asked, looking around the bar. “He get held up by some skirt on the way back?”

I flushed as several people glanced at me.

“He’s an ass, don’t mind him,” Dawn said. “He’s just jealous that more people wanted photos with Ryke than with his ugly ass.”

One of the men grinned
and slapped the table. “It’s the off season, guys! Let’s drink!”

A burly man with shaggy red curls gestured to a server and the table was soon full of glasses.
I went along, throwing back the shot that was placed in front of me. It burned, and Luke laughed when he saw me coughing as I sat the glass back on the table. I didn’t drink much.

Dawn and the other woman, Amy, made small talk with me while the men talked about hockey and had more shots. I was relieved to see Ryke stri
ding across the room toward us. The heads of people at the bar turned his way. How did he command such attention? Was it his wide shoulders? The perfect white smile? That body?

It was the total package, I decided when he smiled at me and my heart picked up speed. He mad
e his way around the table and bent down next to me.

“Sorry about that,” he said in a low tone.
“I see you met the guys.”

This was the part where I was supposed to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything but the warmth radiating from Ryke’s body and the light smell of his cologne. What cologne was that? Whatever it was called, it needed to be renamed
Sex
. That was all I could think of as I breathed it in.

I closed my eyes and took a breath to steady myself. No sex. Never again. I knew it sounded crazy, but I couldn’t. Just couldn’t. The agony I’d feel afterward, wondering if I was pregnant, wouldn’t be worth it. I couldn’t go there
again. The terror of waiting for something to go wrong would be too much.

My mind was suddenly flooded by an image of the room I’d delivered my stillborn baby in: a watercolor painting of a sunset on a plain white wall, a window with the
navy vertical blinds drawn and rectangular ceiling tiles I’d counted methodically as I stared up at them.

“Kate?” Ryke was still looking down at me, but his brows were furrowed now. “Are you okay?”

“Uh . . .” I looked around, desperate to escape. Why had I thought I could do this? I wasn’t ready for a normal social setting, and I couldn’t help wondering if I ever would be again.

“Let’s step outside.” Ryke reached for my arm
as I got up and pressed his palm to my back to steer me away from the table. I flinched at the feel of his hand on my bare skin and it fell away immediately. My eyes filled with tears as we walked through the door to the bar. It had been so long since a man had touched me that I was alarmed by it now.

I looked around the huge marble room, but the only doors I saw were the front ones, where people were rolling into the lobby, all smiles.
There were tropical plants, sculptures, the longest desk I’d ever seen, even a gurgling fountain, but no other doors.

“Goddamned fancy hotels,” I muttered under my breath. The tears were on standby, but my vision was clouding.
They’d fall eventually.

“Come on,” Ryke said. He reached out to take my hand, but then seemed t
o think better of it, so he led the way by walking in front of me. Within a minute, he was holding open a door that led us out to a silent parking area.

I breathed out as I leaned
against the hotel’s outer stone wall and closed my eyes. A couple tears gushed out and I wiped them away quickly.

“What is it?” Ryke asked, leaning against the wall next to me. I couldn’t tell him the way he smelled had upset me; that would sound crazy.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and glanced over at him. “Just the thought of something got to me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Kate. It’s okay. Anything you want to talk about?”

I sighed and looked ahead at a dark Range Rover in the parking lot. “I don’t think I’ll ever move past it. I’ll never be the person I was. I had no idea something could hurt so deeply that . . . it changed who I am.”

“You’re still the same person.”

“But I don’t feel like it.” I looked back at Ryke, wishing I could push my hands under the sides of his dark jacket and wrap my arms around his waist. Press myself against his chest.

“It takes time. A lot of time. Be patient with yourself.” His face, which I’d grown used to seeing light and happy, was serious; his mouth set in a line and the corners of his eyes crinkled.

“Was that how it was for you?”

He shrugged slightly. “I went through so many emotions after Maggie died. Sadness, rage, guilt . . .”

“Guilt?” I looked up at him, confused. “But you didn’t do anything.”

“Well, there was a lot I could’ve done better.” He looked away and sighed. “It took about a year for me to feel normal again. And even then, it was a new kind of normal.”

“You must’ve been so in love with her.” The words were out before I thought about them, and I cringed. What a horrible thing to say. I was rubbing salt in the wound of his loss.

“Sure, I loved her. But it was far from perfect.” He moved his hands into his pockets and stared out into the parking lot. “She was actually talking about leaving me, but no one knows that.”

“Oh.” My own sadness was forgotten as I looked up at his clean-shaven jaw line. “But why?”

He glanced down at me and I covered my face with one of my hands, feeling the heat on my cheeks. “God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“No, it’s okay. Maggie was . . . really emotional. We got married during the offseason and things were great then, but as soon as my season started, everything went to hell. She was paranoid, always thinking I was cheating on her. I had to travel a lot, and she felt neglected. We fought constantly.”

“You said you could’ve done things better. What did you mean?” I’d lost all concern about invading his privacy.

He turned up the corners of his lips in a small smile. “You mean -- was I really cheating on her?”

“No, I didn’t mean . . .” But I had. Was that what he felt guilty about? If so, that had to be a deep-reaching guilt.

“I never cheated. That’s what was so fucking aggravating about the fighting. I was being punished for something I didn’t even do. I guess the guilt comes from all the times I didn’t even want to call her after my games, because I knew we’d end up fighting. And also because . . . initially I begged her not to leave me, but it was getting to a point where I would’ve been okay with it. I loved her, but we were miserable. She gave me an ultimatum: quit hockey or get divorced.”

“Quit?” My tone was incredulous, I couldn’t help it.

“She said she needed to know she was the most important thing in my life.”

“Wow. Did you feel . . . a sense of relief when she died?” My audacity shocked me. It was a horrible thing to suggest.
But I’d felt horrible things, so was it possible other people did, too?

He just shook his head slowly. “No. We needed to go our separate ways, but not like that.”

“Did you hate all the things people said to you when it happened?”

He smiled and slid a bit closer to me as we both leaned against the wall. “Like ‘She’s in a better place?’ Or ‘It was God’s will?’ Or
‘You’ll meet someone else?”

“Yeah, like that,” I said, smiling along with him. “I hated some of the things people said to me. One lady who went to school with my mom actually said that babies need to grow up with a mother and a father, and that may
be God knew mine was a bastard.”

“Jesus, that’s shitty,” Ryke said. He reached for my hand and squeezed it into his own.

“Everyone treats me differently now. People either tell me what they think about it or they’re afraid to even mention it. Only my friend Kylie just asks me how I am and listens.”

“You know you can tal
k to me about it, right? If you ever want to.”

“Death is our fucked-up camaraderie,” I said quietly.

Ryke surprised me with a wide smile. “We’ve got more in common than that, Kate. And I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say fuck.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I liked it.”