Just for Christmas Night Read online

  Damn. Even her feet were beautiful.

  Too slow to detect the danger of standing in her house, of reinserting himself into her life to help Marshall and Tem while assuaging his own guilt, Joaquin realized he was against the ropes again.

  He didn’t like that—to be pushed to desperation. Part of the glory of fighting was that every risk he took was on his terms.

  “Charming, Martha,” Tem said.

  “I wasn’t expecting a first-thing-in-the-morning ambush.” Martha pointed down at Joaquin with a pearly-white mug. “Catch.” When he cupped his hands, she scoffed. “Sharp, broken things and I don’t get along. And I’m not taking a chance on dropping the mug I flashed my derriere to get from this cabinet. I meant catch me.”

  Joaquin’s brain stayed stuck on flashed my derriere until she said, “You’re tall, strong and in my way for a reason, aren’t you?” Softly arched brows rose a millimeter over obsidian eyes.

  Not giving her the satisfaction of his agitation, he held out his arms. She jumped without hesitation, landing securely in his grip with a whisper of a sigh. Privately he relished the vanilla scent on her hair, the gentle sleep-puffiness of her eyelids, the jiggle of her breasts, and her subtle curves and angles.

  In the span of seven heartbeats, she was twisting out of his arms. Unfortunately, he’d cradled her a moment too long—because now he suspected that she was the sexiest thing he would ever see or hold. And he didn’t have a single defense.

  “Coffee’s in the brewer over there,” Martha said to a stunned-speechless Tem, relinquishing the mug. “I’ll walk Joaquin out.”

  “But—but I invited him here to visit you,” Tem protested. “As a surprise.”

  “The drawback to surprises is that there’s no guarantee they’ll pan out. I’ve got a date with a six-jet shower. After that I’m going to the stadium.”

  “Martha, I thought you were taking a personal day to decorate this house for the holidays. It’s almost Christmas and there’s nothing festive on the property.”

  “I was going to take a personal day to listen to you dictate how I should decorate this house. Now I’d rather reacquaint Joaquin with the door and then apply my energy to PR business.” Martha brushed past him, making tracks for the foyer.

  “Vegas is smaller than it seems,” she said to him once he jogged down the rough stone steps and joined her in the semi-privacy of the hushed lawn. The security gate was open the way he’d found it when he had eased his Cadillac Escalade past the stream and rocks bordering the driveway. Sunlight played over her form and washed the rustling, shaggy grounds. “Our paths are bound to cross again.”

  “Not if you don’t want them to.” He had visited Nevada on a handful of occasions over the past four years, to either fight or promote a fight, and had managed to slip out of the state without encountering her.

  Screw the fallout—he’d do the same thing now if it meant sparing her more hurt.

  “I’ll keep my head down, win the match I came here to win, and leave. I don’t want to hurt you again.”

  Martha stared in contemplation. Then she laughed. The ring of it forced him off his axis. “Your life is about hurting people, Joaquin. You’re America’s number one boxer because you make fighting look like art. Causing pain, destroying people—you’ve perfected it. Knowing who you are—what you are—makes me immune to you.”

  There wasn’t a trace of the fragile sincerity he’d witnessed in the gym yesterday. Coldness stood in its place.

  Behind the wheel of his truck, he captured a final glimpse of her as she, with her arctic attitude, taut legs, flimsy sweater and satisfied-with-herself smirk, spun and retreated into the house.

  I don’t know what game we’re playing, Martha. But I don’t lose. I never lose.

  *

  At half past seven, Martha turned off the Tiffany lamp on her mirrored office desk. Darkness collapsed onto the room. Light from the outer hall bled into the shadows, and she could hear a drone of voices. Corporate reorganization had recently combined public relations personnel with the advertising and marketing departments, forcing them to coexist on the admin building’s fourth floor—called “Schmoozers’ World,” or more informally, “S-Dubs.” Most of the Las Vegas Slayers’ front office schmoozers had probably just poured the last drops of stale caffeine from carafes to cups in order to stave off fatigue and finish tasks, meet deadlines and connect with overseas contacts far into the night.

  Martha had immersed herself in team promotions and publicity. The only reprieve she’d allowed herself was the elegant midafternoon luncheon in the conference room. Marshall and Tem had permitted her to join the business operations meeting providing she refrained from chiming in.

  The logic behind the stipulation—she had a knack for talking her way into and out of trouble and she was a fresh college graduate who’d majored in communication studies but unofficially minored in mischief—hadn’t dampened her enthusiasm for the opportunity to watch the franchise’s biggest players in their element.

  Neither Marshall nor Tem grasped that her hunger to strengthen their legacy was so genuine that she’d passed the GMAT and was a part-time Lee Business School student. Enrolling in the graduate program had been liberating, even though it remained a secret. She wasn’t ready to lay her ambitions at her parents’—her employers’—feet, only to have those ambitions punctured with discouragement.

  What she was ready for involved vodka and a dance floor. She grabbed her tablet, a pile of crisp folders and her purse. Her friend Leigh had texted earlier to beg off their plans: RAIN CHECK ON FOUNDATION ROOM. GOING TO D.C. WITH DAD TONIGHT. NEXT MARTINIS ON ME!

  That hadn’t come as a surprise, since Leigh, whom she’d met only months ago at a wedding, was steadfastly following in her CNN correspondent father’s footsteps.

  Martha stepped into hall traffic, counterflowing a barrage of suit-and-tie advertising execs, half of whom paused to admire her walk-away. She was less concerned with their perusal than she was interested in finding someone with whom to share a round of drinks. A social drinker, she preferred conversation with her alcohol. She stopped at her friend’s cubicle, taking a moment to admire the small fiber-optic tree on the desktop. “Can I interest you in martinis at the Foundation Room?”

  “Yes!” Chelle Vine pushed away from her computer, but didn’t seem excited as she began revolving in her chair. “Too bad I can’t, though. Late night with my cubicle mates. With a few more Red Bulls and a crapload of luck, we’ll finalize the tweaks to the team party before sunup. Our entertainment headliner fell through. He’s apparently shooting a few scenes for a film, and there’s a conflict. But our second choice was waiting in the wings.”

  “Thank God for second choices.” But Martha fumed. DZ Haze, an ex-convict who’d preached in lockup and rapped once he was released, was at the pinnacle of hip-hop superstardom. She’d treated his publicist and the record label’s top execs to VIP Las Vegas experiences just to book the artist. It had been a personal triumph because she’d succeeded without the aid of the man who always got asses to move in the music industry: Marion Reeves, her sister’s ex-husband. Now she felt used, offended and even more determined to get her way.

  If her parents got wind of the performer’s disrespect, of her failure to keep him committed, she’d appear weak.

  In a world of overblown egos, multimillion-dollar deals and cutthroat business maneuvers, weakness wasn’t flattering.

  “Not official yet,” she said to Chelle, “but I’m getting DZ Haze back on the schedule. A headliner needs a solid opener to get everyone hyped. That’s what we’ll tell our backup. Keep it confidential.”

  Chelle’s chair abruptly stopped spinning. How the woman managed to remain sitting upright without spilling onto the floor, dizzy, Martha couldn’t explain. “Evening, Mrs. Blue,” Chelle said.

  Martha noticed the boost in the distinct sounds of productivity—people shuffling papers, tapping keyboards, slapping staplers—and would’ve smiled had she not su
spected that she, rather than on-the-clock slackers, was the reason for Tem’s voyage to S-Dubs.

  “A word before you head out, Martha?” Tem asked.

  “Absolutely.” To Chelle she said, “I’ll have a Madagascar margarita in your honor.”

  “Order it extra spicy.”

  “No. I value my taste buds.” Chuckling, she wagged her index finger in farewell and began walking alongside Tem.

  “We’ll take the owners’ elevator down,” her mother informed her, strutting with purpose. In a few strides Martha had fallen behind her.

  The owners’ elevator contained a pair of tufted chairs and a stoic-faced attendant who resembled an action-movie Secret Service agent.

  Though Tem settled into one of the chairs, Martha didn’t follow suit. She failed to see the point when their destination was the main floor.

  No expense had been spared to renovate the building’s lobby. It gleamed and twinkled, and was nearly as overwhelmingly grand as Martha’s favorite New York City relaxation spot, Hôtel Plaza Athénée.

  Passing the concierge’s marble-topped desk, Tem led her to a settee near the soaring Christmas tree. The professionals hired to decorate the stadium for the holidays had achieved a blissful marriage of creativity and class, but Martha was partial to the extravagant hand-painted glass ornaments that displayed this season’s Slayers’ names and jersey numbers.

  “I’m organizing a formal family dinner, since your sister Danica chose to twist the knife of embarrassment and not share Thanksgiving with the family—”

  “Ma, it wasn’t like that,” Martha interrupted. All right, maybe it was a little unflattering that the team’s freshly resigned GM had indulged in a Thanksgiving getaway with the team’s freshly reinstated quarterback. But her sister and Dex hadn’t asked to fall in love. They had made themselves suffer to ignore it for the sake of obligations. Now that they’d found the kind of connection that others lived and died without knowing, shouldn’t that be what mattered? “Dex is part of Danica’s family. She lives with him, sleeps with him, and she wanted to spend Thanksgiving with him.”

  “Oregon, though? An orchard?”

  Martha shrugged. “It’s where Dex grew up, and it’s spectacular. If you make an effort to visit them instead of popping up in my neck of the woods, you could see the photographs yourself.” After several seconds of Tem’s narrow-eyed glare, Martha hastened to add, “I know you miss her.”

  “I miss having her as part of the team. Marshall does, too. We brought Charlotte to the training staff for her potential and persistence. We hired you to give you guidance and stability. But Danica…we wanted her here at our side, as our GM.”

  “Well, Ma, she wants to work at Faith House and have a future with Dex.” Faith House was the nonprofit teen outreach shelter Danica had founded. In exchange for ownership of her sister’s former house, Martha had agreed to volunteer at the shelter. “She has a good life now. Charlotte’s got a good life, too, with Nate.”

  “Nate Franco. Dex Harper. With my girls.” Tem sounded weary.

  “Okay, they’re not altar boys. But, come on, Ma, the Blue family Christmas card photo’s a lot sexier this year.” Major understatement, but to press the issue would only reveal Martha’s own kink for badass men.

  Martha didn’t date. She’d never had a boyfriend. She had lovers and friends. And wasn’t that her prerogative?

  Wasn’t it her choice to never have sex with the same man twice?

  So far she’d managed to keep the details of her sexcapades to herself, which wasn’t easy when something as benign as laughing with a man could be misconstrued as cause for internet shaming.

  “You didn’t bring anyone to the family Christmas card photo shoot,” Tem commented loftily.

  Because to do that would’ve implied that she was committed to someone, which she never had been and never would be. “I haven’t met anyone who’s Christmas card worthy.”

  “Just consider this. When you come home tonight you’ll see that it’s remarkably tidier than it was when you left. I paid my household staff to clean it. They don’t judge—but I will, because I’m your mother.”

  “Judge away, Ma.” Martha turned toward the tree, bracing herself. Two Tem lectures in one day? Did she—anyone—deserve this?

  “A responsible home owner with the financial blessings you have should secure her own housekeeping. Or she should paint the town less and clean the house more. Seems every other night you go off the grid, Martha, and neither your father nor I can reach you. Where do you go?”

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The library. Places where I feel good about myself and my future, where I can accomplish goals you think are out of my league. “You already answered that question,” she said. “I paint the town.” For now, at least, lying was the best way to safeguard her pride.

  “Slow down, Martha.”

  “Slow down? Why—so some man can catch up to me? No, thank you.”

  “Then make time for your family. That includes Joaquin. I was livid watching you all but run him out of the house this morning.”

  “Want me to apologize?”

  “Next time he sacrifices his own priorities to visit you, be a respectful hostess to your guest.”

  “Which is he, Ma? Family or guest? Or just an acquaintance who hasn’t exactly made time for the Blues in recent years?”

  “Joaquin’s career should come first. I realize you looked up to him as an older brother of sorts, but he’s not your brother. You shouldn’t feel entitled to priority in his life. He can’t care about you as much as you might think he should.”

  Didn’t she already know? Hadn’t she had four years to tattoo the message into her mind? “Don’t worry, Ma.” She stepped away from the Christmas tree and the conversation. “I know exactly how little I matter to Joaquin Ryder.”

  *

  A camera flashed as Martha stepped out of the Blues’ private tinted-window BMW in front of Mandalay Bay. “You’re more of a celebrity in this city than you think,” the driver commented, shutting her door.

  “Or that pair of paparazzi was tired of stalking this place for real celebs and photographed the first person who popped out of a car with dark windows,” she retorted with a grin.

  As she cut a path to the entrance in her baggy Christmas-spirit-red sweater, destroyed skinny jeans and stilettos, she sensed someone watching her. Peeking to her left, she found a heavily bearded man in a puffy jacket and stained pants.

  “Want a picture, or what?”

  The man looked to his companion, who seemed startled that she’d stopped to speak. “Yeah. And can we ask you about Joaquin Ryder? Common knowledge says he’s close to the Blue family.”

  “What about him?”

  “We got a tip that he’d be showing up here tonight. We want to ask him about fight night.”

  Martha hadn’t gotten that tip. She scanned the face of the towering Mandalay Bay. If she was going to convince Joaquin that she’d shrugged off the past, she had to prove that he had zero effect on her decisions. She’d left Slayers Stadium, showered off the workday and come out to simply dance at the Foundation Room. There was no choice but to follow through.

  “Can’t help you there,” she told the paparazzi.

  “The picture?” Puffy Jacket reminded her.

  Martha smiled kindly. “Of course. In fact, give your pal the camera. C’mon over and say cheese.” Once the camera clicked, she went inside. The paparazzi population hadn’t been overly pleasant to her, broadcasting her mistakes and finding scandal where there was none, but Puffy Jacket and his friend had given her valuable information.

  Joaquin was going to be here tonight—if he hadn’t already slipped inside undetected. All Martha had to do was pretend she didn’t give a crap.

  In the exclusive Foundation Room, her favorite bartender gave her a sweet martini that she nursed while standing and swaying to the music. Though members-only, the space was filling fast with patrons all hard-up for drinks, laughs and dancing
.

  Giving herself up to the music, she gyrated to the center of the crowd. So high over the Las Vegas Strip with the bass shaking her bones, she didn’t know a more thrilling sensation.

  “Moves like those were made for bedrooms and poles.”

  Martha startled, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to care about the past or that Joaquin in the present posed a much bigger threat to her defenses. It wasn’t supposed to influence her one way or the other that he was stone, inside and out, and his seriousness was so deep that frown creases bracketed his firm mouth. Time and again, it compelled her to tell him a knock-knock joke to lure a smile.

  His single-dimpled smile alone was a glorious thing. In combination with his shaved-to-the-scalp hair, dark eyes and tasty-as-brown-sugar complexion, his image had supplied her with many nights’ worth of red-letter dreams.

  The bastard. In the end, that’s what he’d wanted her to walk away believing he was.

  So why was he in her way—again?

  “I don’t dance for opinions. I dance for myself,” Martha told him, turning on the congested dance floor to behold him in a suit that was on the brink of shoving her into a spontaneous orgasm. “This is kind of my hangout, Joaquin.”

  “All members are welcome.”

  “Well, Las Vegas is clearly running out of hot spots if a place can appeal to a man with your tastes and a woman with mine. We’re very different people.”

  “Can we talk—off the dance floor?”

  “That might be a problem, seeing as I came here to dance.” Yeah, she was being mulish, petulant and difficult, but he’d treated her in practically the same regard yesterday at his uncle’s gym.

  And she had come here to dance.

  Joaquin’s mouth hovered at her ear. “Please, Martha.”

  Attraction was a living, breathing thing between them. Could fate truly be so unfair that he was completely closed off to the lust that rattled her as thoroughly as the music’s bass?

  “I’m making my way to the bar for a Madagascar margarita.” Dancing to the bar, she felt him follow her. He sat on a stool, waiting as she ordered the drink then took a brave swallow.