Page 46 of Hockey Wife

I was absolutely trashed and managed to get myself hitched to this lecherous old dude. You wouldn’t believe what I have to suffer to keep in the good books of Mommy and Daddy.

He sought a change of subject. “So what else was on your sister’s list?”

“Travel was a big one. We took a trip to the Grand Canyon a couple of months before she died. She wanted to hike it, but she wasn’t strong enough, so we did a helicopter tour instead, which was amazing. We took in some of the best views from the South Rim. Have you been?”

“Once when I was a kid. One of the coolest days I had with my dad.” He hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

“It’s funny how these memories sear into our consciousness, isn’t it?”

“Life’s highlight reel. Even if you don’t remember them clearly, the feeling stays with you.”

Her eyes brightened. “Right. Like the karaoke, which thankfully I have a record of.”

“I’ll need to see that.”

She shook her head vehemently. “Nope. It’s in the Twin Vault. With the sex stuff.”

“The sex stuff?”

She blushed. “We shared everything, but there were always things she wouldn’t get a chance to do. I was her proxy, in a way.” He must have looked baffled. “She couldn’t do overly physical things or anything that got her heart beating too fast. So I would go a little wild on her behalf.”

He was still hung up on the sex stuff comment. “Like what?”

“Sneak backstage at a concert. That’s how I met Keaton at the Bison gig. Crash a wedding—I’ve done that a couple of times. Stay the night in a museum. Skinny dipping in Lake Michigan. I was cited for that one.”

She chuckled softly as a fond memory took hold. “Mom and Dad were so worried Dani would get more sick, but it was what she wanted. Just to be free of all the poking and prodding. She always knew she could go at any minute, so we were determined to make sure she had as much fun as possible. Sometimes we played pranks.”

“Oh yeah?”

Her laugh was music. “Switching sugar for salt, changing all the male photos in the house to Bruce Springsteen, rubber scorpion in Dad’s coffee mug. The classics.”

“You’d better not try that on me.”

A mischievous look crossed her lovely features. “But as we got older, we wanted to do more adult things. Like go to bars with fake IDs and borrow the Merc for a little spin, which unfortunately Dani crashed into the pillar at the end of the driveway. I took the blame because Dad would’ve killed us if he knew Dani was driving without a license. Sometimes, she was too tired, so she’d encourage me to go out and do my own thing, but text her constantly to keep her updated. She couldn’t smoke or drink or”—she averted her eyes—“do anything that might be considered dangerous to her health, so I was a bad girl for two. She got to live vicariously through me for a while.”

“And what did your parents think of all this rebellion?”

“Rebellion is such an old-fashioned way to describe it. It was more a sisterly gift.” She crumpled up the napkin, smoothed it out again. “And after she was gone, I’d sometimes find myself doing something a little crazy in her memory. This one’s for Dani, I’d say, which was really an excuse for bad behavior. When I was arrested for borrowing a horse during Lolla, it was the last straw for my parents. They cut off my allowance and said I had to get my act together. I was so mad at them. I had some savings, so I moved into Castle Apartments and carried on with my life.”

Her partying, wild-child life. Only now she needed their money again because being poor, or Georgia’s version of it, must suck. “Is that what Vegas was about?”

Her eyes flew wide. “Getting married?”

He nodded. Waited. Wished like hell he hadn’t asked because it sounded like he was hurt.

“You think I married you as a ‘screw you’ to my parents?”

“It crossed my mind.”

She hissed in a breath. “That’s a pretty dickish thing to say.”

It was, and that critique should have been the signal for him to shut the fuck up. He was never good at listening to that inner voice.

“You said yourself you weren’t that drunk. But I’m guessing that buyer’s remorse kicked in good and hard the next morning.”

Marrying a guy like him would make the perfect revenge against the parents who cut her off—or that might have been her first thought until she realized that even that went too far for wild child Georgia. Once her parents found out, she figured she had to keep it up because the Goodwins weren’t going to put her back on the company payroll if it looked like she was still up to her old tricks.

She stood quickly. “Well, it looks like my first instinct in leaving that hotel room was absolutely correct.” After which she left this room without a backward glance.

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