Page 3 of Tangled with the Tight End

“I’m telling your boss.” He twists on his heel and freezes as a little boy I hadn’t noticed before jumps from sofa to sofa in front of the stone fireplace that takes up the end wall of the lobby. The opposite wall is glass and overlooks the view of everything from the mountain to the lake in the valley below.

“Gino!” The man barks louder at the kid than he did at me. The boy jumps off the sofa and lands on the floor with a howl. “Stop jumping and get over here. Now.”

What an ass. The kid is probably three years old, and this asshat isn’t even concerned about him. I rush over to him, crouch down, and pull the boy to his feet. “What hurts?”

His bottom lip quivers. “My butt.”

“Gino, get over here.”

I whip around and glare at the man. “Wait a second. Let me make sure he’s okay since you don’t have the emotional capacity to show concern for your child or have concern for anything but yourself, for that matter.” A tear slips down the boy’s cheek. They resemble each other but one has emotions and the other is a heartless joke of a man.

two

GABRIEL

Perfect.My head is pounding, my knee has ached all the way from the airport, and now it feels like a jagged hunting knife has been jammed through it after Ms. Graceful here knocked into it. To top it off, Ms. High and Mighty is questioning my parenting skills.

She can’t even walk and not knock someone over.

“Get your hands off my son.” I march toward the sofa she’s sitting on, but each step sends pain shooting through my right knee where the luggage rack knocked into it. “I’m capable of taking care of him.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I am.” I snatch him off the cushion and wait until he settles against my waist. “Hey, Buddy, are you okay?”

“Yeah….” He nods and wipes snot and tears from his face with the back of his arm. Between that and the applesauce caked on his dinosaur T-shirt, it’s no wonder she’s questioning whether I can care for a three-year-old. “The sofa bounce.”

“Yes, they do.” I tilt my head and give him a stern look. “But we aren’t to bounce off the sofas.”

He raises his hand with the palm facing upward. “I okay.”

I bite back a chuckle. “I see that, but we don’t jump on the furniture. Especially furniture that doesn’t belong to us.”

“Oh….” His bottom lip trembles as he fights back tears. Shit. Do. Not. Cry. Just hold it together for a few more minutes.

“Come on. Let’s go to our room.” We both need a shower. I hitch him higher on my hip and glance over at the woman who tosses out barbed insults better than Gunner Sinclair zings a football.

After I collected Gino, she stepped back, but she’s still studying me like a bug on the sidewalk with her phone clutched in her hand, ready to hit dial. That’s just what I need–someone to call the Children’s Division to declare me a worthless father. “Thank you for checking on my son, but he wasn’t supposed to play on the furniture.”

“Okay.” She waits as if she expects me to say something else, and her finger remains poised on her phone.

Fuck. I’m too tired for this. I’ll talk to the manager later about her flippant attitude. She has no business greeting guests like she did.

Without a backward glance, I straighten my back and ignore the pain. I need to get to my room and elevate my leg. The hairs on my neck stand as I push the luggage cart to the elevator, but I refuse to turn around. The last thing I need is more disapproval in my life.

The second the elevator door dings, I hop on the lift with Gino and our gear. Why didn’t I stay in Kansas City for the holiday?

Because you have nowhere else to go.

Thanks for that. But the negative voice in my head isn’t wrong. The guys are at an away game and don’t need a useless player taking up space on the sideline. My parents are back in Texas. Or would be back in Texas if they weren’t traveling. My‘wife’ is in Florida, and well, that’s not a welcome place at this point. And my brother and his family live here. So here it is.

I sag against the elevator wall and drop Gino down to the floor. As we go higher to the lodge’s top floor, Gino jumps up and down while laughing and yelling ‘jump’. What would it feel like to be that happy and carefree again? If I ever was, I can’t remember it. Or that quick to overcome an injury. I glare at my knee.

The elevator door slides open, and I lead Gino through the hallway and into our room with my hand resting on his silken curls. When I stop, he squeals while running around in circles and clapping.

“A tree. We have a tree in our room.” Except room sounds more like woom.

In front of the wall of windows that overlook the view of the valley is a 10-foot-tall Christmas tree decked out in old-fashioned ornaments, lights, and tinsel. Gino grabs a handful of the silver strands and tosses them into the air.

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