My brain was on the brink of frying, my blood had passed simmer and was on its way to boil, and my stupid heart wouldn’t stop thumping. “One more time please?”
Lowe sipped her coffee with purpose, then placed it slowly on the table and pinned me with a look I couldn’t read. “When Penn took ownership last season, he was determined to build a winning team. He desperately wanted Jupiter to play for The Lions, and Jupiter would only do so on the condition Penn found you and offered you a job. He told Penn to give you anything you asked for. Basically, make you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”
My mouth closed, then opened, then closed again, all while I tried to make sense of any of this. “That’s why he offered me a million-dollar salary?”
Beulah sucked in her cheek and nodded, while Lowe looked kind of apologetic. “Yep.”
My mind whirred; that sledgehammer I mentioned earlier? It had just hit.
“So let me get this straight… fourteen years ago he breaks my heart and leaves me to put myself back together, then wakes up one day and decides he wants me back?! And I’m the dummy who fell for it!” I slapped myself on the head. “Oh, hell no!”
I could see Beulah on the verge of saying something, but it was then something else occurred to me.
“Oh my God! He’s been dictating the course of my life since I was sixteen, and I haven’t even realized!”
“I told Penn this would backfire,” Lowe muttered with a head shake, and looked at her watch. “Okay, it’s lunchtime, which means we can officially drink wine. And I think we need it for this conversation.”
We sat in silence, each of us pondering the new information we’d been served, while actually being served three large glasses of wine and a bowl of fries. I don’t think Lowe and Beulah were plotting Jupiter’s downfall like I was, but they definitely looked deep in thought.
Well, not exactly downfall, but my thoughts weren’t favorable.
“What are you thinking?” Lowe asked, breaking the silence.
I stopped running my thumb nail along my bottom lip and took a large gulp of wine.
“I don’t know. I can’t blame him for my marriage ending; I would have divorced David anyway. But I didn’t need to be manipulated into coming to New York.”
“You’re being paid a lot though,” countered Beulah.
“It’s tainted money! It’s blackmail. I was paid just fine in Houston,” I grumbled.
“I say let’s go shopping with it.” Lowe raised her glass with a smirk, before laughing loudly at the expression on my face.
Beulah joined in and then I followed, because none of this made sense and it was sounding more ridiculous by the second. The three of us sat there laughing until tears poured down our cheeks.
And it wasn’t even that funny.
But the more I thought about it the more I laughed… until reality dawned on me, that my reality wasn’t real. I was in a made up job I’d been conned into taking. But as first days go, this probably wasn’t the worst. I had four more to figure out what to do about it before the team returned and things really got started.
I looked down at my cell as it beeped from an unknown number.
Private: We’re back in the same city, Star. Hope you’ve had a great first day. X
I scowled at the screen, like that message was the cause of all my woes – technically it was. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who’d sent it, especially since that rocket scientist was me.
If Jupiter Reeves thought he could click his fingers, or send a text, and I’d come running like every other girl, he was sorely mistaken.
I had until the end of the season to get the job done, and that was exactly what I was going to do.
3
JUPITER
Present Day
My bags landed on the floor with a thud, and I blindly searched the wall for the light switch. Six weeks I’d officially been living here, and still hadn’t remembered where everything was.
At least the place was somewhat open plan, so I didn’t have to go opening closet doors when I was looking for the bathroom.