Page 80 of Moonlighter
“I’m just having a shitty week.”
“I can tell. Why don’t you let me send one of my guys to pick you up at the hospital tomorrow?”
“Nah. I got it covered.” Sort of. My new plan is to ask the Bruisers intern to do it.
“Hang in there, Eric.”
“Thanks.” But I wish people would stop saying that to me. I get up slowly from the chair, while my knee screams.
“Want to have breakfast before I leave tomorrow?”
“Can’t eat before surgery, Max.”
“Ah.” He makes a face. “Sorry.”
“Yeah. Night.”
I go home alone.
21
Alex
“Wow, there’s a VIP elevator?”asks Duff, my newest driver and bodyguard.
“You bet.”
The doors swing open. “After you, Miss Alex.” He holds out a hand to allow me to step in first. Duff is twenty-two years old and cute in the same way that way that puppies are cute—with lots of tireless enthusiasm.
“Just wait until you see the owner’s suite. It will blow your doors right off.”
“Awesome!” His tongue is practically hanging out at the prospect of watching a Brooklyn game from a box hanging over center ice. Tonight, Brooklyn is hosting Pittsburgh. It should be a terrific game.
Duff is the only one who knows what a big hockey fan I’ve become this season. Usually I watch at home, camped out on the sofa in my den, shouting at the TV whenever Eric Bayer takes the ice.
Since I own a cable TV company, I have an eighty-five inch flat screen. It’s almost like being there. I can watch beads of sweat roll down Eric’s larger-than-life, lickable face in complete privacy.
Except once I screamed so loudly that Duff—who’s usually stationed outside my apartment in the hallway—came running in. “Miss Alex? Is everything okay?”
Everything wasnotokay. “That was a terrible call!” I’d shrieked. “Get that ref some glasses. I think he must be blind.”
“No way.” He’d watched the replay in horror. “So who’s on the first line tonight?”
That’s how we became hockey pals. And now—when he’s on duty and I’m not traveling—we watch the game together. It’s basically my whole social life. I work like a dog for ten or twelve hours a day, then I make popcorn to watch hockey with my man-child security guard. I’m too busy and too pregnant to make new friends. Also, I’ve been avoiding my old friends.
Until tonight.
We emerge from the elevator on the VIP level. I waddle down the hallway, belly first.
“You know which way to go?” he asks.
“Sure thing. Last season I came to a couple of games.” It was just a social event for me, though. I wasn’t invested in the game. I didn’t have a favorite player.
“Why’d you stop?” he asks.
“Just busy.” It’s only partly true. I’ve been avoiding my friends for too long now. But here I am, ready to show my face again.
And tonight is the night because I’m a nervous wreck. My legal teamfinallymet with Jared Tatum today. Mere hours ago he was informed of my pregnancy and asked to relinquish custody.
