Ice Cold (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (5 page)

As the taxi pulled up to my mother’s house just outside of New Haven, I looked up at the impressive house that could probably be classified as a mansion. My mother collected husbands the way that she collected jewelry, and she traded up every time she did. I barely remembered the tidy little white house with the picket fence where I had lived before my father passed away.

She had taken a step down in society when she married my father. When he died, she had been left with few skills, and so set about what she did best. She reconnected with all of her former society friends and promptly married husband number two.

They all started to blend together after awhile. The worst one was completely indifferent to me. The nicest one asked me questions about my life and showed up at the various school activities that required parental involvement. My mother divorced husband number five two years ago and had been comfortably living off all of her previous settlements since then. I seriously wondered when the guys she went out with were going to wise up to the idea of a prenuptial agreement.

I knew I shouldn’t really complain. My mother’s gain meant that I didn’t need to pay for school or work during my four-year stint in college. I had been able to focus completely on my studies. But I was eager to get out from under the thumb of my mother subsidizing my life. It was time that I stood on my own two feet, and I had vowed long ago that I wasn’t going to follow in her footsteps when it came to matters of the heart.

As I got out of the taxi, the front door flung open, and my mother stepped out onto the front step. She was dressed in a light pink pantsuit that fit her trim figure like a glove. Her blonde hair was cut in a stylish bob that fell just above her shoulders. More than one person had remarked that Maxine looked more like my sister than my mother. She worked hard at it; such was the life of a divorced socialite on the prowl for husband number six.

“Darling! I would have sent a car for you. Why didn’t you let me know you caught an earlier flight?” I moved toward my mother, and she caught me up in a tight embrace. For everything that I disliked about my mother’s life, I had to admit that strictly on just being a mom, she got top marks. I had never felt second best or as if I was a bother to her. She was proud of my scholarly accomplishments and insisted on spoiling me at every turn.

“I knew you had your luncheon this afternoon, and I didn’t want to be a bother,” I said. My mother’s assistant had provided my mother’s schedule to me in anticipation of my arrival. The entire morning had been blocked off to prepare for some charity fundraiser that she was hosting.

“I would have figured something out,” my mother said. She left her arm around my shoulders even as she directed one of the house staff to take my bags to my room. “I have a surprise for you. I can’t wait to show you.” She moved me across the driveway.

“What is it?” I asked. I had joked to Stacey that I thought my mother was going to buy me a car, but I was secretly wishing that was the case.

My mother pulled a small box out of her pocket and hit it which caused the garage door in front of us to begin its ascent. Inside the stall, I saw a two-door powder blue BMW sport coupe with a red bow on the top. “Happy Graduation!” she exclaimed.

Just like that, I was ten years old again. I squealed and clapped my hands together before giving my mother a hug. Then I ran to the car and started my exploration. It was my favorite color, and I loved the feel of the plush leather seats as I slid into the driver’s seat. My mother opened the passenger side door and sat down next to me.

“You’ll need these,” she said, dangling the ring of keys in my face.

I snatched them out of her hand and turned the engine over. Immediately, it purred to life. “Let’s take a drive,” I said. “Do you have time?”

My mother laughed and nodded. She closed the door, and I spun out of the doorway enjoying the feel of how responsive the car was as I maneuvered back to the main road. “This is awesome, Mom. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Alexa. You’ve worked so hard; I thought you deserved it.”

“I’d say that you are too extravagant with your gifts, but I’m not going to complain this time around,” I said. I loved the way the engine growled as I let it open up on the highway. “This is killer.”

We rode in silence for several minutes. I was completely absorbed in my new car. I hadn’t needed one in Chicago since I lived just off campus and had access to the L rail everywhere. But now that my future was wide open, and I had no idea what to expect next, this was one less thing that I’d have to worry about.

“So, there’s something else that I’ve been meaning to tell you,” my mother said, breaking my train of thought.

“What, you’re getting married again?” I scoffed as I flipped on my turn signal for the exit ramp. As much as I wanted to keep going until we reached the water, I was starving, and I knew she needed to get back. I’d take the car out for a longer spin in a bit.

The long pause caused me to glance wide-eyed back over at my mother. She had a pensive look on her face. “You’re kidding, right?”

“The wedding is in four months,” she said stiffly. “I’d like it if you could be there.”

I let out a low whistle. “So much for the whole ‘I’m never getting married again for as long as I live’ bit that I’ve been listening to for the last two years. What made you change your mind?”

“Cal made me change my mind,” my mother said as she rubbed her forehead. “I know you’re probably sick of me saying this, but I think he is the one, Alexa. The one I was meant to be with forever.”

“Okay,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Yes, I’ve heard that a time or two as well. If I was in Vegas, I’d probably lay odds on that not being the case, given your past history and all.”

“Believe it or not, Alexa, I want what every woman wants in life. A companion who fills my life and enjoys the same things I do. Someone to fall asleep with every night and wake up to in the morning. It has been lonely clunking around that big house with no one around.”

“If this companion happens to be rich, that’s just an extra bonus, right?” I couldn’t keep the snide comment to myself as I spun back into the driveway of my mother’s house.

“Alexa! Really, I thought I raised you better than that. We all have flaws, and we all make mistakes. I am human.”

“Your flaws happen to be named Mitch, Daniel, Robert, and Steve,” I said. I saw my mother’s stricken expression and immediately regretted my tone. I slid the car back into the garage and put it into park. I left my hands on the wheel and gripped it tight before loosening my fingers with a long sigh. “I’m sorry. That was wrong of me to say. I just thought you were really going to stick to the whole not getting married again thing, and I was proud of you for doing that. I don’t mean to be a total bitch. If this is what you want, then I’m happy for you.”

I got out of the car even as I tried to force myself to believe my words. At the end of the day, I was out of the house, and my mother’s love life wasn’t any of my business. I made my way around the car as she got out and then gave her a hug. “Thanks for the car. I’ll be at your wedding. I haven’t missed any of them so far, have I?” My mother had been pregnant with me when she married my father, so it was a true statement.

My mother sighed but gave a small chuckle. “I’d like you to be my maid-of-honor, of course.”

“Sure.” I slung my arm through hers as we walked back to the house.

“So, will you be bringing a date?” My mother wasn’t so subtle with her hints that she’d like it if I settled down.

Silver-blue eyes rose unbidden in my mind. I shook my head. I wasn’t planning on ever having a one-night stand again. Shayne had broken the mold with that experience. I wasn’t supposed to still be thinking about him. I knew there was no way he was still thinking about me. It had been almost a week, and I hadn’t heard a thing from him. Of course, I had refused to give him my phone number, so I shouldn’t be too surprised. “No, I’m not seeing anyone, so I doubt it.”

“You still have four months,” my mother said with a sly wink. “By the way, what are your plans for tomorrow night?”

It was a Friday night, so it wasn’t that unexpected that she’d think I might have plans. I had a few friends from school who were still in the area, and the city wasn’t that far away where a fair amount of them had settled after graduation. “I don’t have any plans,” I said. “I’m all yours.”

“Excellent,” she said as she opened the door for me to step inside. “We have a reservation at eight at O’Malley’s with Cal. I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

I suddenly wished that I had told her I had plans after all. “Great,” I said spreading a fake smile on my face as I feigned enthusiasm for the idea. “I can’t wait either.”

Either my mother was ignoring my true feelings or she was willing to play along. Either way, she kept up her line of incessant chatter as she led me toward the kitchen.

After thirty minutes in Cal’s company, I had to admit that he wasn’t all that bad. He was a partner in a law firm that specialized in entertainment law, and he had already regaled us with several tales of his more well-known clients. Of course, he couldn’t tell us exactly who they were, but it was fun trying to guess.

“That totally sounds like Lindsay Lohan,” I said as the maître’d led us to our table. It had been a short wait after we arrived, but a drink in the bar had been sufficient in loosening up my mind on the topic of Cal.

“No, but it’s a good guess,” Cal said. He pulled out the chair for my mother and then for me. I saw my mother raise her eyebrows at me, and I wanted to roll my eyes. She wanted me to like Cal so bad it was painfully obvious. “It’s true, though, that most of the time when we’re working with our clients, it’s because they have something bad happening in their businesses.”

“It’s so odd to think about being a celebrity as a business,” I said. Cal’s description of their services for their clients included the gamut of legal services from contract negotiations to making bail to defending their clients from various lawsuits. It sounded more interesting than I would have expected.

“Well, they’re in the business of making money to support themselves just like everyone else,” Cal said as he settled into his chair. A bottle of wine appeared next to Cal’s shoulder in the sommelier’s hands. Cal was a regular. He nodded as the sommelier poured a small portion into his wine glass. He paused just long enough to taste it and indicate his approval before continuing. “It just happens to be that part of their business is living a part of their lives in the view of the public. As distasteful as it might sound, that is part of their image. If they are popular with the masses, everything they touch will turn to gold. If they fall from favor, well, that has the equal negative consequences.”

“It makes sense,” I said as my wineglass was filled.

“A toast,” Cal said as he pushed his glass up into the air. “I am a lucky man to be having dinner with two such lovely companions this evening. To my beautiful bride to be.” My mother practically glowed as she leaned over the table, and she and Cal exchanged a soft kiss. I looked away embarrassed by the public display of affection. I went to take a sip of my wine when Cal’s voice stopped me. “And, of course, congratulations to you, Alexa, for a job well done. Happy graduation.”

The sentiment was unexpected. “Thank you,” I said simply. Most of my mother’s husbands barely deigned me with a second glance. I was more of a minor annoyance than anything else. Luckily, my mother hadn’t shipped me off to boarding school to get rid of me like husband number three suggested.

We ordered our meals and then talk turned back to me, catching me again by surprise. “So, you mother tells me that you are quite the academic,” Cal said.

I flushed. “I liked getting good grades because I’m competitive like that. I’m also a big klutz, so sports were pretty much off the table. I focused on my schoolwork, and it seemed to come naturally. I liked it.”

“That’s good,” Cal said. “I wish I could say the same pursuit of intellectual wisdom was evident with my son.”

My eyebrows rose. I glanced at my mother. “Oh, I didn’t know you had a son.” A new stepbrother to add to the mix. Hooray.

“Yes, he’s been quite a handful from the day he was born. He did have a natural gift for sports, I must admit, but that meant that his scholarly pursuits suffered. He decided that a career with that kind of bent was better than pursuing a college degree. He dropped out of college when he was twenty and hasn’t shown any inclination of going back.”

“Well, if he’s good at what he does, then it shouldn’t matter, right?” I wondered what it would feel like if my mother talked about me with the same scorn in her voice that I heard in Cal’s. It was obvious he didn’t approve of his son’s life choices.

“I would have preferred he chose a career that had better long-term prospects. Physical prowess and stamina can fade, and in my line of work, it is unbelievable the number of accidents we see that take athletes out the game. The worst part is, most of them squander their money on frivolous things and then when those accidents do happen, they end up going bankrupt and losing it all. If they had only been serious about investing and looking after their financial future when the money was flowing like water from a faucet, they wouldn’t be in those dire straits. It’s difficult to recover when you have nothing to fall back on.”

I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time Cal had let loose on this subject. “Hopefully, he’ll come around then.” I didn’t want to sour the evening or my warming feelings toward Cal by deciding he was an unreasonable, controlling ass when it came to his son.

Cal snapped his fingers causing me to jump. He pointed at my mother. “You said that Alexa was a bit of a whiz with numbers, right?”

“I do have a double major in business administration and mathematics,” I said, answering on my own behalf. Our entrees arrived, and my mouth watered looking at the expensive filet mignon on my plate. It had been months since I’d had a good steak. “Numbers are easy. It’s people that are hard.” It was a sentiment that I expressed to Stacey often. Stacey’s minor was in psychology. She enjoyed helping people talk through their problems. I wondered at what point she was going to start charging me for listening to my endless babble about feeling like a failure in my life.

“Did I hear correctly that you also don’t have a job lined up yet? What is that about? I would think you could have your pick of any job out there with your GPA,” Cal said.

“The job market is competitive,” I said with a shrug. “Even the valedictorian of my class doesn’t have a job yet. If you aren’t going into the social services or enrolling in the military, it seems like decent jobs are hard to come by. I don’t want to do entry-level work in a call center or at a retail clothing store either. I want to use my degree.”

“I have a proposition for you,” Cal said. “You interested in hearing it?” He cocked his eyebrow as he dug into his steak.

I felt a sweat break out as I realized dinner might have just turned into a job interview. I put my fork and knife down so that I could give Cal my full attention. “Of course.”

“So you just heard the details of my dilemma with my son. My firm handles his contracts and business matters, of course. I’ve been looking for someone to manage his finances on a daily basis. It would involve some travel around the country because to do the job well, you’d have to keep a close eye on what my son is doing and spending his money on.”

“A financial babysitter?” I asked.

“An onsite bookkeeper,” Cal corrected. “He’s got another four months booked out on his current schedule, and then he’ll have a three-month break. That’s why your mother and I planned the wedding then, so he’d be able to join us. If you can take over things and turn him around for the next four months, I’ll see about getting you a full-time position with the firm once his break starts.”

I was shocked. “So you just want me to balance his books for the next four months and travel around the country in his entourage, and you’ll give me a job?”

“Or a glowing recommendation for a position elsewhere if you’d prefer,” Cal said. “I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars for it.”

My mouth fell open. “Twenty-five grand for some basic addition and subtraction? Where do I sign?” Suddenly, I liked Cal a whole lot more than I did when the conversation first started. The job sounded like a piece of cake.

“Excellent,” Cal said. He took his wine glass up in the air again. “I’ll have the contract drawn up in the morning for your review. I’m looking forward to working with you, Alexa.”

I clinked his glass and took a long sip of wine. I couldn’t wait to get home and call Stacey. It looked like my hard work was finally about to pay off.