Page 45 of Breakaway

“How can you say that!” Remi shook her head, thinking of the work Jase had done with the kids at school. Oh hell. She was defending him.

“Well, a lot of them don’t exactly have good track records. Wives beating them with golf clubs for cheating on them. Getting accused of rape or abusing their wife. Taking performance enhancing drugs. Or other illicit drugs.”

Remi sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “Yeah. Uh…well, that’s true.” There had been some stories in the news lately. “But they can’t all be like that. Anyway, having people stalk you like that is kind of scary.” She thought back. It really had frightened her. She couldn’t imagine that happening if she’d been out alone. Not that it would, since she was nobody, but at least with Jase there she’d felt somewhat protected.

“Oh.” Delise regarded her with sympathy. “That’s not good.”

“No.” She shook her head. “So it’s probably not a good idea to see him again.”

Delise nodded slowly. “So what should we do? Hit a club tonight?”

Remembering the last time she’d done that and had met Jase didn’t make Remi feel much like hitting a club, but she went along with her friends, mostly to keep busy and to keep from thinking about Jase.

After the four day, two game road trip, Jase wanted to go home and crash. But he had business stuff to attend to, laundry to do and oh, yeah, call Remi.

He wasn’t sure if he was angry or disappointed about what had happened last week after those damn photographers had descended on them. Sure he was disappointed, because he and Remi had been on their way up to his apartment for what he was sure was going to be some really hot sex. But he was angry too, angry at the paps for screwing up his night, but also annoyed at Remi for letting it get to her. It really wasn’t that big a deal, especially if you compared him to big movie stars. Half the time they’d followed him, he’d been pretty sure they were more interested in pictures of Brianne than of him.

Which reminded him—she’d left another message on his voice mail. Why, when she knew he was seeing someone else, he had no goddamn clue. He really needed to call her and have a little chat.

He sat on his couch and held his cell phone in his hand. Jesus. He had to call two women and there was nothing good about either of those calls. He hated having to tell Brianne to get lost, but really, she needed to get over it and get on with her life. And he was afraid to call Remi because he had a rock-like feeling in his gut thatshewas going to tellhimto get lost.

Which kinda didn’t make sense, given the reason he’d broken up with Brianne was because she was getting way too serious. And here he was all freaked out because Remi didn’t want anything to do with him.

Get it over with, dude.

So he called Brianne first. Amazingly, he got through to her. He’d thought maybe she’d be on a photo shoot or something.

“Jase!” she answered breathlessly. “Hi!”

She sounded so damn happy to hear from him. He closed his eyes.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you?’

“I’m okay. I’m so glad you called!”

“Uh, yeah. Listen. You gotta stop calling me, Brianne.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry.”

“I miss you so much.” Shit. She sounded like she was going to cry. “Please, Jase. Can’t we just sit down and talk?”

“We did that already,” he reminded her. And hadn’t that been fun. “I’m sorry, Brianne.”

“I don’t understand! How could you find someone else already? You were seeing her before you broke up with me, weren’t you?”

“No! Christ, no.” But itwastrue that it hadn’t taken him long to meet someone. He’d never intended for that to happen, he’d been looking forward to being single and free, and he sure hadn’t anticipated getting tangled up with someone else that fast.

“Never mind,” she snapped. “Damn you, Jase.”

And she hung up.

He tapped the screen to end the call. Yeah, that had gone well.

On to the next call. Of course Remi was at school. He glanced at his watch. It should be her lunch time, so he might catch her. And he did.

“Hi,” she said, not sounded nearly as enthused to hear from him as Brianne had. Dammit.

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