Page 30 of Pipe Dreams
“Nope,” Lauren said quickly.
“Patrick told me just last week that you and Beak used to be a thing,” Ari said.
“True story.” Lauren sighed.
“What happened?”
Perhaps the answer to that question was more complicated than Lauren used to think. “Depends who you ask. He broke up with me over the phone the month we were shopping for apartments together.”
“Ouch,” Georgia said.
“The other side of the story is that his ex-wife was terminally ill. He panicked and went back to her after a year and a half with me.”
“Holy shit!” Ari yelped.
“I never saw it coming. So I had a rough couple of months.”Try two years. She still wasn’t over him, damn it. “We haven’t talked at all, either. But he wants to be friends again, and I don’t know if I can do it.”
Ari and Georgia were both staring at her with undisguised fascination. Then again, this was more talking than she’d ever done to these two. “So that’s my life. How are yours?”
Georgia blinked. “And here I thought I was a little stressed out about planning a charity benefit in only two days. Compared to your thing I guess it isn’t such a big deal.”
“What benefit?” Ari asked.
Georgia made a face. “Nate had this bet with a friend from college. Some Florida billionaire.”
“Alex Engels,” Lauren volunteered. “She owns cable TV networks, real estate, and an NBA team.”
“Right,” Georgia agreed. “They had a bet going. Whoever’s team didn’t make the play-offs had to donate a million dollars to the other guy’s charity of choice. The Bruisers made it but Alex’s team didn’t. So she’s throwing a black-tie cocktail party in forty-eight hours. Whatever she raises she’ll match on top of her own million. All the players have to go, because this thing is being billed as a way to meet both a hockey team and a basketball team in one night.”
“Let me get this straight,” Ari said. “Nate won a bet... so I need to put on a gown and heels? How is that fair?”
“You have two days to find one,” Lauren put in. “And an entire team to prepare for the next round of grueling competition. No sweat, right?”
Ari smiled. “You’re funny, Lauren. How do we not know this?”
“Eh. Being around the team makes me cranky. I have to psych myself up just to step into any building where Mike Beacon is. It’s hard to be funny when you’re trying not to throw up.”
“Huh,” Georgia said slowly. “That’s why you always tell Nate that you hate hockey.”
Lauren smiled for the first time in hours and hours. “I say that just to be a pain. He knows that hockey used to be my life, and that this team was my family. My father was the GM until Nate fired him and promoted Hugh. My boyfriend was the captain.”
Ari snapped her fingers. “I’d forgotten that Beak was captain. Patrick told me he only got the job because Beaconhad some family emergencies. I sure never heard the whole story, though.”
This surprised Lauren a lot. “I guess it’s nice to know that not everyone is a gossip.”
“I’ve worked for the team almost since the minute Nate bought it and I never heard about you and Beak,” Georgia said. “Maybe the gossip wasn’t as bad as all that?”
“Maybe notnow. But the hockey wives all knew Shelly because she’d been their friend for years, and she was well liked. And when she and Mike broke up they all blamed me, even though it wasn’t like that. Later, when he left me, they werefilledwith glee.”
“Yikes,” said Georgia softly.
“I moved to Manhattan in a big hurry then.” The worst part about that awful time wasn’t the bitchy looks in the grocery store, though. It was her own anger. She’d hated Mike for leaving. And she’d been angry at Shelly for using an illness to claw back the man she’d cheated on.
That’s how it had looked, anyway. And then, when Lauren figured out that Shelly was actuallydying, it only made her feel guilty. Horribly guilty.
The car pulled up in front of the hotel, and both Georgia and Ari reached for their pocketbooks. “No—I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?”
