Page 38 of Not Before Game Night
“Don’t be a dick and fuck with me,” he warned.
“Okay, I won’t. Wasn’t on my to-do list. So, you came to tell me that here? Didn’t think football was really your thing or that you’d fly all the way here to give me the news.” I wasn’t in the mood for this shit.
“I’m here to watch you,” he informed me.
“Me? Wow, well, I didn’t realize you admired me so much.”
“Buchanan.” He stepped right into my personal space. Anyone else who did that would be on the floor right about now, but I’d let him off on account of the past, and also I didn’t think it would bode well for me with Vanessa if she found out I’d gotten into a fight with her cousin. “I told you. Don’t be a dick and fuck with me. I’m here to watch you because my cousin has this thing for you, and I really don’t know why. So, I’m telling you now. Leave her alone if you plan to make her some kind of addition to your ever-growing list of bed friends. She is not that. She’s not even your type. The loose, classless women I see you hanging around with is not her. If you plan to hurt her, you leave her alone.”
Leave Vanessa alone...
Maybe that was an easier path. The pompous prick looked at me too like I would take that route. It would be easier than have him on my ass. He just didn’t know I couldn’t leave her alone, even if I tried. I’d tasted too much and gone too far. Wanted her too much.
I smiled at him and flicked the lint from the shoulder of his pristine Armani suit.
“Don’t worry, Gage Cartwright, I don’t plan to hurt her.” I gave his shoulder a little pat, surprising him.
I started walking off, but he called out to me. “You better mean that, Buchanan.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I mean it.”
All I had to do was get the girl.
Game on.
Chapter 10
Vanessa
* * *
Mia satdown on the bed across from me.
We’d landed in Chicago a few hours ago, had lunch with Gilly and Eric, and when I tried to dismiss myself so I could be alone in my room, she and Abby came with me.
It was most unusual that Abby the drama queen had kept her silence.
Anyone who took one look at me could tell something more than the bad spell I’d been through had happened. They could see something else was up, and it had gotten to me.
I hadn’t exactly done a good job of hiding it either when anyone spoke to me.
Even Dad. We’d flown over here with him, Gage, Uncle Patrick, and Grandpa.
I’d sat next to Dad with my head on his shoulder while Grandpa told us one of his crazy stories. This one was about how his eye fell out when he apparently fell over a fence and hit his head.
Oftentimes, I questioned the truth in his stories because they were so bizarre. Anyone who knew my grandfather knew he was the essence of whacky. He was a big, burly guy who loved talking about what he used to get up to as a boy growing up in Ireland. Most of the time, he was drunk, and it was at those times when his accent was more pronounced and he would tell us all sorts of things.
Abby sat next to me on the bed, took a lock of my hair, and started braiding the ends the way she did when we were little.
She was the eldest, Taylor the second eldest, Mia next, and I was the baby.
“So, is this how this trip is going to be?” Abby asked. “Us tip-toeing ever so carefully around an obvious problem?”
“No,” I answered and glanced over my shoulder at her.
Mia raised her perfectly arched brows at me. “Well, I could talk about whether or not I think Eric might propose to me while we’re here, but I feel like we’re all talked out about that.”
“He won’t propose here,” Abby answered with a little giggle.
