Page 21 of Play to Win
“Or poker,” Lance added. “I can use some extra cash and you two can’t play worth squat.”
“I’m good.” Ethan looked pointedly at them. “You both know I’m not in the market for a third strike. So I’m good doing what I do.”
They both sobered at that look. One of the first things they’d done when they all came back together was tell what had happened to make each of them walk away from the careers they’d thought would last forever. So they knew his story. They knew about his ex-fiancé and the hot blade she’d stuck so callously through his heart.
Lance stared meaningfully at Ethan for a moment and then gave a curt nod. “Stay good, bro.”
Ethan nodded in return. “I plan to.”
Noah looked as if he wanted to say something else but changed his mind. “Let’s get to work. Holla if you need anything,” he told Ethan.
Ethan knew that Noah was talking about more than work and the bar when he said that, so he simply replied, “I will.”
But he didn’t need anything that Noah could help him with. What Ethan needed and what he should probably stay away from were two totally different things. He needed to keep his mind on the bar and making the statement he and his brothers had planned to make in this town. But he wanted, with more urgency than he’d ever experienced in his life, was to be inside of Portia Merin, once and for all.
* * *
“Everything is going just fine,” Portia lied to her godmother on the phone. “Rod says he’s right on schedule to finish everything on Monday. The new HVAC system was installed yesterday. New appliances for the kitchen and fixtures for the bathrooms came this morning. All that’s left is the rest of the painting inside and then the outside painting. I’ll be on my way to New York late Monday night,” she said.
“And your next book signing is Tuesday afternoon,” Sunny finished.
“Yes ma’am. I’ll still be on track with the book tour.”
“How about the new outline and chapters? How’s that coming?”
Portia was silent. She didn’t want to lie to Sunny any more than she absolutely had to. “It’s coming.”
“What’s the theme of this book?” Sunny asked.
Again, Portia paused. It shouldn’t shock her how interested in her career Sunny was. After all, her success was partially due to her godmother’s candid advice.
“I’m not sure yet,” Portia confessed. “I feel like I’ve covered all the ground there is to cover in this regard. Sex. The emotion. The physical. Done.”
“Oh really?” Sunny asked. “Is that how you think of it now?”
“I’m trying not to think about sex,” she said with a sigh. “I’m trying so hard.”
Sunny chuckled and Portia stared at the phone quizzically. She shouldn’t have said that to her godmother. She should’ve just kept her mouth shut and got off this call. It was uncanny, but sometimes, it seemed like Sunny could actually read her mind. And the last thing she wanted right now was for her godmother to know what she was thinking at this moment. What, or rather who, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about in the past couple of days.
“Yes! It’s finally happened!” Sunny yelled through the phone.
“What’s finally happened? Are you alright?” she asked wondering if Sunny had been paying attention to her at all.
“You’ve found someone you want to be intimate with,” Sunny said. “I knew the day was coming. I told you that patience was a bitch and life was short, so you had to go out there and grab the bull by the horns. Hot damn! You did it!”
Portia shook her head. She had no idea what Sunny was talking about. Her godmother had told her so many things in her years growing up. Some had made sense, others hadn’t. Judy, Portia’s mother, told Portia on numerous occasions to ignore everything Sunny said. “Her mind’s warped from all the marijuana she smoked when we were younger,” Judy would say.
But Portia hadn’t listened to her mother because between the two former best friends, Sunny had been the one to act more like a loving mother to Portia than Judy ever had.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” she said honestly.
“Yes, you do my Ladybug. You were always good at acting like you had nothing to say, blending into the background so that people rarely knew you were there. But I knew and I watched and now here we are.”
Portia rubbed her temple. She had no idea where Sunny’s mind was, but Portia knew for certain that her thoughts were once again straying in the direction of Ethan.
“It’s a man. My Ladybug has found herself a man.”
“No, she hasn’t.” The denial might’ve been a little too quick. “I mean, no I haven’t!”
