Blindsided. Leslie LaFoy
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She owned a semi-pro team. Why didn’t she have a company vehicle? Something that wasn’t falling apart. Was the franchise that poor? A coach’s five-figure salary would buy a new car. A nice one. Maybe he should take the job but not the paycheck. No, he corrected as they turned off the brick paved street and headed toward the door of the bar. He was going to get on the plane in the morning. With a totally clear conscience. He’d already given Catherine Talbott some free advice. Excellent free advice. He’d give her some more over dinner, and all of it combined would be contribution enough. He didn’t owe her—or Tom—any more than that.
He took a half step to get out in front of her, to make sure he got his hand on the door pull before she did. She looked up at him, obviously shocked by the courtesy. For about a half second. Then she grinned her thanks as she slipped past him. Nobody’s eyes could be that naturally blue, he thought as he let the door close behind him. She had to be wearing colored contacts. And God Almighty, whatever perfume she was wearing smelled good. Eat-me-up-with-a-spoon good.
“Two,” she said to the hostess at the podium and over the low roar of a packed house.
Logan half watched the hostess make her notes and then snag a couple menus. As long as he was in a mood to admit mistakes… Catherine wasn’t quite as short as he’d thought, either. He was used to moving around in a world of giants; hockey players under six feet were few and far between and the women who crossed his path came close to that mark more often than not. But compared to the hostess who led them to a table, Catherine wasn’t any midget. Maybe five-five, five-six, he guessed as he held the chair for her and she smiled her thanks up at him again.
The smile, though…he’d been right on about her smile. Logan sat down across the table from her and hid behind his menu, determined not to let himself get dazzled again by wide and bright and completely genuine. So she didn’t seem to have one coy little bone in her curvy body; it wasn’t as if he was going to stick around long enough to enjoy the novelty.
“Iced tea, please.”
Logan looked up from the menu to his blind side. Yep, a waitress stood there, pad and pencil in hand. “Molson,” he said when the server met his gaze. She shook her head and he made a second guess. “Labatt’s?” She nodded and walked off, writing it down. He glanced after her. The wiggle in her walk wasn’t nearly as sexy as the one he’d followed to the table. Inviting, yes. But with a deliberate effort that didn’t make for appealing.
He considered his menu. “What do you recommend?”
“Everything. It’s all good.”
Big help. “What are you having?”
“My usual, the Cobb salad. Caesar. Hold the croutons and tomatoes.” She folded her menu closed and laid it aside as she smiled at him and added, “I avoid unnecessary carbs whenever possible.”
She was one of those Protein People? Why? He stared blankly at the plastic covered folder in his hands. It couldn’t be to lose weight. She wouldn’t blow away in a stiff wind, but there was something to be said for having some meat on the bones. Better healthy-looking than looking like some junkie. He still hadn’t figured out her purpose when the waitress returned, set their drinks on the table in front of them, and asked if they were ready to order.
Logan laid his menu aside. He had a usual, too. “The lady will have the Cobb salad.”
The waitress glanced over at Catherine and asked, “Caesar and hold the carbs?”
“Please,” Logan said with a nod. “I’ll have the large K.C. Strip, medium rare, baked potato, blue cheese, load her carbs onto mine, and I get the check.”
“He does not,” Catherine protested as she sat up straighter. “I get it.”
The waitress looked between them. Logan smiled and met the blue-eyed gaze across the table. “Wanna arm wrestle me for it?”
“No.” She looked up at the server. “We’ll work it out before the time comes and let you know.”
The waitress gave him a quick nod that told him her bet was on him and then walked off. Logan snagged his beer, leaned back in his chair and settled in.
“We had a deal and it was that I buy your dinner,” Catherine reminded him.
“Put what you’re saving tonight into the new car account,” he countered. “And the other part of the deal was the story of why Tom left you the team.” He angled the mouth of the beer bottle in her direction and winked. “I will hold you to that offer.”
She had promised. Cat reached for her tea and wished she could get away with a simple “because he knew I needed it.” But, as stories went, it wasn’t much of one and certainly not worth any ten bucks. No, she had to pour out the whole thing. It was only fair. “Tom was actually my half brother,” she began, setting down her glass. “Same father, different moms. And twenty-four years apart. No surprise that we weren’t really all that close when I was a kid. But Dad died when I was twenty-eight and Tom and I sorta connected at the funeral.”
The waitress arrived at the table and set a salad plate down in front of Logan. He started—ever so slightly—and reached for his napkin wrapped silverware in an obvious and not-so-successful effort to hide the fact that he hadn’t known the server was there.
Cat picked up her silverware, as well. His right eye was the blind one, she recalled. As she laid her napkin in her lap, she quickly closed her right eye and checked her field of vision. And understood how things coming from that side could be such a surprise for him. Poor man. The least she could do was give him some sort of sign that something was coming at him so he didn’t spend his dinner getting blindsided time after time.
“Anyway, because I was in Dallas and Tom was here,” she went on, “we had a distant, three-four times a year ‘hey-what-you-been-doing’ kind of thing for the next ten years. But he was there for me when the big stuff happened. He and Millie came to my wedding and they set up a college savings fund for Kyle when he was born.”
The man across the table cocked a brow. “Kyle’s your son.”
Cat nodded. “Tom was always my big brother. But Millie really got into being the doting aunt for Kyle. She’s always spoiled him absolutely rotten.”
He swallowed a bite of salad. “And then?”
She adjusted the alignment of the forks beside her imaginary plate and forced herself to take a breath, made herself meet the gorgeous brown gaze square on. “And then my husband had a massive midlife crisis.”
“He left you.”
“High and dry,” she admitted, grateful that Logan Dupree hadn’t let her flounder around in the telling. To the point. That was Logan’s style. But gently. Kindly. That was nice of him. “I thought I was doing real well with the coping,” she explained. “I climbed on the back of the Harley. I didn’t say anything when he traded his Town Car for the roadster. I didn’t laugh when he had the hair transplants or when the face lift made him look kinda Chinese. I took the scuba diving lessons and I packed my bags for a ‘second honeymoon’ on the Mexican Riviera.” She sighed and put on a smile that she hoped didn’t look as strained as it felt. “Unfortunately, he decided to take his administrative assistant on the honeymoon instead.”
“Shit.”
Bless Logan for the wince. “Yeah,” she agreed. “It was a late afternoon flight. I spent the morning double-checking the babysitter and getting all that kind of stuff set. He spent it selling his Harley and the roadster and cleaning out the bank accounts. Which was the last of the liquidating as it turned out. The week before he’d cashed out both our IRAs and 401(k)s.”
Across the table, Logan snapped his jaw closed and then frowned. “That’s illegal. Your accounts are yours, not his.”
“That’s what my attorney said and the divorce judge agreed with him. But having a judgment and enforcing it are two different things. It’s like Ben’s