“We’ll see,” Bayliss repeated, and Mac wanted to scream. “Luckily, I see enough talent in this team to want to invest whether you are part of it or not, whether you play or not. It was nice meeting you, Mr. McCaskill. We’ll talk again.”
Mac stared at Bayliss’s back as he and Kade walked away, then he forced himself to sip his drink, to look as though he hadn’t been slapped.
Whether he played or not? Hell, if he didn’t play, what could he do for the team? Kade was the management guy. Despite his youth, Quinn was a damn excellent coach...what did Mac bring to the party apart from his skill on the ice? If playing wasn’t an option, there was no way he was going to float around the Mavericks on the outside looking in, making a nuisance of himself. He was either a full partner or not. A full contributor or not.
God, not. Was that a possibility?
“Want to dance, Mac?”
He blinked at the perfectly made-up face to his right and couldn’t put a name to the gorgeous blonde. He looked toward the entrance, still didn’t see Rory and decided what the hell. Dancing was better than standing there like an idiot freaking out over his future. He nodded, handed his glass to a passing waiter and allowed the blonde to lead him to the dance floor. When they reached the small circle, he placed his hands on her hips and wished she was Rory. He could talk to Rory about the bombshell he’d just experienced, about the fear holding him in its icy grip.
She’d help him make sense of it, Mac thought as his dance partner moved closer, her breasts brushing his chest. He felt nothing, no corresponding flash of desire and no interest down south. Huh, so if things didn’t work out with Rory it looked like he’d be going the monk route.
He tried to put some distance between them but the dance floor was crowded and there was little room to move. Mac sighed when she laid her head on his shoulder. She didn’t feel right, smell right; she was too tall, too buxom, too curvy...where the hell was Rory?
Over the heads of most of his fellow dancers he looked toward the door and there she was, dressed in a scarlet cocktail dress he wanted to rip off with his teeth. She had a small bag clutched under her arm and she was holding her cell phone... She was here, finally, and all was well with his world.
Then he lifted his eyes back up to hers and his heart plummeted at the expression on her face. Her eyes were huge and wide, her skin pale and she looked like she’d been slapped. Even from a distance he could tell her eyes were full of tears and her bottom lip trembled. Oh, crap...
He wanted to yell that her addition sucked. Two plus two did not equal seventeen! He was just dancing with the woman, not doing her on the dance floor. He hadn’t given his dance partner one thought; in fact, he’d been desperately waiting for Rory to arrive to rescue him...
One dance and the accusations, as sure as sugar, were flying, silent and deadly. He could read her thoughts as clearly as if she’d bellowed them across the room. I can’t trust you. You’ve let me down. You’ve disappointed me.
The voices in his head mocked him. Hell, even his mother’s voice came to join the suck-fest.
You’ll never be quite good enough. This is why you should keep your distance. This hurt is gonna be your constant companion for the rest of your life. You don’t deserve normal and you sure as hell don’t deserve love... She doesn’t trust you. She never will. You always manage to mess it up...
The expression on Rory’s face put it all into perspective. They’d been back together for a day, sort of, and with one dance with a complete stranger, he’d been unfairly fouled. And if that wasn’t life telling him this would never work then he didn’t know what was.
Rory looked down at her phone, lifted it to her ear and bit her lip. She sent him another look, one he couldn’t quite interpret, spun on her heel and left the room. She was running as hard and as fast as she could. Mentally, emotionally and, dammit, literally.
That was that, Mac thought, walking off the dance floor toward the bar. He felt like he was carrying a fifty-pound anvil around in his chest instead of a heart. Since he wasn’t about to have sex in the near future and he might be saying goodbye to his career with the Mavericks, he might as well have a drink.
Or many.
* * *
Rory sat next to Troy’s bed, holding his hand and willing him to wake up. She’d been at his bedside for twelve hours straight and he was still unconscious. Rory looked at his medical chart at the end of his bed and told herself there was no point in reading it again, it wouldn’t change the facts.
Troy, on his way to start his evening shift at The Annex next door, had failed to stop at a traffic light and plowed his rust bucket into the side of a truck. He’d smacked his head on the steering wheel and had swelling on the brain. When the swelling subsided they would reevaluate his condition.