“It never came,” Didier said emphatically. “Think. Rachel, lure a client?” He snorted. “She couldn’t even lure a man. You had to go on the offensive.”
He closed his eyes against the pain in his chest. He rubbed at his sternum, trying to ease it.
He felt Erik’s hand on his back. “Are you having chest pains? Can you move your arms?”
“Il a raison.” Sitting on the other side of him, Didier frowned at him with concern. “You’re very pale.”
“My heart’s breaking,” he said, giving them a look.
“Don’t worry. We won’t let anything happen to you. I know CPR.” Erik took his wrist and looked in the distance, concentrating. Then he sighed in relief. “Your pulse is awfully strong so I don’t think you’re in danger.”
“The only thing he’s in danger of is becoming a diva,” Didier said, raising his brow as if he were daring Jamie to react.
“You don’t know how I feel,” Jamie said through gritted teeth.
“Mais, oui, bien sûr que je sais.” Didier rolled his eyes. “We all know. We are footballers. There is always someone trying to take advantage of us, even in our families.Rachel n’est pas Claudia, et tu n’as pas seize.”
“For some reason sixteen and thirty-one don’t feel very different,” he mumbled, drooping. “I never should have told you about Claudia.”
“That is like saying you wish we were not brothers,” Didier said, fire in his eyes. “Is that what you are saying?”
“No.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Donc, arrète.” The anger banked a little, but there was still a little heat to Didier’s touch when he nudged Jamie’s shoulder. “Call her and talk. Rachel is a nice girl, too nice. She couldn’t betray someone, especially someone she loves.”
Erik nodded. “There has to be an explanation.”
Jamie grunted, leaning back and closing his eyes. They were probably right, but he couldn’t see it, and he didn’t trust himself not to yell when he spoke to her. He needed to calm himself first.
Because something sure as fuck had happened. Otherwise her boss wouldn’t have called Brad and wanted a meeting. How could her firm think he was interested? Rachel had to have alluded to it. She had to be involved.
He needed to figure out what he was going to do now. The rug had been pulled out from under him. No football. No Rachel. No new home. He thought about his word,precipice, and knew instead of flying, he’d fallen.
Twenty
Rachel wanted to go to Jamie’s, but she didn’t know the address of the place he was renting with the boys, and Jamie wasn’t answering his phone, so she left him a message to call her as she walked home.
Lottie was sitting on the stoop, hunched over her cell phone. She was so engrossed in whatever she was looking at that she startled when Rachel started up the steps.
She slowed down, warned by the solemn expression on her grandma’s face. “What happened?”
Lottie held her phone up. “Sweetheart, you need to see this.”
Dropping her bag on the porch, she took the phone and sat next to Lottie. It was a news article fromTheTribune. “Since when did you read the paper online instead of in print?”
“Just read it, Rachel.”
The title of the article wasn’t very attention grabbing. She could have done better.
But the first line of the article caught her attention—hard.Superstar forward Jamie MacNiven of the Torino FC is in Chicago, making the rounds…
She gasped.
“Exactly,” Lottie said. “Just wait till you read the rest.”
She skimmed through the entire article, and then she reread it slower. A sick feeling began in the pit of her stomach. She looked at the picture of her and Jamie kissing at the baseball game. It made what had been such a sweet moment look lurid.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Jamie had been outed, Didier and Erik had been too. She groaned. So much for them being incognito.