“You’re feeling better,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I am.”
“So you’re over the asshole then?” He didn’t try to hide the look of disgust. “I never liked that guy.”
“Have you ever liked any guy I’ve dated?”
He thought about that for a moment. “Maybe you need to stop dating so many douchebags.”
I laughed, pushing him away. “You’re one to talk. When’s the last time you dated a decent woman?”
“When’s the last time Idatedanyone?” he shot back, smirking. He had a point. My brother didn’t really date. He was way too busy for that, what with running his empire and all. He did hook-up a whole hell of a lot, and the local papers just loved to photograph him with the revolving cast of one-night stands on his arm.
“Besides,” he went on. “We were talking aboutyourlove life.”
I snorted. “If you can even call it that.”
“He hasn’t tried to call you, has he?” There was a hardness in Andrew’s eyes. He had threatened to beat the shit out of Matt when he found out what had happened, and I was pretty sure he would have if I didn’t stop him. He might be a world-famous billionaire now, but my brother had a long history as a scrapper. He didn’t really have a choice, growing up the way we did, but the guy had gotten in more fist fights than I could count over the years, and I was sure his left hook was every bit as dangerousnow as it had been then, ten-thousand-dollar Brioni suits and all.
“He called a lot at first,” I said carefully. “But then I blocked his number.”
He nodded. “Good girl.”
“Let’s change the subject.” I didn’t like the anger I could still see in his eyes. I didn’t want to be the cause of my brother’s temper fracturing. “Are we getting beignets or what?”
He held out his arm for me. “Let’s get to it.”
Andrew and I met for brunch every Saturday when we were both in town. It was a tradition that we’d started in college, the first time in our lives we’d been separated. I’d followed Andy to the University of Michigan after they recruited him for hockey, getting an academic scholarship of my own. So we’d been at the same school, but our dorms were on opposite sides of campus. That small distance would have been welcome for most siblings, but our shitty history ensured that we weren’t like most siblings. For our entire lives, my brother and I had exactly one person we could count on—each other.
The line at the food truck was long, but well worth it when we finally had our piping hot beignets in hand. “Let’s find a bench,” Andrew said. Once we were seated, I pulled a thermos of coffee from my bag and offered it to him.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, mouth already full, powdered sugar all over his lips and chin.
We munched in silence for a few moments and I let my eyes wander. The weather was nice, not quite as blazing hot today as it had been yesterday, and lots of people were out enjoying it. I watched a couple pass with the cutest goldendoodle puppy. “Maybe I’ll get a dog,” I murmured, watching the hyper little thing tug on his leash.
“I thought spinsters were supposed to have cats,” Andy said, and I pinched him.
“We can’t all buy professional hockey teams when we hit a midlife crisis.”
He gave me a sheepish smile. “I was waiting for you to bring that up.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you tell me you were considering it?”
He shrugged. “It seemed like a long shot. I thought the league’s board of governors would take a lot longer to decide. I figured I would still be in negotiations well after the season started and I’d be lucky to have the team moved next year.”
“Why’d they act so fast?”
He wiped some sugar off his mouth before taking another swig of coffee. “The team’s been hemorrhaging money. I offered to make the problem go away and they took me up on it.”
“You threw a lot of cash at them, you mean.”
He shrugged again. “I did what I needed to do.”
I watched him while he bit into his last beignet, trying to get a sense of where his head was at. My brother was a lot harder to read than most people. Unless he was angry—that he wore on his sleeve for all to see.
“You never mentioned this was something you wanted to do eventually,” I finally said, my tone careful. “I thought you were over the whole hockey thing.”
After his injury, Andy acted as though the sport ceased to exist. He never watched games, never even talked to his old teammates. Once he couldn’t play anymore, he put every ounce of his time and attention into his business.
