Oh, crap. How had I forgotten about that? Andy was throwing the get together at his ridiculous estate outside of town for the entire Austin Sting organization to welcome them to their new city and to celebrate the start of the regular season.
I might have tried to get out of it—even before the night of amazing sex, I wasn’t exactly excited about being in the same place at the same time with my brother and Liam—but Andy had told me the plans in front of Peyton and Rosa, inviting them aswell. They were both so excited about the possibility of hanging out with hot hockey players, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse.
“I’m going,” I told him.
“And I don’t think you could possibly sound less enthusiastic about it,” he said, laughing.
“I just…we agreed we were going to keep this quiet.”
“And you don’t think you’ll be able to keep yourself from jumping me in front of the entire team?”
I laughed at that image. “I mean, youarepretty hot.”
“Keep talking like that and I’ll be forced to find a broom closet to drag you into.”
“No way,” I said quickly. “Absolutely not. I was just joking about the whole jumping you thing. We are not sneaking off to fool around.”
“Why not?” I could hear the pout in his voice.
“Because it’s my brother’s house,” I said. “That would just be weird. And if anyone caught us and he found out about it…”
“You really think he’d be that pissed?”
Um, yes. I did. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Andy traded Liam over it, honestly. He might have teased about bringing Liam here for me, but I knew my brother well enough to know he was messing with me. He would not be happy if he knew what had happened between his sister and his star center.
I decided to try another tact. “Isn’t this a family event? Won’t Josie be there?”
He made an unconcerned noise. “I’m sure Jay would be happy to hang out with her for a while so I could go get some.”
“Liam!” He couldn’t be serious. “Josie is my student.”
“It’s not like we’re going to do it in front of her?—”
“We aren’t going to be doingitat all! We are not sneaking off, we are not hooking up. We aren’t even going to talk to each other in front of my brother and your teammates.”
“Don’t you think that would be a bit excessive?” He sounded nothing but amused at my obvious panic. “I mean, won’t your brother wonder why you’re ignoring me? And won’t it be weird for you to talk to Josie without even acknowledging me? Or are you going to ignore her, too?”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “Fine. We’ll talk at the cookout. In a completely professional, platonic way.”
“Mmhmm,” he said, and I just knew he was grinning.
“I mean it, Liam!”
“I guess we’ll just have to see.”
I didn’t like that tone at all. I’d heard it from him before, usually when he was discussing an upcoming game. Liam was a competitive guy and I could hear the challenge in his voice—and a hell of a lot of certainty that things were going to go his way.
When I pulledinto Andy’s circular drive, the car went silent, my two best friends staring up at the imposing facade of the biggest mansion any of us had ever seen.
“Does it ever get commonplace to you?” Rosa asked, more than a little awe in her voice.
I snorted. The girls knew how Andy and I had grown up, but I didn’t think there was any way they could fully understand what it had been like. It was hard to describe how insane it felt, to pull up to a place like this and know it was my brother’s. To know that I would never again be in danger of being hungry. To know that the lights were going to stay on, that there would be heat in cold weather.
My twin might have been the one to become a billionaire, but that money meant security for both of us. For the first time in my life, there was someone that I could turn to if shit wentsouth. Someone who would never, ever let me return to the kind of life we had lived before. If you’ve never spent nights awake, wondering where your next meal was going to come from or where you were going to find shelter the next day, you couldn’t really understand what a gift something as simple as not worrying truly was.
The old adage that money couldn’t buy happiness was bullshit. Andy’s money—and the security it provided us both—was a miracle. And I was never, ever going to take it for granted.
“Definitely not,” I told them honestly. A point that was reiterated when a uniformed man appeared at my window.
