“Bruiser has a degree?” She’d known he played college ball, but she figured he got drafted into the pros and left school.
“Yeah, in business and finance. He graduated with honors.”
Mac shook her head, shell-shocked. She hadn’t a fucking clue. Everything she thought she knew about him was a misconception.
And just maybe there was one more. Maybe he was a man with the ability to commit long term.
Who the hell was she kidding? The guy carried more baggage than the cargo hold of a Boeing 787, and the last thing he needed was a commitment to a woman who had her own cargo hold full of matched luggage.
* * * * *
Beady little blue eyes bored into Bruiser’s back as he sat at the bar. He could feel them. He swung around and came face-to-face with the team’s asshole quarterback. When the jerk continued to stare without saying a fucking thing, he turned his back on Harris again and faced the bar, but the quarterback’s laser-sharp gaze still seared his skin as if he held a blowtorch.
Bruiser whipped around again. “What?”
Tyler shot him his trademark smirk, an expression he’d honed over the years. “You are such a fucking tool.”
“You would know.” Bruiser would never understand what Lavender saw in this guy.
“Hey, I make it my business to know anything that might remotely affect the team. You’ve been moping around like a pansy-ass about to turn in his man card because of some female.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
Harris’s cronies gathered around the bar, pulling barstools from other locations. So much for a quiet night to think things over.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Harris threw back his head and laughed so hard Bruiser swore he’d snort up a lung. Finally, wiping his eyes, Harris got a hold of himself. “What would we know about that, right, guys?”
Derek seemed to find this hilariously funny, too, along with Zach. Brett half smiled and buried his head in the bar menu, which after all this time frequenting this place, he should have memorized.
Bruiser didn’t get it, not one bit. Other than they were annoying the hell out of him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“One word, dumb shit. Mac.” Tyler’s superior smirk pissed Bruiser off, but then Tyler loved to piss people off. It was part of his MO. If he knew he got under Bruiser’s skin, he’d burrow in deeper and heckle Bruiser until hell froze over.
“Mac?” Bruiser played dumb. He was blond, after all.
“Yeah, you’ve fallen harder than a kicker trying to throw a block on a lineman.” Zach snorted beer through his nose. After a coughing fit, he quickly wiped his nose with a napkin. Kelsie had taught him a thing or two.
“I don’t fall for women—not Mac, not anybody.” They knew about Mac?
The three idiots shared a private look and burst into another fit of annoying laughter, while Brett’s pinched expression made him look constipated.
“Yeah,” Harris said. “That’s why you’re as shit-faced cranky as Lavender when I took away her Nordstrom’s credit card.”
Bruiser exercised epic denial. “It’s not about Mac. Not really.” And it wasn’t, at least not in total.
Another fit of laughter, then the idiots grinned like a pack of hyenas after a wounded antelope. These assholes were seriously pissing Bruiser off.
“Yeah, sure, then who’s it about?” Harris challenged.
“Elliot.” Bruiser deflected the Mac questions to a safer subject though just as troubling. Thinking about the kid’s circumstances made Bruiser sick to his stomach. He’d been visiting Elliot regularly. The boy’s aunt Ruth made no bones about how much the kid inconvenienced her and her brood of “normal” children. All the while, she played the martyr role to the hilt for her church friends. After all, she had taken in this difficult orphaned child of a former sister-in-law.
Bruiser disliked the woman and her husband. They didn’t want Elliot, but appearances were everything to them. After all, what would people think if they sent the kid back to the foster care system? Bruiser researched a possible guardianship, but the Joneses were adamant that his situation didn’t fit Elliot’s needs. He grudgingly had to admit they were right to a point.
“Is Elliot the kid from the burn unit?” Derek’s smile faded and his brows drew together. Even Tyler’s glee over needling Bruiser turned off faster than the power in a Maple Valley thunderstorm.
“His aunt showed up and took him home a week ago. She’s a real bitch. Can’t even look at him she’s so horrified by his burns. Her husband is a fat, lazy slob who sees Elliot as his personal slave so he doesn’t have to get out of his La-Z-Boy. Elliot wants to live with me.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at him as if he’d announced he was hanging up his cleats to take up quilting.
“Crazy, I know,” Bruiser admitted.
“I don’t think that’s crazy. You have lots you could offer someone like him.” Of course, Derek would say that. Derek saw the best in everyone.
“Even if I tried, no one would give me a guardianship. I’m single, gone a lot, and not in a stable home, or so the aunt says.”
“That’s what you needed Freddie’s number for?” Harris asked. Freddie was Harris’s take-no-prisoners attorney sister.
“Yeah, I asked her to look into my options.” Which hadn’t been very encouraging. The aunt and uncle hadn’t done anything to lose custody. They fed and clothed Elliot, kept him clean, and he showed no signs of any physical abuse. Essentially, he had what he needed except for love, and the courts only considered the observable elements of caring for a child. Apparently, love couldn’t be measured. Bruiser knew better.
And he had promised.
“She’ll help if anyone can. Man, I’m scared as hell of my sister.”
“So far, the bitch aunt isn’t having any of
