* * * * *
Bruiser stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. He couldn’t sleep. Normally he slept pretty well until a nightmare woke him up. Tonight, he couldn’t even fall asleep.
“Hey, your thrashing around is fucking keeping me awake,” Brett called from the next bed.
“Since when? You’d sleep through a nuclear attack.”
“Yeah, well, not tonight.” Brett sounded as cranky as Bruiser’s great-aunt Alma without her morning shot of bourbon. “Worried about the game?”
“I wish that’s all it was,” Bruiser admitted.
“Then what is it? Mac?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m psychic, what the hell do you think? You dumb ass, you’re in love with her.”
“What?” Bruiser shot up in bed and gave his buddy his best eat-shit-and-die glower, only it was wasted due to the darkness of the room. He slumped back against the headboard.
“You heard me. You’ve been a jerk to deal with lately. Since you’ve been hanging around the film room into the evening, I can only guess you’re not spending nights in Mac’s bed, and no one else’s, for that matter. Haven’t seen you in one gossip magazine in a few months.”
Bruiser laced his fingers together behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “I’m trying to be good to get custody of Elliot.”
“Hmm. Is that all?”
“Of course that’s all.” Bruiser got up and paced the room in his boxers. “Isn’t that enough to stress a guy out?”
Brett sat back against the pillows, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. “You’re pretty damn transparent.”
“Since when?”
“Since I’ve gotten to know you so well. You have feelings for Mac, and she does for you. Hell, I’d be thrilled if that was happening to me.”
“I wish it was happening to you. I’m all wrong for her.”
“She doesn’t think so. If she did, she’d kick you to the curb for good.”
“She did.” Bruiser stopped and stared out the window at the Boston skyline.
“Bullshit. Nah, it’s just one of those female things where they play hard to get and want you to prove your devotion. That sort of crap.”
“You think?” Bruiser turned to eye the lump on the bed.
“Hell, I’m not the expert you are but, yeah, I think so.”
“I’m far from an expert on relationships. Sex is a different story.”
“Yeah, I get that, but the team has had a lot of guys getting hitched in the past couple years, and they seem disgustingly happy.”
“Except Harris.”
“Harris is a law unto himself. He might not be wearing a wedding ring, but he’s sure as hell wearing a ball and chain.”
“Pussy-whipped.”
“You’ll never see that with me.”
“Me neither.”
Brett laughed. “Buddy, you’re already on your way. The second you give power to a woman to set your moods, the moment your happiness depends on her happiness, then you, my man, are screwed.”
“Fuck you.”
Brett laughed.
“Hey, your time will come.”
“Never. I’m not the marrying type. Too much baggage for any decent woman.”
Bruiser wondered what kind of baggage Brett might be referring to, but he never asked, and Brett never volunteered. That was the way their friendship went.
Besides, Bruiser had his own baggage to worry about, baggage that needed to be stowed somewhere so he could get on with his life.
Chapter 22—Zone Blitz
Returning home from dropping off Elliot, Mac caught movement in her backyard. Gripping a baseball bat, she slipped out her side door and stayed in the shadows of her house, heart pounding so loudly she couldn’t believe the intruder didn’t hear her.
Just as she stalked to within a few feet of the skulking figure, whose shape looked remarkably like her father’s, the man climbed on top of a stool and lowered himself over the fence into the neighbors’ backyard. Mac stood on tiptoes and looked over the fence.
“Dad, what are you doing?” she hissed.
Craig held his hand up to his mouth. “Shh.”
“Get out of their yard.”
“I saw them leave.”
“They could be back any minute. Where’d you park your car?”
“Down the street. Shh. We don’t need to announce our intentions to the rest of the neighborhood, especially nosy old Mrs. Rockhurst.”
“Mrs. Rockhurst has been invaluable in keeping us apprised of what’s happening over here. She’s as nosy as you are.”
“Not that invaluable, or they’d be arrested.”
“Get out of their yard, now, or I’ll call the police on you myself.”
Her father shook his head. Mac leaned the bat against the fence. With a sigh, she climbed the fence to retrieve the stubborn man, even though she didn’t know what good it would do other than get them both arrested for trespassing.
In one hand her dad held a shovel, in the other a flashlight.
“What are you planning on doing? You have a restraining order. You can’t be here.”
“That bitch killed my son. I have a right to know. If the law won’t handle it, I will.”
“Dad, they could have dumped Will’s body in the woods or the sound. Somewhere we’ll never find it.”
Craig turned to her. “We will find it or die trying.”
Mac frowned. She didn’t want to do this the rest of her life, she really didn’t. She wanted more. She wanted—
Bruiser. And Elliot. A family.
If only they could make it work, but the odds were not good as long as her father obsessed over his missing son.
“Get out of their yard.” She grabbed his arm and pulled. “Come back to the house with me.”
They both froze as a car came down the street and turned into Mac’s driveway. She looked through a crack in the fence. Thank God it was Bruiser, though she had no idea what he was doing here this late at night. The team plane must have just gotten back after a heart-wrenching fourteen-to-ten loss to New England.
While Mac’s heart did a little waltz right up to Bruiser, she almost forgot her body was standing in her former sister-in-law-turned-murder-suspect’s backyard.
She ran back to the fence and called to him.
Bruiser peered over the top board. “What are you two doing?”
“I’m trying to get Dad out of their yard before the police show up and arrest him.”
Bruiser vaulted over the five-foot fence like it was nothing, the
