The Elite: The Complete Series of Boomer and Player (With Bonus) (51 page)

When the screw in my hand slipped for the third time I lost it.

“Fuck!” I roared, screaming so loud my lungs burned. I channeled my voice into action, chucking the wrench in my hand so hard it banged into the opposite wall with a loud, pinging, thud of metal on concrete.

I raked my hand through my hair as the sound echoed and died. My eyes burned but I wouldn’t release the hot tears that sprung up.

Instead, I stalked back to the light switch, smashed my hand against the row of switches and watched the room get swallowed back up by darkness. I was done with the museum for the day. Between the angry horde outside, the red canceled signs on the schedule, and the empty, echoing showroom, I was over it.

I sneaked out the side door, locking it behind me, and crossed over to the house, hustling as much as I could, to avoid detection by the protesters.

I wondered if O’Keefe paid them extra if they managed to get me on film. I snorted at the idea. God only knew what O’Keefe had paid them to picket the museum. He was a dangerous man with seemingly endless resources.

It was a real shame that his specialty was fucking shit up.

I bypassed the house and went into the free standing garage my father had built with his own hands as an addition several years ago. Inside, I climbed into my old Army Jeep that I’d rehabbed, and tinkled the keys around on my master key ring until I found the right one. I jammed it into the ignition with the lingering frustration that I hadn’t worked out in the garage, and fired up the engine. The familiar hum settled over me, and to my surprise, I felt my heart rate slow and even out.

I sat there for a long time, staring blankly over the dash, out at the long driveway. I hadn’t driven since the crash, and although it was vastly different than a cockpit of a plane, I found myself frozen in place. I mentally cussed myself out, my mind screaming at me to push the shifter into gear and move. I knew that staying still wasn’t going to help, but it didn’t matter.

I was locked.

Trapped inside my own tortured mind.

As my fingers reached for the keys, ready to admit defeat, go inside, take meds, and pass out, my phone buzzed from inside my jeans pocket. I fished it out and saw an unlisted number flash on the screen. “You can go fuck yourself, O’Keefe,” I muttered, silencing the call. “I have two and a half more days until I have to deal with you.”

I pushed the phone back in my pocket and killed the ignition. A new buzz alerted me and I pulled the phone back out.

Whoever it was had left a voicemail.

I dialed in and pressed the phone to my ear. “Hey, Aaron, it’s Gemma…from the hospital.” I smiled at the sound of her voice, and the way she reminded me who she was. Like I could forget. “I was hoping to catch you. I’m going to that place you recommended. Harley’s? No, Harvey’s. Yeah. That was it. Anyways…uhm…I just wanted to see if maybe we could get a drink or share a basket of wings. Call me back.”

She ended the message by rattling off her number. I searched for a pen, but the interior of my Jeep was clean of clutter for once. I thought about going inside and calling her back, but then flicked the engine back on, and with ease, pulled down the driveway.

* * * *

I saw Gemma before she saw me. She was sitting at a table near the bar, nursing a dark beer in a tall glass. I hesitated in the doorway. God, she was beautiful. She was so…free. I’d observed hundreds of women in bars. Most of the time they were busy pulling up—or down—the top of their dress. Fluffing their hair. Pretending to check their phone while scoping out who was watching them. Talking with their friends loud enough that anyone around them could hear how amazing their life was.

Gemma wasn’t like any of those girls. She had a quiet confidence. A comfort.

She sipped her beer and casually watched the game up on the big screen TV above the bar. She didn’t look around and wonder who was watching her, or who she should go talk to. She didn’t mess with her clothes, hair, or makeup. She didn’t thrust her tits out when guys walked by.

“Hey, Aaron,” Sonya, one of the normal bartenders, spotted me and blew my cover, as she flagged me down from the other end of the bar.

Gemma turned at the sound of my name and a smile lit up her face. She waved me over and I flicked a glance over to see Sonya’s face fall as she realized I wasn’t flying solo. “You got my message?”

“Yeah.” I sank into the chair opposite her. “Thanks for the invite. I was having a rough afternoon…”

She arched a brow. “What’s up?”

I held up my casted hand. “Let’s just say it’s hard to do anything mechanical with this thing on me.”

“Ah,” Gemma nodded. “Sorry. It’s only for a few more weeks.”

“Yeah, well, as you’ve probably picked up on, I’m a little stubborn. I spent three hours trying to make it work.”

Gemma smiled. “You? Stubborn? Nah.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I chuckled. “What about you? Little early for a drink, huh?”

“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere,” she said, not missing a beat.

In reality, it was barely creeping towards three o’clock, but hey, who was I to judge.

“In that case,” I said, smiling as I signaled to Sonya. She knew my regular drink and hustled to bring it to me, flashing me her best smile as she placed a napkin down, casually brushing her arm against mine, before setting down the ice cold bottle of my favorite brew. A pale ale.

“This is a cool place,” Gemma said, completely unruffled by Sonya’s “special attention.”

Damn, this chick was either a cool customer, or she wasn’t interested and didn’t care that another woman was positioning for my attention.

“Cheers to…well…whatever day it is. I’ve kinda lost track.”

She laughed and lifted her glass to mine. “Thursday.”

“Right.” We sipped our drinks.

“If I was a good doctor, I’d lecture you about mixing alcohol with your pain meds, but I’m pretty sure you got that speech already and are choosing to ignore it.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Good thing you’re here to save me if I hit the deck, huh?”

Gemma rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything else about the drink in my hand. I’d had a couple of beers the night before while out with Jack and Holly, and hadn’t felt any adverse reaction. I figured it was safe.

“How many days off do you have?”

“I work three on, four off. Twelve hour shifts.”

“So, you have one more day off?” I quickly did the math in my head from the last day I’d seen her at the hospital.

“Yeah.”

“So you never get the weekend off?”

“Not usually. I mean, I can request it off if I have plans, but weekends in the ER are usually the busiest.”

“Aha.” I nodded and took another sip. “Makes sense. Sucks for you though.”

“Not really. This way I get all the best stuff to myself while everyone else is at work. The beaches are quieter, the restaurants less crowded, and I can drink at three in the afternoon and no one cares,” she said with a grin.

“Fair enough.”

“You strike me as a work horse too. That museum of yours is impressive. I did a little Googling.”

I set my beer down. “Well, it was.”

“What do you mean?” She set her glass aside too and pushed her hair behind her ear as she leaned in for the answer.

I looked at her for a moment, wondering how much of my drama I should drag her into. So far, she hadn’t shirked away from anything I’d told her. She’d seen me at some of my worst points, and hadn’t even blinked. I hadn’t known her for all that long, but something in my gut told me I could trust her.

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said, figuring I could decide what to tell her based on her reply.

She shrugged and sat back in her seat. “Hey, I just told you I got all day.”

After another beat, I launched into the story, not leaving out any of the gory details. The bar was pretty empty, as it was a weekday afternoon, but there was enough noise from the music piping through the speakers and the announcers covering the game on the TV that no one was going to overhear me as I laid it all out for her.

“Whew,” Gemma exhaled slowly when I wrapped up. She hadn’t interrupted me as I’d talked, not even to ask questions. She’d seemed to follow along without any issue. “That’s a pickle.”

I laughed at her casual reaction. “A pickle? Hell, I think I passed
a pickle
a while ago.”

She smiled. “I don’t mean to downplay it. It’s obviously very serious. I just don’t know what else to say. I mean, the crash was traumatic enough. I can’t imagine having to deal with all that bullshit on top of it,” she concluded, the smile fading as the mood shifted back to the serious. “I’m sorry, Aaron. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Me too. Ya know, it’s shocking how few people have experience in dealing with evil billionaire tyrants.”

She laughed softly at my joke. “What’s your gut instinct telling you to do? I find that’s usually the best place to start.”

“Well my gut can’t always be trusted. It tends to run hot and not think things through…” I let my voice trail, thinking back to the brawl in the parking lot the day I’d first met O’Keefe. I hated to think that if I’d just given him the F-4, or hell, just let him win the stupid auction, if any of this would have even happened. In reality, he would have found out about the museum sooner or later. He’d been bidding to develop Holiday Cove for months, but still…his tactics and fucked up attitude might have been vastly different had we not started out in the middle of a war.

Not that it mattered. The pin on that grenade had already been pulled and I couldn’t put it back now.

“I don’t want to give up my museum, it was my father’s legacy. He wanted me to keep it in the family. Indefinitely. How could I take O’Keefe’s money and just walk away?”

“Could you move locations? I mean, the business would still be yours, right?”

“O’Keefe said he wants the planes. I’d have to start from scratch. I guess I could fight him on that part…try to negotiate, but from our past interactions, that feels like I’d be negotiating a brick wall with a vendetta.”

Gemma smiled sadly. “I’m sorry.” She dropped her hand to mine and the chill from her glass radiated through to mine. She realized it when our skin met and pulled her hand back to wipe it on the leg of her jeans. “Condensation.”

I smiled at her, still marveling at how calm she was after everything I’d just told her.

“And you don’t want to get your friend…the smuggler guy in trouble…that’s why you aren’t going to call his bluff on that part?” Gemma asked, returning her—now dry—hand to the back of mine.

“Yeah, that would be shitty of me. O’Keefe is my problem. Besides that, Rick has done me some favors, not of the illegal variety, but it would be a smack in the face if I turned on him.”

Gemma nodded, her eyes dropped to our hands and I could see the wheels turning in her mind.

“You know what, let’s talk about something else,” I said, pivoting the conversation. I needed something more light hearted. “Tell me what made you join the Army. Were you a military brat?”

Gemma met my eyes again, her eyes bluer that grey in the natural light streaming through the window beside our table. “Yeah. Both of my parents were Army, actually. That’s how they met. Right after basic.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It’s a crazy story. They divorced a couple years after my younger sister was born, but they stayed friends,” she continued. “They both encouraged me to join the military, mainly for the education benefits since I wanted to go to medical school, which, is crazy expensive.”

I laughed. “Makes sense to me.”

“What about you? Your dad was Navy, and then your mother? What did she do? Besides cook awesome food?”

I stared at Gemma, blown away that she’d remembered the small detail I’d shared in the hospital. “She was a secretary at a law office. Up until she got sick. Then she had to quit so she could go through treatment. That was rough on her.”

“I’m sorry, Aaron. When did she pass away?”

“The summer before I turned fifteen. So just about fifteen years ago.” I paused, struck by how close I was to hitting my thirtieth birthday. “Anyways, after that, I had to stay with friends or relatives every time my dad went on deployment, and spent the rest of the time on a naval base, raising hell.” I chuckled.

“I bet.” Gemma smiled at me as she took another sip from her tall glass of dark beer. “I saw the tats…when you were in the ER.”

I nodded, a dangerous smile tugging at my lips. “You like what you saw?”

Gemma blushed slightly and it turned me on. I’d finally gotten to her. She’d so effortlessly batted away all my previous attempts at flirting with her, it was entertaining to have struck a soft spot.

“Ha! You did. What about you? Any tats?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m pretty boring I guess.”

“Hardly.”

She ducked her chin and I grinned all the more.

Half a heartbeat later, she looked up, a renewed fire in her eyes. “The other night, when I was there with you and your friends for dinner, he called you “Player”. Ya wanna tell me what that’s all about?” Gemma grinned at me and ran her finger around the rim of her empty glass.

Damn it if she didn’t flip the tables on me.

“Shit. You heard that, huh?” I ran a hand along my scruff coated jawline.

“Uh huh.” She licked her lips. “So spill. What’s the story? I know those call signs aren’t just given out for no good reason, and I’m pretty sure there’s a bang up story behind yours.” Her eyes were bright and sparkled.

“All right, all right.” I hesitated. It wasn’t like me to shy away from a good story, but the story behind my call wasn’t exactly one that painted me in the light I wanted Gemma to see me in. “Like all the best stories…it started with a bet.”

“Oh Lord,” Gemma said, giggling slightly as she rolled her eyes.

“This Chief Petty Officer bet me that I couldn’t bag the Admiral’s daughter. She was this prissy, high society girl, and I was this young rebellious type. A match made in hell, right?” I paused, carefully considering my next words. “Well, I got her, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Gemma echoed, laughing.

I grinned. “Well, it turned into this game. Guys would bet me that I couldn’t get a certain girl. I’d prove them wrong and take their money. So, I became “Player.”