Time of Possession (Seattle Lumberjacks #5) (27 page)

Words jammed in Estie’s throat, and she
swallowed and forced them out in a worried croak. “What’s going on?
Where is everything? Did you move the clinic?” If only it were that
simple, but her gut shook with a resounding
no
.

“We didn’t move it.” Sylvia continued to
stare out the window, her classic features drawn into a tight mask
across her flawless dark skin.

“Then where is everyone? Where are the
animals?” Estie fought down the panic turning her words into a
high-pitched shriek.

Sylvia ran her hands over her face, sighed
wearily, and faced Estie, meeting her gaze. “We closed down.”

“Closed down?” Not possible. Sylvia and her
sisters bled for this place, put every spare penny into it, just as
Estie had also.

Sylvia sucked her lower lip into her mouth,
a sure sign she didn’t want to explain herself. Instead, she
started tossing leashes and other doggy-related items into a
cardboard box, whistling as if neither of them had a care in the
world. Which was total, absolute bullshit, and they both knew
it.

“What happened?” Estie followed her around
the room as Sylvia grabbed anything not nailed down and shoved it
in the box.

“Nothing. We’re closed.”

“Just like that? Why didn’t you tell me? I
didn’t know anything about this. I could’ve helped with the
funding.”

“No, really. This is necessary. We’ll open
again someday.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Sylvia slammed stuff in the box at an
alarming rate, breaking a small dog figurine in the process, but
she didn’t seem to give a shit.

“Sylvia,” Estie growled.

Nothing.

“Syl-vi-a.” Estie drew out each syllable in
frustration.

Sylvia stopped and slumped into an orange
plastic office chair. “We lost our funding.”

Her friend’s words slammed into Estie with
the force of a pitch thrown at a hundred miles an hour. Her stomach
took an elevator to the basement, and her head pounded, as she dug
her fingernails into her palms. “Richard?”

“No, his parents. They pulled their funding.
We operate on a tight budget. And we lease the building month to
month from them. They raised the rent. As soon as they did that, we
knew we couldn’t cover bills so we had no choice but to bail.”

“I could talk to them. I could—”

“No. Estie, you can’t. I talked to them.
Trust me when I say that you wouldn’t be welcome.”

Sylvia was right, but it didn’t make Estie
feel one damn bit better.

* * * * *

Brett walked through the Jacks’ cafeteria.
The overall mood was uplifting and boisterous. How could it not be?
They were going to the Super Bowl.

He ordered a burger and fries, needing to
load up on carbs after the physically and emotionally draining game
a few days ago.

Brett placed a tray on the table and sat
down in the empty chair next to Bruiser. His buddy glanced up and
nodded then went back to shoveling in food like it was his last
supper. All around them, voices rose and fell as their teammates
consumed mass quantities of food in the team dining room.

And Brett was their starting quarterback—a
weird-assed dream come true, exceeding his wildest
expectations.

Only the dream wasn’t over yet. Once he won
that biggest of all games, he’d finally silence the doubters. There
were those who might say getting there was a fluke. Winning was the
only option and the key to a big contract and a future in
broadcasting once he played his last down.

Brett should be ecstatic, yet fear weighed
heavy on his heart—fear of failure, but not failure on the football
field. Brett Gunnels feared he’d lose Estie. Something happened
yesterday, even though she wouldn’t admit it. He sensed her
uncertainty and her pulling away from him, except in bed. Their
lovemaking last night took on an almost desperate aspect. Something
was definitely off with her.

He was losing her, and he didn’t know what
the hell to do about it. Nor could he do anything about it with the
Super Bowl looming over his entire fucking future.

A little niggling of doubt pushed to the
forefront of his mind, and he shoved it back in the corner where it
belonged. Estie had never told him she loved him. Never guaranteed
anything past the next day. Estie wanted vet school. Brett wanted
to start for a team with potential.

“Hey, man, what the hell has your balls in
vise?”

Brett looked up to find Bruiser studying him
with unnerving intensity. “Nothing. Just the game, that’s all.”

“Nah, that’s not all. I’ve known you too
long. Something else is up. Gotta be a woman. Like maybe Harris’s
sister? You don’t say much about her. How’s it going?”

Brett sighed. A private guy, he preferred to
keep his business to himself, yet this time he needed a friend.
“I’m not sure. Everything was going great until yesterday.
Something changed, but I don’t know what.”

“Did you ask her?”

“No, I thought if she wanted me to know,
she’d tell me.”

“You dumbass. You don’t know a damn thing
about women. They
want
you to ask. In fact, they expect it.
You keep your mouth shut and wait for them and you’ll get this
bullshit about how you don’t care, and you never pay attention to
them.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience.”

“Any married man or a man in a serious
relationship with a woman can vouch for what I’m saying. How you
missed that part of the
Guy’s Manual to Pleasing Females
,
I’ll never know.”

Brett scratched his head and took a bite out
of a juicy hamburger. The Jacks employed a full-time chef, and the
guy could cook like nobody’s business. He chewed on his burger and
on Bruiser’s words. “I guess I’ll try asking.”

“Better than fretting about it.”

“I don’t fret,” Brett didn’t appreciate the
insult. Men did not fret. They left that to women. Brett’s sisters
fretted, his mother fretted, and every other woman he’d been close
to fretted. Brett did not.

Bruiser chuckled and speared one of Brett’s
pickles with his fork. “Yeah, whatever. You’re worried about Estie,
worried she might rip your heart out and leave it at the side of
the road while she backs over it a few times and drives off in a
cloud of dust.”

That about summed it up. He’d looked all his
life for a woman like Estie. “I don’t want to screw this up.”

“Well, good luck with that, buddy. We all
screw it up. It’s whether or not the relationship is strong enough
to survive our idiocy that’s the question.” Bruiser waved at Derek
weaving through the tables looking for an empty spot. “Ask
Derek.”

Derek sat down at the table and looked from
one to another. “Ask me what?” When neither man answered, Derek
nodded. “This convo has to be about a female.”

Bruiser nodded, while Brett looked over his
head and out the window at the rain falling in buckets.

“Well, don’t ask me then. I don’t have any
words of wisdom. I learn by my mistakes, and I’ve made plenty.”

“That’s what I was telling our man, here,
but he’s pretty clueless about women.” Bruiser pointed at Brett and
stole another pickle off his plate.

“Go get your own pickles. There are plenty
over there.”

“I’d rather take yours.” Bruiser munched
happily. Not much affected him.

Brett glanced at Derek, who stared at him
like he’d just realized who he was. He wiped his mouth off with his
napkin, but Derek continued to stare. “This has to do with my
cousin.” Derek rubbed his chin and sighed. “My female cousin.”

“Brett’s in love with her. Didn’t you know
that?” Bruiser offered helpfully, while Brett ran his finger along
the edge of the table knife as if to test its sharpness.

“Yeah, I knew it. Everyone knows it. You
sure you know what you’re getting into, buddy?” Derek’s sympathetic
brown eyes trained on Brett, as if he had a fucking clue how deep
into this relationship Brett had sunk.

“I can handle myself.”

“Yeah, right. We all say that. You’re going
down just like the rest of us. But, hey, I love going down, and I’m
betting you sure as shit do, too.”

Brett shrugged. There was no reasoning with
these clowns, and just to insure the shit flew even faster, Zach
lowered his big body into the last empty chair.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Brett’s succumbed.”

“Oh, yeah, a woman. I knew that.” Zach
stuffed a roll in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Harris’s
sister, huh?”

“How the fuck does everyone on this team
know my business?” Brett hated being the focus of conversation when
it came to his private life.

Zach grinned. “We’re a team, my man. That’s
why your business is my business. If she’s anything like Harris,
she’ll slam you up the side of the head worse than any blitzing
linebacker.”

Derek, good cousin that he was, jumped to
her defense. “Estie has a heart of gold, but she’s not a woman to
get involved with. Take my word for it.”

“So how’s it going with your women?” Brett
looked at each one of them, daring them to answer. By the
deer-in-headlights expressions on each of their faces, he’d
bludgeoned them into changing the conversation.

Zach turned to Bruiser. “Hey, when did
HughJack say we were flying to San Diego?”

“I don’t remember.” Bruiser looked at Derek,
who usually had an answer for everything and paid attention to
stuff like that.

“Next Sunday morning, I think.” Derek
launched into a dissertation about New England and their defense.
His teammates joined in, anything to avoid personal conversations
about those most elusive of creatures—their female partners. They
wanted to rag on him but couldn’t take it themselves.

Brett sat back and watched the lively
conversation, not saying much because he couldn’t quite take his
mind off Estie and what might be troubling her.

His ran through possible scenarios for her
recent withdrawal, and he didn’t like a damn one of them.

Chapter 16

Tyler might be right about Brett choosing a
team based on her needs, not his. God, there was nothing Estie
hated more than Tyler being right. He was such a douche when he got
one up on someone.

Tyler’s points were driven home a few days
later when she heard Brett arguing on the phone with his agent
regarding the merits of San Francisco over Miami.

She should’ve let it go for now, kept her
mouth shut until after the big game, but she didn’t. After all, he
couldn’t sign with a team right now anyway. Yet her obsession with
clear-cut planning prevented her from allowing him to continue down
the path he’d laid out to his agent. She opened her big trap after
he cut off the call.

“Brett?”

He glanced up at her. “Yeah?”

“Why did you tell your agent that you’re not
interested in Miami when they’re the obvious choice?”

“Because San Francisco is close enough to a
vet school for us to be together.” He smiled hopefully at her.

Estie held her tongue. She’d never planned
on this kind of confrontation with the game looming. The timing
sucked.

Brett caught her expression and pushed, not
willing to let it rest. “What? What’s wrong with that? We are going
to be together, aren’t we?” He fisted his hands at his sides, his
face turned to granite, as if he were steeling himself for bad
news. As if he already knew.

“You have to make the right decisions for
your career, ones that don’t have a damn thing to do with me.”
There, she’d said it.

“But my choices have a lot to do with
you.”

“They can’t. You have to do this for you,
not for me.” She felt sick to her stomach, like she might throw up
any moment. It felt like her life had started to cave in around
her, and nothing she said now would stop the destruction.

“But I love you.”

“I know you think you do. Let’s put this
conversation on hold so you can concentrate on the game. No
pressure from me, and we’ll talk afterward.” She tried to prop up
the roof of their relationship with her bare hands.

“I don’t like the sound of that. What are we
going to talk about after the game, Estie? Why can’t we talk about
it now? I want you in my life.”

“Brett, this is not the time.” She’d been so
stupid to bring it up in the first place. Damn that Harris
directness.

“When will it ever be the time? Tell me the
truth. I can handle it. Don’t patronize me.”

“Our lives are on conflicting paths. You’ll
be going to a new team, and I’ll be going to vet school.” His
expression broke her heart, but she stuck with the path she’d
forged. She’d already opened that Pandora’s Box and nothing would
put the monster back inside. She needed to do this for him. Not for
herself. Because that’s what a person did when they cared about
someone more than they cared about themselves.

“But you can come with me. I’m going to a
team within commuting distance of a vet school.” She almost caved
at the sight of his pleading expression, but she bolstered her
inner strength, called upon that Harris stubborn streak, and stood
tall.

Just like Tyler had warned, Brett would
sacrifice signing with a good team just to keep her near, but she
couldn’t ask that of him. He could not give up his dream, and she
couldn’t give up her plans. They’d grow to resent each other.

It was a no-win situation for her, but not
for Brett. He’d move on. He’d get his ring and his new team.
Eventually, he’d find a woman. He deserved the best, and the best
wasn’t her.

Estie shook her head and swallowed back the
tears. “I love you, Brett. I’ll always love you, but you and I are
on separate paths. If I mess with your journey, you’ll never
forgive me. If you mess with mine, the same thing will happen. We
were destined to come together, and we were destined to break
apart. Right people, wrong place, wrong time.”