Then he’d stay with his lover, wake up the next morning, make her breakfast. Because he didn’t do one-night stands. The small number of relationships he’d had since Calypso had been relationships. He’d never gone into a single one thinking it’d just be sex—a conscious decision on his part.
His life, who he was, meant sex was available anytime he wanted. To a lot of women, the simple fact he played professional rugby was aphrodisiac enough; they didn’t care if he had two heads or sacrificed baby goats in his spare time. But as evidenced by Leo’s constant presence in the gossip media, that sex came with all kinds of consequences, and Jake wasn’t into that. He preferred to take his time, choose lovers who treasured their own privacy and would respect his.
He could smell Juliet on him as he drove away. Lush and aroused and sweet. The latter had surprised him—that sweetness inside her. She’d never been sweet that he knew, but she’d been Calypso’s friend, not his.
He squeezed the steering wheel against the memories of two teenage girls laughing together in the sunshine, both in school uniforms. One with silky, straight blond hair, the other wearing a messy black braid, their smiles equally bright. Calypso, soft and plump and gentle; Juliet, all sharp angles and striking bones, a hardness to her.
Calypso would never change from that gentle young girl; she lived in the same past as the teenage boy he’d been. Because despite the way some of the magazines tried to play up his “devotion” to his “first love,” Jake wasn’t stuck in the past. He’d grieved Calypso and he’d done it hard, but he didn’t cling to her. The brokenhearted boy had grown into a strong, confident man, and that man lived in the present. The same present that held Juliet.
Someone will catch us if we do this again, and that wouldn’t be good for either you or me.
She was right. She was thinking. He had to do the same.
Because this wasn’t just about his need for privacy. He’d caught glimpses of how the media hounded her after the Reid saga; was it any wonder she wanted to stay away from another athlete who’d inevitably draw the same intrusive attention?
Better he let her go so they could both live their lives in peace. Even if the time they’d spent together felt as if it had altered something fundamental inside him.
17
Breaking News! Major Scandal!
Jake didn’t sleep well that night, but he turned up to the team’s morning training run ready to go. This was a deliberately public training session to celebrate the naming of the new squad; the public wanted to see them together as a group. Their actual training camp wouldn’t happen for another three weeks, and most of the squad would return to their home bases in the interim.
New Zealand’s top coaches had realized at some point that superfit athletes couldn’t get any fitter beyond a certain point. Overtraining could actually lead to injury. The camp would be as much about mental strength and how to use that strength to win the game as anything else.
Today, however, the squad jogged up one of Auckland’s volcanic cones in the lingering fog, and while everyone bitched and cursed, they all made it up without problem. The view from the top was breathtaking, the sun’s rays breaking through the clouds to bathe the city and its various waterways in pale golden light.
Hands on his hips as the team took a moment to appreciate the view before they dropped for a punishing set of push-ups, Jake found himself thinking of another kind of beauty altogether: Juliet.
Pastry maker. Businesswoman. Allergic to sports. And wearer of flamingo socks.
He only had pieces of her, and now he’d never learn any more. His gut grew hot and tight, the taste of wrongness in his mouth.
“Drop!”
Jake snapped into focus, dropping to the ground to begin his first push-up. But even as he made sure his form was flawless, his reps perfectly in time, a part of his brain remained dedicated to its quiet cataloging of Juliet, the woman who could jerk his chain faster than anyone else on the planet. The woman with whom he’d had the most phenomenal sex of his life. And the woman with whom he forgot to be staid, serious Jacob Esera and became a younger man with far less weight on his shoulders.
The way down the mountain was easier, and he ended up beside Danny. His brother might be the youngest member of the squad, but he was as disciplined and determined as any of his older teammates. Yeah, Danny could party, but unlike Reid Mescall, the youngest Esera brother limited his big nights out to the off-season.
During the season, the entire squad ate clean, slept solid hours, and maintained strong bodies capable of brutal bursts of speed. Even Leo followed the team rules—he went out with a different woman every evening, but you wouldn’t find any photos of him in the clubs after a certain time of night; underneath his womanizing surface, the man fans called the Lion was one of the best second five-eighths in the world.
“You see Boo and Sweetiepie this morning?” Jake asked his brother.
Danny had first put on the squad’s iconic black jersey at age nineteen. He’d signed a major sponsorship deal six months later. As a result, he had far more money than most twenty-two-year-olds. Despite that, he hadn’t gotten his own place, preferring to stay with Alison and Joseph when in the country.
Not to say that he was in his old room; no, Danny had his own apartment above the villa’s detached double garage. He had privacy to come and go as he pleased, and their parents weren’t the kind to monitor his movements anyway. It worked.
Jake himself hadn’t moved out until Esme began to go to school. He could’ve never continued with rugby without his parents’ support, much less made the national squad at age twenty-one. Ísa and Sailor, parents of an eleven-month-old at the time of Esme’s birth, had also helped by passing on their own experiences and talking with him and Calypso in the late-night hours when they got up to settle a restless Emmaline.
After Calypso’s death, Ísa had pumped milk for Esme for a long time.
His mother had talked him into counseling, then driven him to every single appointment to make sure he went. At the beginning, she’d gone with him and done most of the talking while he sat numb and broken, mechanically rocking the bassinet in which he’d carried Esme around, unable to let her out of his sight.
All three of his brothers as well as his father had run plays with him in the backyard to prepare him for selection to a local team after he fell away from the sport for nearly a year. Sailor, the brother who’d never wanted to play professional sports, had watched and rewatched Jake’s training videos—shot by academically inclined Harlow—to figure out minute variations that had continuously improved his performance.
Gabe had become his personal taxi service, private coach, and occasional emergency babysitter, rocking Esme in his arms while he walked the sidelines and conferred with the team coach. Not many people in rugby turned down the Bishop’s advice when he offered it.
Catie’d come along when she was in the city, the faces she’d pulled making baby Esme giggle. Ísa had hugged him so many times, sensing his fear of fucking up and getting it all wrong. Danny, called up to the national squad two months before Jake, had made Jake eat, drink, and train to the squad’s schedule.
So many hands, all there to catch him when he fell.