“I know the look of defeat.”
“Oh really? So a lot of women turn you down?”
“Nah.” He grinned. “I’m usually the reason they’re turning down some other guy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Full of yourself much?”
Christian shrugged. “Just being honest.”
“Come on, honest Abe. Let’s get out of here. The cleaning crew has looked in a few times to see if we’re still here. I’m sure they’d like to go home in the near future.”
***
An hour later, we’d dropped off my grandfather, and Christian and I were alone in the van.
“So today was your first time sitting in the owner’s box, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “I went to all the team’s games over the last two years, but I sat in regular seats. My sisters weren’t going to welcome me unless they had to.”
Christian was quiet for a moment. “It must’ve been crazy to find out who your father was and that he’d left you a football team, both on the same day.”
I nodded. “It was. Most people probably think I won the lotto by inheriting the majority of shares of a professional football team, but it didn’t feel like that at all. It made me sad to realize my father had known I’d existed and didn’t bother to get to know me.”
“You really had no idea he was your dad, huh?”
I shook my head. “My mom was only nineteen when she had me. She always said my father was a guy she met at a concert out of state, and she didn’t even know his last name. After she died, I went to live with my aunt for a short time. I asked her if she knew more about who my father was, and she admitted that my mother had confided that he was a married man. But she didn’t know his name, and she suspected my mom might not have told whoever it was about her pregnancy.”
Christian’s eyes slanted to mine. “But John obviously knew, if he wrote you into his will.”
I nodded. “Though I have no idea if he knew from day one or found out years later. My mom was a hostess in the luxury boxes at the stadium for sixteen years, from the time she was eighteen. She sometimes worked in the owner’s suite. They could’ve had a long-term affair or only a night together. When I first found out, I tried to talk to my half-sisters and find out what they knew. But they weren’t exactly amenable to speaking to me, much less sharing anything personal they knew about their dad.”
“Not surprising, knowing Tiffany and Rebecca.”
“Yeah.”
“They must’ve freaked out when the will was read.”
“I would imagine. I wasn’t there for the actual reading. One day a lawyer knocked on my door and said a bequest had been made to me from John Barrett. I didn’t even know who that was until the attorney explained he owned the Bruins. I figured maybe he had been friendly with my mom.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I had to work, so I didn’t go to the reading. I found out what I’d been left that night on the news.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. It was a crazy time. One day I was living my quiet life, and the next I couldn’t go anywhere without a reporter sticking a microphone in my face. And my lovely new half-sisters held a press conference saying I was a gold digger who’d manipulated a sick man, even though I’d never met John Barrett.”
“Jesus, and I thought I had a lot of pressure.”
“My grandfather likes to say pressure makes diamonds. He forgets it can also cause a nervous breakdown.”
Christian looked over once again and smiled. “Nah…you got this.”
A little while later, we pulled up to the address I’d given him. Christian’s brows dipped as he looked over at the crappy old building. “Do you need to stop at the store or something?”
I laughed. “No, this is where I live.” I pointed up to the third-floor window, two stories above the fruit stand downstairs. “It’s a walk up, but it’s rent controlled, and I have a skylight.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Since I was sixteen. I worked for Mr. Zhang, the owner, in exchange for a place to stay until I finished college and got a full-time job.”
“You said your aunt took care of you after your mother died, right?”
I nodded. “She did, but she died during a routine hernia surgery six months after my mom. She had a reaction to the anesthesia. So the state placed me with a cousin of my mom’s. That didn’t work, so I moved out on my own.”
“At sixteen? The state didn’t care?”
“They didn’t know. Social services is so overwhelmed with people who don’t have places to stay that they don’t check on people too often who are taken in by family.”
Christian was quiet as he glanced toward the grocery store again. “I guess it’s convenient to get fresh fruit.”
I smiled. “That it is. And I’m guessing you live somewhere a little more swanky?”
Christian squinted at the building. “How do you get in?”
“Through the store. There’s a door in the back that leads upstairs to the two apartments.”
“What about when the market is closed?”
“It’s open twenty-four hours. So it’s never been a problem.”
Christian grinned. “You really jumped into the billionaire lifestyle, huh?”
“Totally.” I chuckled. “Well, thank you for the ride home—and for dropping off my grandfather.”
“Hang on. Let me find a parking spot, and I’ll walk you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Maybe not. But it’s dark out, and I’m going to do it anyway.” He looked around. The street was lined with bumper-to-bumper cars, so he hit the button for the flashers. “On second thought, right here looks good.”
Christian got out of the van and jogged around to my side to open the passenger door. He held out a hand to help me. Being the klutz I am, I somehow dropped my binder as I stepped to the curb. It fell to the sidewalk and bounced, spilling the contents all over the street.
“Shit.” I bent to scoop up the papers, but the breeze caught a few pages and sent them sailing down the street.
Christian chased those down, while I corralled the others. When they were all cleaned up, he went to hand me the ones he’d gathered, then pulled them in for a closer inspection. “You’re keeping your own stats? You know there’s a team analyst who does that—more than one, actually.”
“I know. I used their stats to build an algorithm to try to predict the success rate of certain plays in the future.”
“Really? You can do that?”
“I thought so. It worked pretty well for some players, but not so much for others.”
“Which ones?”
“Which ones what?”
“Did it not work for?”
I shuffled the loose papers around until I found the ones with the most red ink. “Yates, for one. His was completely off. And so was Owens.”
Christian smiled. “Ah, you’re missing the human factor.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yates’s girlfriend dumped him this week. He’s a great player, but he’s also emotional as shit. He was off his game at practice all week, too. And Owens is worried about his contract renewal. His wife recently found out she’s pregnant with their fifth kid, and he’s in his early thirties. He’s got a lot riding on his shoulders with an uncertain future.”