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Reckless Love is the second part of The Reckless Duet, a newsletter serial. Both Reckless Kiss and Reckless Love are available for purchase.
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Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3Â | Episode 4Â | Episode 5Â | Episode 6Â | Episode 7
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This is a pivotal episode! Where does Leo get that hero complex of his and who else might be behind the cheating scandal? Read on to find out!
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Wednesday night dinner at Marie and Greg’s came much faster than I anticipated. I made a cheese plate and Leo bought a really expensive bottle of red.
“How was work?” It was already dark so the streetlights cast funny shadows around the car as he drove.
“Fairly normal. Charley Culpepper, you remember him?”
The baby. At least that’s how I thought of him. He wasn’t even nineteen and burning up the baseball scene. “Yeah. You drove down to see him, right?”
“Yep. They’re calling him up. In his first season. He’s losing his mind.”
I knew football. It was a sport I had no choice but to learn. Partially because I grew up with it all around me, but mostly because it was best to understand every single component of a system you planned to dismantle. I probably knew more about football than most coaches. I just couldn’t play it. Trust me. I tried once. It was ugly.
But baseball was something I was just beginning to understand. I got the mechanics of the sport. It was the nuances of how the leagues worked that I hadn’t really had a chance to dig into yet. “Is this unusual?”
Leo sputtered. “Uh, yeah. It happens, just not usually in your first season. Especially not straight out of high school.”
That made sense since high schoolers and college players had different levels of coaching and experience. “So he’s happy?”
Leo stared at the road. “You know, I’m not sure. At first I thought he was just nervous. It’s a big deal to play at the highest level of any sport, but it was more than nerves.”
“More?” I’d be terrified, but then again, I couldn’t catch a ball.
“I don’t know. He almost seemed . . . scared.”
“Scared? That doesn’t sound good.” I knew from experience that a little nervous energy had its benefits, but too much wasn’t helpful. Every time I had to speak at a conference I wanted to puke in a trashcan right before I took the stage. The nerves spurred me to hone my presentation, double-check my facts. They made me better.
“He’s playing here in Tampa tomorrow night. I’m probably going to spend the day with him.”
“That will be good. Hopefully he’s just shocked.”
Leo parked on the street outside Marie’s house. “Come to the game tomorrow night and keep me company?” He leaned across the seat and brushed a kiss across my lips that sent tingles . . . everywhere.
“Yep.” It was the only word I could form.
“Yep? That was articulate.”
I kissed him again. “Well what do you expect when you kiss all the thoughts out of my head?”
We walked right inside and found Greg tending a pot on the stove while Marie cut slices of bread on the counter beside him. She was still in her work clothes, just like Leo. Greg on the other hand appeared to have changed, unless he usually wore black lounge pants to work. I was pretty sure he didn’t. Also the Mantas tee didn’t appear to be typical work attire. Also his hair was in complete disarray.
“How do you feel eating dinner with the boss after a full day of work?” he quipped to Leo before selecting a full glass of wine from the counter and handing it to me. “Try this one. I picked it up last month when Marie and I were in Napa. I think you’re gonna like it.”
“Thank you.”
“I think you keep forgetting I like my work and my boss.” Leo winked at Marie.
“Oh he’s trying for a promotion. Buttering me up over dinner. You know that doesn’t work, Leo. You know what does?” She leaned closer with her hand to her ear.
“Charley Culpepper going to the big game and not bombing?”
“Ding, ding, ding! If you can pull it off with this kid I’ll give you a fucking vacation.”
“Can I get that in writing?”
Marie shook her head. “How weird is this? My best agent randomly meets one of my childhood friends and falls in love with her? When they say the world is small they really mean it.”
I plied Marie with questions about Natalie and somehow that turned into Greg asking about Leo’s childhood. He was always quick to change the subject but not tonight. As we sat around the dinner table with our dirty dishes and fresh glasses of bourbon he actually spoke.
“You know Esme picked up on it right away,” he glanced at me with a smile that made my heart beat a little faster. “My mum—she didn’t like to be called mom—was from Liverpool. Made the bad mistake of falling in love with an American. They got married, moved to the States, had a kid.” He waved his hands at himself and then took a sip. “I was raised by her which is why I say things funny, right Esme?”
Honestly, I was so shocked he was actually sharing that I forgot how to speak for a moment. I tried and failed twice before I found my voice. “Um, yes, that’s right. Some of your vocabulary choices are very British English and your syntax and cadence as well.”
“You’re a fucking linguist too?” Greg asked.
“Actually in the United States linguistics is one of the four subfields of anthropology.” It was annoying and amazing how fast I could switch into professor mode. I sounded like I was selling students on choosing my department as a major.
“Well there you go.” He took a swig of his drink and grabbed the bottle to refill everyone’s glasses. “So daddy dearest packed up and left his wife and kid for freedom? A younger woman? Which cliché did he pick?”
“I don’t know,” Leo shrugged. “One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. My mother never told me and now she’s gone so I can’t ask.”
His words sounded confident and sure, but his eyes told a different story. I wanted to sit in his lap and hold him, tell him things like everything will be all right and I love you. That was silly right? No one had ever said such things to me no matter how sad I felt inside.
But it felt right.
And my life was probably not the best example to follow when it came to caring, loving gestures. To use a terrible analogy, if Leo and I were a delicious dish I was creating for dinner, would I follow the recipe or my instinct? Did we need a dash more sugar for everything to come out just right?
Well, if it worked in the kitchen maybe it worked with people too. So you know what I did? I crawled in Leo’s lap. The look on his face was worth it. The surprise, the smile, the love. All worth it.
Marie laughed and Greg mumbled something about she can be taught! And then we were alone in the dining room while they cleaned up the kitchen.
“What’s this?” His arms came around me, tilting me back just a little.
“Everything will be all right. I love you.”
His smile reached his eyes. “She can be taught,” he repeated with a smile. “I was wondering what you were struggling with over there.”
“Struggling?”
“Yeah,” he waved at my face. “There was a lot of crinkling up here,” he touched my forehead, “and frowning. You wanted to do this but didn’t know if it was the right thing to do?”
He was a damn mind reader. Or maybe I was that transparent if Greg could read me too. Heaven knew that man was oblivious to everything except Marie and Natalie. “Correct. It was the first thing I thought of but I’d never seen anyone actually crawl into another persons lap in front of other polite guests.”
“I’m glad you went with your gut.”
“Yeah? You like it?” I snuggled closer, realizing I liked it quite a lot too.
“Being closer to you is always a good idea but yeah, I think I needed a hug too.”
I held him tighter, wishing I could make him completely and truly happy. “My father said something that got me thinking.”
Leo’s arms tightened around me. He was still so angry about that night. “Something you haven’t told me?”
“He said he never believed I could have orchestrated the Nashville problems on my own. That,” I began talking with my hands as I whispered, waving them in circles as I tried to find the words to explain everything that I had been quietly running and analyzing in the back of my mind. “He said that one of his executives had to have helped me or put me up to it. And that now they’d been pretty high up in the national organization.”
“Perfectly placed to set things in motion now . . . ”
“Yes. Possibly.”
“And what are you thinking?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. But I keep circling back to that. There must be something there.”
Leo’s fingers gently touched my throat. “Thank you for telling me. I know you try to keep it all to yourself.”
“That’s because I don’t want to bring anything bad into your life. I only want the best for you.” My heart thudded against my chest. I wanted to shower him in love and happiness and pleasure. I wanted to give him the world like some out of control Santa Claus.
Love made me nuts. I was a nut. A happy nut, but a nut.
“You’re the best for me, Esme. And I’ll happily take the good with the bad.” He shifted us again and now I was cradled in his arms like he was about to sweep me up a grand staircase. “You know why I actually answered Greg’s questions tonight?”
I had no idea so I shook my head while I stared up into his stormy eyes.
“Because it’s hard to talk about when we’re alone. I want to protect you too. And seeing me sad isn’t my best shade of white. But . . . ” he leaned closer, stopping just short of kissing me, “I needed you to finally hear the story. She raised me and it wasn’t easy. We were broke and she worked two damn jobs all the time. She was always sad. I did everything I could to make her smile. I did favors for the neighbors. When they paid me I left the cash on the table. Seeing her smile made me feel ten feet tall.”
It was that superhero complex of his. He came by it naturally at least. There wasn’t much that was sweeter than a boy trying to make his mother smile.
“I worry sometimes,” he whispered against my lips, “because with you I want it even more.” He kissed me. “That smile of yours, when I can coax it out, is better than anything.”
“Would you two like a room upstairs?” Greg joked as he took his seat back.
“No room necessary.” I smiled but also gave him the stink eye before I moved back to my chair.
“He’s just giving you a hard time because he’s Greg.” Marie placed a plate of cookies in the middle of the table and, being the good guest that I was, I quickly selected two.
“Chocolate chip is my favorite. It’s partially how I met Marie.”
“It’s how you met Natalie.” She smiled and shook her head at him.
He shrugged. “Which is how I met you.”
“So Marie, who do we know in the administration of the football league?” Leo leaned forward.
The hair on my arm stood up. It took everything I had not to let my jaw hit the table.
“Everyone?” Marie scrunched up her nose. “Let me think. We’re fairly well acquainted with Jackson Mayhew.”
Mayhew was the commissioner of the league. He was a total and complete jackass who’d held the position for the last twenty years at least.
“There’s the associates, Templeton, Rashid, Watt, Benedetto, and that ugly guy who always wear the toupee.”
“Franklin,” Leo said.
“Yes, Franklin.” She shuddered. “He thinks his jokes are funny. They’re not funny. Then under them are Markowitz, Carbone, Gillespie, and Eubank.”
My ears perked up at that. “Eubank? Like Jonathan Eubank?”
Marie nodded. “The one and the same.”
“The guy my brother stuffed in a locker?”
Greg barked a laugh. “I like your brother.”
Marie shrugged. “They had their moments but then they became friends in college. Those two are something else. William trained Jon. Taught him how to jog, lift weights, swim. I think Jon helped Will learn to play piano or something strange like that.”
“Edmund said music was for pussies.” I remembered William begging for piano lessons. When father wasn’t home he always played classical music.
“Well I guess that makes sense after all.”
William was friends with Jonathan Eubank, who was now an executive with the national league. Where did he work ten years ago?
“It’s weird that you know more about my brother than I do.”
Marie shrugged. “Families like ours are weird. And my parents love to gossip.”
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