Chapter 1
Rick “Brick” Blanick
“What’s the matter with you?” Roman shoves past me into the kitchen as I stand like a stone on the threshold, feeling like I’ve been struck by Medusa.
“What the fuck, Brick?” Dylan asks as he falls in next to me, coming off the back stairs.
Good question. Simple question. Right?
Not. The answer is far from simple. The answer stands across the room at the sink washing pots and pans, banging them around like she’s playing in the rhythm section of a heavy metal band. Either that or she’s fucking pissed at the world.
Well, I know what that’s like. Except it’s her I’m pissed at. What the fuck is she doing here at St. Paul University? At BMOC House? My house. Big Man on Campus House where I’m responsible for the well-being of a dozen of the school’s elite athletes. Unofficially responsible. I put it on myself to make sure we’re all in a prime mindset to win.
“Someone pull your plug out?” Allie says as she comes up on my other side. She’s Dylan’s girlfriend and I don’t usually pay much attention to her, which makes her try harder to get a rise from me. Occasionally we’ll banter, trading increasingly bizarre insults and witticisms like dueling banjos playing faster and louder until the strings pop. In our case, it’s usually Dylan who pops. Or threatens to pop me if I don’t back off his girl. She’s funny and smart, I’ll give her that. If she were a guy, I’d pal around with her. But she’s not.
Dylan snickers at her sideways crack about me being a robot. It’s an ongoing theme of Allie’s barbs. What she doesn’t understand is that I truly don’t care, aside from the entertainment value, what the fuck she hurls at me. For the record, I'm more implacable than robotic. But it's all in the name of fun.
Roman walks through the kitchen straight to the dining room to get his seat. As if someone would take his chosen spot from him.
He’s a fucking offensive lineman on St. Paul University’s football team. No one is going to take his fucking seat. Not even at BMOC House, where all the best athletes from SPU live, where I rule as president. Dylan elbows me and juts his chin in the direction of the girl at the sink, a question creasing his brow.
Finding my voice, I pull my shit together but I don’t particularly want to share the answer to the WTF question. It’s long and complicated and all about the girl standing at the sink, the girl who hasn’t even bothered to acknowledge us, barely turning her head.
“Nyla,” I scrape out her name.
She turns around. My heart taps hard and fast like I just downed a gallon of Red Bull. It’s her. Nyla Rhoades, the last girl on earth I ever wanted to see again. The girl who haunts my dreams like an evil temptress.
Get a grip, Brick. What happened to your famous indifference? Your world class cool and disregard for emotional entanglements with all females?
I do allow myself to feel lust because, hell, I’m male, and lust isn’t an emotion. And that’s all I feel for Nyla. But after four fucking years, that explosive heat shouldn’t be shooting down my spine straight to my cock like a shot of epinephrine to the heart, making it throb to life. Yet it does.
“If it isn’t Brick aka Rick Blanick,” she says. Same sassy mouth as always. Same wrap-around-your-cock-and-squeeze voice. Something about the low velvety sound of it, the musical lilt, hits me where it counts every time. Then the slow smile, like she knows she’s stirring the pot of my desire, drags itself across her face, sure and warm at the same time. Fuck. She hasn’t changed—unless you count getting even better at turning on the heat, her shield of confidence growing strong enough to bounce boulders.
“What are you doing here?”
“You two know each other?” Dylan asks me. There’s a tease in his Captain Obvious question. I spare him a quick shut-the-fuck-up look and note Allie’s curious glance ping-ponging between me and Nyla.
Shit. I wrap up tight whatever I’m showing on my face because the last thing I need is Allie getting a whiff of the truth about my past with Nyla. That secret isn’t ever going to see the light of day. For too many reasons to contemplate.
Shoving the heap of trash that constitutes everything that’s happened between us to the basement of my mind, I force a cool smile at Nyla. Then I join her on the other side of the kitchen as if she’s any other girl, an acquaintance.
“Nyla worked for my family.”
“I used to date Brick’s brother,” she adds. Shit. And just like that, one small corner of my past shame is exposed. I need to shut this down now.
“Long time ago,” I say. “So you’re working with Majik? She told me she was hiring someone to help in the kitchen.”
“I’m here on scholarship.” She smiles, the joy and pride bursting from her like a ray of sunshine, and I’m worried I’ll go blind. I have a severe sensitivity to sunny female personalities. Then her words register.
“You’re a student at SPU? A freshman?”
She shakes her head. “No, I went to Wilkinsburg Community College for two years so I’m starting here as a junior. Only a year behind you.”
I nod, pretending this is all fine and dandy with me, that she didn’t just slap me with the threat of exposure, a threat I’ll need to deal with for the entire next year.
As if she didn’t just turn my entire world upside down and turn my senior year that was supposed to be my year of triumph as QB1 and President of BMOC House, into a fucking living hell.
“That’s great,” Allie says. “What’s your major?”
“I’m here on Majik’s culinary arts scholarship.” She inflicts another painfully elated smile on us, but no one else seems to mind. “I’ll be doing more than washing pots and pans here at BMOC House.” She zeroes her eyes in on mine. “Brick knows all about my cooking and baking skills. He was a fan of my pastries.” My chest tightens and my heart stutters out of whack, but I manage not to show that I want to strangle her. At the same time, she’s right about the pastries. I salivate, my tastebuds overcoming the seething hate that has the rest of me in a stranglehold.
“You cooking tonight?”
“Yes. One of your favorite dishes.” I nod and head for the dining room with no intention of eating whatever the fuck she cooks. On a good day I might eat a meal cooked by a woman without waiting for someone else to take the first bite like a royal taste tester. Long story rooted in my childhood. Though there was a time I’d eat anything Nyla cooked.
Now she has my gut twisted to hell. She’ll probably spit all over my food or possibly has a poison vial ready to dose my plate. Half kidding.
Dylan sends Allie out the back door and follows me into the dining room, taking the seat next to me at the big old banged-up table for twelve. Roman sits on my other side. I’m across from Trey Eagleton, aka eagle eye, the SPU hockey team’s goalie, Kace’s replacement at the table. Also Kace’s replacement as captain of the hockey team, which is unusual for a goalie. I hear he’s a sure thing for the Mike Richter Award for best NCAA goalie.
I’m trying to hold my shit together. There’s no way I can tolerate having Nyla cooking for us all semester. Seeing the girl who nearly undid my family, every day, the girl who turned my brother into a fool and me into a fucking traitorous asshole, isn’t going to work for me.
If I’m honest, it wasn’t all her fault. But that fact makes her no less my enemy and doesn’t lessen the fact that she could spill my secret and ruin everything in my life, tear the last fragile threads of my family apart, and kill my chance at the NFL at any given moment, if I sneeze the wrong way.
Why would she do it now after four years?
Why is she here now if she doesn’t have some kind of agenda? Which can only be bad for me.
Claire Majisky, in all her fleshy glory, the best cook at St. Paul University and the entire Northeast, as far as I’m concerned, walks into the room carrying a big-ass platter of steak and puts it at the end of the table. Nyla follows right behind her with another platter filled with potatoes and vegetables and puts it down in the empty space reserved for it.
“Listen up jocks,” Majik commands. “We have an assistant cook this semester. Approved at the end of last year by Kace and Brick.” She flashes her eyes in my direction with no change in her always neutral expression. She outdoes me in the look-of-stone department and I admire her talent for it almost as much as I admire her cooking ability.
“Meet Nyla Rhoades, the new assistant cook. She’s also my scholarship recipient and a full-time student here at SPU.” She looks around the room and there’s a smattering of congratulations, and some nods of approval. Nyla smiles and her eyes dart around everywhere except at me before she looks down. She takes a deep breath as if she’s bracing herself.
A cold shiver goes through me as I instinctively brace myself. Here comes the bad news, although I already classify the news of Nyla’s presence on campus and in our kitchen as a shitshow of hellish proportions.
Majik puts a hand up signaling the room to quiet, then she looks at me with implacable confidence, and speaks in that rumbling voice of hers that sounds like boulders moving.
“As part of her scholarship award, Nyla will be receiving room and board.” Majik pauses a beat, but doesn’t blink, her eyes still on me. Every muscle in me goes rigid. My pulse roars as if I’m racing through a tunnel and I can’t see a thing, have no idea what to expect ahead except that it’s bad. Very bad.
“She’ll be staying here at BMOC House.” Majik folds her arms across her mighty chest, daring me to defy her.
