She nodded, kissed the fingertips of one glove, and used that hand to wave to him. “Safe travels, Grant Saber.”
And she turned away, put her gaze on the dirty snow path leading to the parking lot, and kept her head down and her mind focused on getting one foot in front of the other.
13
Grant was fucking miserable.
Everything about this gig had been as tedious as he’d expected—the flights to get here, the traffic from the airport, the wardrobe fitting for a tux, Bridgette’s pawing at the cocktail party beforehand, and now, he and his teammates were standing in a brutally cold DC wind that created a thirty-four-degrees-feels-like-seven-degrees situation just to watch some lights turn on.
The only light in this dark cloud had been the performance by Giselle Diamond. Despite the cold and the wind, she’d put on an outstanding show. Her voice silenced the massive audience until the end of a song when the applause and cheering rose to ear-splitting levels. That had been the only part of tonight he was sorry Faith had missed.
Faith.
He took a covert glance at his phone to check for texts, emails, or voice messages. Still nothing. That knot of fear digging into his ribs tightened a little more.
“Would it be...how you say...vulgar, to ask how the fuck we got here?” Andre Kristoff asked in his thick Russian accent.
“It’s called rude,” Beckett Croft, one of the team’s best defensemen answered. “And sometimes, you just gotta say what you gotta say. What I want to know is how the fuck do we get out?”
“Better question,” Tate Donovan said under his breath, “is how to shut you guys up so we don’t get kicked out.”
“Whose idea was it to bring the fuckin’ Boy Scout along?” Rafe Savage cut a look at his best friend since childhood and his current teammate on the Rough Riders. “I’ve got my eye on a couple of sweet pieces of ass from the cocktail party, and I’m taking at least one of them home tonight. So if you plan on acting as the goddamned hall monitor, stay the fuck away from me.”
“I’m going to repeat that to you the next time you call me from jail looking for someone to bail out your skanky ass,” Tate shot back, using a high-pitched girlie voice to repeat, “Stay the fuck away from me.”
Normally, Grant found Rafe’s and Tate’s bitching entertaining. Tonight, he found nothing entertaining. Absolutely nothing. He’d only been away from Faith for about thirty hours and all he could focus on was the hollow ache in his gut.
Rafe pulled his jacket tighter against the bitter DC wind. “Bet he wouldn’t talk so damn long if he were out here instead of up there, shielded and warm. Fucker.”
“Say that a little louder,” Beckett told him. “Maybe to that Secret Service agent or bodyguard or whoever the hell that is on your right.”
“It’s a free fucking country.” He met the steely gaze of the noted agent or guard. “Isn’t that right? Sir.”
The man didn’t respond but took in every last detail of their group before scanning the crowd again.
“Would you guys shut up?” Hendrix said from behind them, his arms crossed, jacket pulled up around his ears. He stood between Andrade and Lawless, all three of them using Grant, Beckett, Rafe, and Tate as wind blocks. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Jesus Christ.” Grant bounced from foot to foot, trying to stay warm. “Don’t stand still, boys, or your ass cheeks’ll freeze together.”
“That ain’t all that’ll freeze together,” Lawless offered.
A murmur of movement rippled close to them. Someone nudged their way to the front of the crowd. Grant glanced that direction just as Bridgette stepped up beside him. She wore a winter-white wool trench over the barely there midnight-blue dress she’d had on at the pre-party, and slipped her arm through Grant’s, snuggling up beside him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. She hadn’t been invited to the lighting, only the parties before and after as Grant’s arm candy. “How’d you get in?”
“I used to date the security guy.” She beamed up at him with pearly whites that made her coat look positively dingy. Her bright blue eyes danced with clandestine thrill.
In the two hours since he’d picked her up at her apartment, Bridgette had tried three times to convince him to spend the night with her. Yet all Grant could think about was Faith. Faith and what she was doing with her Christmas Eve day without the ice-sculpting contest on her agenda. Faith and all the texts she ha
dn’t returned. Faith and his calls she hadn’t taken.
He knew how to read the message she was sending loud and clear. He just wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of it. And now that he was back in the middle of this hot mess he called a life, everything he’d found cute or quirky about Faith to begin with were the very things he loved about her now. Missed about her now.
And he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
Thankfully, the ceremony ended within ten minutes. Grant grabbed a private limo ride to the reception with Bridgette and spent the ten-minute drive repeating what he’d already told her earlier in the evening. But this time, he wasn’t as nice about it. Bridgette pushed from the limo livid and strode past Donovan and Savage, who were waiting for him at the curb.
When Grant stood from the car to tip the driver, Rafe said, “What the hell did you do to ruin that sure thing?”