her looks that weren’t exactly pleasant.
She gave a tentative smile. “I could throw it again?”
One of the disappointed stepped forward, an absolute stunner with a big blond up-do and amazing green eyes. Those eyes were now looking at Mia like she was something on the sole of this woman’s very high designer shoe. “You weren’t even here intentionally,” she bit out.
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m at this wedding intentionally. I’m on this earth intentionally. I live a very intentional life.”
The woman who looked like she might have been intending her entire life around catching this bouquet was unimpressed.
“Here.” Mia held it out. She didn’t even want it. “You have it.”
“You can’t do that.” The woman was getting agitated now, but in a weird way. Like she was trying to scream while her mouth was sewn shut.
“It’s just a bunch of flowers.” Lovely pink and orange ones, but Mia didn’t know anything about flowers so couldn’t comment more than that. This woman looked like she knew about flowers. She looked like she had very specific ideas about flowers, such as where she’d like to deposit this particular bunch.
Anxious to extract herself before this escalated further, Mia offered it again to the woman, who took it—finally!—and glared at a point over Mia’s shoulder.
“She ruined it!” The woman spoke to someone else, someone who would likely offer more sympathy to her situation. Mia wasn’t even sure why this was a situation.
Mia turned, her skin prickling with awareness.
Callum Foreman. Cal, to his friends, including her brother. Vadim and Cal were tight.
She didn’t know him well. Until recently he had played on Vad’s old team in Montreal, the Quebec Royals. Amiable, nice guy Cal, according to just about everyone, though Mia didn’t see it.
Sure, she recognized the roughhewn attractiveness, like he’d been carved out of something. Not a classical marble like Tommy Gordon, but granite, perhaps. A coarser, more weathered stone. With his sable brown, close-shorn hair, square jaw, once-broken nose, and a couple of thin white scars above his left eye, he had the look of a street fighter.
He dated a lot. She knew that much. But not so much that he would ever be called a manwhore. Something nicer and more old-fashioned, perhaps, like a playboy—which was just another way to label a man’s behavior so he was viewed as harmless, his conduct largely victimless. Chicago was his fourth city and at the grand old age of thirty-two, when most players were married and starting families, no woman had managed to pin him down. Foreman was what happened when college players with asshole coded in their DNA were drafted and allowed to flourish unchecked.
Mia had met a million Cal Foremans.
Still, there was something about the man she couldn’t put her finger on. It was if he were playing a part, acting the way people expected with his Southie energy mixed with man-about-town. More likely her unease around him stemmed from the fact he hailed from Boston, a black mark against him given that she’d grown up in New York. Ye olde enemy.
He had nice eyes, however. Golden-brown ones that often danced with amusement. Only not right now.
“Tara, what’s wrong?”
The woman—Tara, Mia assumed—who didn’t want the bouquet because Mia had contaminated it promptly burst into tears. She practically shoved Mia aside and fell into Foreman’s arms. “I was so ready for it. So. Ready.”
Something like panic flashed on Foreman’s face. This should be good.
“There, now. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Oh, so you agree with her now?”
Uh oh. This had the makings of a trap, one that any man would need to navigate carefully. Cal patted Tara’s back, his big hands splayed in such a way they almost covered her entire width. What a tiny thing she was. Beautiful, too.
He caught Mia’s eye. Something had changed. She didn’t know what but Foreman was thinking, and Mia didn’t like it one bit.
Come on, Foreman. Do what you need to do to make your girl feel better.
“It is just a bunch of flowers.”
No.
No no no.
Cal’s gaze had morphed to … was that calculating? Impossible. He was a clueless, self-absorbed jock, like every hockey player she knew. Like her ex. Sure, Drew had screwed her over but even then, she wouldn’t have considered him manipulative. That would come later when other people became involved and reshaped the narrative.
Mia shivered, not liking that reminder. Not here where she was supposed to be launching her grand plans to win a man and get her life back on track.