“I guess calling her at school isn’t a great idea.”
“Fuck no. She can’t answer when she’s in class.” He jumped up, paced over to the big windows, and looked at the city skyline. “I could call her tonight when we get there.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess that’s the best I can do.”
His head was a mess of shit during the entire trip to Denver. Duper wasn’t the only one who’d seen that blog post, and Duncan knew all the other guys were checking it out on their laptops once word started to get around.
“Holy shit, man,” Hughie said to him. “Deke Johnson’s daughter?”
“I know.” He wanted to punch Hughie in the mouth to shut him up, but the guy’d just recovered from a mild concussion so he couldn’t do it.
“Why didn’t we know that?” Hughie asked.
“Because she didn’t want anyone to know it.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.”
Hughie nodded thoughtfully. “Not sure whether to be disappointed in you or admire you for not spilling those beans.”
“Shut up, all right?” He stood up on the bus from the airport to the hotel, turned around, and yelled, “Okay, just so everyone knows. Yeah, I knew about Amber’s dad. She prefers it to stay on the down-low. I can’t stop you from looking at those pictures of her on the Internet, but anyone who says a word—and I mean any fucking thing—about her to my face or behind my back will get a fist in the nose.”
“Um, how’re you gonna know what we say behind your back?” Pilker asked.
Duncan fixed him with a hard glare. “I’ll know. The message is…shut the fuck up about this. Got it?”
He threw himself down into his seat and scrubbed a hand over his face.
Yeah, he was really looking forward to the phone call he had to make once he was alone in the hotel.
—
“Fuck, I wish I was there with you.” He let out a frustrated sigh after he’d dropped the knowledge on Amber. She was so quiet it was making him nuts. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
“What are you sorry for? This isn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, it is. If it wasn’t for me, that never would have happened.”
“Well. True.”
Shit. She did blame him.
“But still. You didn’t take the picture or write the fucking article.”
Whew.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “Good luck tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” he said automatically. “But wait—”
She’d hung up. He frowned at his phone. Dammit.
Then he had a genius idea. Why hadn’t he thought of this sooner? He poked at his phone to call his sister.
“Hey, Lovey. What’s up?”
“Not much. Where are you? Aren’t you in Denver?”
“Yeah. Listen, I need a big favor.”
“Uh-oh.”
“No, really. This is serious.” He told her what had happened.
“Who the hell is Deke Johnson?”
“Football player.”
Silence. “Oh yeah. Um. I think I sort of remember hearing something about him. That was years ago, right?”
“Not a football fan, are you?”
“Nope.”
Well, that served to put things a little more in perspective. Not everyone in the world knew who Deke Johnson was. So that was good.
He was kidding himself, but whatever.
“Okay, listen, Amber’s probably upset about this. I just talked to her on the phone, but fuck, I’m here and she’s there. D’you think you could go over to her place and make sure she’s okay?”
“Of course!”
“And…I don’t know…is there anything she should do? To respond to that?”
“Hmmm. I’ll have a look at the post. What’s the name of the blog? And what’s Amber’s address?”
He gave her that info. “Thanks, Lovey. Can you call me later and let me know how she is?”
“Sure, Dunc.” She paused. “You really care about her, don’t you?”
“Well. Yeah.” He swallowed. Fuck, more than anything. The fact that she was upset and hurting and he wasn’t even there was killing him.
“Nice. Okay, I’m on my way over.”
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the hotel bed. Then someone pounded on his door. “C’mon, Armdog! We’re going out for dinner now.”
He didn’t exactly feel like it, but figured he’d better go so they’d shut their faces about Amber, because if he wasn’t there he knew exactly what the main topic of conversation would be.
—
Amber knew she shouldn’t look at the website, but with the fascinated horror of watching a car wreck, she sat down at her computer and pulled up the site. Yeah, there it was. The only comfort she took was in scrolling back through older posts and finding she was in the company of nearly every wife or girlfriend of the Aces. In fact, there was Lovey. Did Lovey know that was on there? They didn’t have any underwear shots of her, but they’d found a picture of her and Marc at some kind of fancy event where Lovey was dressed in a sexy black dress.
Amber sighed.
Yeah, this brought back horrible memories, all right. Holy geez. She had to close her eyes, remembering all the crap things that had been in the news about her dad and their family.