Excerpt from Simon Says
Excerpt Three“Let me talk to the Powers That Be.” Simon considered all the ramifications to reentering the circuit. “I’ll see how they feel about me making a comeback.”
Dean scoffed. “Are you kidding? You’re a legend in your own time. Everyone will love it. You’ll be the biggest draw the SBC has had in years. I don’t have a single doubt that the organization will play up your first fight in a big way.”
“Then I better be ready to win, huh?”
Gregor put his arm around him. “Don’t worry, little buddy. We’ll get you in top fighting form.”
Because Simon stood six-two and weighed over two hundred pounds, only Gregor would refer to him as little.
His mind made up and his immediate future settled, Simon said, “I’m starving. Let’s hit a drive thru for some loaded burgers.”
“Hell yeah,” Gregor agreed. As the only one of the three currently still competing, fast food, and especially anything as delicious as a hamburger, had been cut out of his diet for a while.
Happy to oblige, Dean pulled into the drive-thru line for the next burger joint they saw.
Simon knew that once he hit home, his mom would have a healthy, home cooked meal for him morning, noon and night. And once he started training, his diet would be a big part of the program. He wanted to enjoy fast food while he still could.
It was the best way to celebrate his new freedom.
* * *
As if going to her mother’s home – the home she’d grown up in - wasn’t bad enough, it was barely nine in the morning, and Dakota Dream was a night person. Her eyes felt gritty, her brain foggy, and she needed caffeine in a bad way.
Not a good start.
Dakota stared at the man who had served as her stepfather from her sixteenth year until her mother’s death.
Now he served as nothing in her life.
Nothing at all.
Yet... here she was, in a place she didn’t want to be, at an hour she hated, and without the kick of coffee to keep her alert.
Wearing a deliberate look of disinterest, Dakota sauntered further into the familiar living room and took a seat where her mother’s favorite chair used to be. Now, thanks to her stepfather, a very expensive leather lounger replaced it. “You’re joking, right?”
Resting back with his shoeless feet on a new coffee table and a toothpick in his perfect teeth, Barnaby Jailer smiled that same smile that had always made Dakota’s skin crawl. “Of course I’m not, honey. You owe me and you know it.”
Hoping to brazen her way out of that claim, Dakota snorted. “Right. In what universe?”
A grating sound that Barnaby tried to pawn off as a laugh made Dakota’s stomach lurch. Why couldn’t he be a coffee drinker with a fresh pot waiting in the small kitchen?
From the moment her mother had brought Barnaby home, Dakota hated him. Her reasons were sketchy at best. He was an average height man with an average, rangy build and a pleasant enough face.
But at sixteen, she’d been very afraid of him.
Now, at twenty-three, he merely repulsed her. But it was years too late for second-guessing her first impressions.
Eyes closing on a familiar rush of pain, Dakota struggled to gather herself. She had few weaknesses left. As a survivor, she’d overcome obstacles and conquered nearly all of her fears.
With very few exceptions, she could face anyone and anything without flinching.
But those damn past regrets that encompassed her mother’s death and her own grief always hit her like a concrete sucker punch. Time hadn’t softened them.
Nothing ever would.
The hush of clothing against couch cushions and the squeak of a floorboard announced Barnaby’s approach. Dakota didn’t have to look at him to know he smiled, that his dark eyes glittered with satisfaction.
He was right, she did owe him.
“If it wasn’t for me,” Barnaby whispered from her right side, “you wouldn’t have known your mother was dying.”
“Shut up.”
“If it wasn't for me,” he continued, “you wouldn’t have had anywhere to live.”
“It was my home.”
“Not after you left. Not after staying gone, without a word, for so long. She’d written you off, little girl.”
Dakota smirked. “Little girl?” She slanted her gaze up at him. “I’m only a few inches shorter than you are, Barnaby.”
“And yet,” he said, his voice frighteningly gentle as he moved to the back of her chair, “you’re still so much smaller.”
With every fiber of her being, Dakota felt Barnaby standing there behind her. Her skin prickled and the hair on her nape lifted as if touched by static.
“To Joan’s mind,” Barnaby continued, “she no longer had a daughter. Had she not been so ill, she would have refused to let you enter. Yet despite her wishes, I contacted you myself. I gave you a place to live and food to eat and most importantly, I allowed you back into your mother’s life. I gave you a chance to say good-bye to her. Again.”
“For good.”
“Don’t blame me for that. As soon as I knew your mother wouldn’t pull through, I looked for you. But you weren’t the easiest girl to find.”
No, she hadn’t been. When she’d run off with her boyfriend, she’d covered her tracks. Not once had she considered that her mother might be right in her arguments. No, Dakota had fostered her hurt, telling herself that her mother’s reactions were because she loved Barnaby more than she loved her own daughter.
Like a spoiled child, she’d wallowed in her sense of betrayal while doing exactly as she pleased despite her mother’s wishes. Thinking to herself, “She’ll be sorry,” she’d wanted her mother to regret her actions.
Oh God. Her mother had been sorry all right. Sorry that she’d ever had a daughter.
Shoving to her feet, Dakota turned to face Barnaby. Despite the prickling of unease she got whenever in his presence, she wouldn’t cower from him. But she wasn’t dumb enough to let him linger at her back, either.
“So you think I owe you, and for that, you want me to find your son?”
“He’ll be easy to find,” Barnaby corrected. “What I need you to do is bring him to me.”
“Why?” Suspicions began niggling around her brain. “If you want to establish some rapport with your son, why don’t you just contact him yourself? Why send me?”
“I haven’t seen him in a lot of years. It would be awkward.” Hands stuffed into his pockets, Barnaby began circling her.
Dakota felt certain that restlessness didn’t drive him. No, he wanted to unsettle her, to rattle her. For that reason more than any other, she kept her pose lazy and relaxed. “I didn’t even know you had a son.”
He shrugged at that. “No reason you should.”
“How old is he?”
“Thirty, maybe thirty-one.”
“You don’t know?”
He scowled, and ignored the question. “He might not want to see me after all this time. But you... you could get in on his good side, convince him to have a meeting with me.”
Dakota watched him closely. He was up to something, but as usual with Barnaby, she didn’t know what. “How am I supposed to do that?”
His dark-eyed gaze took her measure, crawling over her from head to toe in a way meant to disgust her. “You’re a woman now, Dakota.”
At twenty-three, she agreed, but that wasn’t his point at all. “Yeah, so?”
“All women know how to sway men. I imagine you know better than most how to –”