FIRST CHAPTER BROKEN
“The Hornets better watch out, Dwight Scott seems to be on a roll!” The commentator’s voice boomed inside the little sound box. His enthusiasm and excitement bounced off the walls, the echo urging him on.
“Hold on, Mickey,” his co-commentator cut in. “My senses are tingling.”
“You know what that means, Donny. Greatness is about to occur.”
“Look at that. It’s a steal by Dwight Scott. He’s got the whole Hornet’s team chasing after him.”
“You can call him Peter Pan. Watch this—it’s a flawless layup! Dwight Scott dunks on the rim.”
“He just wants to make sure it got in.”
“The clock is winding down, and the Hornets are walking off the court,” Mickey announced.
“A stellar performance by Dwight Scott, a true giant.”
“The ladies are going to be clawing at him.”
“Heck, I’d lay on my back if that engine continues to drive us to the playoffs and the NBA final.”
“I don’t think you’re his type, Donny. Once again Dwight Scott leads the Knicks to another victory.”
* * * *
“Good job, man!”
Dwight met his teammates’ accolades with a smile. He was exhausted. His body felt like it was about to give up from the stress he was putting himself under. He could almost hear the bones plead and the muscles cry, asking his brain why the hell he kept pushing them to the extreme. The answer was easy enough—he wanted to be the best. And according to the sports gurus, he was on his way there.
He exhaled, hoping the tension in his body would leave him just as easily as the breath through his mouth. But it was still there. Maybe I can find a little lady who wouldn’t mind giving me a massage. Dwight definitely didn’t lack for female companionship. All he had to do was step out of the stadium and handpick from the hordes of women camping out to see them. He chuckled to himself; he loved that part of his job almost as much as he loved winning.
Sure, his grandmother would like to see him settle down and give her a few great-grandbabies before she left for the great beyond, as she called it. But Dwight was just fine being the most eligible bachelor in New York.
He stretched, and a grunt of discomfort left his lips. The way he felt, he would be lucky if he could leave the stadium, let alone bed a woman. Maybe she could do all the work this time. His turn to lie flat on his back.
“That grin on your face tells me you’re thinking dirty thoughts,” Dylan, one of his best friends, said.
“Maybe he was thinking of a ménage à trois,” David put in.
They were ‘the triple D’, a name given to them by the press. Hardly anything or anyone could stop them when they were on the court together. Dwight was six foot five and full of muscles. Physically, he was the better of the three, and talent wise, he surpassed their potential. But he had to admit that David and Dylan were his left and right hand.
Their friendship and bond had ruffled a few feathers on the court. Especially since they always seemed to play a three-man game instead of a five-man game. They fed him the ball and were there to catch his rebounds when he couldn’t. The truth was they made him look good.
He had more in common with David. Both Dwight and David were African American, and Dylan was the marshmallow in their Oreo. Dylan was the silent type, a great contrast to Dwight and David’s loud and rowdy personalities. Dylan was just as tall as Dwight, while David was six foot three. Both Dylan and David were twenty, which was considered the ripe age in the sport, and at twenty-three, Dwight felt as if time was catching up with him. But he loved basketball and often joked about not retiring until he was six feet under.
“So what do you guys want to do tonight?” Dwight asked as he pulled his t-shirt on.
“Whatever it is, I can’t stay out too late. I’m taking my mother to church.” Dylan’s Texas drawl always amused Dwight. And when he started talking about church, all Dwight could picture was Dylan in a buggy, his old horse pulling it to a local run-down church. The image in his mind looked like a scene from the 1860s. Dylan always had a straw hat on his head and was chewing on a piece of straw.
“Your mother is in town?” David asked.
“Yep, and my daddy too.”
“Okay, Miley Cyrus, you can ditch us tonight. I guess it’s just me and you, David.” Dwight took a look at himself in the mirror. He pulled his long dreadlocks from the tie behind his head, and with a few sprays of his favorite cologne, he was ready to go.
“Let’s go to the strip club first,” David said as they walked down the stadium hallway.
“Nope, too messy.” Dwight passed a window and caught his reflection. He couldn’t resist checking to make sure that during the few paces between the locker room and the team cafeteria nothing had come out of place. He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going and bumped into a tiny obstruction.
“Ouch!” a dainty, unmistakably female voice cried out. “Watch where you’re going, big foot.”
“What?” Dwight glared at the tiny blonde sprawled on the ground. Her Knicks’s cheerleading outfit left her creamy thighs out for viewing. “Nice,” he said, a saucy grin claiming his lips.
“I apologize on behalf of my friend,” Dylan said as he reached for the pixie’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Don’t worry. I guess they don’t make them like they do in Texas,” she spat out, the steel at the tip of her tongue slicing through Dwight’s confused haze.
“Make what in Texas?”
“Oh my God, he’s clumsy and dumb. Thank God you don’t need your smarts in order to throw a ball into a hoop.”
“Who the hell is this chick?” A sliver of irritation crept up Dwight’s back.
“I definitely wasn’t fathered by a cock, nor did I hatch out of an egg. And the last time I saw my mother, she wasn’t covered in feathers.” Just then she winced and swore.
“Are you in pain?” Dylan reached out to steady her before she fell to the floor.
“I think I hurt my foot.”
“I’ll take you to the ER,” Dylan, in his noble nature, offered.
“No, I’ll take her.” Dwight didn’t know what possessed him to say that. It definitely wasn’t her viperous tongue, which he found amusing. She didn’t have much up top, or bottom, but her creamy thighs had him ensnared. “I’m the clumsy idiot who knocked her down.”
“I said clumsy and dumb,” she said, a brow arched, her arms crossed over her chest in defiance.
“Sorry, I meant to say clumsy and dumb, not clumsy and idiot,” Dwight said, an amused smile tugging at his lips.
“Don’t sell yourself short—you’re both dumb and an idiot.” She tried to hobble past them but didn’t get too far before she tilted back.
This time Dwight was the one who caught her. He gathered her in his arms and headed toward the private door. He would have to let down the hordes of females waiting to see him.
* * * *
“I didn’t ask you to take me to the ER.” Aurora’s voice pierced through the blanket of silence that had settled around them.
Dwight grunted then shrugged his shoulders, never looking her way.
“You should watch where you’re walking instead of looking at every reflection of yourself.” Again, her statement was met by another non-committal shrug. “You are very arrogant. A giant among giants, what the hell does that even mean?”
Aurora was getting desperate for a response. It wasn’t fun goading a person if they didn’t even react. She liked sparring with words. That was something she had learned from her private school days. That and that money could get you anything you wanted.
Dwight Scott was a giant. Just looking at him, she estimated he was six foot five and could possibly weigh 200 to 250 pounds. He wore his shoulder-length, jet-black hair in dreadlocks. The goatee and moustache framed his mouth perfectly.
Aurora leaned forward to get a better angle. The man was sort of beautiful. Who was she kidding? He was chocolate sex on legs. If she could bottle him, she could make a killing and probably replace all the money her family had lost.
“You’re not much of a talker,” she commented. He shrugged again. “Or is it that I’m not your type? No silicone and lots of brains. Your mother must be real proud of the man you’ve become.”
Aurora felt the jolt of the seat belt as it snapped her back, after the force of the Jaguar stopped abruptly. Her hand flew to her bruised shoulder, and she let out a series of curses. She looked on in surprised silence as Dwight got out of the car and walked around to her side. He opened the door and stood waiting.
“What, you idiot?”
“Get out!”
What the fuck! Aurora watched Dwight, wondering if he had lost his mind.
Something she had said definitely struck a chord. It might have been the comment about his mother. She knew how that felt. In the upper-crust of New York society her family name was taboo. After her father and her uncle swindled most of New York out of their hard-earned money, her mother took the easy route and killed herself after their incarceration. Her aunt fled the country with her Latin lover. I should have done that. Now she was left responsible for her cousins.
“Get out!” The anger behind Dwight’s words snapped her back into the present. She was being kicked out of his car, without any money for a cab and wearing her very short dancer uniform. Her tongue had got her into a fix this time.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I don’t care.” Dwight reached into the car and unbuckled her seat belt. With one hand under her thighs and the other on her back, he easily lifted her out of the car. He walked a short distance to the curb and deposited her there.
“You can’t leave me here,” Aurora protested as she got to her feet and hobbled after him.
Dwight glanced over his shoulder at her and gave one of his famous shrugs. He then got into his Jaguar without giving her a second look.
Aurora wasn’t one to be outsmarted; she stepped in front of the car. She could see the angry twitch in his jaw as his eyes reduced to slits. But then a mocking smile appeared on his face and he started reversing. He pulled back and drove around and past her before she could do anything about it. Aurora was left staring at the red taillights.
Suddenly, the car stopped and he started reversing again. Aurora was determined to stand her ground, but when it didn’t look like he would slow down anytime soon, she got out of the way before he could run her over.
“Are you fucking crazy?” she yelled as he stopped the car beside her.
“No, just clumsy and dumb.”
“Don’t forget idiotic.” Aurora began to hobble to the passenger door when Dwight threw a hundred dollar bill out the window.
“Get a cab to the ER or home or straight to hell. I don’t give a fuck which one.”
Aurora cringed at the sound of rubber against gravel as Dwight sped away once again. She stood there staring at the taillights, knowing very well that he wouldn’t come back for her this time.
* * * *
Dwight felt guilty within minutes after he left her there, standing in the chilly air with almost nothing on. He brought his car to a halt and cursed his grandmother’s morally upright upbringing. He wasn’t that much of a bastard to leave a defenseless girl alone, prey to any psycho with an itch.
No matter what she had said about his mother, he shouldn’t have left her there. Sixteen years later and his heart still ached from the pain of loss, the sound of the screams and the image of the blood still fresh in his mind. His mother was dead, and if he didn’t hurry up, he feared he would find the blonde witch in the same condition.
Dwight turned around and returned to the street he left the blonde on just in time to see her get into a cab. He sped past the cab and parked in front of it. In the midst of angry honking and swearing, he got out of his car and walked to the cab. He opened the back door and reached in for the passenger.
“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the witch yelled as she resisted.
Dwight groaned. His body was still recuperating from the game, and the witch’s angry blows weren’t doing him any favors. He threw her over his shoulder and walked back to his car. But when he deposited her on the front seat, she tried to run away from him. Dwight picked her up again, demonstrating how much stronger he was than her.
This time when he put her in the front seat he buckled her in. “Listen, I’ve had a long night. I shouldn’t have left you there, but you pissed me off. Now just sit still and stay quiet.”
A shrill made Dwight look over his shoulder.
“Shit,” he swore. It was like an amber alert had gone out, letting every single groupie know where to find him.
“Your adoring public awaits.” He didn’t miss the sarcasm in her voice and didn’t appreciate it either.
“Don’t try getting out of this car or I’ll let that mob get you.” Dwight ran around the car, ignoring the angry words hurled his way by other motorists.
Once he got into the driver’s seat he made a quick u-turn and barreled down the road. In his rearview mirror he could see the groupies chasing after him. He winced as one took a tumble, taking a bunch of the others down with her.
“So is this the life of the mighty Dwight Scott?”
“You don’t know when to give up.” Dwight chewed on his lip to distract himself. “What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“So I can stop calling you ‘the witch’ in my head.” He took pleasure in her angry huff as she turned away from him.
Dwight had never been so relieved to see the tall, illuminated hospital building in his life. The last time he had allowed himself into the building was the night his mother died. He hated that it was the closest hospital he could get his witch to.
His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel in a tight grip. He sighed when he realized he didn’t have any other choice; he would have to escort his witch in there. He came to a halt at the emergency room entrance and wished that a nurse or an orderly would walk out and relieve him of his burden. But there was no such luck.
“Let’s go,” he murmured. She opened the door, but he stopped her from getting out. “Wait, I’ll carry you. You don’t know what kind of damage has already been done, and you don’t want to make it worse.”
“I don’t have to worry about my limbs. I’m not a basketball player. If it’s broken, I find another job. I’m just a dancer.”
“Just wait.” He couldn’t help the irritated tone in his voice. This woman knew just how to rub him the wrong way.
Dwight carried her into the ER and stopped at the nurses’ station. “My friend hurt her leg. I think it’s sprained.”
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” the nurse asked.
“The—”
“Aurora,” she cut him off with a glare. “Aurora Duncan.”
“Well, Aurora, if your friend—”
“Scott,” Dwight volunteered.
“If your friend Scott can bring you over here, we’ll take a look-see.”
Dwight smiled at the nurse. Her warm and motherly nature reminded him of his own grandmother. He followed the heavy-set woman to a hospital bed and deposited Aurora on it. He stepped back as the curtain was drawn, and he was left out of sorts. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
He walked to the waiting area and took a seat. He could leave; she’d definitely be able to find her way home from here. But he didn’t have anything to occupy him tonight, so he just waited.
