Angle of Pursuit, page 1
Angle of Pursuit
Jamie Bennett
Copyright © 2023 Jamie Bennett
Copyright © 2023 Jamie Bennett All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at JamieBennettBooks@gmail.com.
This is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Book cover by Angela Haddon Book Cover Designs.
Aubin had a plan…
and this wasn’t it.
Never, not once in a million years, did Aubin Frazier think that she would end up like this: single again, rejected by her family and friends, and totally broke. Seriously? How had those things happened to a woman who was, let’s face it, renowned for being the best? For getting ahead? For winning?
Now she’s living in a mostly unfurnished condo that she can’t afford and her teenage neighbor, Parker, becomes her best—and only—friend. The other unit in their complex belongs to Robby Baines, the pro-football player. He’s extremely cute and charming, of course, but Aubin’s not interested in any of that. Even if she was, Robby has a line of women following after him, young, beautiful women who are just starting off their perfect lives. The line leads right into his bedroom and he’s not looking for anything more from them.
Aubin can see that he leads a charmed existence, so why would Robby want to get involved with a loser like she is? Funny, but it does seem that he wants to be friends. He seems to want to be a big, strong, steady fixture in her life and in Parker’s—and it also seems that they both need him there.
If Robby can get past her defenses, Aubin might have a chance at a different kind of a win. He’ll just need to find the best angle…
Chapter 1
“Awesome! We’re done.” She smiled and closed her laptop, as pleased as if we’d just completed some online shopping and gotten a great deal on shoes. She certainly didn’t look like she had any understanding that my life was totally over: all my plans were pulverized and my hopes for the future now rotted in ruins. My reputation had been tattered, my finances sunk underwater, my happiness vaporized, et cetera, et cetera.
It was…what was the word? Catastrophic. Apocalyptic. But how did this girl react?
“Awesome!” she repeated, and stood up from her chair and glanced at the door, ready to move on to the next project.
I still sat, my butt glued to the vinyl cushion. It was done? She’d just said so, but could that be right? No, it wasn’t possible, and I shook my head. I didn’t give up on things. I didn’t throw in the towel and quit! Not too long ago, I had been successful in every venture I attempted—and now, another failure? Again? No.
“I don’t accept this.”
The paralegal, or legal secretary, or whoever my attorney had fobbed me off on, stared across the table in confusion. “Um…” She glanced around this sterile little cubicle of a conference room like she sought guidance. Like there might be a poster with bullet points for how to deal with a troublesome client hanging next to the one with the pride of lions and an inspirational message about group dynamics. “Um, are you experiencing regrets or something?” she hazarded.
Yes, I was. “Regrets or something” was exactly what I was feeling right now.
“I think lots of people get like this after a divorce,” she said, nodding sagely. What did she know about that? She looked like she was about fourteen, not nearly old enough to understand “regrets or something.” And her ring finger was empty, just like mine now was. Only the hint of a white circle remained as evidence that once, I had been married. Once, I’d been part of a couple, a team, two people pulling together.
“Yours was so easy, though,” she comforted me. “There were no problems at all! No shared assets, no children, nothing. You have a fresh start and you’re still young. Young-ish,” she revised. She squinted her eyes as she checked my face—for wrinkles, maybe? For age spots or sagging?
My hand rose and I swear, I might have slapped her, but I used it to smooth my hair—my thick, shiny, mahogany-brown hair without even one grey strand. I stood also and stalked across the institutional carpet. “You’re blocking my exit,” I informed her, and she leaped to the side. I walked out of the building, out from under their bad fluorescent overhead lighting and onto the wet asphalt of the parking lot under a grey sky instead.
Maybe my divorce had been easy, with no problems at all, but it had still taken a long time to finalize. It was early spring and the snow was melting—it was almost a year since Billy and I had said our vows. Now, instead of celebrating our first anniversary together, I was leaving the family law office alone. I looked at the clouds, lost in thought, and then started to head toward my car. At that moment, another driver raced in front of me, smashing through a puddle that exploded with dirty water.
It exploded onto me, all over me, saturating my coat and my shoes, spraying my face and my hair. I stood there dripping in the parking lot of my divorce attorney’s building, needing to get into a car that I could no longer afford, to drive back to a condo that was mine only through the generosity of the man who thought I’d tried to ruin his life. I looked again at the gathering clouds. I wasn’t religious, but was this some type of smiting thing?
“I’m sorry,” I told the sky. “Ok? I’m sorry! I would take it back if I could. I’ll be better!”
“Um, Aubin? Excuse me, Aubin Frazier?”
I spun around and there was that paralegal or legal assistant or whatever she was, the girl with skin like porcelain who thought I was an old hag. “What?”
“You left your purse in our conference room.” She held it out and I took it as her eyes tracked over me and the muddy water dripping from my person. “Have an awesome day!” she offered, and raced back into the building.
Awesome. Yeah, it was the perfect description of this situation. I drove the expensive car to the condo that I scrimped to keep, and I got into the shower to wash off the mud and the printer toner-odor of the attorney’s office. I stayed in there for a while but I didn’t feel any better, and when I turned off the water, the empty hours rose up before me. My days had always been so full with work, volunteer projects, going out with friends, exercise, shopping, and making plans to do more of those things. Oh, and there had been my husband, too. I’d also spent time with him.
But almost all of that had fallen by the wayside. The money for entertainment and shopping was gone and all of my friends were mad at me, anyway. My husband was also gone, having moved to Oklahoma for a better job that paid enough to start him off solidly in his new life. He’d meet a new wife, too…
Exercise. I could still exercise. Better yet, I could dance, because of all the things I’d excelled at, I was best at that. No one had been able to take their eyes off me when I’d had on my uniform and ran out on the field as the captain of the Wonderwomen squad, the professional cheerleaders for the Woodsmen football team. I wanted to feel that again, the adulation and the exhilaration.
I turned on my little speakers and cued up the music on my phone. This was a routine we’d done in my last season before I retired. We’d called it “Cobra” because of the way we’d rolled our hips, undulating like snakes. I loved to watch the videos of us all performing this and I could still do it. I could! I could still do this, all of it.
As I danced, I forgot everything that had happened, not just today but for the last few months. I imagined myself wearing the iconic orange halter top of the Wonderwomen cheerleader uniform, my hair perfectly curled, my makeup impeccable. I could almost hear the other girls dancing behind me, where they’d always been since I was at the front and center of the group. I listened to the crowd screaming their appreciation, their yells even louder than the music coming from the speakers and their feet thumping on the stadium—
No, that noise was someone pounding on my door, and I was actually alone in my living room with wet hair and wearing a giant, old Woodsmen Football sweatshirt instead of the tight, orange halter top. I sighed and pressed pause on the music to see what fresh hell awaited on my front porch because lately, there hadn’t been a lot of pleasant surprises.
This time it was a kid, a teenager. I’d seen him before in the parking lot, so I stepped back from the peephole and swung open the door. “Yes?” I asked him.
“Will you turn down that fucking music?”
My mouth fell open. Who was he to talk to me like that? He didn’t even look old enough to drive but he was definitely old enough to feel comfortable swearing, because he kept right on doing it.
“I’m playing a really important level and I can’t even focus because you have that fucking oldies shit at top volume,” he announced.
“Oldies?” I sputtered. “That song was popular—”
“Before I was born,” he informed me. “Turn it down!”
I waited for my clapback, which was going to come to me soon. Now it was my turn to tell off this oversized child, to put him in his place so he knew that he could never speak to a woman like that. He particularly couldn’t talk that way to a beautiful and desirable woman, as I was. No stupid teenager and no grown man, either, could swear at me and tell me what to do! I was Aubin Frazier, damn it!
“Oh. Oh, shit! I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he to
I wasn’t. Was I? I rubbed my knuckles over my face and they came away wet with tears, and when I opened my mouth to give him an earful, the only thing that emerged was a sob.
His eyes got huge. “I’m sorry,” he stuttered.
And all I could do now was shake my head and turn away. I went to my kitchen and buried my face in a towel. Everyone knew that crying was for weaklings and the only thing it accomplished was ruining your makeup, but here I was behaving like an infant, like a woman who couldn’t control herself.
“Uh, lady?” a voice asked from behind me. The teenager had invited himself in. “I’m sorry. I really am. You can play that bad music, I don’t care.”
I remembered that I wasn’t even wearing any makeup to ruin with these useless tears. I cried harder.
“Am I supposed to call somebody? Do you have to breathe into a bag? Should you slap someone who’s hysterical, or is that only a thing people did in the olden days before you guys knew about medicine and stuff?”
“Shut up,” I managed to tell him, and then took a big, long, shaky breath before I tried talking again. “It was a new song!”
“That’s why you’re crying? I thought you felt threatened by me.” He flexed his two skinny arms a little but no muscle showed under his sleeves.
I went to the sink and poured myself a large glass of water, which I swallowed in three big gulps.
“You must be able to chug beer.”
“What?” I looked over at the teenager. He was staring at me and nodding like he was impressed.
“You can really take down a lot of liquid. Can you do shots?” he asked.
“Yes. And yes, I can chug beers.” I had been able to in college, anyway, back before I got a little more sophisticated. It felt like that had been in a different eon.
“How do you do it?”
“I mean, you just relax your throat and…why are you in my house?” I asked him.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he explained. “I followed you because I felt bad. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“You didn’t. You called me old, which hurt my feelings, but I was crying because my divorce was finalized today,” I heard myself explain to him. And why I had bothered to do that? No idea.
“That fucking sucks,” he commiserated. “My parents aren’t divorced but my mom’s dead. Have you seen that sad sack of shit I live with? He’s my dad. I just ignore him.” He waited. “Aren’t you going to tell me not to do that, that I should appreciate the parent I have left or something?”
“My dad is also a sad sack. I didn’t talk to him for three years when I went away to college.”
He nodded, impressed again. “I was wondering what happened to the guy who used to live here with you. Was that your husband? The one you divorced?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “He got a new job in Oklahoma and moved away. He was an assistant trainer on the Woodsmen team staff but he’s the head trainer for the Rustlers now.”
“He makes the football players lift weights?” He tried out another flex.
“You know,” I said impatiently. “Billy is a certified athletic trainer. He can help with their strength training but he does a lot more. He works with the guys to prevent injuries and he directs their rehab.”
“For drugs?”
“No,” I bit out again. “Rehab when they’re hurt. He tapes them, stretches with them…I don’t know why I’m talking about his job.” Was I defending him? He’d left me.
“Does he make good money?”
“He does fine.” Better than what I had made at my last job while we were married, which was negative money. “Why do you care?”
“I want to earn a shitload. I want to retire early.”
A short, sharp bark of laughter burst from my mouth, startling both of us. “You’re young to be considering retirement,” I pointed out.
“My dad is old and he’s still working. I don’t want to be like that,” he explained, and I wondered what he considered old. Forty? Fifty? “I plan to be on a beach with a lot of girls and beer.”
“Would you be chugging it?” I asked. “You seem to care a lot about drinking.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care too much about anything.”
Good Lord, I wished I felt that way. “What’s your name?”
“Parker.”
“Aubin,” I told him, and offered my hand. He must have been working out the correct way to shake, because first he limply grasped my fingers, then he attempted to squeeze the blood out of them, and lastly he returned to holding them as if he was afraid of human contact. “It’s nice to meet you,” I commented when that process was over.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I didn’t know your name, but I see you all the time. I’m home a lot.”
“What about school?”
“I’m homeschooled. I do online shit.”
“Why?” I asked, but he shrugged. “Why don’t you—” But I broke off, interrupted by a deafening noise. It sounded like someone had just switched on a large power tool and it was coming through my walls. My hands went to cover my ears, that was how loud it was, and the empty water glass on my countertop vibrated with it. “What is that?” I asked Parker, and when he couldn’t hear me, I repeated it in a way that strained my throat.
“Sounds like Robby Baines again,” he told me, his voice also raised. It cracked a little. “He’s our neighbor. Do you know about him?”
“Do you think I’ve been living under a rock?”
He only stared at me. “What?”
I rolled my eyes and nodded an exaggerated assent. “Yes, yes of course I know who Robby Baines is. He’s a football player,” I said, enunciating loudly and carefully. “He’s plays for the Woodsmen, the Pride of the Peninsulas, on the D-line.”
“The what?”
Now I stared at him. He’d heard me, he just didn’t know anything about football. “You know how when the quarterback gets the ball, some really big guys on the other team figure out the best angle to run him down and pummel him into the turf? That’s Robby Baines’ job.”
“How do you know that?”
But I didn’t answer, because I was listening again to the noisy machine. “What is he doing? What makes that sound? He’s, like, four or five units down from here and it still makes that much racket?”
Parker shrugged. “It just started yesterday when you weren’t here.”
“You watch when I come and go?”
“There’s nothing else to do,” he answered. He hadn’t said that in a volume much above a mumble, but I’d read his lips. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s relentless,” he told me in a louder tone. “It’s worse than your old—your music,” he finished, and I saw him shoot me a glance to check if I’d noticed the insult.
I had. “Did you also trot your butt over there to tell him to turn it the F off?” I asked, and now his eyes widened.
“Are you kidding me? Have you seen that guy? His arms…his chest…” He shook his head. “He could break me in half. I wouldn’t even say hello to him. I bet he weighs double what I do.”
From the look of things, it was probably more like triple. At least. If Parker tipped the scales at a hundred pounds, I would have been surprised—but he was also tall, standing close to the nine inches over five feet that I did. Skinny ankles emerged from beneath the hems of his jeans and bony wrists protruded from his hoodie sleeves, as if maybe this height was a new thing that no one had prepared clothes for. Or, if his dad really was like mine, no one had noticed that he was walking around like an idiot, wearing stuff that didn’t fit anymore. I remembered that my old dance teacher had been the one to inform my extant parent that I needed a bra. He hadn’t seen that for himself and I’d been too embarrassed to tell him.
The din continued and I stared at the wall. “How long did this go on yesterday?” I yelled.
“Couple hours,” he shouted back, holding up three fingers to specify how many. “Then he left his house with another big guy.”
I knew that many of the defensive starters had stayed here in northern Michigan instead of leaving for the offseason. Most of the Woodsmen jetted to warmer climates during the winter to train, but those guys had stayed to work out together. They were generally friends, and a couple of them had settled down with local girls who didn’t want to move away from our area. The reason I knew this was because my sister was one of the local girls who had settled down with one of those defensive players. She wasn’t here at the moment, though, because her husband had surprised her with a trip to about a million different cool places as a delayed honeymoon. They planned to be gone for weeks, galivanting.
