9 Hell on Wheels Read Online Free PDF

involved a problem with another guy, but that didn’t mean it had happened, just that Greg didn’t mention it.
    “Which of your old girlfriends did he hit on?” I finally ventured.
    Greg’s jaw tightened. He stared straight ahead and said nothing.
    Sometimes—not often—I know when to keep my mouth shut. This was one of those times. I continued driving until we were at our hotel. Valets opened both of our doors. The one on Greg’s side pulled his wheelchair from the back seat and set it up for him. By the time Greg had transferred himself to his chair, I was by his side. Obviously, plans for dinner with the team were not going to happen. Those players who had been released by the time we had were definitely not in a social mood. And everyone was too stunned to talk about what had happened in a group setting, though I was sure there would be a lot of whispering and speculation behind closed doors tonight.
    “Should we go to the hotel restaurant,” I asked Greg as we entered the hotel lobby, “or order room service?”
    Without answering, he went straight to the elevator. We rode up to our floor in silence. When we got into the room, Greg went to the patio sliding doors and opened them, rolling outside into the cool sea breeze. I put down my purse and joined him, taking a seat on a chaise longue. It was already dark out, and the beach couldn’t be seen except for the few yards caught in the lights lining the hotel property. Beyond that the dark waves, their backs shimmering with snatches of moonlight, rolled in to spend themselves on the sand. We could hear the ocean clearly. Its rhythmic ebb and flow was the heartbeat of our silence.
    “It was Linda Atwater,” Greg finally said.
    It took me a minute to place her in my memory of Greg’s past girlfriends. “You mean the girl you dated a few years before you met me—the one you almost married?”
    “Yes.”
    “But I thought you said she moved away to attend grad school.”
    My husband turned to me, his eyes sad. “And that’s the truth, but not all of it.” He looked back to the sea. “At one point we were talking about getting married, then she stopped talking about it and avoided the subject when I mentioned it. I thought she was mad because I hadn’t formally asked her yet. I was going to do it right, with a big romantic gesture. I’d already started shopping for her ring.” Greg turned and faced me. “One night over dinner she confessed that she’d been seeing Peter Tanaka behind my back.”
    “How well did you know him then?”
    “Quite well. He was very young and brash and making a splash on and off the courts. He’d met Linda when I brought her to one of the rugby matches. The night she confessed, she also told me she was leaving California and going to Canada with Tanaka. He was becoming more and more unwelcome around here for his conduct on the court, and none of the teams would have him anymore. He received an invitation to play for a team in Montreal and asked Linda to go with him.”
    “Greg, I’m so sorry.” Truth be told, I wasn’t sorry Linda Atwater had dumped Greg. If she hadn’t, we might not have met. But I was sorry for his obvious pain.
    He reached out and took my hand. “I’m not. If that hadn’t happened, I would never have met you.”
    Geez—add mind reader to his other talents.
    I squeezed his hand back. “True, but it’s still something that hurt you. It makes me want to slap her while thanking her at the same time.” I dug through my memory for a second. “I didn’t see Peter with anyone today.”
    “No,” answered Greg, his eyes growing dark. “They were gone about a year, maybe a little more, when I heard he had dumped Linda. She returned to California and eventually contacted me, not to get back together but to apologize for what she’d done. Soon after, she left for grad school in the East, like I told you. She wanted to start over.”
    “And that’s the last you heard of her?”
    He shook his head.