Power Play (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free

eager to get closer to their favorite player in whatever way they could. Young and handsome and a rising star to boot, Cahal must have had his pick of young beauties while Lila remained innocent, waiting for him in Toronto.
    The color came to her pale cheeks as she remembered just how innocent she had been on their wedding night and how surprised that Cahal seemed to know exactly what to do to bring them both pleasure. At the time, like a silly fool, she had thought that such things came instinctively to men. She had not imagined that while she had wanted to save herself for him alone, her new husband might have acquired some experience along the way.
    No, Lila told herself, she would not allow her thoughts to take her back to those times. For months she had brooded on the past, searching her memory for any prior signs of her husband’s true nature.
    In retrospect, she had found it only too easy to find significant clues. Only, after such a long time, she no longer knew if she could trust her memories to be accurate or trust herself not to blur those recollections with her own anger and hurt.
    Well, she could not stop herself from having been angry and hurt by Cahal. There was nothing she could do about the past. But there was no way that she would be hurt again. Not by Cahal and not by any man.
    • • •
    Monday nights were the usual time for meetings of the Toronto Wives and Girlfriends’ club. A reluctant Lila had been urged by her new boyfriend to join two months before. Now she found it a pleasant way to occupy her time.
    The other women were cheerful and interesting, and the charity events they planned were useful rather than being decorative social affairs. Last year, Lila learned, the Wives had raised almost half a million dollars for a local children’s organization. This year they were planning the same sort of outcome for an earthquake relief fund.
    This Monday, however, Lila felt a faint shimmer of apprehension as she arrived at the home of Catherine and Edward Monahan.
    Although the meeting times of the Wives were set, the location often varied according to the women’s whims and inclinations. Sometimes the rotation occurred every week, with a different woman hosting the club each Monday. Other times one woman would host for weeks on end, taking the pressure off the other families.
    At first Lila had felt like an interloper. The majority of the women were actually wives of the players, not merely girlfriends. Lila had wondered whether her status as Jack’s girlfriend would give her a diminished role in the club. She had not wondered for long.
    The women had been inviting and welcoming. They could well afford to be. Some of the wives had been in Toronto for a dozen or more years. Most had been there for at least a couple of years. Of the three girlfriends who attended, two had been going steady with their boyfriends for several years and the other for at least a year.
    Lila’s apprehension was that she was now going to be cast in a role she had avoided discussing — that of Cahal Wallace’s wife. But tonight was also the first time she was going to attend a Wives meeting without seeing the face of Jessica Gerard, the wife of Toronto’s previous goaltender. Jessica had been well liked and respected amongst the Wives. This was the first time that one of the Wives had left for the sake of another’s estranged husband.
    • • •
    She could feel the tension the moment she stepped into Cathy Monahan’s decorated home. Her hostess’s smile was polite in the extreme but it was patently false, an exaggerated attempt at friendliness.
    This was worse than Lila had anticipated, worse even than she had feared.
    Cathy Monahan led Lila toward the living room where she saw that she was among the last to arrive. There were already more than a dozen women in the room, comprising most of the membership of the Toronto Wives and Girlfriends.
    Most of the women were dressed more casually than Lila, wearing the slacks,