Not So Snow White Page 3

  "I don't need a vacation. I need a coach, dammit."

  "Don't swear."

  She merely rolled her eyes at him, then huffed as she crossed her arms across her chest.

  "And I think we need to take a short break before we recruit someone new."

  She looked at him as if he'd sprouted another head. He wished. Two brains would come in handy when dealing with a recalcitrant, bullheaded, thinks-she-knows-every-damn-thing teenager. Especially when said teenager knew exactly what buttons to push.

  "I know you're still disappointed that I didn't go further in Paris," she told him, "but give me a break. I drew Serena in the first round, so are you kidding me? My first grand slam and I get Wonder Woman on Day One. All that hard work to qualify and then, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, I'm gone."

  Max shot her a warning look. "You know damn—darn well that I'm not disappointed in you. Not everyone plays their first match of their first grand slam on a stadium court in front of sixteen thousand screaming fans. And you pushed her to three sets, Gaby, something even the top-ten players haven't been able to do since sometime during the middle of last year. Everybody's talking about it."

  "Then I came here and made it exactly one round further in Birmingham. Oh yeah, everybody's talking. And what they're saying is that the junior-circuit phenom isn't so phenomenal when playing against the big girls. Some of whom are barely a year or two older than me."

  "And have already been playing on tour for a year or more."

  "And whose fault is it I haven't been on tour for the past year?" she groused, even though she knew that was a dead-end argument.

  Max didn't even go there. Gaby had known for a long time that he had no intentions of putting her on tour before she finished school. Even then he thought that was too young. He'd have liked to see her play through college, earn a degree. But he'd known that was unlikely. She had such a fire in her, a burning passion to play, and she was just too damn good. To top it off, she'd worked just as hard off the courts, finishing her tutoring and getting her GED early, leaving him little choice but to cut her loose this year and let her try her hand on the pro circuit. And even now she was still in a hurry.

  "Cut yourself some slack, Gabrielle. You're doing exactly what we hoped you'd do."

  "We meaning you and stupid Sven. You might not care, but I wanted to go further in Paris. And I certainly expected to this week. I know I can do it. I just need a coach who understands me." She glared at him, all accusation and daring him to say otherwise.

  Like he was the one who threw temper tantrums on and off the court. Like he was the one who had to make every little damn thing some huge melodramatic event. As a junior, the only reason he could get the top coaches to agree to work with her was because, as an athlete, she had a ridiculous amount of natural talent. He tried to blame it on hormones, or some other mysterious becoming-a-woman estrogen thing. But it didn't really matter why. What mattered was that he find some way to deal with it. To deal with her.

  With more patience than he thought he still possessed, he took a steadying breath and crossed the room, taking a seat next to her. "Come on, Gaby," he said calmly, focusing all of his attention on her.

  She kept her gaze averted, but he just waited. He knew a few buttons, too. Finally she shifted her steely, unrepentant gaze to him. It was a small capitulation, but a telling one for anybody who knew her. And no one knew Gabrielle Fontaine better than her big brother.

  "You convinced me you were ready to move up, but—"

  "I am," she said with absolute certainty. "You and I both know it."

  He did know it. She'd obliterated the juniors to the point where there was nowhere else for her to go but pro. Truth be told, he was the one who hadn't been ready. He'd held her back as long as he could, keeping her as protected as possible from the big bad world of the women's tour. Not that competing on the junior level was a walk in the park. She'd been an international attention-getter for some time now, but on a much smaller scale.

  Only the tennis world really paid attention to the junior phenoms. Now she was on the main stage, with the whole world watching. An enormous amount of pressure had been brought to bear on her as the next great hope for the American women's game.

  He'd prepared her for that as much as he could, and carefully selected the initial events she would play in, keeping them well paced and her overall schedule light for her first year. Professional tennis was a sport populated by teenagers, so she was far from alone out there, but he'd seen too many burn out or end their careers early due to injury from overextending themselves and putting too much of a strain on their still growing bodies. On top of that, they had the international media paying attention now since her debut in Paris. It didn't hurt that she was beautiful, flamboyant, and confident bordering on cocky. Okay, maybe not bordering. She was making quite the splash already and it scared the hell out of him in ways he hadn't been prepared for.

  He'd been almost relieved when she'd lost early this week. London media was the worst and he was thankful she was out of the spotlight for now. She'd been given a wild card into Wimbledon, her second grand slam of the year, starting in a few weeks. They could both use the break,

  He'd been more worried about the tour pressures than the media attention, but her very confidence in herself insulated her somewhat. Gaby was so sure of her abilities that the pressures and international-scale expectations didn't seem to faze her. It seemed normal to her for people to expect great things of her, since she expected them from herself, as well. She only seemed to get bent out of shape with her assumptions about his expectations of her.

  As brother, mentor, manager, guidance counselor, and most important, the only family she had left in the world, he worried constantly about whether he was making the right choices for her. Especially lately when her temperament careened from typical teenager, to tyrant, to woman-wise-beyond-her-years. Often in a breathtakingly short time span.

  Now more than ever he wished Gaby had a female influence in her life, someone to maybe soften her up a little. Even a female coach would be welcome, but Gaby had gone through the few they'd tried like water through a sieve. Male coaches had slightly better luck, but didn't last much longer. And while they'd had varying degrees of success in molding her game, none of them had forged any inroads into molding her temperament. That job, apparently, was destined to remain his and his alone. Lucky him.

  "I just don't see why I'm being punished with this stupid spa thing," Gaby insisted, drawing him from his thoughts.

  "You know," he gently chided, "most people wouldn't view a few weeks stay at a place called Glass Slipper as punishment."

  Gaby snorted. "Glass Slipper. I'm no princess."

  "You're telling me," Max muttered before he could catch himself.

  But rather than flip out, Gaby laughed, though it was totally sardonic in tone. The going-on-thirty-year-old surfaced once more. He wished he was better at predicting that, but he knew it was a fairly hopeless expectation.

  "Exactly," she said airily. "So why try to pretend otherwise? No amount of time spent at some posh spa is going to magically transform me into the lovely, obedient young lady you so yearn for me to be."

  "That's not true."

  She leveled an amused smile at him. "Which? About it taking more than two weeks? Or you yearning for me to find my inner good girl?"

  "Both, actually," he said, momentarily surprising her. He immediately capitalized on gaining the rare edge. "I don't want them to change you, I want them to help you." He held up a hand to stall her, surprised when she respected it. "And I don't want you turned into something you're not, no matter what you think." He leaned forward and took her hands, squeezing them together between his own. "You've been amazing these past couple of months. Most girls your age couldn't handle a tenth of what you have. I couldn't be more proud of you and how you've handled the tour so far."

  Instead of being touched by his sincere proclamation, she snorted and tugged her hands free. The tyrant had r
eturned. "Don't bullshit me, Max. Just tell me the real reason you want to dump me in this stupid, godforsaken 'life spa' for two weeks. Vacation plans of your own? Haven't been laid in a while? Because I have no problem with that. Really. You work too hard, you have no life. In case you haven't noticed, I can take perfectly good care of myself. I don't need baby-sitting." She flicked her hand at him. "So go on and have your little fling. You have my blessing."

  Max clenched his jaw. "First of all, enough with the swearing already. And you know perfectly well that I'd never just take off and—"

  Gaby barked a laugh. "Exactly!" She slapped her hands on her thighs and shoved to a stand. "God, Max, you're so uptight you don't even know how repressed you are."

  "I'm not repressed!" he spluttered as he shot off the couch after her, wondering once again just where and when he'd lost control of this conversation.

  "When was the last time you got laid? Hell, when was the last time you even went on a date? And I mean with a woman who wasn't tour personnel, a marketing rep, or a sponsor? In other words, not a business dinner? Honestly, I have more fun than you, and I have no social life."

  Max stood there, hands on his hips, fully prepared to deliver a perfectly worded, stinging retort guaranteed to shut down this particular subject. Only nothing came to mind. Mostly because there was a hint of a chance that she actually had a point. But he'd let her pummel him physically if necessary before he'd give her that kind of power.

  "If you don't have plans for the next few weeks, maybe you should make some," she went on, goaded by his uncharacteristic silence. "Go pick someone up. Everyone thinks you're kind of a hottie. For an old guy, anyway. Though if they saw you in those ratty old sweats you insist on—"

  "They're my fraternity sweats, and I'd hardly wear them out on—wait a minute, I'm a what? What did you just say?" Max raked his hands through his hair, completely lost now. "Who says that about me?"

  Gaby sighed in teenaged disgust. "You are so hopeless. Of course, that you're so totally oblivious to it is part of what gets them, you know? I mean, I know it's because you're too anal about every last detail of my every living and breathing moment. But to them it comes off like this cute, endearing sort of earnestness."

  "Them? Who the hell is 'them'?"

  "Don't swear," she said, smiling broadly, vastly amused at his complete consternation. "I could give you a list. But do me one favor, okay? You're thirty, so no hitting on anyone under, like, twenty-five. It would be so embarrassing." She lowered her gaze. "For both of us."

  "I'm not going to hit on anybody," he insisted, his mind still racing along this surprising, if unbelievable, new path.

  She crossed the sitting room that connected their two bedrooms. "You know, the more I think about it, the more I think you should. Date, I mean. Might do us both some good. Give me a little room to breathe, and loosen up that tight-assed, overprotective tendency of yours, all in one shot." With a grin and a wiggle of her fingers, she disappeared into her room. Once again, having the last word.

  He couldn't help it. She'd left him with his mouth hanging open. What was it the Brits called it? Gobsmacked? Didn't he have enough to deal with? She was just being ridiculous, but even if it were true, it was more than he was prepared to deal with.

  God, life had been so much easier before she grew breasts and started realizing boys were good for more than beating on the tennis court.

  With a confused sigh, Max walked to her still open bedroom door. He leaned on the frame and watched as she flopped across the bed, magazine in one hand, while booting up her laptop with the other. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was just a typical teenager with nothing more on her mind than boys and the latest fashion tips. If only.

  He let the room fall silent, save for the clicking sound as she typed on her keyboard. Perhaps it was time he admitted that cajoling and psychology were never going to work with her. She'd always been too sharp to fall for that. Maybe it was time to try something completely new. Desperate times called for desperate measures, he thought, then plunged ahead with plan B. Okay, so it was more like plan X, version 7.0, but who was keeping track?

  Instead of thinking of her as a naive sixteen-year-old—which she obviously wasn't—maybe he'd have more success if he appealed to the older-than-her-years side of her. What the hell did he have to lose? "You've grown up fast, Gaby. You're light-years past most girls your age. I know that and respect it. But if you think about it, I know you'd agree that it's been an insulated life, too, in a lot of ways. Playing tennis full-time, learning from tutors, constantly traveling. And now things are changing even faster. You're going to face things on tour I can't prepare you for."

  "Your point?" she said, not breaking stride in her keyboard tapping.

  "I'm asking you to be mature enough to recognize that we all need help from time to time. I think you could stand a little life coaching from the Glass Slipper people." He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "And yeah, maybe I do need a break for a little life coaching of my own."

  That had her rolling to her back, eyes wide in surprise. "What is this? Saint Max admitting that maybe he's not perfect?"

  Now it was Max's turn to snort. "I've never pretended to be perfect or a saint." He smiled. "In fact, I feel far from that most every minute of every day."

  Surprising him, Gaby's quicksilver mood changed yet again and her expression immediately softened. She scooted off the bed, came over, and wrapped her arms around him, putting her head on his shoulder. "God, I'm a horrible sister, aren't I?" she said, completely sincere in that sudden way only she could be. "I'm sorry I'm such a bitch."

  Max's heart melted, as it always did when this side of Gaby— just as real as all the others, only making increasingly rarer appearances of late—surfaced. He smiled tiredly and pressed a kiss against her hair as he hugged her back. "Not horrible, no. But on the bitch thing? Totally," he said, in a teen-speak accent.

  She laughed even as she half-jokingly sucker punched him. "You so do not do that right. Please don't try to impress younger women with your mad slang skills. They won't be able to reject you because they'll be laughing too hard, But they will reject you."

  He rubbed his abs with one hand, but pulled her close with the other. "I think I'd figure it out, anyway. But thanks."

  He hugged her with one arm, which she returned, before looking up and catching his eye. It was moments like this, when her guard was down, and he saw all the love and fear and hope in her eyes—all thrust directly at him, trusting that he'd take care of it, take care of her, no matter what she did, what she said—that terrified him most. He hadn't been kidding a moment ago. Eight years into it, fully half of her life, and he felt more unqualified than ever to be responsible for her upbringing.

  Max had been twenty-two and fresh out of college when his father and Gaby's mother had been killed in a car accident while touring Italy. Overwhelmed by the suddenness of it, and all the attendant details that had been left to him to resolve as Trenton Fontaine's only son, when it had come to Gabrielle, he'd done the only thing he could do. Take care of her.

  Max's mother—Trenton Fontaine's first wife—hadn't been any help. Already on husband number four, she'd wanted nothing to do with the offspring of the woman her first husband had left her for. Through most of high school and all of college, Max had been largely estranged from his international financier father, and consequently knew next to nothing about his much younger half sister other than she was already something of a budding tennis prodigy even at such a young age.

  Their first meeting had been at the funeral and it hadn't gone especially well. A little darling she was not, but then, she'd just lost the only family she'd ever known, so he hadn't expected much to begin with. Then he'd learned that Gaby's mother had no family, and as the only legal adult and next of kin in his father's family, Max either accepted taking on guardianship of his little sister… or allowed her to be shipped off into the state system. Which meant there was no other choice.

/>   The only blessing—if there was one in all that mess—was that Trenton Fontaine had left the two of them quite well taken care of financially. So at least Max hadn't had to worry about that while figuring out what the hell to do about his talented, snotty, eight-year-old precocious sister's welfare. His father's lawyer had suggested he enroll her in a private girls' boarding school, so Max could get on with his life. They'd only have to see each other during holidays and summer breaks.

  Admittedly, it had been a tempting idea, for about two seconds. But it would have meant abandoning her all over again. Having been largely abandoned by his own father, and his mother, as well, seeing as she had always been more focused on finding her next husband than worrying too much about whatever Max was doing… he couldn't do that to Gabrielle.

  For all that his father and his young second wife had traveled extensively, from what he could tell, they had doted on their only child. Perhaps too much. Private lessons, private tutors, private coaches. She was both an athlete and debutante-in-the-making. Part of Max was a bit jealous, but there was little use in nursing old grudges, and besides, it was hardly Gaby's fault.

  Looking at her now, it was impossible to imagine what life would have been like without her. And he didn't want to. Come what may, they were family. It might not be the kind of family he'd yearned for growing up, but for better or worse, it was the one he'd been handed. And it was a damn sight better than having none at all. Which was probably why he was so protective of it, of her. He wanted to do right by her in the way he wished his parents had done right by him.

  He pushed her dark, fringy bangs off her forehead. She was still too wise for her years. Her body, her brains, and her talent had all matured at a far-too-rapid pace. But sometimes those dark eyes were still the same ones staring up at him out of that eight-year-old's tearstained face. Defiant and terrified all at the same time, as she demanded to know what in the hell he was going to do with her.