Playing House: A Small Town Brother’s Best Friend Romance (The Playboys of Sin Valley Book 1)

by Cassie-Ann L. Miller

  He grabs a huge chunk of cheese sitting on the night stand next to his water and aggressively chomps right through it. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We can forget it ever happened.”

  Shit. Jace’s zero-fucks-to-give vibe may have fooled me. But not the mozzarella. Mozzarella is his go-to stress-eating food. Look what I’ve done to him.

  We’re quiet for a beat too long. Then, he mumbles. “Oh, by the way, your brother asked about you. He wants you to call him.”

  “Right. Yeah, I guess I should call Wyatt before I go to bed.”

  “Please do, or I’ll never hear the end of it.” He laughs but his joke falls flat. Every word feels stilted and awkward.

  We stare at each other and the mood shifts again.

  He shouldn’t be looking at me that way. And I shouldn’t be enjoying it. We shouldn’t have this much chemistry.

  “Night, Baby Girl.”

  I really have screwed things up between us. I sigh. “Good night, Jace.”

  “And Sera?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just to address your comment from earlier. Let me put your mind at ease. I’m not hanging out with any hot girls or ugly girls or average girls. You’re my wife. There are no other girls. There’s only you.”

  I wait for Jace to laugh again but this time, he doesn’t. His earnest expression capsizes the bucket of emotions in my gut. Leaving me speechless, he ends the call.

  I flop facedown onto the bed, screaming into the pillow.

  But that doesn’t help. Because the pillowcase smells just like Jace.

  Nine

  Jace

  The hotel towel is tied low on my hips and water is dripping from my hair into my eyes as I tap frantically at my phone. When I got out of the shower and saw the message Gabriel just left me, nothing was more important than making this phone call.

  “Come on. Come on. Where are you?” I tap my foot and my pulse runs like a track star as the phone rings.

  Relief snaps in my chest when the ceiling of my grandmother’s master bathroom appears on the screen and I hear a shaky, sugary, slightly breathless voice over the line. “Hello? Jason?”

  I drop down onto the edge of the bed. “Granny, what the hell? Why’d it take you so long to answer the phone?”

  Her face appears, hovering over the screen. And I can’t help but smile. The lines on her skin, the puff of white hair on her head, the mischievous twinkle in her eyes. To me, Granny is the personification of home.

  But right now, she’s a little ticked off. She gives a huff. “Young man, first of all, where are your manners?”

  I pull in a breath and try to calm myself down. “Sorry, ma’am,” I say sheepishly as I run a hand through my hair. “The phone rang a million times and I had this text on my phone from Gabriel saying you weren’t at aerobics class this morning and I just got worried, that’s all.”

  “I am an eighty-three-year-old woman with a bad hip. Don’t expect me to be dashing around the house, tripping all over these cats of mine to get to the phone, Jason.” She picks up the phone and shuffles around the bathroom.

  I hear purring and yowling in the background and I can just imagine Granny’s feline-demons tangling themselves up around her ankles. Those fuckers are always hungry and I swear I spend more money feeding them than I spend on my grandmother.

  “I know. It’s just, I worry about you living there by yourself.”

  “I’ve told you a million times, you don’t have to worry about me.” Granny closes her toilet seat with a loud clack. “Christina lives right next door and she checks on me every day. If I suddenly went missing, it would only take her a few hours to notice.”

  It’s true. Sera’s mom does check in on Granny. Sometimes twice a day. Once when she’s leaving to start her hospital shift in the morning. Then a second time, when she gets home, as long as it’s not too late. Plus, there’s Gabriel, who’s the eyes and ears of Sin Valley. The homeless guy somehow knows everything that goes on around town. He keeps an eye out for my grandmother around the community center.

  In fact, there are any number of people around town who look out for Granny while I’m on the road. That’s the beauty of living in a small town like Sin Valley. And a woman like my grandmother, with a heart as big as hers is, she has more friends than she can count.

  Still, I feel like that’s not enough. I want someone living with her, full-time. At least for companionship. But the stubborn old woman refuses to let me hire her a caretaker.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You skipped your aerobics class this morning. You never skip your aerobics class.” I know I’m being overbearing and annoying the hell out of her but when it comes to my grandmother, I don’t apologize.

  She means everything to me, okay?

  “I…uh, I slept in.”

  “You slept in?” I have never known the woman to sleep in. She gets in bed as soon as the sun goes down and she wakes up early as hell.

  Forget the early bird who catches the worm. Granny Bellino wakes up the early bird who catches the worm.

  “Would you stop questioning me, boy?” she frets. She grips the edge of the sink and lowers herself onto the toilet. “Let’s talk about football and the way you Paragons got beaten to a pulp in the first game of the season. What the hell was that about?”

  I pull my duffel bag onto the bed beside me and start digging through it for socks. “I…I…was tired.”

  “Tired during the first game of the season?” she asks, her question full of sass. “Why might that be?”

  Oh, jeez. Gotta say, I’m not loving this conversation very much now that it’s been turned on me.

  When I don’t answer, she huffs again. “Bet you were out partying with all those overeager girls who are always following the team bus around.” The woman’s exhale is heavy with disappointment. “I raised you better, Jason. You know what’s at stake.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Granny.”

  Back in the day, that used to be my M.O. Partying every day of the week with random football groupies.

  But this time was different. This time I was with Sera. And I can’t bring myself to regret it.

  I don’t tell Granny that, though. “I’ll play better tonight. Promise.”

  “You’d better,” she says threateningly as a yellowish tabby cat springs up onto her lap.

  She knows as well as I do, football is the only thing that’s always worked in my life. I wasn’t great in school. I always did a little too much socializing and not enough studying. A lot of guys wanted to play ball but I was one of the lucky ones who actually got the chance to make it big. Football was my ticket to a better life and Granny never lets me forget that.

  Thankfully, my grandmother changes the subject. “Have you been taking care of your fern? I’m sure you haven’t been. That’s probably why you performed so badly the other night. The fern brings good luck but you’ve got to take care of it.”

  “Not that fern superstition again…”

  “Y’know what? I’m gonna go over there this afternoon and make sure that it’s—”

  “Granny, you don’t have to go take care of my fern. Sera’s staying at my place.”

  She pauses. “Oh, Sera…That poor thing. Christina told me she was staying with you. So nice of you to take her in. She must be going through a rough time. You’re such a lovely boy helping her out like that, Jason.”

  Fuck. Granny probably wouldn’t think I was ‘such a lovely boy’ if she knew I nearly fucked Sera right through the hotel room carpet just a few nights ago.

  The old woman sighs. “Too bad about that ex-fiancé of hers, huh? He couldn’t see a good, marriage-minded women standing right in front of him. Shame.”

  “Yeah.” At the mere thought of Rocky, my jaw is clenching again. Fuck that guy.

  Granny stares at me thoughtfully as her white Persian cat hops into her lap and nuzzles his head into her chin. “You know, in situations like these, nothing helps a woman heal like…” she pauses heavily. “…bas
ket-weaving.”

  I furrow my brows. “Really?”

  She nods assuredly. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think Sera likes basket-weaving, Granny.”

  “Every woman loves basket-weaving,” she insists. “Especially when she’s questioning herself worth. A little basket-weaving goes a long way.”

  “Uh, okay. I guess I could get her some supplies.” I click away from the call and immediately pull up my web browser. “I’ll look to see if there’s a craft store in town that sells—”

  Granny laughs lightly. “Not basket-weaving in that sense. I mean…You know…” She rotates her wrist like she’s urging me to fill in the blanks.

  I blink cluelessly at her.

  She tries again. “Boil her cabbage…”

  “Do I…do I need a recipe for that?”

  “I mean…fadoodling.”

  “Fa-what…?”

  She’s getting impatient now. “Play tangletoes with the girl, Jason.”

  A picture is starting to take form. I’m slowly beginning to get her meaning.

  “Ravel up her little ball of yarn. Grind her corn. Butter her bread—”

  “Okay, I think I get it—“

  “Shake the sheets. Give her some horizontal refreshment.”

  “Granny, you can stop now—”

  “Take her on an intimate journey.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” She finally stops spitting out seventeenth century sexual euphemisms. “Thank you for the imagery.”

  “Of course, darling.” She smiles sweetly at my scowling expression. “The Bellino men are known for their talent in that department. And for having above average equipment. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, you should wear it as a badge of honor. Your grandfather left me over forty years ago and I still have a clear picture of his—”

  “Granny, please.” I can’t tell if she’s just doing this to make me uncomfortable or if she genuinely thinks I want advice on buttering Sera’s ball of yarn or however she put it. Gag.

  Granny’s great but sometimes, Granny has no filter. It’s a problem.

  She sighs. “I’m only saying this because I love you. And you know how close I am with Sera. She’s a wonderful girl and she didn’t deserve what that awful man did to her.”

  I couldn’t agree with her more. But can I really? Can I really give myself permission to go there with Sera?

  I think maybe I want to…

  But this girl has always been a part of my life. Always. We spent summers together, dashing through front lawn sprinklers and goofing around at our neighbourhood’s sketchy public pool. Snow fights in the winter and building igloos on the back lawn. Our families stood side by side in line at the local community center’s food bank. More than once.

  This isn’t just some chick. It’s Sera.

  We can dissolve this marriage quietly. Go back to the way things were. Or at least try to.

  Or we could make an attempt at making it work.

  But what if we fail? What if we didn’t make it to forever? What would that mean for our friendship? For our families? For our relationships with the people we care about? Would it be worth it to risk everything? Probably not.

  Hell, I’ve never seen anybody make it work. My parents each have a string of horrific relationship failures behind them. Do I really want to go down that path with one of my best friends in the world?

  Granny’s soft voice breaks through my thoughts. “Jason, what is it you’re not telling me?”

  I scrub a hand down my face and sigh. “I messed up, Granny.”

  She waits patiently as I close my eyes and purse my lips.

  “The night Sera was supposed to marry Rocky, she and I got really drunk. We weren’t thinking straight. And we…we accidentally got married.”

  The crinkles deepen across her forehead as she absorbs my announcement. “You ‘accidentally’ got married?”

  I nod, because what else is there to say? What excuse can I come up with?

  “‘Accidentally’ and ‘married’ don’t really go together. You could tell me you accidentally dropped a red sock into a load a whites, you accidentally put your recycling out on Monday instead of Tuesday, you accidentally dropped some magic gummies into a batch of brownies for the church bake sale. But you didn’t accidentally get married.”

  “We were drunk, Granny.”

  She strokes her cat’s head. “The alcohol facilitated what you wanted to do all along but didn’t have the guts to do sober. Don’t blame this on the alcohol.”

  Granny is close to Sera and her family. After Christina’s husband left, Sera’s mom often worked late. On those nights, Sera and her siblings would have dinner with us at Granny’s house. We’d all do our homework together at the kitchen table. Watch the Simpsons after doing the dishes. My family and Sera’s, we have history.

  “It was an accident and we’re gonna get an annulment—”

  “Don’t you dare!” My grandmother admonishes in horror as she snuggles the purring felines to her chest. “Jason, you can’t keep acting like a little boy, running away from commitment.”

  “You’re just conveniently forgetting that she was about to marry somebody else just a few days ago.”

  Granny shrugs. “And she married you instead. Roll with it. Is that how you young people say it? Roll with it?”

  “I’m gonna need to start monitoring what you watch on YouTube, woman.” We laugh together.

  “It’s about time you married a nice girl. I don’t know what you’ve been waiting for all this time.” Another cat jumps up to join the party in her lap.

  I smirk. “I’ve been waiting to find someone to take care of me as well as you take care of those cats. I don’t want to settle for less.”

  Granny is not amused by my lame joke. “You have trust issues, Jason.”

  I’m not even going there with her.

  I don’t have trust issues. I trust myself.

  I don’t have a fear of commitment. I’m committed to never making the mistakes my parents did.

  I don’t lack maturity. Because it takes a whole lot of maturity to parent yourself while your mother and father are too busy having their own emotional meltdowns to even stop and ask themselves whether their kids are having their needs met.

  Before I can put all that into words, I hear a gravelly voice call out from beyond Granny’s bathroom door.

  “Juliana, you’ve been in there a while. Is everything okay, darling?”

  I perk up in my seat and square my shoulders. “Who was that?”

  “Who was who?” She bats her eyes from behind her glasses.

  I’ve got enough adrenaline in me to jump right through the phone screen to protect my grandmother. “Who just talked to you? Is there someone at your house?”

  “Me? No. Here? There’s nobody here,” the woman says innocently.

  “Granny, I clearly heard somebody talking to you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  The same voice rings out again. “You want me to bring you a glass of prune juice in there, honey? It’ll help loosen things up.”

  “That. Who was that?”

  “That was my new cat. A stray. Took him in off the street last week.”

  “That was a cat? Speaking words? English words? And why are you having this conversation from your bathroom?”

  “You’re imagining things. You need more sleep, boy.” Granny pops up to her feet and her cats yowl, tumbling out of her lap. “Okay, gotta go.”

  “Granny!”

  “Get more sleep. And eat your vegetables,” she demands. The screen goes black.

  I want to call her back. Immediately. But I don’t get the chance. Because just outside my door, it sounds like a buffalo herd is coming down the hotel corridor.

  “Come on, pretty boys. Time to head out for practice. I need every one on the bus, on the bus, on the bus.” Coach’s heavy fist pounds my door three or four times before moving on to my other teammates’ rooms.

  Okay, get you
r head on straight, Bellino. Time to go play ball.

  Ten

  Jace

  Some rowdy hollering catches my attention, and I lean into the aisle to make sure the plane isn’t going down in a ball of flames. When I see that it’s nothing—just my teammates being their usual asshole selves—I slide my headphones back over my ears.

  Normally, we’d be flying home for a few days of practice before next weekend’s game. But this week, we have the big Thursday night game. Another away game. So instead, we’re going straight to Arizona. We’ll practice for a day and a half, kick some Arizona ass, and then fly back to Sin Valley.

  The guys are worked up as usual. They’re amped about turning our recent loss around. Nothing gets the blood pumping more than some overly-harsh criticism from the Sports Broadcast Network analysts.

  Some guys hate that shit, but me? The haters light a match under my ass. It’s always been that way. I embrace their negative comments and put in work on the field. Yeah, I’m the scrappy kid from the bad side of town and I’ve got a chip on my shoulder. I’ve never complained about having to prove myself.

  But life has been pretty unpredictable lately. There’s no telling what new drama might get thrown at me between now and Thursday evening. Still, I’m confident that whatever comes, I’ll be able to compartmentalize and get the job done this time. The Paragons are depending on me.

  My knee bounces, restlessness threatening to break me in half. I need off this airplane. I need to run off this nervous energy on the field. I need to hit something. Someone. Anyone. Preferably someone in a maroon Arizona jersey.

  For now, I’ve barricaded myself in the back corner of our team’s private jet. I’m trying to clear my mind with meditation.

  Too bad thoughts of my sexy new wife in all kinds of compromising positions keep popping up and messing with my Zen.

  Still can’t stop thinking about her. I haven’t been able to stop visualizing what Sera looked like in my bed when I video called her the other night, wearing my shirt, while I was on the other side of the country, ready to take my hard dick in my hand at the mere sight of her.