Hoops Holiday

by Ryan, Kennedy

  Hoops Holiday

  Kennedy Ryan

  Copyright © Kennedy Ryan, 2018

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Proofreading:

  Kara Hildebrand

  Cover Design:

  Letitia Hasser

  RBA Designs

  Cover Photo: Perrywinkle Photography

  Reach Kennedy

  kennedyryanwrites.com

  Contents

  The HOOPS Series

  FULL-COURT PRESS

  1. Decker

  2. Avery

  3. Avery

  4. Decker

  5. Avery

  6. Decker

  7. Avery

  8. Decker

  9. Avery

  10. Decker

  11. Avery

  12. Decker

  13. Avery

  14. Decker

  15. Decker

  Epilogue

  Introduction

  August

  Iris

  Introduction

  Banner

  Jared

  Also by Kennedy Ryan

  Connect With Kennedy!

  About the Author

  The HOOPS Series

  (3 Interconnected Standalone Stories)

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  BLOCK SHOT (A HOOPS Novel)

  Banner & Jared’s Story

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  *Audio coming Jan 31, 2019

  Coming March 2019

  HOOK SHOT (A HOOPS Novel)

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  FULL-COURT PRESS

  1

  Decker

  I’m dripping wet and almost naked the first time I meet Avery Hughes.

  It’s my second season in the NBA, and I’m used to conducting interviews at my locker wearing only a towel, with a ring of microphones, recorders, and demanding reporters crowded around me. But this reporter, this night, from the first look, blindsides me.

  We played a shit game.

  Correction. For forty-five minutes of regulation, we played a stellar game. That last three minutes—that was some shit, and as the idiot who turned the ball over repeatedly in the closing plays, most of that shit rests squarely on my shoulders.

  Post-game and post-shower, I lean against my locker, eyes stuck to the floor while I duck and dodge the flurry of questions flying around my head. I should have taken the fine for not making myself available to the press. That would have cost me less. This costs my pride and the dregs of my patience.

  “Can you walk us through that fourth quarter implosion, Deck?” a husky voice raises above the fray tightly encircling me. “Those last few minutes of the game were pretty brutal.”

  My brows snap together at the rudeness, the audacity of this reporter. Sure, I’ve fielded tougher questions, but after this kind of game, a win that slipped through our fingers, and me responsible, I’m too raw and not in the mood for it.

  “What kind of question . . .”

  The half-formed demand withers on my lips when I meet the eyes behind the recorder thrust at me. They are the softest thing about her face. Her chin draws to a point, and her cheekbones flare out like a cat’s, rounding into sharp feline femininity. She looks down her keen little nose at me with a touch of disdain and condescension. Her lips are set in a flat, determined line, but that doesn’t make them less lush, less kissable. But still . . . the eyes are the softest thing in that face, darkest sable, surrounded by a fan of long, minky lashes. Those eyes lock with mine while she waits. They never lower to scrape over the bare brawn of my shoulders and chest. Don’t dip to my waist or the barely knotted towel hanging onto my hip. And definitely don’t slide over my legs, still dripping from my shower. Nope, she looks me right in and only in my eyes while she waits.

  “Well, um . . .” I search for her name on the laminated media credential lanyard resting between a set of perky breasts. “Avery, we made some mistakes there at the end.”

  She tilts her head and lifts her brows to the angle of “obviously” before scooting her mic an inch closer. Her scent, something fresh and wild, like the dark, textured curls rioting around her face, is a high note piercing through all the testosterone rife in the locker room.

  “Great night overall. Bad few minutes,” I finally answer, crooking my mouth into a smile possible now that I’ve seen her. “Happens to the best of us on any given night.”

  I shrug, watching her eyes finally drop to the flexing movement, before snapping back to my face.

  Ahhh, made you look, pretty lady.

  The dark eyes narrow and those kissable lips part like she already has the next question cocked and loaded, but another reporter butts in with something else. I answer a few more questions, getting impatient to dress and talk to Avery without the watchful eye of every major network. When our media rep shuts down the post-game press, reporters start filing out of the locker room. I consider letting it go. Letting her go. I’ve seen prettier girls, right? I can fuck a different chick in a different city every night. Matter of fact, it’s practically my civic duty on behalf of all my brethren who will never have the NBA all-access ass pass. Real talk, I’m already over that. Gorgeous, grasping and vapid. That pretty much describes every woman hanging out in the tunnel after a game. This girl—one look and one question tells me I can’t have my way with her. I never could resist a challenge, and when Avery turns to leave, giving me an uninterrupted view of a firm, round ass outlined in her tailored slacks, I know I won’t resist her either.

  “Avery,” I call, holding onto my slipping towel with one hand and gently grabbing her elbow with the other. “Hold up a sec.”

  She looks pointedly at my hand, so large against her slim arm, like it offends her, before looking back to my face. Some half naked, wet jock a foot taller and grabbing her probably isn’t making the best first impression.

  “Sorry about that.” I drop her arm and flick my head toward my locker. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  Reluctant curiosity settles on her face, and she takes the few steps back to my corner in the chaos of the locker room.

  “I wanted to ask you—” I cut off my words when she thrusts her recorder in the space just above my mouth and below my nose. I push it away with a finger. “Uh . . . off the record.”

  She lowers the recorder to her side, suppressing what I strongly suspect is a smirk.

  “You want to tell me the real reason behind your collapse tonight?” The dark brows take flight over curious eyes and she leans one silk-clad shoulder into the locker door.

  “No, I mean . . . I could, yeah. Maybe over a drink or dinner. Our flight doesn’t leave until the morning.”

  Horrified realization unfurls on her face.

  “Are you asking me out?” Her incredulous words ring through the room
, and I look around a little self-consciously. It just isn’t done, approaching a reporter like this. In my defense, most reporters don’t have an ass like Avery’s.

  “Yeah, for a drink or something,” I whisper, modeling the appropriate and discrete tone for this kind of conversation, hoping she’ll catch on. She seems like a bright girl, after all.

  “Or something?” A full-blown frown materializes on her face. “I don’t do ‘or something’ with basketball players. I don’t do anything with athletes on my beat.”

  “I’m on your beat?” I lean into the locker door, too, crossing my arms over my chest. “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “Well you’ll be seeing me from now on because I was just assigned.” Her gaze drops to my chest and I make my pectoral muscles jump. She rolls her eyes. “And I won’t compromise my professional objectivity with the ‘or something’ you probably have in mind.”

  “One drink,” I urge, shifting against the door.

  “My answer is still—” Her gasp chokes out the rest of her sentence when the precariously knotted towel slides right down my hip and plops at my feet. The sight of my dick, slightly erect and on the loose for all the world to see, leaches the air from the room for just a moment, the total quiet before a storm of laughter and good-natured cat calls.

  “Oh, shit.” Ignoring my teammates’ snickers, I scramble to grab the towel from the floor, jerking it back around my waist to cover up my junk. I’ve been sharing showers and locker rooms since my dick was half this size, so I’m unfazed. Avery, though, looks like she swallowed her little recorder and it’s about to come back up with her dinner. Over the wolf whistles, a leftover reporter adds his misplaced mockery to the mix.

  “Getting an exclusive, are you, Hughes, your first night on the job?” he asks with a leer. “An exposé? Deck would give me the scoop, too, if I had an ass like yours.”

  What the hell? I’d heard comments like that all my life. Hell, maybe I’ve even thought them myself. This sport, this industry, is male-dominated, and we’re basically overpaid, overgrown adolescents, most of us, until we’ve been around for a while. Some of us longer than others. Hearing that shit with her standing right here, though, seeing the hurt and irritation spark in her eyes before she quells it, makes me want to knock the bitch-ass reporter’s glasses off his face. Laughter from a few others at his rude comment overtakes any hope I have of convincing her. I glare at the idiot already on his way out the door.

  “Thanks a lot, asshole,” she mutters, jerkily adjusting the bag on her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I agree, shaking my head. “He’s a piece of work.”

  “I meant you,” she says, exasperation evident in her tone. “You’re the asshole.”

  “Me?” I thrust my thumb into my naked chest. “What’d I do?”

  “Could you just . . .” she sputters, and gestures in the general area of my groin. “Hold onto your little towel? Those are my colleagues. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a woman in this field? To earn their respect as an equal?”

  My mouth opens to commiserate, but I never get the chance.

  “The answer is no,” she barrels over my would-be response. “You have no idea because you’ve been catered to and coddled since you made your first triple-double in high school. Those other reporters don’t have to worry about being pinched or grabbed on the sly. It doesn’t bother them conducting interviews with half-naked men, which I don’t mind either until one of them pulls me into a corner and asks for a drink ‘or something.’”

  I let those words sink into the quiet that collects around us after her diatribe. By any reasonable measure, this would be considered a rough start, but I’ve never met a woman who could resist my charm, my smile, my good humor. My tanned half-naked body. If I’m a betting man, I don’t think Avery can either.

  “Soooooo . . . you’ve been following me since high school?” I break out my fail-proof grin. “That’s really flattering. I didn’t realize you were a fan.”

  “I’m not a fan,” she snaps. “And if I were I’d be pretty disappointed with your sorry performance on the floor tonight.”

  “Hey now.” My grin slips. “You don’t have to get personal. That’s my career we’re talking about.”

  She turns to leave, tossing the last words over her shoulder. “And this is mine.”

  I stand there like an idiot, thinking of all the ways I could arrange to meet her. I’m sure I’ll see her on the regular from now on if she’s assigned to this beat. I dry the last of the water from my aching body and pull on my T-shirt and sweats before I head to the hotel alone. I’m not worried that it didn’t happen for Avery and me tonight.

  Maybe I’m being cocky, but I’m sure it won’t take long.

  It never does.

  2

  Avery

  Ten Years Later

  “I’m convinced the fundamental problem of society is technology evolves much faster than the male brain.”

  I aim the words at my producer and best friend Sadie, meeting her eyes over my iPad.

  “How else do you explain dick pic scandals?” I ask. “Something as simple as not sending pictures of your dick because it could cost you an election, a career, a marriage—men just cannot grasp. It’s like this ancient urge to prove who has the bigger dick. Only instead of pissing on things, they send images of their penises into the ether.”

  I point to yet another post about my co-host’s JunkGate. “I thought Gary was smarter than this.”

  Sadie walks to the desk and peers over my shoulder at the screen.

  “I thought Gary was bigger than this,” she says.

  Our inelegant snorts meet in the quiet of my office.

  “I had my suspicions.” I set the iPad down and whirl my seat around a few times. “He’s got that look small-dick men always have.”

  “What look do men with small dicks have?”

  “Girl, if you’ve never seen it,” I say, stopping my spinning chair long enough to offer a wry grin. “Count yourself lucky.”

  “As much as I’m enjoying all this girl talk at Gary’s expense,” Sadie says, dark eyes sobering in her pretty face. “We need to discuss what this means for Twofer.”

  “They’re not firing him from the show, are they?” I stop grinning and grip the edge of my desk. “I mean, yeah. It’s bad and indiscrete and embarrassing, but surely not a fire-able offense.”

  “No, not firing, but it does violate the conduct clause in his contract, and it’s not his first time.” Sadie leans back in the seat across from me, linking her hands over her stomach. “And it’s definitely a distraction the show doesn’t need, so they’re suspending him for three weeks.”

  “I figured as much. I hope, for his sake, it was worth it.” A rueful grin pulls one corner of my mouth back into humor briefly before uncertainty drags it back down. “So how will we handle his absence? Rotating guest hosts? Me solo?”

  “Not solo. Twofer’s popularity is built on the back and forth of opposing perspectives. We need a guest host, just while Gary’s gone.” Sadie shakes her head and leans forward to grab and munch some of the salted seaweed I was snacking on before she arrived. “This stuff tastes like literal shit. You’re aware?”

  “Focus. You can’t just say I’m getting some guest host and not tell me who, like right away. Who is it?”

  “Someone the audience will love tuning in to see.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone credible.”

  “Who, Sadie?”

  “Someone handsome.”

  “What’s handsome got to do with journalism?”

  Sadie slants me a knowing look. It’s not just journalism. It’s television, and looks mean a lot too often even in sports. I have enough firsthand experience with producers’ requests and standards to understand the look she’s giving me. When we first started the show two years ago, SportsCo executives asked me to “consider” pressing my hair for a more “polished” look and said they “loved my weight” just where it
was. I doubt very seriously they had those conversations with my male co-host.

  “Okay. You’re right. Looks count,” I concede. “So he’s handsome. Who?”

  “Retired. He’s a future Hall of Famer,” Sadie mumbles around a mouthful of the seaweed she insists is vile.

  “Which sport?” I ask cautiously. Some retired athlete coming on my show who doesn’t know jack shit about not just playing sports, but analyzing them, debating them, covering them is not what I need on set.

  “We’re playing ba-sket-baaaaaall,” Sadie sings the famous Kurtis Blow refrain

  and seesaws her shoulders.

  Hmmm. Credible. Handsome. Basketball. Retired. Future Hall of Famer.

  “No!” The word cannons from my mouth with fire power. “Not—”

  “Mack Decker,” Sadie finishes, her smile satisfied. “We got Mack Decker.”

  “Then un-get Mack Decker.” I stand and pace, my go-to when something bothers me intensely, as the worn path in front of my desk attests. “He’s arrogant, conceited, self-important—”

  “Is this about that towel incident?” Sadie’s evil grin hopes it is.

  “That was ten years ago. Of course not.”

  Sadie’s steady stare bores holes into my face.