Hot for Sports: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Box Set: The Sports Romance Complete Series (Books 1-5)

by Erica Hobbs

  “So, I’m assuming you’re going to keep seeing him. You’ve already gone on two dates with him, and you’re still grinning like an idiot.”

  I blushed. It was true. I nodded.

  “He wants to see me tonight.”

  The waiter arrived to take our order. Tanya remembered the menu and picked it up, ordering the first thing she saw on the menu. I ordered a breakfast bowl with oatmeal and fresh seasonal fruit.

  “What do you think he’s going to do for you tonight? First a five-star restaurant, and then a masquerade ball. It’s hard to top that.”

  I nodded. It would be hard to pull more things out of his hat, but I didn’t doubt his ability to surprise me, not even for a moment. It wasn’t the acts of extravagance that impressed me, though. Sure, they were fun. It was great to get a glimpse into a lifestyle I’d only read about or seen on television. But it was Jake himself, the raw side he seemed to show me now and then, that really hooked me. It was the fact that he had it in him to be a human being under all that arrogance.

  Why did he hide it all from the rest of the world? I knew no one wanted their personal life on public display, but his arrogance fascinated me – the fact it no longer irritated me was already a sign I was getting in too deep – and I wanted to know more. It made me feel he was vulnerable, and the fact that he was showing that side to me made it all feel like it was worth it.

  It was the reason why my vulnerability was something I could trust him with. Because there was something there as well, but what?

  “Maybe he will take me to the moon,” I said.

  Tanya snorted. “You're disgustingly cheesy right now,” she said. “I hope you’re not going to be like this the whole time.”

  I laughed and shook my head.

  “What did he tell you about himself?” she asked. “I mean, other than what you can read up about him.”

  I shrugged. He hadn’t really told me that much. It was more about what he showed me, but I wasn’t going to explain that to Tanya. I wasn’t sure she would understand.

  “Does he have a family?” Tanya asked before I had time to give her a response.

  “Well, everyone does, don’t they?” I asked. “I’m sure he does.”

  Tanya reached for her phone. “We should find out.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to keep Googling him to find out more about him. That’s taking all the fun out of getting to know him.”

  “Well, you can take the time to get to know him and put in the hours. I want to know now, and if Google has all the answers, then why not?”

  The food arrived, and I started eating. Tanya’s food remained on her plate, forgotten.

  Tanya frowned and looked up at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  She hesitated for a minute. Her face was full of concern, though, and suddenly I was worried.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked at her screen, unsure. She turned the phone slowly to me, letting me take a look.

  ‘Powerhouse’s New Plaything is really Something’ it read. I turned to stone, and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. My ears started ringing. Tanya said something, but I couldn’t hear her. I took the phone from her.

  ‘We’re used to Powerhouse Jake playing out the field just as well as he plays on it, and his new fling has everyone whispering. Sources are unsure about who his new girl is, and everyone wonders if he’ll keep her around long enough to find out.’

  It was the photo of us in the maze, the one the photographer had gotten without our masks on. I should have known something like this would happen – in the back of my mind I’d expected something like that. But I hadn’t thought I would be depicted like this.

  My throat dried and when I swallowed, my tongue felt like sandpaper.

  “Oh, God,” I said. Tanya took the phone from my hand and put it down, not looking at the screen now. Her eyes were on my face. All her attention was on me.

  “You know how they twist things,” she said.

  “I don’t, actually,” I answered her. My voice sounded distant.

  “We don’t know how much of what was written before was wrong, how much of it was fabricated.”

  I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs so hard it felt like it was going to break free. What if all of those rumors were true and this was who Jake really was? What if I was just another game to him? What if his attentiveness and his kindness and how he treated me with care were all part of his way to reel me in before he got tired of me and dumped me?

  “What you’ve told me about him was nothing like what I just read,” Tanya said. “It can’t be true. He was so nice to you all the time, Ali.”

  I nodded, looking at my hands. My appetite was long gone, and I had stopped eating. Tanya hadn’t touched her food, and I doubted she would, now.

  “James was nice in the beginning. In fact, he was nice all the way through, until he was caught. Aren’t these the same kind of things I told you about Jake?”

  Tanya shook her head. “You can’t do this to yourself, Ali. You can’t keep comparing everyone to James.”

  “But what if he is like James?” I asked. I felt cold all over. It resembled the feeling of dread I’d felt when I’d just found out about James. The feeling was too real, too easy to remember just to push away. What if this was just another repeat?

  “Listen to me,” Tanya said. Her voice was stern. “You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. You don’t owe him anything. Two dates mean nothing. If it doesn’t work or you, it doesn’t work for you, and that’s it. If you don’t want to go tonight, then don’t.”

  “Don’t say that. I don’t know what to do now. How do I make this choice?”

  Tanya leaned on the table with her arms, pushing her plate back. She was silent for a while, long enough that I thought the question had stumped her as much as it stumped me.

  “I believe you need to go with what you feel,” she said. “You like him. And you said it feels good to be with him.”

  I nodded. It was easy to feel good around someone who made you feel like you were one of a kind. I knew this feeling. I knew these actions. These tricks.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Tanya shrugged. “End it.”

  “What? You’re contradicting yourself.”

  She shrugged again. “If you don’t like how this feels and you’re scared it’s going to be a repeat of the past, walk away.”

  My stomach turned. It was too much to take in. Tanya was being weird about this. Where was my friend who agreed with me that men were assholes? The one who made me feel better about my past because she didn’t pity me as much as she joked about it in a way that made me feel like I could deal with it? This was weird.

  “I can’t just do that,” I said. “What if he’s not?”

  Tanya smiled. “That’s what I mean. You haven’t lost hope. You still want to find out whether it’s true or not. You still have a feeling about it. So follow that. Give him a chance. Guard your heart, but don’t block it. Follow your gut and see where it leads you.”

  I realized what she was doing. She was setting me up against myself so that the truth would show. And she was right. Even if I thought Jake might be a scumbag, I didn’t want to just give up on him. I wanted to find out if he was what they said he was. A part of me hoped he would prove them wrong.

  And a part of me already believed they were wrong. I didn’t know why I was so sure with that tiny part of my being, but I was.

  “Okay,” I said and nodded. “You’re right.”

  Tanya grinned. “Can I have that on recording?”

  I stuck out my tongue at her.

  “How about I come home with you, and we decide together what you’re going to wear?”

  I leaned over the table and gave her a half-hug. This was why Tanya was my best friend.

  Chapter 21

  Alyssa

  He came to pick me up himself. He’d texted me he would. I’d noticed three missed calls f
rom him, but I’d been too afraid to call him back. The text had been enough.

  He didn’t walk to the door to fetch me. I was relieved he didn’t – he would have run into one of my parents, and I wasn’t ready for that. Instead, he texted me when he was outside, and I left the house, telling my parents I would be out until late.

  I walked to the car. I couldn’t see him through the tinted windows of the car and nervousness clawed at my throat. What if’s rolled around my mind. Since I’d seen the article in the morning, I’d moved from excited to see him to terrified that I was falling for the same thing all over again.

  Tanya had helped me choose my clothes – a simple black lace dress with thin spaghetti straps which flared out from the waist and laced up at the back. It was the kind of dress you could dress up with heels and a hairdo, or dress down with ballet flats and a sling bag. I had done a bit of both. I wore flats, but I’d put on light makeup and blown out my hair.

  When I approached the car, the door opened with Jake leaning over the seat, pushing it wider for me.

  “Wow,” he said when I got into the car. “You look beautiful.”

  He didn’t lean in to kiss me. I was relieved. I didn’t know how I would feel if he did. I had no idea how I felt now.

  “This car is amazing,” I said. I had no idea what kind of car it was, but it was probably expensive. Anyone could see that. The dashboard had dials on it like a spaceship, and the leather seats still smelled new. Jake’s hands were big and able on the steering wheel, and when he pulled off, I could feel the power under my seat.

  In a way, it felt the same way Jake did – like there was raw power, furious when unleashed – but his control was impeccable.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, thinking he had probably changed his mind. After all, why would he pick me up if he hadn’t?

  “My place.”

  I glanced at him. His eyes were on the road, his jaw set, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The easy-going open attitude he’d had last night was gone. He was tense, and the atmosphere in the car was strained.

  “I don’t usually do this,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Take people back to my place.

  I nodded. People. Women.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  He was quiet for so long I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me. When he answered me it didn’t sound like he’d heard me, either.

  “It’s not true, you know,” he said.

  I frowned. I wanted to ask, but he carried on.

  “They’re wrong.” When he glanced at me his face was an expressionless mask. I got a glimpse of who Jake the public figure could be.

  “You’re talking about the article,” I said, two and two snapping together. He nodded slowly, his eyes back on the road.

  “I thought you would have read it. I saw it this morning.”

  “So did I.”

  The silence that hung between us was loaded with questions I couldn’t put into words.

  “I have to be two different people to be able to survive in this life,” he said. “I have to be someone in the public eye and someone else at home. They’ll rip me apart if I’m not.”

  “So you being a player is your public image?” I realized the double meaning in what I said.

  Jake shook his head. “My ruthlessness is. The women… it was just because I hadn’t met the right one and there was no reason not to do what I’d done.”

  My head spun. What if I was the right one? Nonsense, I scolded myself. It was that kind of thinking that had ended up ripping me apart with James.

  “I’m sorry it happened. If I could go back to last night, I would have never taken my mask off or let you take off yours.”

  “It was my own choice.”

  Jake shook his head. “I know this life. I should have warned you.”

  When he looked at me again, that mask was gone, and he looked unsure, maybe even scared. “I don’t want to lose you before I even get to know you,” he said. The way he looked at me made me feel like he might crack if I told him I wasn’t interested anymore. There is a strange power in someone else’s vulnerability. You have the power to make them or break them.

  I didn’t want to break him. Not just because I didn’t want to be like that, but because I cared.

  “I know they’re all gossip,” I finally said, even though I didn’t know that for sure. “I get it. It’s not easy when everyone knows you.”

  Jake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It felt as if he was trying to control the tension.

  “Just give me a chance,” he said.

  I looked at him in silence until he stopped at a red light and looked at me for longer than just a glance.

  “I wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t what I was doing,” I said.

  He visibly relaxed. I saw the tension leave his shoulders, and his hands slide down on the steering wheel. He slid down a little more in his seat and just like that, the Jake I knew was back.

  We weaved through town, cutting through suburbs that slowly got more and more secluded and expensive, with big houses behind high walls with security guards and high rise buildings with large balconies hanging off the sides like nests.

  Jake turned into the undercover parking of one of the tall buildings and parked in a parking bay which had his name on it. He got out and ran around the car to get the door for me. I laughed and let him take my hand to help me out of the car.

  “This way,” he said, guiding me into the marble tiled lobby and toward the elevator.

  He pressed the button for the penthouse.

  When the doors opened, it was into a small little foyer. Jake opened double doors which led into a luxurious living room.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said.

  I walked into the room and looked around. Everything was white. The carpet was thick and plush underneath my feet. White couches were arranged in the middle of the room around a flat screen television suspended from the ceiling with silver cables. Throw pillows added splashes of color to the place, mirrored in abstract paintings against the walls.

  Windows overlooked the city, and in the dusk, it looked like a sea of twinkling lights.

  “This is beautiful,” I said. I walked around, taking in the feel of the room. A bookshelf in the corner had books in them – books that looked like they’d seen many hands – and photographs. A young girl, sometimes alone and sometimes with Jake. An older woman. And a black and white photo of a young couple with the man looking almost exactly like Jake. I knew very little about his family – I hadn’t paid a lot of attention when Tanya had read it out the first time.

  “Is this your sister?” I asked.

  Jake nodded. “Rebecca. And my Aunt, Maurine. Becky is seventeen. She’s growing up too fast.”

  “Don’t we all?” I asked and turned to him. Jake shrugged.

  “I’d like to meet them sometime.” I realized how it sounded – like I was suggesting to meet the family. It wasn’t what I should be doing if I wasn’t sure about Jake if I wasn’t sure I wanted to introduce him to my family.

  “Maybe you will,” he said. “Come with me.”

  He turned and walked away, and I followed him into a kitchen that would put the one at my parents’ home to shame. He had all the latest state of the art appliances. The room was kitted out with pristine white counters with black marble countertops, and everything else was stainless steel. A table with the same marble top stood in the middle of the room with stainless steel bar stools packed around it. Jake gestured to a seat.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, opening the fridge. “I have wine.”

  I nodded. The last time he’d given me wine it had been spectacular. He closed the fridge again and opened the door to a wine rack that could as well belong to a vineyard. He chose a bottle with care before removing the cork and pouring it into glasses. White wine but I wasn’t sure what kind.

  When I sipped it, the taste was light and airy in my mouth.
/>   “You’re going to get me used to this stuff, and the box wine will never be good enough again,” I said.

  Jake smiled and turned to the fridge again. One by one he pulled ingredients from the fridge and laid them out on the counter. I watched him, and after he’d taken it all out, I smiled.

  “You’re making lasagna.” I recognized the recipe. Jake nodded and opened cupboard doors, opening three different ones before finding what he was looking for. He did the same with the drawers. It was as if he wasn’t at home in his own kitchen.