Did this woman just invade my body and read every single thought and insecurity I have?
“Wow …” I breathe. “I think I might be in love with you.”
Leah squeezes my arm, which is lying in the middle of our shared table. “You remind me of me when I first started dating Killian. And us WAGs, we’ve got to stick together. Especially the good ones like you, I want to see you soar. And girl, with a voice like that, you’re going to knock ’em dead.”
I’d come to Jude’s game expecting a couple of hours of footie, and instead, I was given the greatest advice of my lifetime. My stroke of luck is infinite, these days.
40
Jude
“To our boy, Jude! You always take a sad song and make it better!”
Kingston lifts his glass, giving a toast in my honor as everyone else clinks their drinks and then almost downs them.
“If I didn’t love you like a brother, I’d wallop you for being so cheesy.” I roll my eyes at him.
He loves to throw that Beatles song in my face every time I score a goal … which I did tonight. And all with my best friend riding the bench and then being substituted in mid-match. That’s right, Kingston is in London to stay, and signed his contract last night.
“But, I should add a toast for my main bloke, to his continued success.” I hold up my glass, and the group of us toast Kingston.
In normal Kingston Phillips fashion, he climbs on top of the table, lifts his button-up shirt, and shows us all his abs. The group is comprised of a couple of our teammates, their wives or girlfriends, and then Kingston, Vance, Aria, and me. We decided on a late night dinner after the match at an old-school steak and seafood restaurant, and the smell of our appetizers alone reminds me I’ve been running about for ninety or so minutes.
“Get an eight-pack or stop boasting!” someone yells from across the restaurant.
Our heads turn, and Kingston’s face sours as he sees the person heckling him from below. Poppy Raymond sits three tables over with a group of girls, and she’s giving my friend the most bored expression I’ve ever seen.
“I do have an eight-pack, maybe you need your eyes checked. Better yet, come sit by me and I can check you out,” Kingston lobs back.
“God, you’re daft. It’s a pity girls fall for those lines.” Poppy rolls her eyes.
“And it’s a shame that such a pretty package has such a bad attitude,” he clips as he climbs down off the table.
“Oh, love, you wouldn’t be complaining if you knew just how good it is under all this pretty packaging.” Poppy smirks at him with a smile that could send any man to his knees.
“Can we please stop yelling across the restaurant?” Vance elbows Kingston in the gut.
Kingston lets out on oomph but stops shouting at Poppy. She turns back to her table guests, and he shoots daggers at her head for the rest of our meal.
“I got to sit with Leah Ramsey at the match,” Aria tells me as her filet and my T-bone are set down in front of us.
Killian approached me on the sidelines during warm-ups, and I was glad to see him again. “That’s nice, how was she? I’ve never formally met her, but isn’t she like … the American every British woman wishes to be?”
“Something like that. She’s lovely, actually, and gave me some great advice.”
“And what was that?” I say with my mouth full because I’m too hungry to care.
“That’s for me to know, and you to reap the benefit of.” Aria grins.
“Is it a sex thing? Because I’d be very grateful to her if it was a sex thing.” I lower my voice so only my girl can hear me.
Aria rolls her big, beautiful eyes. “Is everything always about sex to you?”
“After I’ve run around a pitch for two hours, scored the victory goal, ate a nice, healthy portion of steak and now my girlfriend is sitting next to me in this dress that’s riding up her thighs … yes, it’s all about sex.”
I watch as her eyes melt into lustful pools of lava and use the opportunity to run a finger up her bare leg.
“You’re rotten,” she accuses me, but there is no malice in her tone.
If anything, she sounds two seconds away from begging me to take her home. It’s a miracle I ever kept my hands off this woman for as long as I did in the beginning … Aria is that irresistible to me.
“Good thing you’re the one I get to spoil, then,” I tease, pressing my lips to her neck.
Aria murmurs her agreement. “Good thing.”
41
Aria
“You sure you’ll be okay for three days?” Doubt grips my stomach like a vice.
Dad waves at me and makes an annoyed cluck with his tongue. “Get out of here before I have to kick you out. I’ll be fine. Mrs. Nethers from next door will check in on me every few hours, like a bloody babysitter. And I have all of my medications lined up.”
“And meals prepped in containers in the refrigerator. Your transport for the doctor’s visit is set up and will be here tomorrow at noon sharp. Don’t stay up too late, and if you need anything, I’ll have my cell phone on me.”
He’s on the last round of radiation after he completed chemo last week, but after the health scare he had, and the hospital, I am extremely hesitant to leave him.
“Would you scram already? You sound like the adult here, and that’s not how it should be. You deserve a few nights off, love. Go have a brilliant time in Italy. I traveled to Positano once, the most beautiful place in the world …”
Dad trails off, and I know he’s leaving out the detail that he and my mother had gone there together. He talks about her so rarely, it’s as if she’d never been in either of our lives at all. I was too young to fully grasp why she left, but if I had to guess from the heartbreakingly sympathetic looks Dad gave me whenever I’d asked as a child, I’d assume it was because she never really wanted to have children. My parents traveled the world before they had me in their late thirties, I remember looking at books filled with old pictures of their explorations.
Shaking my head, I resolve myself to stop letting the sadness of the past creep in and just create my own memories.
Jude and I only have a few days off before his international break is over, and my time in the studio starts. In a week, I’ll go into twenty-hour sessions in the booth, working with producers and songwriters and music execs to pump out my album. Ian said they were hoping we could cut all the rough takes of the eight tracks in a month which means a lot of late nights and hard work. I’m not afraid of it, I’ve done backbreaking labor since I was in secondary school.
This is my passion, I’m not afraid of cutting my teeth to succeed at it.
Although, when I finally do emerge from the studio, it will be to help Dad through the recovery from his tumor removal. Dr. Bradley, his oncologist, is confident that in a couple of months, the tumor will be shrunken enough to operate, and Dad will be strong enough after laying off treatment for a while.
I am both terrified and elated for that time to come. On one hand, my father will finally be in remission after the surgery. He can have his life back, we can move, I can give him a new life where he can roam free of the house. But on the other, the operation isn’t a guarantee, nor is the fact that the cancer will be completely gone. I try not to think about it too much, as I can’t predict the future, or control it.
“I’ll miss you. Send you postcards, okay?” I promise him as he wraps me in a hug.
“Postcards? I expect a lot more than that. I want good wine and pizza and beautiful leather goods,” Dad jokes.
“I’ll work on it,” I tease back, but in all reality, I’ll load bags full of those things if it will make him smile.
“Tell Jude to take care of my girl, okay?” he says into my hair, and I know it’s a lot for him to trust another man with his daughter.
Speak of the devil, my gorgeous boyfriend slips through the front door, a witness to our goodbye.
“Ah, Jude, I was just talking about you. I told Aria you better
take care of her, but now I can tell you face-to-face. I’m trusting you, and this is her first adult travel experience. No shenanigans, yeah?”
Jude nods solemnly. “None, sir. I’ll have her home by curfew every night.”
The scoundrel, he will not and we both know it. If anything, Jude is going to be the bad influence that makes me jump into the Italian ocean naked or some other ridiculous thing. I raise my eyebrow at him over my father’s shoulder, and I know he’s trying desperately not to crack a smirk.
“We should go, the plane isn’t going to stay on the tarmac forever,” Jude tells me.
A private plane … who the bloody hell am I? I feel like my life has turned into one big romantic comedy, but since Jude is taking me to the Amalfi Coast, I’m not going to argue it. He convinced me, with his head between my thighs last night, that I deserve all the good that is finally coming my way.
Once we’re in the car, with the driver directing us toward the airport, I finally let myself relax.
“What’re you thinking about?” I ask Jude, settling in his long, lean arms.
How this man makes my heart and stomach both flip over simultaneously every time he touches me … I’ll never know.
“I keep thinking about how it’ll be very difficult to stop myself from doing illegal things to you when I catch sight of your body in a bikini when we make it to the beach,” he says very seriously.
That makes me bark out a crude laugh. “You’re so bad.”
“That’s why you like me.” Jude nuzzles my ear, tickling it a bit.
I shake my head, turning to look up at him. “No. That’s why I love you.”
Epilogue
Aria
One Year Later
Glittering chandeliers cast light into every corner of the room, a golden hue coating everyone and everything I can see.
The party for my album release is more decadent than I thought it would be, and although it’s been a bit since I stepped into this world, I’m still not fully comfortable in it.
I pull at the velvet fabric of my emerald dress, the one whose price tag I almost puked over when I saw it. This dress cost more than almost every item in my life put together. It’s a rental for the night, something the stylist Barry hired told me, and so I keep fretting over getting any speck of food or drink on it.
“Relax, this is your night, and you look beautiful.” Dad walks up, carrying a champagne flute in one hand and a mound of passed hors d’oeuvre in the other.
It’s wonderful to see so much color back in his face. “Take it easy on the snacks, yeah? You still have a doctor’s appointment next week.”
“A little cheese and bacon isn’t going to bring my cancer back, love.” He kisses me on the cheek and walks off.
Even though he’s in remission, I still worry constantly over him. It helps that we still live together, so I can check on him when I’m not traveling, working late nights, or staying with Jude in London.
I haven’t allowed Jude to buy my father and I a flat in London, or more ridiculous, move us all into one of those beautiful white terrace houses in a posh neighborhood. However, I did enlisted his real estate prowess to help me purchase a moderately priced flat in Harlow with the advance I’ve been paid in anticipation of my album. An advance that, without Barry’s help, wouldn’t exist.
Jude and his management have helped me so much thus far, but I still have my independent spirit about me. I’m not going to let my rich and famous boyfriend pay my way, nor am I going to take advice from so-called professionals blindly. I examine every deal presented to me, I consult Dad on everything, and make a decision with my gut … not market research or the pounds offered.
Which is how I produced an eight-track album, with my own original lyrics on every song, that I am fully proud of. I’d been stubborn in its creation, taking advice on the nose and doing the opposite. Ian was extremely frustrated at times, but I knew, at the end of it all, that I’d made an album that I was both excited by and could sell for the label. The fact that in two weeks, it would be played for the masses … blimey, I still can’t wrap my head around it.
The third song on Hope, the name of my album, pumps through the speakers that have been set up around the sparkling room. Industry professionals nod their head to the love ballad, while my friends and family keep throwing me thumbs-up every five seconds. It’s a sip and listen kind of soiree, at least that’s what Ian called it. And so far, he seems pleased with how the small crowd is receiving it.
Me? I am giddy as a schoolgirl that anyone is hearing my music. It’s something I never in a million years thought would happen, and that’s why I wanted to call the album Hope. This is the feeling I never dared to feel, and now I am putting it out into the world so others can have some if they need it.
Suddenly, an angry-faced hunk is heading straight across the room for me.
“You invited Poppy?” Kingston practically screams at me.
I shrug, a devious grin washing over my face. “We had a nice chat last time I saw her. I like her. Deal with it.”
He points a finger at my face. “You’re an inciting meddler.”
I cackle. “That may be, but I’m dying to see the outcome of my troublemaking.”
We all know that Kingston and Poppy will either kill each other, or fall madly in love … which, of course, is why I invited her. I am part of a happy couple now, all I want is for others to feel the kind of affection I do. And if anyone can use some genuine care, it’s Kingston Phillips. He might appear to have a fantastic ego and brutish snobbery, but underneath all of that is a man who is very much wounded from the mistreatment of his parents.
Now that Kingston and Jude have been promoted to the first team and are scoring goals like their jobs depend on it. Which, now that I say it, is kind of accurate … they do have to perform to keep their positions. But it means that Vance is the only musketeer left at the academy. I can tell, each time he comes to London to stay with Jude, or we see him in Clavering, that he is retreating further into himself. I hope, for his sake, that something gives soon.
“Hey, so, I heard you’re like, the second coming of Adele,” a husky voice whispers in my ear.
I turn as Jude’s arms wrap around my waist, the cocky grin of his beaming down upon me. “Hmm, I don’t know about that. But I did hear that Jude Davies is at this party, think you could introduce me?”
“I thought you two were already nicely acquainted.” Jude’s naughty grin disappears as he kisses it into my own smiling lips.
Those sturdy, skilled hands sneak into the low dip of my dress, his fingertips skimming the flesh just above my tailbone. I get lost in the dance our mouths are doing until someone crudely interrupts us.
“Save it for the hotel suite after, lovebirds. I need you on stage.” Barry practically pulls Jude away from me and waves a hand for me to follow him.
At the last minute, I lace my fingers through my boyfriend’s. “I want you up there with me.”
“It’s your time to shine, love.” Jude tries to extract his hand from mine.
“And without you, I wouldn’t have any of it. So come on, before I make you.”
His eyebrows raise. “I’d like to see how you can make me. Does it involve your mouth or your hands?”
Even now, a year and more after we first decided to be together, he can make me blush like mad. There are days we make each other mental, and days where I’m so caught up in him that I can’t see anything else. The man that I love is arrogant and randy, but he’s also loyal and kind and supports me more than anyone who has ever wandered through my life. There are no more doubts about what we are to each other, and I never have to second guess his feelings for me. I tame him just enough, and he lets me be wild.
He loves me, and I love him.
And together, we’ve taught the other what our life was missing.
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About the Author
Author of romance novels such as Red Card and Privileged, Carrie Aarons writes books that are just as swoon-worthy as they are sarcastic. A former journalist, she prefers the stories she dreams up, and the yoga pants dress code, much better.
When she isn’t writing, Carrie is busy binging reality TV, having a love/hate relationship with cardio, and trying not to burn dinner. She lives in the suburbs of New Jersey with her husband, daughter and dog.
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The Second Coming: Rogue Academy, Book One Page 18
