by Ellie Hall
She didn’t need to think. There was no question as she pulled him to his feet, wrapping him in a hug. “Yes, yes, I will.”
As the lanterns surrounded them, enveloping the couple in warm, glowing light, Connor tilted his head back and howled then kissed Katerina, sealing the moment.
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Grab Finally Together with the Football Billionaire here to get Pippa and Chase’s second chance story full of heart fluffies. Read on for an excerpt:
Chapter 1
Pippa
When Pippa was growing up, her favorite thing to do was play dress-up. She and her sister, Hattie, would sneak into their mother’s closet and try on her gowns and high heels.
Teetering around, they’d call each other darling and Pippa would try to get her brother to pretend to be Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty so they could dance, but he’d refuse. Inevitably, they’d argue because he thought it was dumb for his sister, Phillipa (Pippa for short), to marry a guy named Phillip.
In the years since, Pippa still loved to dress up—though she didn’t call anyone darling and she hadn’t found her prince. Actually, she had, but he didn’t want to make her his princess even though his name wasn’t Phillip—eliminating the similar names issues, which apparently was problematic according to her brother.
The one difference between make-believe and reality was that Pippa wasn’t always the picture of grace and poise. Though she tried. So hard.
She carefully climbed the rain-slick steps of the opulent home of Lord Carlisle and Carling Smythe, her parents’ friends.
That day alone, she’d already gotten nail polish in her hair, painting a nice little streak of pink in her medium brown locks. She was going to cut it, but it was in the front and would look like a chunk was missing—like the time her sister decided to give her a haircut when she was four.
She also stepped on the hem of her long, pale yellow gown as she got out of the car earlier.
Oh, and she made herself look like an overly friendly fool when she waved at a complete stranger who she thought was an old friend from high school. The lady squished up her nose and fled to the safety of the party. Pippa’s wave had a bit of enthusiasm behind it, to say the least.
“Do not fall. Do not fall,” she muttered to herself as she neared the top step.
The driver who held an umbrella over her head gave her a side-eye and then gripped her elbow with his free hand.
“Sir, unless you want to risk going down with me, I recommend you let me go. I’ve been known to take down larger men than yourself.”
It wasn’t that she was especially clumsy or accident-prone. She was just unfortunate. She’d been pooped on by birds seven times and counting. Her dog really had eaten her homework. She’d lost passports, keys, sunglasses, and even an elephant once. If lightning was going to strike, she’d be the target—though that hadn’t happened yet. Thank goodness.
As the doorman greeted her and she stepped over the threshold, she drew a deep breath. “My luck is bound to change,” she whispered. It had been her mantra for months after she listened to a podcast about positive affirmations.
Expensive perfume scented the air along with wealth—custom made suits, handmade leather shoes, gems and diamonds dripping from gold and platinum settings.
Live, classical music played pleasantly in the background. The swish of gowns and polite laughter pulled Pippa into the gathering as she smiled at several people while looking for her parents. They’d insisted she attend the soiree and dinner.
After moving from England to Concordia, she had a good excuse to miss many of her parents’ functions where her mother tried to play matchmaker. But since that particular event was in Intherness, the capital of Concordia where Pippa lived and worked, she couldn’t respectfully decline.
A server offered her a sprig of something green wrapped in something white with a single piece of shredded carrot on top—at least she thought that’s what it was. “Do you have anything more filling?” she asked politely.
The server moved on to the next guest.
When Pippa and her sister Hattie had been eleven and thirteen, respectively, their parents hosted a similar function with all the finery and fuss of the London elite. While she loved how fancy it was, she didn’t understand why the food was always so plain—turned out no one wanted bad breath, food stuck in their teeth, or to pop the hems of their fitted gowns. So they hardly ate. But before she learned those lessons, she and her sister concocted a plan to swap out all the catered foods for items people would actually enjoy: pizza bites, pigs in a blanket, and crisps—the kitchen staff didn’t keep much in the way of kid-friendly food on hand so they had limited options to work with. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well.
“What I’d give for a mozzarella stick,” she said to another server who offered what could only be described as looking like a small, shriveled golf ball on the end of a toothpick.
Mozzarella sticks were a rarity during her childhood, but a favorite. Pizza and pasta too. It was no surprise that she’d crave comfort when feeling out of her element. Her parents insisted the soiree was good a networking opportunity—also known as a chance to meet her future husband.
“You were always a sucker for sauce,” said a voice that sounded as pleasant as a dentist’s drill.
Pippa startled and knocked into a man carrying a tray of tall glasses filled with bubbly liquid. “Sorry. My apologies.” She extended her hand to steady the tray, but she stepped on her dress again and pitched forward into the man. Luckily, the wall behind him kept him from falling backward, but it didn’t prevent the liquid from spilling all over Pippa. It missed the top of her sequined yellow gown, but made a splash below the waist, making it look like she’d wet herself.
Her high school mortal enemy laughed low and mean.
“Hello, Mallory,” Pippa said evenly. “What brings you to the Smythe’s this fine evening?”
Pippa was an etiquette teacher and practiced what she preached even though the woman she went to high school with—who’d been there for the beginning of her string of bad luck—had to remind her of the sauce incident.
It was almost the same as the one she was dealing with at present, all over the front of her gown. However, the sauce incident differed in that she’d somehow sat in a puddle of tomato sauce in the dining hall. The school uniform involved a khaki skirt, which made it look like Pippa was woefully unprepared for her monthly cycle.
Pippa was pink-faced from knocking into the server and wetting her gown. Meanwhile, Mallory’s skin had an orange-ish hue like she’d had a close encounter with sunless tanner or had been eating a lot of carrots.
“Darling, is that you?” Pippa’s mother’s voice tinkled, coming to her rescue.
They kissed on both cheeks in the European style.
Camilla Thompson held her daughter’s hand and then stepped back to get a good look at her—probably since they hadn’t seen each other in a few months due to Pippa’s job in Concordia. “You look lovely, darling, but what happened to your dress?” She took off the silk scarf that was draped over her shoulders and strategically arranged it around her daughter’s waist to disguise the wet patch. “You were always such a tidy child. How do you manage to get into fixes like this?”
The fact that she hadn’t always had bad luck gave her hope. But Mallory lingering by her side made her think her luck wouldn’t turn around anytime soon.
“Melissa? Madelyn?” her mother said, feigning forgetfulness.
The mean girl from high school simpered. “Mallory Dunlop. It’s such a surprise to see your daughter here.”
“And why is that?” Camilla asked, as lovely as can be. Camilla had once been a student at Blancbourg Academy where Pippa taught and skilled at pleasantries even if underneath she recognized mean and fake when she saw it.
“You’d think after all these years she’d learn to stay home where she’s safe from herself.” Mallory laughed genially.<
br />
“Yes, well, she has learned to look before she sits.” Camilla smiled thinly.
Mallory sniffed and then lifted her hand and waved at someone as her cue to exit before whisking away.
Camilla smoothed her daughter’s hair and lifted her chin. “I agree with Hattie. That girl is no good. I thought so when you were in school and I know so now.”
Pippa’s older sister was convinced Mallory had purposely put the sauce on the dark wooden chair in the dimly lit dining hall where Pippa was going to sit—it had been a cloudy day and for some reason, the school didn’t turn on the overhead lights. Pippa didn’t want to believe it, but over the years, it was uncanny how often Mallory was at the scene of the calamity—as she’d called them.
Pippa wanted to see the best in people and always gave second chances. Anyway, why would Mallory have it in for Pippa?
“Come now, I’m going to introduce you to someone worth knowing.” Camilla looped her arm through her daughter’s and strode across the room.
Pippa braced herself. According to her mother, someone worth knowing was often male, wealthy, and had the personality of a wet noodle. Even though Camilla had her daughter’s back when it came to unfortunate spills and undesirable people from high school, she was determined to get her married.
A tall, elegant woman with fair skin and dark hair, smiled as they approached.
“This is my daughter who I was telling you about earlier. Meet Christina Smyth, she’s Carlisle and Carling’s daughter.” She angled her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “She had a run-in with a tray full of drinks.” Camilla discretely pointed at her daughter’s skirt.
Pippa’s cheeks warmed. While her older sister Hattie was also tall, had creamy skin, and silky dark hair like Christina Smythe, Pippa was average in every way. She was medium height, build, and had medium brown hair. She always felt like she was in the middle. Not the pretty one, but not ugly either. Nothing striking about her or hideous. She did well in school but wasn’t the smartest. Her job was decent, but not necessarily her dream—she hadn’t figured that out yet.
Camilla left the two women to chat and soon several others joined while Christina told a lively story of her recent trip to Greece where she met an oil tycoon and spent a week on his yacht touring the nearby islands.
Pippa didn’t even desire an extraordinary life, she just wanted to be happy, have a family someday, and be bad-luck-free.
She wished Hattie was there. She always made things fun and knew just what to say to help Pippa feel less awkward and out of place. It wasn’t that she didn’t belong—she’d grown up being groomed for the kind of life Christina described and the one her mother desired for her. But the idea of living that life made her imagine a dress rehearsal, wearing a costume and playing a role that wasn’t written for her, instead of being in the main show.
“You’ve been to Greece, haven’t you, Pippa?” Mallory asked.
Pippa stopped herself from flinching that time as the frenemy inserted herself into the conversation.
“Yes, I have. Yet another reminder of an unfortunate event.” Pippa’s face was suddenly tired from smiling just as it had been during her senior year in high school during a class trip when she was stranded on a small island with two goats and no sunscreen.
“I didn’t know you knew each other,” Christina said to Pippa and Mallory. “Everyone, this is Philippa Thompson.”
“You can call me Pippa.”
Mallory giggled. “More like Poo-pa.”
Her cheeks blazed. As if the sauce and being stranded weren’t enough, there was another incident in high school that kept her home for three days afterward.
“What was that?” Christina asked, confused.
“Tell them the story. It’s rather charming,” Mallory said with a smirk.
Pippa pressed her shoulders back, trying to maintain a shred of dignity because that Poo-pa incident all but stole it from her. She hadn’t thought about it in years—at least until she saw Mallory and then fell into a server and it looked like she’d peed in her yellow gown.
Christina and the women leaned in, eager for the scoop.
She sighed. Better she told the story and own it than Mallory tell it and humiliate her. “In high school, someone put an unwrapped chocolate bar in the back pocket of my skirt.”
The women tilted their heads as though unsure why that was funny.
“Go on. That’s not even the best part,” Mallory coaxed.
“It was a very warm spring day and in my botany class, we took a trip to the greenhouses.”
Mallory could hardly contain her laughter. “The chocolate melted in her pocket and looked—” She snorted with laughter. “You can imagine what it looked like, but from then on everyone called her Poo-pa.”
“You called me Poo-pa, Mallory.”
“That’s awful,” Christina said. “Why would you keep an unwrapped piece of chocolate in your pocket?”
“I didn’t. I don’t even eat chocolate. I’m allergic.”
In unison, the women made a woeful sound as though that too was a tragedy.
“She walked around like that all day.” Mallory tittered.
Pippa cocked her head. “Considering you were my partner for the project, you could have told me.”
“I didn’t notice.” Mallory shrugged and wiped away a tear of laughter.
“Right.” Pippa huffed.
“But you know who did notice?” Mallory asked.
Pippa shook her head not wanting to relive that mortifying moment. “It’s in the past. I moved to Concordia for work. I haven’t had too much time to get out. Are there any restaurants I should try?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.
“But you grew up in London?” Christina asked.
“We went to boarding school together,” Mallory said.
Mercifully, the conversation detoured as everyone swapped the names of the schools they went to, made connections over mutual teachers, friends, and events they had in common.
“Wait, you went to Hinnifin Hall?” a woman with copper hair asked. “Me too.”
Pippa didn’t quite remember her.
“If you were a few years ahead of me, you must have known Chase Collins,” the woman said.
She knew him as an acquaintance and wished it had been more than that, but that was ancient history.
The other women in the group went silent at the mention of the name.
“Every freshman girl had a major crush on him.”
And a junior as well. Namely, Pippa.
“His parents are here somewhere.” Christina glanced around the room. She seemed to know everybody.
The women erupted into a cacophony of how handsome he was, his height, build, and good looks. Pippa knew all too well. They may as well have been in high school all over again by the way their voices rose in pitch as they giggled.
Chase was American, but famous the world over for being the star quarterback of a famous football team, incredibly handsome, and most recently in the news for mooning the league’s commissioner, his daughter, and several others.
“Was he always such a prankster?” someone asked at the mention of moon-gate.
The answer was a definite yes, but before she could answer, another one asked, “Was he always so dreamy?”
The others probed for her to tell them more. They wanted all the details: was he as perfect looking in real life? Did he have good breath? Was his hair as soft as it looked?
Mallory wore a sly smile. “Didn’t you sit with him at lunch once? I vaguely remember. Tell us the story.”
The others urged her on, wanting all the sordid details.
Panic flooded Pippa. Upon moving to Concordia, she’d mostly avoided the spell of bad luck, but that evening seemed to be making up for it.
There was no getting out of telling the fateful sponge cake story. “Well, I was walking with my lunch tray. I admit I was a bit distracted,” she cleared her throat, “by him. I tripped. He was very apolog
etic and helped me up.”
“Such a gentleman,” one of them said approvingly.
“He offered for me to sit with him,” Pippa went on.
There was a chorus of oohs.
“He had a slice of cake.”
“Sponge cake,” Mallory interjected.
“He offered me a bite and I took one, but it was actually a cleaning sponge covered in frosting.” Her heart sunk as she recalled the deep humiliation as she rushed out of the dining hall. “At least I didn’t have melted chocolate in my pocket and tomato sauce on my skirt, but still.” She shrugged, expecting at least one giggle or word of consolation.
The other women stood there in silence, staring. Eyes were wide. Mouths dropped open.
Pippa blinked for a moment and then recognized the looks on their faces. They were swooning. That was when it hit her and her cheeks flamed crimson. “He’s behind me, isn’t he?”
She turned ever so slightly, catching a glimpse of Chase Collins.
Strong jaw? Light brown eyes that sparkled? Impossibly perfect hair? Check, check, and check.
Was he as dreamy as ever? Check.
Was the universe impossibly unfair for having him appear at that moment? Check.
Pippa dashed away just as she did the last time she saw him over ten years ago.
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