The Striker's Chance

by Rebecca Crowley

  A sudden realization knocked the smile off his face with the force of a cold, hard slap.

  “I don’t have anything,” he groaned. “Any protection.”

  Conflicting emotions chased each other across Holly’s face. Shock, despair, humiliation and, finally, anger.

  “I thought men like you always carried that kind of thing in your wallet.”

  “What do you mean, ‘men like me’?”

  She rolled her eyes as she shifted into the seat next to him, hastily buttoning her blouse.

  “Kepler, we’re both half dressed in the backseat of my car. You can drop the whole ‘I’m not really a playboy’ act.”

  He stared at her, irritation quickly becoming horror at how badly he’d misjudged this situation.

  “Is that what you think? That this is all some elaborate ploy to get you into bed?”

  “I think you probably used your last condom on some random woman you met at the bar in your hotel and forgot to replenish your supply,” she said, the words pointed and harsh.

  His body went rigid with tension and barely contained rage. He rolled his hands into tight fists.

  “I don’t have any protection because I’ve spent the last year living at my parents’ house recovering from multiple fractures in my leg,” he informed her coldly, his voice rising in volume with every word. “Condoms do expire, you know.”

  Kepler thought she reddened and maybe even looked slightly contrite, but he was past caring. He just wanted to get away from her.

  “Forget this,” he muttered to himself in Afrikaans. As he zipped up his jeans and rooted on the floor for his windbreaker, he added a string of Afrikaans profanities for good measure.

  “Kepler, wait,” Holly said, much quieter. “That was below the belt. It’s just with all those articles in the press—”

  “Don’t believe everything you read.” He pushed open the car door and charged back to the bar through the bucketing rain, hardly feeling it as it pummeled his head and shoulders.

  Chapter Seven

  Holly kept her smile carefully in place as she snuck another covert glance over Alan Brady’s head at the clock mounted on the wall.

  Twenty minutes late.

  The half hour she’d allotted for coffee before a sit-down breakfast with the board—the breakfast at which Kepler was supposed to be the guest of honor—was almost up. She could make excuses for him while everyone was mingling, but what about when the kitchen served the food and his chair remained conspicuously empty?

  As if plucking the thoughts right out of her head, Alan cleared his throat. “Are we expecting Mr. de Klerk to join us this morning?”

  “I thought so, but he must have been held up.” She pulled her cell phone from her purse and glanced at the display. “Oh, I’ve just missed a call from him,” she lied and excused herself from the room.

  Once safely down the hall from the windowless hotel boardroom, she sank back against the wall.

  She was so screwed.

  The last three weeks of managing Kepler’s public relations had been nothing short of a nightmare. Any rapport they’d had dissolved the minute he stormed out of the backseat of her car. Now every interaction was strained, tense and painfully awkward.

  Discovery had continued to win with him on the field, but they were ugly victories. His playing style was selfish and aggressive, and although the team’s record was improving, Sven constantly worried about the other players failing to mature and that Kepler would burn himself out.

  Meanwhile, his compliance with her publicity schedule was erratic. Discovery had finally set him up with a furnished sublet while he closed on his house, and he’d bought a car the day after the Women’s Wellness photo shoot. Far more independent and mobile than in his early days in Charlotte, he became increasingly difficult to track down. Holly sent him a timetable of interviews, meetings and events at the beginning of each week, but unless she turned up at his apartment before each one and reminded him face-to-face where to be and at what time, it was a crapshoot as to whether he actually showed. Evan Barstow’s anonymous, critical articles in the Recorder were getting nastier and nastier, and she was terrified that the other papers would get bored of her sugarcoated press releases and follow in his salacious footsteps.

  She’d spoken to Sharon from LKC Energy a few more times, and although they were still happy with the results—Holly had managed to cover up the few times Kepler had been a total no-show, and they seemed more preoccupied with Discovery’s winning record—her whole career balanced on a knife edge. She hadn’t told anyone about the New York City offer yet, afraid of jinxing it. At the same time, she spent hours reading up on property prices, looking at subway maps online and perusing article after article about all the amazing food, fashion and nightlife that seemed to be ever changing and always cutting edge.

  Let her friends have weddings and babies, she told herself as she shut her laptop each night. She was destined for something bigger and brighter.

  But alone in her bed, her thoughts inevitably turned to Kepler and the few minutes of passion they’d shared. She’d been so turned on that she’d practically thrown herself at him. She’d never, ever been so forward, and now every time she saw him she burned with a mix of humiliation and wanton desperation to repeat the encounter.

  It was her own fault. She let things go too far and when they couldn’t go any further, she lost her temper out of pure sexual frustration and a deep-rooted paranoia that she somehow hadn’t measured up and he’d changed his mind about wanting to have sex with her. She knew all that. She just didn’t know how to fix it.

  She ducked back into the room and motioned to one of the young press officers who worked full time in Discovery’s marketing department.

  “Kepler’s car won’t start,” she fibbed. “I’m going to run over to his apartment to pick him up. Go ahead with the breakfast, but let everyone know he’ll be late.”

  Holly played fast and loose with speed limits as she raced across town, grateful that it was still too early for rush-hour traffic. Kepler’s apartment was one in a block of four, and she jogged up the stairs despite her high heels.

  He opened the door on the third press of the doorbell, wearing plaid boxers and nothing else. Squinting at her, he ran a hand through his rumpled hair.

  “What are you doing here? What time is it?” he asked in a voice still thick with sleep.

  She ignored the giddy rush of desire the sight of his mostly naked body produced. “It’s eight o’clock. You were supposed to be at breakfast with the board almost half an hour ago.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s tomorrow. Today is the launch thing.”

  Holly sighed in exasperation. “The breakfast is today—in fact it’s now. The restaurant launch is Thursday night.”

  He blinked, guilt etched on his face. “I got confused, I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  A searing, irrational wave of jealousy roared through her as she peered over his shoulder.

  “Did you bring someone home last night? Is she still in there? Kepler, I swear, if you missed this breakfast because of some tramp you picked up at a bar—”

  “Wait, stop.” He held up his hands to silence her, then glanced around before pulling her inside the apartment. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been practically shouting at him, and as he shut the door behind them she flushed with embarrassment.

  “There’s no one here.” He swept his arm to indicate the empty living room and the open-plan apartment beyond. “Not that it would be any of your business if there was.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered, eager to change the subject. “Just get dressed. We can still make most of the breakfast. You’re not hung over, are you?”

  “No, I’m not hung over.”

  “So why couldn’t you sleep? You’re not sick, are you? Because we have a lot of things lined up this week, plus you’re playing at home on Saturday.”

  She put her hands on her hips, expecti
ng to have to launch into another one of her lectures about image-building and consistency, when to her surprise, Kepler dropped onto the patterned couch and scrubbed a hand over his eyes.

  “I couldn’t sleep because my leg was throbbing, my hamstrings are tight and my lower back is killing me. And the air conditioner rattles. And the woman downstairs is always slamming her door.” He paused and drew a deep breath before continuing. “And my brother emailed me a bunch of photos of my nephew. I guess it made me homesick.”

  Holly’s gaze instinctively flicked to the digital clock mounted over the oven at the other end of the apartment, but it was too far to make out the numbers. One part of her wanted to hurry him into the bedroom to put some clothes on so he could attend at least part of the breakfast.

  Another part of her knew that, at this moment, the man was more important than the event.

  She lowered onto the couch beside him. “I didn’t know you had a brother. Older or younger?”

  “Four years older,” he replied. “He’s married, and he’s got a little boy. I bought him one of those toddler-sized Charlotte Discovery outfits. I never seem to have time to go to the post office and mail it, though. By the time I actually send it and it gets all the way to South Africa, it’ll probably be too small for him.”

  “I can mail it for you if you give me the address,” she suggested, “or get one of the people in the press office to do it. That’s the kind of thing I can help you with, and I’d be glad to do it if it made your life a little easier.”

  The surprise in his expression made Holly’s heart ache. What kind of a callous corporate demon did he think she was?

  “Is your sister pregnant yet?” Her face must have shown her confusion because he explained, “When we were in Ballantyne, you said your brother-in-law wanted kids but your sister wasn’t so up for it. Has she changed her mind?”

  “No, not that I know of.” She sank back into the couch, deciding the breakfast was a lost cause. Evan had probably already paid a hotel staff member to feed him gossip from the event, and by this time tomorrow the Recorder would be full of quotes from “an anonymous source close to the team” speculating that Kepler’s absence meant he was a raging alcoholic, or a freaky sex addict, or otherwise generally unfit to captain Discovery.

  A tension headache began to throb between her eyes as she thought about all the placating phone calls she’d have to make over the next forty-eight hours.

  “I never had much respect for Raynard when we were growing up,” Kepler continued, snapping her out of her moment of self-pity. “He was always dutiful, hard working and impeccably well behaved, whereas I was constantly getting into trouble and being scolded for not living up to my full potential. I thought he was boring and predictable, and I was exciting and fun.” He smiled. “And to be honest, I still think that sometimes. But now I understand that stability and consistency aren’t such bad things.”

  Holly began to reply, but he waved her away. “I know. You’re going to tell me that you’d love to see a little more of that consistency when it comes to my press appearances.”

  “Not at all,” she said, careful to keep her tone free of indignation. This was the best conversation they’d had in weeks, and she didn’t want to drive him back into his defensive armor. “Actually, I was going to say that I wish I could learn to respect my sister in the same way. We’re less than two years apart in age, and it feels like we’ve always been competing—and she always wins. She moved to Charlotte from our hometown in Virginia a year after I did, and within six months she was engaged to a rich lawyer. Oh, and did I mention that she’s gorgeous? She was a runner-up for Miss Virginia.”

  Kepler frowned. “What’s that?”

  “A beauty pageant,” Holly explained, aware she sounded like the bitter younger sister but unable to stop her confessional now that it had started. “That’s how pretty and perfect she is—people used to give her trophies just for being attractive.”

  “So? Take it from someone who knows a thing or two about trophies—they’re exciting and validating for about a day, but as soon as you wake up the next morning there’s someone new trying to win it away from you. You said yourself that your sister spends all of her time swanning around with her friends, whereas you have your own business, doing a job you’re great at in a field you love.”

  “Of course, because every little girl dreams of a career in sports PR.” She exhaled wearily. “I learned early on to distinguish myself with intellectual achievements, and it’s fair to say I could be pretty arrogant about them. I hardly ever dated in high school because whenever I thought a guy was interested in me, it turned out he just wanted my advice on how to ask out my sister. But you can’t be rejected by someone you deliberately push away in the first place.”

  His eyes were clear and steady as they held hers. “Some men are more easily pushed than others. But that does give me an idea—maybe I should ask your sister for advice on how to get you to go out with me.”

  Holly’s jaw slackened in shock. Genuinely lost for words, she could do nothing more than stare at him dumbly. He’d spent almost every day of the last three weeks either arguing against or blatantly disobeying her every instruction, and now he was flirting?

  After a minute of awkward silence, he sighed. “What are we doing, Holly?”

  “I have no idea. I’m really embarrassed about what happened in my car.” Her face flushed at the mere mention of the incident. “I’ve never been that forward with anyone, ever. I don’t know what got into me.”

  Kepler leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and appeared to study the patterned carpet. “Do you regret it?” he asked after a thoughtful pause.

  “Yes, of course,” she said automatically. “I thought we were partnering so well until then. We gave into a stupid impulse and now there’s all this tension between us. Don’t you regret it too?”

  “I regret the way we left it. And I can see your point. Perhaps we moved too quickly. But I don’t regret touching you. Not for a second.”

  His words evoked a sudden, visceral memory of his hand warming her breast beneath her rain-damp shirt, his tantalizing exploration between her legs, the delicious contraction in her pelvis as he’d pushed his finger inside.

  There was hunger in his expression as he gazed at her from the other end of the couch, and she knew he was reliving those few moments too.

  Holly forced a ragged breath into her lungs. If she wasn’t careful they’d end up right back where they started, and in three weeks they’d be having this same conversation.

  “I never know where you’re coming from,” she offered. “One minute you’re skipping events and refusing to answer the phone, and then you’re trying to ask me out. Which is it going to be, Kepler?”

  He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his arms, and she could practically see his guard going up.

  “Which would you prefer? My interest in you is real. The public persona you’re creating for me is not.”

  “Why do I have to choose? Why can’t you turn up to an interview and rattle off some pre-written anecdotes? Afterward we’ll go out for dinner and laugh about it.”

  “What about all your professional boundaries?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “What about all that panic in Ballantyne when you thought someone might see us together and get the wrong idea?”

  And what about the fact that she was privy to LKC Energy’s plan to auction him off at the end of this season?

  Holly swallowed against a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  “You’re right,” she said, despite every nerve in her body begging her to disagree. “We should keep things professional, at least until the end of the season.”

  Because by then she’d be hundreds of miles away from Charlotte in New York City, and he’d be—well, he could be anywhere.

  Kepler’s jaw tightened and his posture hardened, but he nodded. “If that’s what you want, I have to respect that.”

  “Thank you.”


  “But I still hate the idea of this PR campaign,” he insisted. “Like this restaurant launch tomorrow. Why should anyone care where I go out to dinner? Being able to accurately handle a ball has nothing to do with my taste in food, or clothes, or anything. The truth is I try to avoid fancy restaurants like that one. I was looking at the options they emailed over. One of those dishes said it came with a special foam. Why would I want foam on my plate? The notion that people are turning up to that place, spending their hard-earned money on pretentious food because they think they might spot me there—it makes me feel so guilty.”

  “It also means more people are turning up to watch you play,” Holly countered. “Like it or not, some people buy tickets because they want to see someone they think is famous, not because they love the sport. The more people sitting in the stands, the more money Discovery has to spend on players, training and everything else that keeps the game alive. But you’ve been a professional athlete for long enough that you don’t need me to explain this to you, do you?”

  Kepler stared fixedly at the floor, and she continued, “You don’t like the well-behaved yet sexy striker idea I’ve come up with, and you insist the picture painted by the British media of bad-boy Killer de Klerk is wrong as well. So tell me, who do you want to be?”

  “I want to be myself,” he said with such quick defensiveness that she knew he hadn’t given his answer any real thought.

  “And what is he like?” But she could feel him shutting down. These few, precious moments of honest interaction were coming to an end.

  “Look, I’ll try to make more of an effort with this PR stuff, but I can’t make any promises. I suppose this breakfast is a washout, huh?”

  Holly checked the clock. “If you throw on a suit, you could make the last half hour.”

  Kepler’s eyes met hers, and it took every shred of her willpower not to close the distance between them and wrap comforting arms around his broad shoulders while she brushed reassuring kisses over his forehead. Every trace of arrogant swagger had been wiped from his face. He looked dejected, drained and lonely beyond belief.