Roughing the Kicker

by Eden Butler

  When Ryder’s expression didn’t change—when he, in fact, twisted his mouth into a frown—Reese dropped pretenses, not seeming to like his expression or the hardening glare he shot her way. She had a temper, that much Ryder knew, and he also knew the longer they watched each other, the more that temper sparked. At that moment, it seemed to get the best of her. She leaned forward, making Wilson back up as she glared right at the quarterback’s pinched expression.

  “Team captain. Hundred-million-dollar man and…a total asshole.”

  “I’m an asshole?” Ryder asked, balling his fingers into a fist against the table.

  Reese shifted her gaze to the still-filled shot glass in front of Ryder, then jerked her attention back at him. “It’s thirteen-hundred-dollar bourbon.”

  “Not thirsty.” His tone was bored on purpose. He wanted her pissed. For some reason, he like how flushed her face got when she was angry. It reminded him of other things that colored her cheeks.

  “You’re a liar.”

  Ryder cocked his eyebrow, silencing Hanson with a flick of his fingers when the man tried to interrupt. “I’m the liar?” She caught his meaning. Last time they’d fought, before this morning’s practice, years before in fact, he’d called her a liar. He’d called her a disgusting liar, in fact.

  The laughter around the VIP room had gotten soft, morphed into something resembling shocked mutterings, but Ryder tuned them out. He didn’t care that they were probably starting a scene. He didn’t care that his teammates were watching, likely wondering what had their normally calm and collected team captain so pissed at a woman none of them really knew.

  But the anger was already brimming in Reese’s face. That temper was lethal, dangerous, and matched the one Ryder kept locked down tight through years of discipline and self-reliance. She’d begun to eradicate it on the field today. Now Reese was pulling at what remained of the thin threads holding it intact. “Don’t start that shit, Ryder…”

  He stood, buttoning his jacket, an indirect dismissal he knew she wouldn’t take well. “This is not the time or place.”

  “Yeah?” she answered, standing so quickly that her chair moved back, and Wilson had to catch it before it toppled to the floor. “And neither was the field this afternoon.”

  “You wouldn’t back off,” he said, taking one more step than he meant that brought him nearly toe-to-toe with Reese. He breathed deep, hating that the first thing he noticed was the sweet smell of her perfume.

  “I was trying to thank you, pendejo.” Eyes flashing, Reese’s cheeks were pink now, her eyes nearly black.

  “Your gratitude doesn’t fucking register,” Ryder grunted, making two fists, fighting the loud voice in his head that urged him to grab her, pull her close, and shut her up with a searing kiss.

  “Neither,” she started, tilting her head to the side, eyes narrowed, mouth a hard, straight line, “does your subpar leadership.”

  Ryder couldn’t help himself. He reacted, grabbing her bare arm before he realized he moved at all. “Watch yourself.”

  She stepped back, glancing at his grip on her arm, then back at him before she yanked out of his reach as Wilson and Pérez came behind her. “Dios, why? You gonna tell me to fuck off again?”

  “That was…”

  He had no excuses, none at least that made sense, and Reese knew it. She shook her head, looking disgusted and disappointed by his frown. It was a look that made Ryder feel revolted with himself, too. Part of him wanted to apologize. The reaction on the field today had been stupid. It had been weak, nothing like what his team or the fans had come to expect from him. No one but Reese could get under his skin. No one alive could make him lose his shit with a little bit of irritating nagging. Reese could, and in under a half-hour she’d done it already. Again.

  He meant to speak, say something to diffuse the screaming that had now drawn the attention of everyone in VIP. He thought he noticed a few phones out and filming, their owners forgetting the promise of silence and discretion everyone agreed to when they walked past the velvet ropes. But Reese seemed done with him, with the attention, and grabbed her purse, head shaking when Wilson stood next to her, muttering something that sounded like an attempt to calm her.

  “What the hell happened to you?” She didn’t expect an answer, didn’t give him a second to offer one. “You used to be a man of honor. Solid. Real. Now…this…” Reese waved a hand over him, shaking her head before she clenched her jaw and stepped away. A few steps away, she turned, voice low and lethal when she spoke. The sound of it worked up something inside Ryder he’d never expected to feel from a woman again: shame. “If you can’t be that man off the field, then you damn well better do it on it. Earn your overpaid, inflated salary, cabrón.”

  Her retreat left him cold, like all the sunlight had been siphoned from the world. He felt exactly like the prick she’d just called him. Wilson and Pérez paused, waiting, it seemed, for Ryder to explain himself, and when he didn’t, they left, trailing behind Reese with Jackson following after them. Only Hanson stayed behind, his expression guarded, his attention on the crowd and the stares they gave the quarterback.

  “Man, what the hell was that shit?” Hanson asked, standing in front of Ryder to block the doorway and the flash of cameras that had converged near it.

  “Nothing,” Ryder said, sounding weak to his own ears. He should have said more, explained himself, but couldn’t find the words. The Old Fitz bottle was empty now, but he still grabbed it, looking over the old font and yellowed label. It wasn’t the first time he’d held one of Reese’s bourbon bottles in his hands. Not caring about the crowd and the attention he’d gotten, Ryder slammed the bottle to the floor, shattering it against the expensive-looking tile before he gripped the still-full glass of bourbon and threw back his shot, wondering why it didn’t burn on the way down.

  4

  Reese

  There were no secrets in the city. There were shadows, and things done in the dark that no one saw while they happened, but eventually, the sun rose, the shadows slipped, and you were left naked to the world.

  The VIP room at Decadence wasn’t a confessional. But people did pray there—to porcelain gods, to men heralded as the saviors on the field—and their church was the gridiron. They offered redemption and hope to the people who had suffered from breaking levees and the brutal mess the Mississippi left in its wake. But there was no real loyalty to anyone in that place. The gossip was simply too juicy.

  “On Twitter and Instagram two minutes after you left the club, Reese.” Gia’s voice was loud, held the smallest shriek that she immediately cleared away. But there was still fury dancing in her eyes as she waved her iPhone between Reese and Ryder on her left. “Fucking social media all over my new placekicker…” She glared at Reese, but the curl of her top lip and the bite in her voice got directed right at Ryder. “And our team captain, our quarterback, slamming a bottle against a Parisian Chequer marble floor.” She sat on her desk, dropping her phone on the top to grab an envelope that she flung directly at Ryder. The man caught the envelope and jerked a glare at the team manager but didn’t hold it when the woman folded her arms. He tore open the envelope, pulling out what looked to Reese like an invoice. The Decadence logo ran across the top of the page, and the number she spotted at the bottom was astronomical.

  “You’re paying to have that replaced. You damn well can afford it.”

  Ryder deflated, slipping low in his seat, fingers covering his brows and forehead as Gia continued.

  “What is the problem here?” Her voice was softer now, but there was still an edge to it. “Someone mentioned you cursing at Reese on the field, Glenn.” That had the quarterback snapping his gaze at Gia, waving his fingers at her in a non-committal reply she didn’t seem to like. “You earned a Duke education throwing balls down the field. Had to have at least some intelligence to get accepted in the first place. Speak.”

  He did, eventually, taking a long breath, the exhale slow as Ryder scrubbed his neck,
head shaking like he couldn’t believe he was getting berated by Gia. The woman was new. She didn’t know the players all that well, and Reese suspected that Ryder, with the Steamers five years, might believe Gia had no right to berate him.

  But she did. No matter what he thought, Gia had earned her spot behind the desk. She had a hell of a lot of say about who played, who got benched, and why.

  Reese didn’t want to throw Ryder under the bus, and she guessed he wouldn’t want anyone in New Orleans knowing the truth about them. By the way he bounced his heels sitting next to her in front of their team manager, it looked to her like he was thinking of a way around any real explanations.

  “Things…were stressful,” he tried, not sounding remotely convincing. Idiot even glanced at Reese, like he half-expected her to laugh at how pathetic those three words were. “I…”

  “Gia,” Reese offered, voice calm. In her peripheral, she spotted Ryder curling his fingers on the arm of the leather chair and the foot bouncing stopped. She wondered if he was even breathing. “We…were at Duke together, you know that. My father coached Ryder.” The woman nodded, shifting her eyes between the pair of them as though she waited for the bottom to fall out, for Reese to deliver some earth shattering news. “You know I started playing my junior year, just as Ryder was finishing, and it was hard.” She crossed her legs at the ankle and tried to ignore the low grunt Ryder released. “Ryder and I, we didn’t…get along much. Guess…guess I wanted all my papa’s attention, and he was the golden boy. There were a few…” She shot him a frown when he twisted to face her, expression tight, eyes worried as she spoke. “We had arguments.” Reese shrugged, swallowing down the wave of bullshit she felt suffocating her. “Like siblings, I guess.”

  Liar. Big fat liar, she thought, ignoring the flash of memory, the recall of Ryder’s naked skin the night of Ryder’s last home game in the locker room, how he clearly thought he was alone. How he stopped just inside the showers when Reese turned, her naked body wet, sore from the game, aching from need that Ryder had stirred inside her the night before. They’d been alone in his Chevy, ready for things to move forward, but he’d stopped her. Ryder always stopped things before they went any further than his fingers teasing her. That night in the shower, with her naked and waiting, Ryder hadn’t stopped.

  “I need to walk away,” he told her, standing still, not looking at all like a man who intended to leave what was waiting for him under that spray of water.

  “No, you don’t.” Reese loved how every shift of her body, every twitch of her hands as she slid them over her skin, caught Ryder’s attention. “You don’t need to do anything but walk into this shower.”

  “This…isn’t how…”

  “I don’t need roses and poetry.” Reese touched herself then, fingers spreading wetness across her stomach, to her hips, settling between her legs. Ryder held his breath, attention on her fingertips as Reese petted herself. “I just need you.”

  He’d taken her for the first time in those showers. Then nearly every night after that for four months. It had been intense and, Reese thought, it had been nothing like sibling rivalry.

  Gia waited. The woman watched, her mouth set into a straight line as she gawked at them, finally shaking her head. “You expect me to believe that the screaming match at Decadence last night was some sibling shit from your college days?” Gia asked Reese, head tilted to the side as though she was insulted her placekicker thought she was that gullible.

  “It…”

  “She’s not lying,” Ryder interrupted, lifting a hand to keep Reese quiet. For once, she let him speak over her. He’d been at this for a while. He knew how to manipulate the media and the coaches. Reese had no clue how to manage any of that. “Coach Noble was like a second father to me. Mine, he wasn’t much interested in me playing football. He wanted me to be an engineer like him. So, the coach, he took me under his wing, helped me out when I needed it. He…” Ryder adjusted in his seat, biting the inside of his bottom lip as he glanced at Reese. “Sometimes he put the team, me in particular, above everyone else. When Reese started playing with us, well, she got in the way. I wanted to pay the man back for everything he’d done, but he was focused on her.” He pointed a thumb in Reese’s direction and his voice took on an exasperated tone. “She got sloppy. She got in the way and cost us a field goal against Baylor when we were down. I didn’t much like her after that.”

  That wasn’t a lie. The Baylor game had been a bad one. The worst of her short college career. But, Rhiannon had just given Reese news she made the girl promise to keep from everyone, including Ryder. It was no excuse, but when he asked what her hushed, serious conversation with his sister had been, Reese had refused to tell him. It had caused the biggest fight they’d ever had. Right before the game. It had been the beginning of the end.

  “Things got worse after that,” Ryder said, fiddling with his jacket as he sat straight in his chair. He looked calm again, his demeanor settled, as though the explanation he gave should suffice. “If you recall, I wasn’t too happy about you guys signing her. She’s a distraction.”

  “Not if you’re a professional,” Gia offered, one perfectly plucked eyebrow moving up. “Which, one would assume with the salary you demand, you would be capable of being at least moderately professional.” The team manager walked around her desk, hitting a button on her phone that blinked.

  “Yes, ma’am?” a soft voice asked.

  “Cat, bring me the camp journal, please.”

  “On my way.”

  Gia flipped through a calendar on her desk, pen sliding around the dates, lips moving as though she was speaking to herself and didn’t want Reese and Ryder to hear her. A minute after she’d summoned her assistant, Cat walked through the door, a leather-bound journal in her hand.

  She was tall, and young from the looks of her, reminding Reese of a dancer, not that different from Rhiannon when Reese had first met her during sophomore year at Duke. But where Rhiannon had been thicker around the bottom, with wider hips, Cat was model-thin. She had long, black hair and hazel eyes, skin darker than Reese’s, and a narrow nose and mouth. When the woman had first picked Reese up from the airport months ago for the contract negotiating, on first introduction Reese thought she looked very New Orleans—mysterious, hard to define, with the kind of energy that was infectious. She’d liked her instantly. Cat nodded to Ryder and smiled at Reese before she handed off the journal to her boss.

  “Wilhelmina still on vacation?” Gia asked Cat, and her assistant nodded, pulling open a page in the journal. “Here?” Another nod and Gia moved her head, as though settling something in her head. “Good. Thanks.”

  The manager waited for her assistant to leave before she sat behind her large oak desk, the top neatly organized with leather-bound boxes to hold pens and paperclips and a few paperweights, all in different shapes and sizes.

  Reese spotted a small white pig on the left corner of the desk with long, expansion wings and a proud grin on its face. She thought it was odd, such an eclectic figurine amid the important-looking folders and fancy leather boxes and files, but she dropped the thought when Gia spread open the pages of the journal.

  “Little Steamers,” she started, and the two words had Ryder leaning forward, hands locked together as he watched Gia. “It’s gotten so popular we’ve decided to extend the camp by two weeks.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?” he asked, expression shifting into something that reminded Reese of a kid being told there’s no Santa.

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Coach Ricks…”

  “Has other things occupying his time and asked me to make arrangements with Willie.”

  The muscles in Ryder’s neck flexed as he worked his back teeth together, but he remained silent.

  “What’s happening?” Reese asked, leaning on one elbow as she tried like hell not to laugh at the pout that had suddenly transformed Ryder’s face.

  “The Little Steamers camp is an event we do for kids, under t
he age of fourteen from the city and surrounding areas. The players go in, teach them about conditioning, show them drills, and at the end of the camp the kids are assigned teams and have a tournament. It coincides with the end of our regular season. Their final game happens first week in January. The kids on the winning team, and their families, get a free trip to Disney with the players. It’s a big deal to the team and the kids.”

  “A very big deal,” Ryder supplied, finally unclenching his jaw. “What are you planning?” he asked Gia, face brightening as he waited for her to answer.

  “Since you and Reese want to act like bickering siblings, I’m going to treat you like siblings.” She shuffled through some papers and pulled two single sheet calendars from the journal. “You will work together these two weeks.” She handed Reese and Ryder each a sheet. “You will be cordial. You will be professional, and you will remember that whatever you say and do, the kids will notice.”

  “Gia…” Reese started, but immediately went quiet when the manager held up her hand.

  “Before you get any big ideas about importance on the team, I should tell you that Coach Ricks isn’t happy about the fight, or you, Glenn, telling Reese to fuck off at practice.”

  When Reese didn’t hold back the small noise of amusement from leaving her throat, the team manager jerked a glare at her. “Don’t get cocky. He’s not happy about you getting in Ryder’s face last night either, and I’ll remind you, Ms. Noble, that your contract includes a ninety-day probationary period. Don’t think because you’re getting the Steamers some notice because of the novelty of your place on the team that you aren’t replaceable.” She leaned forward, resting against her arms. “Everyone is replaceable in the NFL. Don’t ever forget that.”