Playing Dirty (Sydney Smoke Rugby)

by Amy Andrews

  “Please.” Kyle grimaced at the desperation in his voice. “I just want to talk to her. And then I’m done.”

  Eve pursed her lips, considering him for long moments. “I’ve been trying to get Griff and Val to patch things up for years. His fault, of course.” She waved her hand in a gesture indicating everyone knew it to be so. “Such a stubborn bloody…man.”

  She said the last word with such disgust, Kyle felt the need to apologise on behalf of his sex. For everything.

  “Griff would be monumentally pissed at me for aiding and abetting you.”

  “I understand.” Kyle had always thought it a long shot, but it didn’t stop a flood of disappointment.

  She pursed her lips a bit longer. “You like doughnuts?”

  Kyle blinked at the rapid change in topic. “Yeah…sure.”

  “Croissants?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Chelsea buns, you know, the scrolly ones with sultanas and the pink icing.”

  Yeah. He knew Chelsea buns. “They’re my favourite. There’s a bakery in Manly that makes them, I stop by there most mornings on my way to training.”

  Eve’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. Sure…Chelsea buns weren’t a particularly manly thing to admit to eating, but why should she care? And they were laden with carbs, which he was going to need more of if Griff kept up this level of training intensity.

  “Sticky Fingers?” she asked.

  “You know it?” The bakery was known and loved amongst locals, but he knew Eve lived a long way from Manly.

  “Oh, I know it.” Her gaze was speculative now. “I think you should stop there on your way home today.” She stared at him hard, as if she was trying to convey a silent message.

  “I called there this morning.”

  “You have something against two Chelsea buns in a day?”

  Kyle shook his head. The more Chelsea buns the better, as far as he was concerned. He looked at his watch. “They’ll be sold out, though. In fact, they’ll probably be closed. It shuts as soon as the food is gone. That’s usually between one and two.”

  “I know.” She gave him another prolonged, meaningful look he wasn’t quite sure how to interpret.

  “If you want, I can grab you one tomorrow morning on my way here?”

  She tisked under her breath and all but rolled her eyes at him. “I want you to go there directly, knock on the glass if it’s closed, and demand to talk to the owner.”

  It took a few seconds for Kyle to compute her meaning. At least, he thought he knew what she was hinting at, even if it made no sense. “Val works at Sticky Fingers?”

  If someone had put a gun to his head and asked him to guess the sexy redhead’s job, he’d have said she was some kind of corporate professional. Someone who worked in an office, wore narrow skirts and high heels. Okay…maybe he was just confusing fantasy with reality, but hell, he’d have even bought a secret agent over shop assistant.

  Eve bugged her eyes at him, leaving Kyle in no doubt that she thought his intellect lacking. “She owns it,” Eve said slowly, joining the dots for him. “She’s a baker.”

  Owns it? Val owned Sticky Fingers?

  Val was a baker?

  Small business owner had been the last thing on Kyle’s list of possibilities. A baker even less so. Surely that would have shown up in his Google search yesterday? He’d never seen her there, but he supposed if she was the baker she was probably busy in the kitchens when he was quickly ducking in for his Chelsea bun just before six most mornings.

  Is that why she’d snuck out on him the other night? Because bakers started work at the crack of dawn and she had to get to Sticky Fingers? He hadn’t felt her leave—he was a really heavy sleeper—but the thought cheered him.

  “Okay.” Kyle blinked, still a little dazed at the news. And also more than a little preoccupied by images of pouring pink Chelsea bun icing all over Val’s body and licking it off.

  Which wasn’t going to happen.

  “Well?” Eve looked at him expectantly. “What are you waiting for?”

  Kyle stood, pinwheels churning in his gut at the thought of seeing her again. He had no idea how it would go down. He just knew he had to.

  “Thank you.” He reached across and squeezed Eve’s hands, which were clasped together on the desk in front of her. “Just…thank you.”

  Eve’s face told him she wasn’t really convinced she’d done the right thing. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Hmm.” She did her lip pursing again. “You’re a pretty flashy player on the field, Kyle, but are you any good at the long game?”

  Kyle stiffened a little at the implication. He knew Griff thought he was all flash and no substance, and it irked. “I’ve been working my way toward playing for the Smoke since I was in the under sixteens. That’s eight years. Long enough?”

  More lip pursing. “You’re probably going to need a lot of patience. There’s twenty-odd years of stuff between them, and Griff’s guilt is…” She broke off, and Kyle heard the catch in her voice. “Set like cement around him.”

  “Oh, I’m not… I can’t…” Eve had obviously gotten the wrong end of the stick. He just wanted to make sure Val was okay and get some answers. “There’s not anything between us,” Kyle hastened to assure her.

  Eve’s head dropped to the side. “Really?”

  Her tone clearly said she didn’t believe it. Christ. That was the last thing he needed. Griff’s PA thinking he and Val were a thing when he’d promised the man they weren’t. “I just want to check on her. That’s all.”

  She frowned at him as if she was disappointed in his reply. “Well that’s a shame. Griff needs a seismic shove. Thought you might be up to the job.”

  Kyle shook his head. He didn’t want to be some catalyst between father and daughter. He wanted to play rugby. Why hadn’t someone else who’d known Griff for longer taken it up with him?

  “I’m just—”

  “Yeah,” she interrupted with a nod. “You’re just checking on her.” She waved him away with a grim smile. “Go.”

  Kyle left, but not without the feeling he’d somehow been judged and found severely wanting.

  Kyle pulled up opposite Sticky Fingers forty minutes later. It was almost one thirty. The street parking outside the shop was plentiful. He could see the closed sign on the door from across the street, and the display cabinets normally laden with baked goodies at six in the morning were empty. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him.

  He was going to get out and knock, just like Eve had suggested. And knock until she opened the door. And if she’d left for the day, he’d be back here tomorrow morning, because she’d definitely be in then.

  His phone rang as he unbuckled. He glanced at the screen. His mother. This could be a discussion about anything from his sister’s pregnancy, to how his father had managed to get his hands on a dozen lobsters and would Kyle like one, to how Uncle Denny couldn’t afford to pay for his full set of veneers so could Kyle cough up the money instead.

  None of it would surprise him.

  He glanced at the bakery again, usually bustling with customers and somehow so much more intimidating now it wasn’t, and decided he could work off some of his nerves in conversation with his mum. She could win a gold medal in talking.

  “Hey, Ma.”

  “Hey, Kyle.”

  So it was to be a financial thing. She was always more formal when asking him for money. Usually she just called him baby, because, despite being twenty-four and a pro rugby player who was regularly on the tele, he was the youngest of his four siblings, so baby it was.

  Plus. He did kinda like it. Kept his feet on the ground and his head from swelling too much. His family were loud and proud about his success, but they’d be on him in a heartbeat if they thought he was getting too big for his boots.

  “Jaidyn got picked up for street racing last night.”

  Jaidyn was a second cousin on his dad’s side who
was a good, hardworking kid with a genius for motors. He was also an idiot petrol head who liked to drag race with his mates at deserted industrial estates as if they were living on the set of The Fast and the Furious.

  “He needs bail money?”

  “Yes. And that lawyer friend of yours. They’re talking about confiscating his car this time.”

  Kyle sighed. It’d probably be cheaper to keep his lawyer friend on a bloody retainer, considering his family’s propensity to regularly find itself on the wrong side of the law. They were no Corleones, but the Leighton clan was always in some kind of trouble or other.

  It would be easy to disown them all. They were exasperating and distracting, their reputation often causing him grief with the media, but hell if he didn’t love his big, fat, bogan family.

  “They should confiscate his car, Ma.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  “Okay.” He glanced across at the bakery. “Give me an hour. Which cop shop is he at?”

  She told him. “You’re a good boy, Kyle Reese Leighton. You’re living up to your namesake.”

  Kyle had been named after Kyle Reese from Terminator because his mother had apparently had a crush on him. But, according to his father, because he’d been conceived during one of the many times they’d watched the film.

  Which was a little too much information. But he guessed he’d rather be named Kyle than Arnie.

  Although, as he looked at the bakery, he wished he was as invincible as the Terminator.

  “Bye, Ma,” he said, ending the call with grim determination.

  Chapter Five

  Val was just pulling her third batch of chocolate macadamia nut biscuits from the oven when someone banged on the front door. She startled and almost burned herself on the hot tray. Cursing in a way she learned from a very young age hanging around rugby fields, she slid it onto the gleaming metallic surface of the bench top.

  “We’re closed,” she shouted.

  Couldn’t whoever it was see the bloody great sign on the door?

  But the pound came again, and, annoyed, she pushed on the slatted, double-swing doors that separated the kitchen from the front of the shop. Kyle stood outside, peering in through the glass, not looking very happy at all.

  Her stomach looped the loop. He was in shorts that moulded to the contours of his well-developed thighs and a T-shirt straining at the shoulders and sitting enticingly flat against his belly. She’d been dreaming about that belly for two weeks. The way the muscles there had contracted beneath her tongue as she’d licked her way down his body.

  “Open up, Val.”

  His demand yanked her back from the seduction of that night, and she met his gaze. The irritation in his tawny eyes did nothing to quell the riot going on in her ovaries.

  Her instinct was to tell him to go away, to turn on her heel and not speak with him at all. She hadn’t exactly covered herself in glory as far as her conduct with him had gone, and never seeing him again seemed like a good way to avoid rehashing it.

  Plus she was in her daggy work clothes—long black-and-white checked catering pants, a plain white T-shirt, and a Sticky Fingers cap on her head to constrain her hair to satisfy safe handling of food regulations. Her makeup had probably slid off hours ago. The ovens were warm, and she could work up a real sweat back here, no matter how cold it was at four in the morning. And he could probably join every single one of her freckles dot-to-dot style.

  As if he could see she was gearing up for another request to go away, he pre-empted. “We need to talk.”

  Val sighed. He was right, and she knew it. She owed him an apology and an explanation and the sooner she got it over with, the better.

  She strode across the floor, flipped the lock, and yanked the door open. With the glass gone, the impact of his body was almost a physical force as it filled the open space, and Val gripped the door handle to stop herself from walking into his arms. They stared at each other for a moment, not saying anything.

  There was something about this man that drew her. A primal thing. An aura he exuded, along with the heady voodoo ripeness of his cologne, which curled invisible fingers around her middle and yanked. She had to grind her shoes into the wooden floorboards to resist the pull.

  “Come out to the kitchen.” Val fell back to let him in and shut her eyes as he brushed past to withstand the temptation of sniffing him. Licking him. She locked the door behind her and led the way through the swing doors into the kitchen, conscious of Kyle’s nearness. She rounded the bench and faced him, but not even the presence of the stainless-steel barrier between them was adequate enough protection for her recalcitrant body.

  He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, inhaling deeply for a moment. “Bloody hell, it smells amazing in here.”

  Val inhaled also, calmed momentarily by the assuring aromas of warm baked biscuits. Sugar and cinnamon and chunks of chocolate with melted centres. She still got off on it even after two years. She pushed the cooling tray toward him and offered him a biscuit because he was looking at her intently, and she was very much afraid she might offer herself, instead.

  “They’re just out of the oven. The chocolate’ll be all gooey still.” She always made up a few batches at the end of the day and delivered them to a couple of the local cafés.

  He shook his head, his gaze not quitting hers. “Are you okay?”

  Val blinked. He’d seemed ticked off, glowering at her from the other side of the door, and he had a right to be. But his first words on what had happened the other night were are you okay? She shut her eyes briefly at the sweetness of his consideration, particularly when she didn’t deserve it. “I’m fine.”

  “It was quite the argument,” he pressed. “With your father.”

  Yeah. “Sorry about that.” The poor guy probably wasn’t used to such open dysfunction.

  “It’s fine.” He shook his head like a woman he barely knew yelling at her father over a liaison she’d had was nothing out of the ordinary. “I’m just sorry for kissing you like that in front of everyone and causing trouble between you and your old man.”

  “Oh, that.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry about it. You did me a favour, actually. We never fight. I never say anything that rocks the boat, and he…”

  Val shrugged and picked up a biscuit for something to look at other than him, something to do with her hands. She broke off a portion of the warm, pliant biscuit and popped it into her mouth. A sweet kick of chocolate and cinnamon burst on her taste buds, and she sighed as it practically dissolved on her tongue it was so fresh.

  Her relationship with her father sucked, but biscuits she could count on.

  “And he?”

  Val glanced at Kyle to find him staring at her mouth. She licked her lips in case she had some gooey chocolate residue on them. His nostrils flared as he tracked the flick of her tongue, and the intensity of his gaze reached deep inside the muscles slung between her hips.

  “He says as little to me as possible. He just…shuts me out. For the first time in years, I actually felt like he was seeing me. That he actually cared enough to warn me. I’m not sorry about the argument at all. But I do owe you an apology. An explanation. For that night. At the bar.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You do.”

  The steel in his words matched the steel in his gaze. He was a little ticked. Fair enough. “I should have been up-front about who I was. I contemplated it, I really did, but then I knew we’d spend all night talking about my bloody father and I was pretty pissed at him that night.”

  “Pissed enough to sleep with me?”

  Val cringed. There was resignation in his voice. Like he knew the answer already. It’d be easy to lie to him, to deny that she did something so deliberate. But she didn’t seem to be able to. It was like he’d wrapped her in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, and she was powerless to do anything other than tell it like it was.

  “Yes. I admit, there was part of me that thought sleeping with one of
Griffin King’s precious players would be the ultimate fuck you to my father. But only part. And when I left that morning I was so ashamed of my actions. For not being completely honest with you, and when I thought about what we did potentially impacting on you…” Val shook her head, reliving her shame. “I was annoyed with myself. I know you don’t know me well enough to know this, but I really never would have told him. It was more a silent protest. I never planned for him to find out.”

  “Except then I went and groped your ass and kissed you in front of everyone.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up into a half smile. Val pushed the tray closer to him. If he didn’t do something else with his mouth other than smile at her, she might have to give him something to do with it.

  “Yeah.” She returned his smile as he took a biscuit. “That hadn’t been part of my plan.”

  “But I would have found out who you were eventually. How did you propose to manage that?”

  “I assumed you’d learn pretty quickly Coach’s daughter was off-limits, and that when you met me at some stage down the track as Griff’s daughter you’d be smart enough to keep your mouth shut about our…”

  Their what? Night of passion? One-night stand? Fuck fest?

  “Liaison?”

  Oh yes. That was a much nicer word for it. “I wasn’t supposed to run into you, Saturday night. Eve had texted me to lock up her office because she was taking Liam straight to the hospital for his asthma. I figured you’d all be in the locker room celebrating and I had the baseball cap on. I was planning on just sneaking past.”

  He nodded. “But I screwed that all up by coming out of the locker room and…”

  “Yes.” He’d come out at exactly the time she’d been passing. Epically bad timing. “I hope you believe it wasn’t ever my intention to screw with your career or your chances with the Smoke. Looking back, that was rather naive of me, but I was…sad and…not thinking very straight, and I sincerely apologise.”

  He nodded, the steel in his gaze melting away. “Thank you.”

  Tension in Val’s shoulders also melted away. She didn’t want him to be ticked at her, even if she did deserve it. “What did he say to you after I left?” She hadn’t given it much thought after she’d stormed out of her father’s office, but she had after she’d calmed down.