Playing Dirty (Sydney Smoke Rugby)

by Amy Andrews

  A flood of emotion flowed through Val’s chest, and she shut her eyes as it glowed hot and steady inside her. “I don’t want to give you up, either.”

  She shouldn’t have said it. Not out loud. She should be sensible. For both of them. Reject the statement, point out the difficulties of a relationship. But it was the simple truth. She hadn’t felt this inexplicably drawn to a man—ever—and she was powerless in the face of it.

  “That,” he said, pausing to raise his head and kiss her long and slow until her head was spinning, “is very good news.”

  “So, let’s not.” She stroked her finger along his jaw again. “Give it up. Let’s keep doing this. Keep seeing each other.” She brushed her fingers along his lips. “But we keep it on the down low.”

  He shook his head. “No.” But he smiled as he grasped her finger and caged it against his chest. “I don’t want you to be some kind of dirty secret, Val.”

  She dismissed that statement with a flick of her head. “I don’t care. It’s not like we’re going to have much trouble concealing it, with my crazy bakery hours and your training schedule. It’s not like we have much of a social life anyway. And I don’t want you to hurt your career. Besides, I’m used to it, remember. I’m a secret agent.”

  He gave a half laugh, but his amusement never quite reached the tawny hue of his eyes. “Who I see in my private life has nothing to do with my work. With the team. The sport. Or your father.”

  “I agree. It shouldn’t. But we both know that’s not true. You know that thing I said about family being complicated? Well there’s a shit-ton of complicated between my dad and me, and that could impact you, too.”

  He stared at her for long moments, his hand toying with hers, indecision turning his face serious. Val knew that face. She’d seen it many times. The kind of face people had when they wanted to ask about the tragedy that had torpedoed her family, but were either too afraid or didn’t know how.

  “It’s okay.” She gave him a nod and smile. “You can ask.”

  He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers before placing their locked hands back on his chest. “Has it always been like this? With your father?”

  “Do you mean, has he always pushed me away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m a reminder for him. Of her. Of Lauren. We were identical twins. My mother says every time he looks at me he sees her. He sees that whole day again. The moment he realised he’d run her over. That she was dead. My mother screaming. She said he lifted the car off her… But it was too late, it had crushed her chest.”

  “That can’t be an easy thing to live with.”

  “No.” Val shook her head, taking a deep breath past the thickening in her throat. “I understand why he pushes me away. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting him not to.”

  “Of course not.”

  “The crazy thing is, the harder he pushes, the more I want to cling.”

  “It says a lot about you that you’ve persisted. A lot of people might have stopped trying.”

  “How could I? When he’s already been through something so unimaginable? When he’s already lost one daughter? What kind of a person would I be to make his life any more difficult than it already has been?”

  “But…it was an accident.”

  “Yeah. Dad thought Lauren was in the house with me. So did my mum. They didn’t know she’d snuck out to go with him, that she was trying to open the back door when he started the car. He was in a high four-wheel drive, and she was two years old. He didn’t see her behind, and there weren’t any reversing cameras twenty-odd years ago. The coroner ruled it an accident, but Dad…well, he’s been punishing himself for it ever since.”

  He squeezed her hand and kissed it again. “I’m sorry.”

  Val shrugged—it was what it was.

  “Has he had some counselling or something?”

  “Mum said he went for a while, but he pretty much withdrew from everything afterward, including her and their marriage. He asked for a divorce within a year of Lauren’s death and signed over any custody rights to me to my mother. Then he essentially buried himself in rugby. Used it to block out the world. Block out the pain and the grief and anything that reminded him of what had happened.”

  “Which included you and your mum.”

  “Yes.” It hurt to even say it, despite the familiar lecture that rationalised his behaviours. It usually worked, but deep down she was still that little girl who adored her father as much as he had apparently adored her.

  “Didn’t your mother have something to say about that?”

  “There’s so much guilt for her in this, too. Why hadn’t she been keeping a closer eye on us? Why hadn’t she checked we were both still inside when she went out to wave him goodbye? She, more than anyone, understands the kind of demons that plague him. She might not have been driving that day, but she feels just as responsible.”

  Much to Val’s surprise, her voice cracked, and Kyle’s hand slid onto her shoulder and squeezed. “You don’t have to talk about this,” he murmured.

  She shook her head. She never talked about it, and it felt surprisingly good to do so. Or maybe it was just that Kyle was an exceptionally good listener.

  “She blames herself?”

  “In a way, yes.” Val sighed at the convoluted layers of guilt and blame that formed the barriers to a functional relationship. “So she’s always taken the path of least resistance with my father. Some would say she’s let him get away with abdicating his parental responsibilities, but as someone who went through that horrific incident with him, she understands his angst. She knows him, and how shut down he is. She knows that weeping and wailing won’t work. She told me a long time ago that the way to my father’s heart was through rugby, and she took me to as many games as possible, to the ones he played and the ones he coached, and made sure everyone knew who I was and that I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  A well of hot tears pricked the backs of Val’s eyes. Her mother had led the charge in Val ingratiating herself with the Smoke, and for that she would be forever grateful. She’d been right, the way in to her father was rugby. It was the only language he spoke, and Val had spent a lot of years becoming fluent.

  A tear spilled over, and Kyle swiped at it with his thumb before pulling her down onto his chest, his arms gathering her close. Val’s nose prickled as she squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the even thud of his heart just below her ear.

  She didn’t cry about this. Not anymore. Well…not often, anyway. And not in front of a guy. But it felt safe here with him. Like she could tell him anything. Or ask for anything. Or burst into tears, and he wouldn’t judge her.

  Or freak out.

  His fingers drew light patterns up and down her arm, and her eyes drifted shut. “Do you remember her?” he asked after a while, his voice rumbling through the wall of his chest.

  Val shook her head, her eyes fluttering open, a flat male nipple filling her vision. “Lauren? Not really. Kind of vague images that I’m never sure are remembered or just co-opted from photographs. But…I feel her.” She shifted, propping her chin on her fist again, her hair spilling across his chest. “You know that twin connection people always talk about?” He nodded. “I feel that. Or, at least, I feel like there’s part of me missing, like I’m not quite whole. If that makes any sense…”

  “Sure.” His fingers slid into her hair, scraping deliciously against her scalp.

  “It makes me…sad.” Her throat threatened to thicken again, and she swallowed it down as her gaze searched his. “I wish I’d known her.”

  He nodded. “I guess that’s probably another thing that weighs heavily on your father, too? Maybe it’s not so much that you remind him of Lauren, but that you remind him of what he took from you?”

  Val hadn’t thought of it like that before. Surprisingly, it helped. The thought her father might be prioritising her grief, her emotional scars over his own, did help. It seemed like something someone who cared deeply
would do. “Maybe.”

  “What do you want from Griff? If you could have anything? A relationship? An explanation? An apology?”

  The question shredded Val’s usual bravado where her father was concerned.

  Nobody had ever asked her that.

  Given her permission to want anything of her father. Not even her mother, whose tactics had been patience and resilience.

  She sure as shit deserved all three, but Val would give them all up in a heartbeat for the thing she wanted the most. “I just want to know he loves me.” Her mother had always insisted he did, but Val was very much afraid her father didn’t know how to love anymore. “He doesn’t have to publically announce it. I just want to hear him say the words. And know that he means it, that he feels it.”

  “You think he doesn’t?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I think in his head, I died that day, too.”

  “Val…” His brow crinkled, his tawny eyes troubled as they searched hers. “Maybe I can talk to him.”

  Val blinked and pushed herself up off his chest a little. Was he crazy? “Are you crazy?”

  “No.”

  Sincerity blazed from his eyes. He meant it. God—he was so damn perfect. But her father would not take kindly to anyone interfering in their dysfunction, especially not the guy Val had already announced, in rather spectacular fashion, she’d screwed.

  “It’s fine.” She shook her head. “This isn’t your problem. Besides, it’d just make him suspicious about our relationship, and I don’t want that.”

  “I really don’t think we should sneak around behind his back, Val.”

  “I know.” It was good to know that Kyle wasn’t just in this for some horizontal action. That he actually cared. “But how about we just see how it goes for a while? A couple of weeks? A month? The finals season starts in a month, right?” She settled back down, resuming her chin on fist position. “Then it’s only another month until the season ends. We can reassess after that, if things are working out well between us?”

  “Your father doesn’t scare me.”

  Val’s heart squeezed. No one had ever said something so naively wonderful. Her father was a formidable man. An alpha of the worst kind—a wounded alpha. A man at the top of his game, but completely emotionally barren. There was his way or the highway. He didn’t let his emotions make the decisions. The fact Kyle knew it and was still prepared to take him on put a little kick in her pulse.

  Val drew her finger along the cleft of his chin. “He should.”

  His tawny gaze searched hers. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Valerie King.”

  Her heart banged to a halt in her chest for one second. Two. She blinked. What? Maybe he really was crazy. It was utterly preposterous, and she refused to believe it was anything other than a product of high emotion and an honourable streak a mile wide.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “My mum said she knew the second she laid eyes on my dad he was the one.”

  Except Val didn’t believe in those kind of fairy tales. And she didn’t think Kyle did, either. “We’re not them. So just don’t, okay?”

  He regarded her for long moments. “Okay. What should I say?”

  Val relaxed at his easy capitulation, the jump in her pulse settling. He hadn’t pushed, insisted, or repeated the ridiculous statement. He’d let her talk him out of it with no protest. So he couldn’t have been serious. It must have just been a term of affection blurted out in the aftermath of her sob story.

  She pushed away David Cassidy singing I think I love you in her head.

  “Say yes. Let me be your dirty little secret.”

  He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yes.”

  And in the next second, she was flat on her back, his mouth kissing everything better.

  Chapter Eleven

  Several hours later, Kyle was following his teammates into the locker room after a light training session. It didn’t matter that it was Sunday. Or that they’d played the day before. Griff apparently believed in optimising every day, although his definition of light would make most seasoned athletes wince.

  It explained why the Sydney Smoke were the top-class team they were, but Kyle wondered if it was less to do with his team’s match fitness and more to do with Griff’s need to punish himself. It sucked they just happened to be caught in the middle of his emotional baggage.

  “Kyle.” Griff’s stern command pulled him up short.

  Oh Christ. What did he want now? Was it not bad enough he’d done about a thousand passing drills this morning? All Kyle wanted was to catch a shower and head back to his apartment, where he’d left Val curled up in his bed.

  Hopefully she’d still be there to kiss all his aching muscles better.

  Kyle scrubbed the image from his mind. It was epically squicky to be thinking such R-rated thoughts about the coach’s daughter when he was less than two metres away. Especially when Griff had an uncanny knack of knowing what Kyle was thinking at any given time. Which was mostly for the love of god can we just stop now.

  “Yes, Coach?”

  “My office.”

  Tanner slid him a sideways what-the-fuck-did-you-do-now glance as Kyle reminded himself that being coached by the King was something he’d wanted for years. “Yes, Coach.”

  Kyle followed the wild mane of hair and purposeful stride he’d come to know so well in the few short weeks he’d been here all the way into the great man’s office. He was a few paces behind, and Griff was already sitting behind his desk.

  “Shut the door.”

  Kyle hoped he didn’t look worried as he pulled on the knob. Did Griff know Kyle had spent several hours debauching Val last night?

  “Sit.”

  Kyle sat. “Is there a problem?”

  “You could say that.”

  Griff regarded him through glittering amber eyes that seemed to see right inside his head to all the images he was trying to hide. Kyle’s pulse picked up. He’d told Val her father didn’t scare him, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t acknowledge he was somewhat apprehensive right now. Griff had been clear about staying away from Val, and Kyle had given his word he would. And this man did, as Val had pointed out, hold Kyle’s rugby career in his hands.

  Kyle swallowed. He hadn’t want his relationship with Val to come out this way, but…well…it was better to be out in the open. At least there wouldn’t be any sneaking around, now. Of course, he probably wouldn’t get any game time for what was left of the season, either…

  “You know I didn’t want you here, right?” Griff said, his voice gruff.

  Kyle blinked. So, not about Valerie? “Yes, Coach.”

  “You know why?”

  “You thought I was all flash and no substance. I hope I’ve proven you wrong.”

  Griff’s brows beetled together. “No, Leighton. You haven’t. You’ve done nothing but prove me right since you got here.”

  Kyle’s heart was beating now for an entirely different reason. His throat was suddenly parched. “With all due respect, Coach. I’ve been the highest try scorer since I got here.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Griff thumped his fist on the desk, and the pens in his broken-handled coffee mug rattled. He pushed his chair back noisily as he stood. “You have no bloody clue, do you?”

  Kyle tamped down his own temper. “You want me not to score any tries?”

  Griff jabbed at the table with his forefinger. The pens rattled again. “Don’t be a smart-arse, Leighton.”

  Kyle held up his hands in a conciliatory fashion. He was never going to get field time if he blew his stack at Griffin fucking King. “They didn’t have a problem with me scoring tries at the Centaurs.”

  “Of course they did. Why do you think they traded you so late in the season?”

  It was Kyle’s turn to stand, his chair falling back as he pushed it away. What the fuck was Griff trying to say? “Because I’ve
always wanted to work with you and I have a great agent.”

  Griff gaped at him, then he laughed, holding his stomach as if it were so hysterical his insides might fall out from all the funny. It ratcheted up Kyle’s pissed off several degrees.

  When Griff finally settled, he locked two amber eyes on Kyle and shook his head. “Because you’re a fucking one-man band.”

  Kyle shrugged. “My style is unique.” That wasn’t any secret.

  “Your style is arrogant, Leighton.”

  The accusation shot through Kyle like a bullet. He was an exceedingly self-sufficient player, that was true, but he’d sweated and toiled and given Griff everything he had and more, and he’d won them games, and this was the thanks he got?

  “I don’t like you, Leighton, or your show-pony style of rugby. I especially don’t like that you’ve had your paws all over my daughter.”

  Kyle had to bite his tongue. The urge to say at least someone in this room pays her some attention rode him hard, but he kept himself in check.

  “But you have talent. Probably more raw talent than I’ve seen in anyone in a long time.”

  The startling statement clearly hadn’t been easy to give, if the granite set of Griff’s jaw was anything to go by. Kyle certainly hadn’t been expecting it. It was the kind of praise he’d only ever dreamed of, coming from arguably the best player the game had ever seen. The kind of praise that would normally make him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, but not so much in the face of Griffin King’s open hostility.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Leighton,” he snapped. “Talent means squat if you aren’t prepared to be moulded.”

  Kyle gritted his teeth. He would not lose his temper. “I am here to be moulded.”

  “I see no evidence of that on the field, Leighton. Are you here to be coached by me, or are you here to keep doing the same shit you’ve always been doing and playing in your little team of one?”

  Kyle knew he was an excellent rugby player. He knew he had talent. But he’d come here to be better. To let Griffin King make him better. “I want to be coached.”

  “Really? Well, it seems you say that, and you think that, and you do all the right things in training, then you go on some one-man glory ride during the game. There were a half-dozen times when you should have passed the ball yesterday. There were guys waiting there to take it, and you decided in your infinite wisdom to go it alone.”