Rough & Ready

by Tracy Wolff

  No, it’s not the WNBA and it never will be again. But as Aneesha scores her first points of the game—and screams with the ensuing excitement—that doesn’t matter. Nothing does, but the fact that at this moment, on this court, none of us are thinking about anything but playing ball. No crappy guys moving in, no fists to dodge, no fear or worry or pain.

  Just the game. Always the game. It’s not everything, but right now, it’s more than enough.

  Chapter 4

  Tanner

  “I’m not sure you should be hanging out in this neighborhood,” I tell Tina as we drive down Euclid Avenue in Southeast San Diego.

  “It’s fine, Tanner.” She’s looking out the window, but I don’t need to see my little sister’s face to know she’s rolling her eyes at me. “And I’m not hanging out. It’s a study group.”

  “Since when do you study on a Sunday?”

  “Since organic chemistry started kicking my ass.”

  Not going to argue about that. It’s kicking my ass and I’m not even in the damn class. “I told you not to take it over the summer.” I make the left turn onto Imperial Avenue and somehow grow even less impressed with the area.

  “And I told you that I wanted to take it all by itself so that I could really concentrate on it and not have to worry about any other classes. Plus, if I flunk it over the summer, I can take it again during fall semester and not get behind in my credits.”

  “You’re not going to flunk anything. You’re too smart for that.”

  “You don’t know that,” she says with a snort. “It’s the hardest class I’ve ever taken by far. It might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done so far.”

  “Which is why you should be studying in the library at UCSD, not here where even the schools and churches have bars on the windows.” I gesture to the large Catholic school we’re passing on the right as case in point.

  “Wow, look at you all bougie in your Escalade. It’s like you forgot where we came from.”

  I shoot her a look, but she ignores me in the way only little sisters can. “I know exactly where we came from—and it wasn’t a neighborhood like this.”

  She rolls her eyes. “It was a metaphor.”

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t a very good one.” I drive by three gangbangers on the right and what I’m pretty sure is a drug deal on the left. “If you’re going to stay here, maybe I should stick around.” I have other plans down here—one of the reasons I volunteered to drop Tina off to begin with—but I can change them if my little sister needs me.

  “Maybe you should mind your own business!” she snaps, and it’s pretty obvious that her patience has worn thin with her overprotective brother. “I’m not asking your permission to study at my friend’s house—or anywhere else. The only reason you’re here at all is because my car’s in the shop and you refused to let me take an Uber. Which I will definitely be doing on my way home.”

  “Tina, I just want—”

  “There’s the address!” she says, talking right over me. “Pull over.”

  I do, partly because she’ll kill me if I don’t—no matter how old you both get, little sisters know how to make you hurt—and partly because she’s right. She’s twenty-one and a junior in college. Any say I had over where she goes or who she dates is long gone, even if I do pay all the bills. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it and it sure as shit doesn’t mean I have to keep my mouth shut about it.

  “How long are you planning on being here?” I ask, stopping her with a hand on her arm as she reaches for the door handle.

  “Don’t worry about it.” She shakes me off. “I’ll catch a ride home, and if not, I’ll take that Uber.”

  “How long?” I demand. Tina looks like she’s going to argue, but then she gets a look at my face and figures out I’m not budging on this. Dropping her off at her friend’s house to study for a few hours is one thing. Expecting her to find her own way home from here is something else entirely.

  Twenty-one or not, she’s still my baby sister.

  “Three hours,” she says grudgingly. “And you better not come to the door.”

  “What’s wrong with me coming to the door?” I eye her suspiciously. “What don’t you want me to know?”

  “Are you serious right now? You think I’m hiding something from you?”

  “Are you?”

  “Why would I do that? You’re my brother, not my father.”

  I incline my head in a you’re right kind of way. But we both know that whole brother not father thing doesn’t mean shit. Not when I’m the one who raised her after Mom died and Dad lost his shit from grief…and then died a couple of years later from the same thing. Not when I’m the one who went to her parent-teacher conferences and her volleyball games, who took her to school in the morning and to Girl Scouts and play practice in the afternoons.

  “Three hours.” I repeat her words back to her as she climbs out of the car.

  “Yes, brother dearest. Three hours. Now scram.” She slams the door and heads down the narrow alley that has two small houses on either side of it. I keep watching as she gets to the second door on the left and knocks, waiting until it opens and she’s inside before I pull away from the curb.

  And yeah, I get that she’s an adult who can vote and drink and do anything else that she wants. But she’s still my baby sister and she’s still my responsibility. They all are. Before she died, I promised my mother I’d take care of them. I’ve been doing it for nearly half my life, and just because Tina turned twenty-one doesn’t mean I have any intention of stopping.

  Besides, I know I’m a little nuts about the whole thing, especially where Tina’s concerned. But of all four of my younger siblings, she’s the one who’s always getting into trouble. The one who says one thing and then does something else entirely just because she wants to see what will happen. The fact that, more often than not, whatever she ends up doing is something she needs me to bail her out of is the main reason I’m breathing down her neck so hard right now. The older she gets, the harder it becomes to clean up her messes.

  Bank—even NFL bank—doesn’t fix everything.

  I’m still brooding about Tina five minutes later when I stop at a red light in front of the address that’s the real reason I came down here this morning. It might be a fool’s errand, but I want to check the place out. See what all the fuss was about…and if it was deserved.

  The building itself is a really vivid purple, with violet swirls, silver moons and shooting stars, white, gray and black planets and what looks an awful lot like a giant comet streaking above the two main windows on the side. The door is yellow and so are the shutters and the window boxes filled with purple and pink flowers. Colorful banners hang on the chain-link fence that surrounds the property and when you put it all together it should be a major eyesore.

  Instead, it’s magnificent. Bright and cheery and hopeful, it’s by far the most welcoming and interesting-looking place in the neighborhood. Maybe the most welcoming-looking place anywhere—and not just because the sign above the front door says it’s a teen rec center.

  A very popular rec center, I decide as a group of kids pile out a side door onto the fenced-in blacktop to watch what looks like a pretty intense game of three on three. A cheer goes up just as the light turns green and I stay where I am for a few seconds, transfixed by the sight of the hot blonde from the stadium jumping a couple feet off the pavement as she fires off a really impressive shot. The fact that the tight skirt she’s wearing is currently hiked up around her thighs is just an added bonus.

  When I Google mapped Rebound last night, I was afraid Lacey had given me bad info about her friend’s address, but apparently not. This is definitely the place.

  She lands amid more cheers, a huge grin on her face as one of the kids on the opposite team rebounds the ball. Then she’s flying up the court, flowy purple blouse wav
ing in the wind as the kid races toward his own basket.

  He’s half her size and she can block him easily—especially when he moves in to hip check her. Instead, she drops back a little, gives him a chance to shoot. He misses and that’s when she swoops in, grabs the ball, and fires it to one of her teammates, a huge grin on her very striking face.

  The car behind me honks and it suddenly registers that I’m sitting at a green light ogling an unaware woman through a fence, like a total perv. It’s a dick move and the realization has me looking away as I start hunting for a parking spot.

  I finally find one about a block and a half up. I parallel park, then grab my checkbook from the glove compartment before heading back toward the center.

  The front gate is open, and once I’m in the yard I head around the side to the basketball court instead of through the main door. There’s a growing crowd around the court by now and they’re rowdy—cheering and laughing, with just enough trash talk thrown in to keep things interesting. I hang at the back, dark shades on, because I don’t want to draw attention away from the game, and watch as Elara once again powers her way down the court.

  Now that I’m closer, I register a few things at once. One, she’s barefoot, which is both ridiculous and fucking awesome all at the same time. Two, she’s even taller than I remember from the locker room. Like over six feet tall, and that, too, is pretty dope—at least to a guy who’s six foot six. And finally? She’s hot as shit.

  Which I knew already, but seeing her like this really drives the point home. She’s not pretty, not in a conventional way—her face is way too strong for that. But she is captivating, so much so that it’s almost impossible to look away from her even when the action is somewhere else on the court.

  I was right about the cheekbones—super high and super angular. They’re set off by a sharp blade of a nose and a strong jaw that looks like it might slice you open if you get too close. Not to mention the brightest, richest violet blue eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.

  I called her an Amazon in my head the other day, but as she approaches the basket, arms raised and tight black skirt hiked up to show miles of strong, curvy leg, I realize I was wrong. This woman is no Amazon. She’s a fucking Viking, a Nordic warrior goddess who can cut with a look as easily as a sword.

  When she jumps, she all but flies and the way she’s going I expect her to bury her arm in the fucking basket when she dunks. Instead, she twists at the last second and fires the ball backward at one of her teammates, a scrawny-looking kid with dark hair and a huge grin on his face.

  It makes me like her even more.

  He catches it and moves in for the kill, shooting a three-pointer that has the crowd going crazy. I find myself cheering right along with them, even though I’m not looking at the kid anymore. I’m not looking at anything but her.

  The game goes on for another five minutes before she calls it—at a tie. The teens on the court with her talk a little more trash, but they’re pretty good-natured all in all. As the kids near me start to mill around, I duck my head and step back even farther as I try to make myself invisible. But at six six and three hundred pounds, invisible isn’t really in my job description.

  Sure enough, it only takes about thirty seconds before one of the boys—a dark-haired kid around twelve or thirteen—grabs his friend’s arm and starts pointing at me, eyes huge and a giant grin on his face.

  And to hell with blending in. The game’s over and there’s no more thunder to steal. Sure, I’d rather spend the next ten minutes chatting up the very sexy Nordic goddess who is even now facing the other direction as she pulls down her skirt and straightens her blouse, but I make it a policy to never turn away a fan. Especially if that fan is a kid from the wrong side of town.

  “Hey!” the dark-haired kid’s friend calls in a slight Mexican accent. “Aren’t you Tanner Green?”

  That’s all it takes to have the goddess whipping around and staring at me with narrowed eyes as she heads in my direction.

  I take my glasses off, let her get a good look at my eyes so she knows I come in peace. But that’s all it takes to convince the kids that I am, indeed, Tanner Green.

  The circle around me grows quickly to include nearly every kid on the court—which means that by the time she reaches me, there’s a crowd about four deep separating the two of us.

  I give her my most innocuous smile over the heads of a small group of middle school boys in Lightning jerseys. They’ve all got different numbers on, but the scrawny kid with dreads is wearing number sixty-one. I like his style, so I shoot him a wink and a thumbs-up. It’s a good number, after all—one that’s served me well for the last decade.

  Elara looks even less impressed—which is not something that usually happens to me. I’m no Shawn Wilson, but I usually hold my own and then some with the ladies, even the ones who are mad at me.

  I hold out a hand over the kids’ heads in an attempt to get us off on the right foot this time, but before I can even get a word out, she says, “You can’t just come onto the property like this, without even checking in with the front office.”

  The group of ballers directly in front of me look horrified, and number sixty-one starts babbling, “But, E. He plays for the Lightning. This is Tanner—”

  “Green,” she finishes for him, nodding to his jersey. “Yeah, I know exactly who he is, Jamal. He still needs to check in with the office and give me a good reason as to what he’s doing here.”

  She steps forward and the crowd parts like butter. It’s an impressive trick, one I wish I had in my arsenal, as it would make getting through fans—and my younger sisters—so much easier. Two more steps and she’s standing right in front of me, looking even more annoyed than she did at the stadium the other day. Which I didn’t think was possible.

  It irritates me, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t also intrigue me. That she didn’t also intrigue me.

  Usually I have to look way down at a woman, but not this one. Now that she’s slipped her shoes back on she’s just about looking me in the eye—and shit that’s sexy. It’s not often I run into a woman who’s tall—and strong—enough to hold her own against anyone, but Elara definitely fits that bill.

  Add in the challenging look on her face, like she’s just daring me to play the fame card when it’s already gotten me so much, and she’s pretty much the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. So hot that my damn dick starts to get hard just looking at her. Which is totally not what I need to have happen right now when we’re surrounded by kids and she’s currently looking at me like I’m a cross between a pedophile and a pile of dog crap.

  Doing my best to get my suddenly unruly body under control, I once again hold my hand out for her to shake. I also try a more conciliatory, less cocky smile. “My bad. I came by to talk to you and when I saw you playing, I couldn’t resist coming in to watch. I love a good pickup game, especially when the players are as skilled as you guys are.”

  She doesn’t roll her eyes at me like Tina would, but I can tell it’s a close thing. It’s just one more thing that never happens to me anymore—right up with getting yelled at by a strange woman when I’m wearing nothing but a towel—which is probably why I think it’s so fucking hot when Elara does it. Then again, I’m pretty sure she could recite the alphabet backward right about now and I’d think it was smoking.

  There’s just something about this woman that rings every single one of my bells—including a few I didn’t even know I had.

  “The kids are good,” she agrees, but the suspicion doesn’t leave her face or her voice. “But you still have to check in. This is a teen rec center, which means it’s open to kids but not the whole community. I can’t have strange men wandering around in here. I’m sure you understand.”

  Strange men? I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never a strange man. And definitely not in that prissy, pissed-off tone tha
t she’s rocking.

  The kids seem just as shocked because the crowd erupts, a bunch of them speaking at once as they explain that I’m not a strange man. I’m Tanner fucking Green. Of course she already knows that and doesn’t give a shit.

  Arms crossed over her chest, lips pursed—not in a good way—eyes narrow. She’s immovable. And Jesus. I have no idea why that pissed-off, stubborn look on her face gets me so fucking hot, but it totally does. “Of course,” I tell her, even as I reach into my back pocket. “Would it help if I said I brought my checkbook? And that I want to make a donation to the center’s basketball program?”

  The buzz of the kids goes up exponentially now, a few of them calling, “Thanks, Tanner,” while others start urging “E” to let me stay.

  “Yeah, E,” I tell her after she continues to stare at me, totally unyielding. “Let me stay.”

  It takes a few seconds, but eventually she says, “You can stay,” even as her look promises retribution. A whoop goes up from the crowd, but she holds up her hand. “After you check in.”

  I’m grinning like a fool by this point, but I can’t help it. She is such a hard ass, and I absolutely love it—even if she has already told me off once. I don’t question why that is, despite the fact that my usual taste in women tends toward soft, sweet ones who expect to be coddled.

  Instead, I just sweep a hand out in front of me and say, “Lead the way.”

  She lifts a brow, her expression saying more clearly than any words that I don’t call the shots around here. Then, just to prove it, she calls, “Hey, Miguel. Why don’t you show Mr. Green to the front desk? He can check in with Miranda and leave his donation with her as well.”

  And then she turns her back on me and saunters back to the court.

  It takes a few seconds for it to sink in that I’ve just been dismissed by Elara for the second time—after I’ve come all the way down here to try to make peace. Dismissed. By a woman even though I’m doing my best to charm her.