First and Tension

by Tara Sivec

  Have you already forgotten how many times you’ve gotten off thinking about her the last five months? Shit!

  “I’ve heard of Summersweet,” I say as calmly as I can, unclenching my fist from around my water bottle until the plastic crinkles back into its original shape. “My parents actually took me and my sister there over summer vacation once when we were kids. We only spent two days there because there wasn’t really much to do once you took a tour of the small island, rented bikes for a scenic ride through town, hung out on the beach for a while, checked out a few of the gift shops and other stores, and then grabbed dinner, followed up with some ice cream from the local ice cream shop. I just remember it being really chill, and everyone was friendly.”

  No hint of a future crazy redhead anywhere in sight.

  “Fascinating. Show me the family photo albums of you frolicking in the surf later,” Tyler deadpans. “Lucky for you, I don’t believe in coincidences. I’m going to head over to this hillbilly island in the middle of nowhere and take care of it.”

  “What do you mean take care of it?” I ask him worriedly as I wipe the sweat from the back of my neck with the towel he threw at me, wanting to kick my own ass for being worried about a woman who’s trying to screw me. And not in the fun way.

  “I’m going to have her whacked, obviously. Jesus, Quinn, I’m going to see how much it will take to pay her off and shut her up.” Tyler shakes his head at me, bringing his phone up to his ear as he makes a call to his assistant.

  “You’d stop getting STDs if you’d stop paying for women, Deal!”

  I can’t help it; another laugh flies out of me when Craig shouts from the Stairmaster. Thankfully, it temporarily puts a stop to the queasy feeling in my stomach. I only spent a handful of hours with that woman, but she definitely didn’t seem like the type who would take too kindly to being bribed for her silence.

  I also didn’t think she would be the type of woman to lie right to my face after the shit we shared with each other and then go running to the press, but here we are.

  I can’t believe I even tried to track her down when she turned into an obsession I couldn’t get out of my head. Thank God no one from the party returned my texts or voicemails.

  “Julie!” Tyler barks into the phone while all sorts of crazy ideas start running through my head. “Call my pilot and schedule me a flight over to that shitty little island off the coast of Virginia Beach ASAP.”

  Was any of it even real or the truth? She didn’t even tell me she cheered for the same fucking team I played for, for four years! Who does that? All her little cheers throughout the night make sense now. Fucking adorable little cheers that made me want to bend her over the closest table and—Nope! Stop it!

  I thought she looked a little familiar, but I’ve met so many people during my career that pretty much everyone looks familiar at a certain point. Ellen Westwood, the scary director of the Vipers Cheerleaders, put a rule in place long before I was drafted that the cheerleaders aren’t allowed to have anything to do with the football players, no matter how hard the players try. After a while, the guys just stopped trying and stopped paying attention to them, as shitty as it sounds, considering these women bust their asses every day to root for us. There’s no point lusting after hot, athletic women we never have a shot with unless they quit their job, which is some serious double-standard bullshit. There are still plenty of guys who buy thirty copies of the cheerleaders’ yearly calendar and jerk off to it, but I never understood the point. I’d much rather fantasize about a woman I can actually be with, not someone forever off-limits.

  Like the woman I fantasized about for five months, who made me laugh and forget about my problems for a few hours… who actually turned out to be psychotic.

  “What do you mean it’s not big enough to land a private plane on?” Tyler shouts, pulling me from my thoughts. “Do they even have running water and electricity? Jesus Christ… I’m sorry, did you just say… a ferry? A fucking ferry! Fine. Book a private one for me for later tonight, and make sure it’s stocked with caviar and…. I have to ride with everyone? And I have to walk up to the dock, buy my own ticket, and they only take cash? Is this fucking island located in the 1950s?”

  I just want to ask her if she got some kind of sick satisfaction out of pretending to be a decent human being on a night when I was questioning all my life choices.

  “Do the two professional athletes who currently live there, and clearly don’t care about their own well-being, play football? Since, you know—” Tyler laughs a little maniacally. “—the Deal Firm specializes in football, and my client list only includes an extensive number of professional football players.”

  Tyler pulls the phone away from his mouth long enough to wink, give me a finger-gun point, and whisper, “An extensive list, but you’re always my number one, Quinn.” Something I’m absolutely positive he tells all his clients. He brings the phone back to his mouth and yells at Julie. “Then no! If they don’t play professional football, I haven’t heard about those two schmucks, and I don’t give a shit!”

  “I’m going with you,” I mutter while Tyler continues to yell and complain to poor Julie, the words flying out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  Stalking over to the row of hooks nailed into one wall, I grab my blue-and-red drawstring bag with the Sharks’s logo on it from the middle hook, shoving my towel and water bottle inside before cinching it closed and throwing it over one shoulder.

  “The hell you are!” Tyler shouts after me, his phone still pressed to his ear as he jogs behind me. I walk quickly through the home gym, nodding and fist-bumping my teammates as I move past them, heading to the separate entrance door that leads out to the driveway so a bunch of sweaty, smelly football players don’t have to go traipsing through Patrick’s house and annoy his family. “You don’t need that kind of publicity on top of all this. Could you even imagine what the gossip rags would say if they caught wind you were visiting your secret girlfriend? They’d have you married and on your honeymoon by tomorrow morning.”

  My feet falter a little when I think about how I jokingly proposed to her that night and how, for just a few seconds out in my backyard, I crazily almost wanted to. Aggressively pushing open the gym door and stepping out into the bright sunshine, I reach into my bag to grab my sunglasses and slide them on my face.

  “Seriously, you’re not going—”

  The muffled ringing of my cell phone from the bottom of my bag cuts off Tyler’s order, and we both stop in the middle of Patrick’s driveway as I dig around inside and pull it out.

  “Oh fuck,” Tyler mutters when he sees the screen of my phone and who’s calling.

  I’m not gonna lie; I almost shit my pants when I see the name too, but I keep it together as I quickly answer it, not wanting to piss this woman off at all by making her wait more than two rings.

  “Jeanie! I was just thinking about—”

  “No, you weren’t just thinking about calling me, Quinn, or you would have done it before I called you,” Jeanie Bidwell, the owner of the Virginia Beach Sharks, speaks in a cool voice that instantly makes me feel chilly in the warm sunlight.

  In her mid-sixties, Jeanie made her millions as a successful marketing executive who invested her money very wisely. She bought her husband the Sharks ten years ago when he retired from teaching and was bored to death. He spent the next ten years having no earthy idea how to run a football team, hiring the wrong coaches and making all the wrong draft picks, until Jeanie told him in the nicest way possible that he was fired. She took over, cleaned house, and fired everyone else who was a problem. And spent a lot of money and put a lot of faith in all the promises I made her when my contract was signed. She is a badass businesswoman, who knows a hell of a lot about football. I respect and admire her—almost as much as I fear her.

  I just got to this team, and I already can’t imagine playing anywhere else, even if the team currently has the shittiest record in the league. Not to mention the monthly fami
ly dinners I’ve finally been able to attend in person and all the good, quality family time I was missing out on for far too many years. I refuse to let anything screw this up for me, when I’m finally where I’m meant to be.

  “I trust you’re going to take care of this little issue that seems to have arisen in the press?” Jeanie continues, and I can hear her clacking away on her computer through the phone, her ability to multitask just as awe-inspiring as Tyler’s.

  “Yep! I mean, yes… absolutely yes, ma’am, I am actually on my way right now to take care of the problem,” I reassure her as Tyler curses under his breath, hangs up on Julie, and then makes another call as he starts pacing in the driveway a few feet away from me.

  “Good, very good. That’s what I like to hear from my star quarterback, That he’s taking things seriously and getting the job done,” Jeanie replies, making me regret all the times over the last week I told Tyler to just ignore everything and it would eventually blow over, which I’m sure got back to Jeanie.

  It’s not blowing over; it’s blowing up, and it’s time I take care of this shit myself.

  “I’ll call and check in soon. Make sure you’ve got everything handled.”

  Before I can give her another promise I hope to God I can keep, Jeanie has already hung up on me, and I may have actually shit my pants for real.

  “A car will pick us up after dark tonight and take us to the… ferry dock, so no one sees us,” Tyler informs me, having a hard time spitting that last part out. “We’re getting in, getting this shit taken care of before anyone notices we’re there, and then we’re getting the last ride out on that disgusting form of public transportation. Got it?”

  “You’re going to stick out like a sore thumb. You know that, right?” I prompt, looking him up and down before I start walking to my car, pulling my car keys out of the pocket of my athletic shorts and hitting the key fob to unlock it. “It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t an Armani three-piece suit with Italian Gucci loafers type of island.”

  Tyler is already making another call and in the middle of bitching at someone—I’m assuming it’s poor Julie again—about the atrocity of how he’ll have to rent a golf cart for us to get around in once we’re on the island.

  “I don’t give a shit if they don’t come with private drivers. You find me a fucking driver!” Tyler yells before pulling the phone away from his mouth to reply to me, always paying attention to what I’m saying no matter what he’s doing. “I’m not wearing a baseball hat and dark sunglasses like you usually do to stay incognito, or it will mess up my hair plugs and Botox. Eat shit. This is how I look.”

  “I pay you entirely too much, and you don’t pay Julie nearly enough.” I shake my head at him as I open my back door and chuck my bag on the seat.

  “You pay me exactly enough, and Julie tells me how much I pay her. She’s fine. Now, let’s go shut down this gold digger by flashing what she wants in front of her money-hungry eyes and be home before you even drink your next protein shake.”

  When I raise one eyebrow at him nervously and questioningly, he just laughs at me.

  “Come on. It’s one little woman on an island in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure it will be a piece of cake.”

  Tyler pats me on the shoulder before turning his attention back to his phone call to shout some more as he walks down the driveway to his Bentley parked against the curb.

  I slide into my car and start it up, completely unsuccessful in trying not to run through every single moment of that night in my head while I drive back to my hotel, wondering how I could have misjudged someone so completely.

  CHAPTER 3

  Quinn

  “I’m gonna go throw up now.”

  “That” night…

  “I’m sorry I was dared to kiss a pass rusher’s end zone—Nope… oh shit!”

  A bunch of confusing words, followed by the scuffling of feet and a soft couple of thumps has me jumping up and quickly turning around from one of the cushioned pool loungers I was relaxing on. I find the woman who insulted my home and my playing abilities in my own living room sprawled in the grass on her hands and knees after taking a tumble walking out here. Under normal circumstances, there would already be porn music playing in my head to find a gorgeous woman in this position a few feet away, but these are not normal circumstances.

  She was rude, dammit!

  Even if she was right, and I should have tried harder to get out of the pocket more that game, and gray really did turn out to be the shittiest color I could have picked for this house.

  Whatever. Not the point. Karma is a bitch!

  But she’s also a woman who just ate shit on my lawn, and that could not have felt very good. To her pride or her hands and knees.

  Cursing under my breath and shaking my head, since I guess I’m still a gentleman, I jog over to her as she starts to push herself up from the ground, wrapping my hand around her elbow to help her.

  “I didn’t mean to say that. Fuck… shit! I didn’t mean to say that either,” she mutters to herself. “I’m not usually this sweary. That’s a lie; I’m totally this sweary.”

  When she snorts as I help get her back up to her feet, making sure there isn’t any damage other than grass stains to her knees, I find everything happening in front of me adorable as hell. I quickly let go of her arm and take a few steps back. Redheads are crazy, and I’m not allowed to fraternize with them anymore. I signed a paper and everything.

  I watch silently as she brushes her hands together to get the grass and dirt off them before looking up at me with those stunning green eyes again. The ones that almost made me tell her back in the house that she could insult me all night long if she wanted to… before I remembered I had a little pride.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Probably not.” She blows a long strand of red hair out of her eyes from the corner of her mouth, making me chuckle against my better judgment. “I shouldn’t be talking to you, but I never turn down a dare, and I’m already fired. My name’s Emily. I’m gonna go throw up now.”

  I have not a single clue what she just said, other than her name, but this much cuteness from one woman should not be legal. I find myself laughing out loud this time until I realize she’s not laughing with me.

  “Oh shit. You’re serious.”

  She just nods, gives me a thumbs-up, then turns her back on me, and starts vomiting in my juniper shrubs.

  Growing up with a sister four years older than me, I spent plenty of nights during her crazy teenage years holding her long hair back while she yacked in my bathroom instead of hers, which was closer to our parents’ room. I was all about doing her a solid so they wouldn’t hear her and she wouldn’t be grounded for life. She drove me and my friends everywhere before we had our licenses, and she bought all our alcohol for us before we turned twenty-one. I wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize that.

  Quickly moving into action, I lean across Emily’s bent-over body while she rests her hands on her knees. Reaching down and pulling her hair back from either side of her face, I secure it in one fist as I gently pat her heaving back with my free hand, while she purges all the demons.

  “That’s it. Get it all out….”

  This is absolutely a first. Women usually throw themselves at my feet, not puke near them. And I’m definitely not used to a woman who doesn’t freak out that Quinn Bagley is talking to her, let alone allowing him to hold her hair back when she throws up.

  Damn… her hair is really silky and soft.

  Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? She insulted you. Now she’s killing your favorite bush, and you’re thinking about petting her. Snap out of it!

  “Well, this is shaping up to be a great evening,” Emily groans a few minutes later when her stomach is finally empty. She stands back up and turns around, slipping the red, shiny strands of her hair out of my hand as she goes, until it falls all around her shoulders again. “Thanks so much for making sure I didn’t vomit in my hair. If y
ou’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just… leave the country… change my name. I heard Japan has eleven cat islands, where you can just go and be one with hundreds of cats, living off the grid forever. That sounds nice.”

  My laugh is so loud as she starts to walk away from me that I scare some birds that go flying out of a small tree a few feet away. Before I can tell myself, No, bad Quinn, I’m reaching out and grabbing her hand, giving it a little tug to turn her back toward me and keep her here.

  What the hell am I doing? I don’t have time for this shit. When this season is over, I’m an unrestricted, free agent for the first time in my career, and I’m supposed to be making a decision about my future. Not wasting time with a woman here in California, when the decision I’m leaning toward will take me halfway across the country.

  “My life is spent around a bunch of professional football players. Believe me, I’ve seen worse,” I reassure her, giving her hand a squeeze and not listening to one good, goddamn thing my brain is telling me. “I’ve done worse, actually. The last time we won the Super Bowl, I drank too much champagne and threw up on the Lombardi Trophy.”

  “I know.” She laughs softly, her smile lighting up her entire face and making my chest feel tight for some stupid reason. “I was there… for… when the video was all over the internet.”

  She stumbles over her words a little, and I wonder for a minute if maybe she didn’t manage to get all those demons out and into my bushes.

  “See? Every stupid mistake I make is caught on camera for the whole world to see. I’m the only one who saw you do that completely awful, mortifying, oh my God you can never show your face in public again, thing. You’re fine; I won’t tell anyone,” I tease her, really hoping this woman is cool with joking, before I pull my head out of my ass and walk away, like I should have done five minutes ago.

  “Would you look at that? A football player and a comedian. I want my cover charge back. Your show sucks.” Emily gives me a little smirk, letting me know she’s a good sport and making me wonder where the hell she’s been all my life.