by Liz Crowe
The Black Jack Gentlemen Series by Liz Crowe
A city and a sport with something to prove—Meet the men who take that challenge.
The Black Jack Gentlemen—Detroit’s expansion soccer team.
They play hard. And live harder.
Red Card
(The Black Jack Gentlemen - Book 2)
Free will makes us human.
Choice makes us individuals.
Love makes us unique.
Metin Sevim has it all. At the pinnacle of international soccer playing success, he has managed to craft a perfect world for himself along the way.
When fate strips him of free will and the ability to choose his own path, he retreats from everyone and everything, destroying his hard-won career in the process.
Dragged back from the brink by his desperate family, Metin reluctantly agrees to coach the Black Jack Gentlemen Detroit soccer team but remains debilitated by memories and loss. When a surprising friendship emerges, it renews his passion for life, providing much needed solace… and extreme complications.
A saga of family dynamics and gender politics that cuts across cultures and circumstance, Red Card illustrates the human capacity for forgiveness through the life of one man as he attempts to rebuild his shattered existence.
Red Card
(The Black Jack Gentlemen – Book 2)
A Tri Destiny Publishing book
published by permission of the author
Copyright © 2013 by Liz Crowe
Cover Art and Design by Lindee Robinson
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission.
For more information: Tri Destiny Publishing
P.O. Box 330 Arcola, IL 61910
ISBN: 978-0-9893069-1-1
Visit our website at www.tridestinypublishing.com
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Glossary of Terms
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Read an excerpt from Man On (The Black Jack Gentlemen Book 1)
Read an excerpt from Shut Out (The Black Jack Gentlemen Book 3)
About Liz Crowe
Other Books by Liz Crowe
To second chances,
no matter what form they take
Glossary of Terms
“Guzelim” (gooz-eh-lim): My beautiful
“Canim” (Ja-num): Darling
“Evet” (Eh-vet): Yes
Part One
Chapter One
“You have got to be shitting me.” Alicia rose to her full, nearly six-foot height and glared at her father. He matched her stare with his own steely gray gaze. Unwilling to be intimidated, she let her anger speak. “No way. Screw that six ways to Sunday. Hell no.”
She marched over to the hotel suite bar and poured an aggressive amount of bourbon into a heavy crystal glass. Tears threatened, but she bit them back not about to give the man the satisfaction. She would not be manipulated into this… thing.
“Alicia.” His deep voice rumbled through her.
All the years she’d spent trying to please him: the travel teams, tournaments, the NCAA Division 1 soccer scholarship, all the practices, personal training sessions, extra games, and sacrifices made on behalf of her sport came crashing down on her, pummeling her with memory and barely repressed frustration. She gripped the glass so hard it hurt.
All the hours, all of the missed dances, proms, trips, events, and dates, all for…what? In the middle of tryouts for the women’s Olympic team yet again, she was on the ragged edge of giving up. Diploma in hand, she faced a yawning, gaping hole of her life without soccer. The English degree, zero desire to teach—what in the hell would she do without practices, matches, tryouts to structure her life?
And her own father had the nerve to think she’d parade around at a private party for the jackass prima donna players from the men’s teams. The ones he’d paid to come play an exhibition match at the football field his company owned? Right. All those golden boys, half of them from the Euro leagues, who didn’t have her fucking dilemma because they got to continue playing the game she loved. A game that had so consumed her she’d not sustained a real relationship with a man for nearly her entire dating life. He actually believed she’d prance around in high heels and a slinky dress so he, the estimable CEO of A Major Car Company and philanthropist could—what? Show her off?
“I need you to be there. Please, it’s… important to me,” her father pleaded, which only pissed her off more.
She ground her teeth and stepped out of the heels she’d worn down to the casino club that currently housed the teams before their media-blitzed match and party the next day. Grimacing at the ache in her calves she crossed her arms.
“Dad, are you deaf? I said no. I hate those guys, you know that. Jesus.” With a shaking hand she raised the glass to her lips once more. Going against her father’s will in any way felt very strange. She still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around it.
“Honey.” He stood, tugging his tie off and rolling his shoulders. Trevor Matthews, anyone’s definition of Alpha male, would be a prime catch even now in his early sixties. But since her mother had passed away from ovarian cancer years before, a messy horrible death that took a solid six months to finish, he had never even looked at another woman.
Not for lack of trying. She and her older sister, Melanie, encouraged him to go out, to enjoy himself. She smiled around her glass recalling how he’d flush red with embarrassment and deflect any and all attempts to set him up.
His deep voice snapped her out of the momentary reverie, and she blinked, his tone one she’d been programmed to heed.
“Listen, I understand this might not seem fair to you, considering… but truly, you are a known entity in this realm. God knows you worked hard to be, anyway, and I think….”
She held her hand up to cut him off. “Dad, stop it. Half of these guys are from Europe and the other half from South America where women don’t even play seriously, like they do here and….” She dropped into a chair and lowered her head to her arms at the hard reality of her own words. No one took women
soccer players seriously. Not even here. They were a freak show to be paraded out every four years so people could pretend to support females playing professional sports, nothing more or less.
Of course, she loved the game—even as sore as she was right then from extra training sessions for the tryouts next week. Her body already rejected the concept of dressing up like a damn Barbie doll, as opposed to putting on her shorts, shirt, and cleats, and doing what she loved.
Her dad poured his own drink and turned to her. “I’m worried about your sister,”
She smiled at his unsubtle change of subject. “What else is new?” Wincing, she stretched her calves and tried to unearth a few more excuses why she would not be going to the team party the following night.
Alicia stared in the full-length mirror in her childhood bedroom, brushing a bit of powder over the bruise on her cheek from the day’s training session with the under-twenty-four-year-old group chosen for Olympic team tryouts. She winced. By the end of the night she’d likely be sporting a real shiner under that eye. Her phone buzzed with a text.
She sighed and answered her father’s message. Yes, I will be there. Probably forty-five minutes late, though. Training went long.
“You’re such a wimp.” Her sister, Melanie, lolled in the doorway holding a glass of wine. “Why do you let him do this to you?”
She frowned at her older, shorter, prettier sister. “Fuck off, Mel.” She stuck her feet into towering high heels. She’d taken perverse pleasure choosing the five-inch black patent leathers. Damn things made her nearly six-foot-four. She’d be a freak show on parade anyway with her height in a room full of men used to seeing women as stick figure objects for future wives and girlfriend status so she’d gone with her shortest possible sleeveless dress that showed off her fit, tanned arms and hugged her athletic frame to perfection.
Take that, overpaid, over-flattered man-boy soccer players. She sprayed a little perfume on her shoulders, the futility of her whole life sitting in her gut like a stone.
“Alicia.” Melanie sat on her bed.
But she continued to ignore her, already mad at herself for even agreeing to stay in her old house, her bedroom, and feeling like she could suffocate from the memories that roamed the halls of the giant Grosse Pointe mansion.
“Come here. Sit.”
Melanie had never left Grosse Point, had moved in with her shiny banker husband a few blocks away. Until said shiny banker husband revealed his inner shithead and left her high and dry with an upside down mortgage and nearly fifty grand in gambling debt.
“At least I don’t have a car payment,” she’d say, a lot, breezy, and seemingly unaffected.
But Alicia knew better. Mel had gotten knocked up nineteen to a much older man, married him, had been happy as a housewife. Now, she clattered around, back in her father’s house with a surly teenager and a nine-year-old son, trying to pretend all was well.
“You don’t have to be his prancing pony, you know. All that stupid soccer stuff, all those years. So you get to be his pretty daughter-who-plays-soccer-isn’t-that-cute for this little project?”
“You aren’t helping me,” She slumped into her sister’s side. Melanie’s boozy breath wafted over her, setting off alarm bells in her already rattled psyche. “I’m good at the game. He was just trying to help me be better….” But she stopped realizing that any protest or excuse on behalf of her father’s soccer obsession sounded lame, even to her.
She’d spent way too many hours in tears, bitching and moaning about missing homecoming, prom, class trips, while Mel went on her merry way to all of them. She and her sister were closer than most. But Mel had always been the strong one, smarter, petite, and cute, not tall, gangly, and athletic. And at times, that grated on Alicia more than she liked to admit.
“I know, Alicia, I know.” She patted Alicia’s shoulder and sipped more wine. Melanie’s slow slide into angry grief had aged her, creating bitterness where she’d always been so carefree. The sister who didn’t play sports, had plenty of dates, and was the apple of their father’s eye, being a near-mirror image of their model-gorgeous mother, had become the defeated, divorced, single parent of two boys.
“Mom!”
They both smiled when Tanner’s voice cut through the room. Melanie’s younger son was such an amazing kid, easy and fun and….
“Jesus, what is all over you?!” Mel leapt up and snagged him as he flew through Alicia’s open door.
By the time they figured out the dye he’d used in his hair was real, reamed out her older son, Zach, for betting Tanner he would not use the hair coloring kit under her sink to transform his deep brown to bright yellow, Mel had collapsed into a chair, still clutching her ever-present wine glass. She jumped when Alicia laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Come with me tonight,” she said, meaning it. Having Mel there to deflect her own growing anger at the roomful of jerk-off, male professional soccer players would help her. Besides, Mel needed a night out.
“You’re nuts.” Mel waved in the general direction of the living room.
“They’ll be fine. Zach can watch his brother. I’ll call Mrs. Jackson next door and make sure she checks in on them. C’mon, Mel… you need to get out.”
Her sister shot her a funny look, one she understood but had never really liked. “I’m fine, Alicia. I used to go out all the time, remember? See where that landed me? Back at home, a broke mom of two.”
“Cut the pity party crap, Mel. Put on a nice dress and let’s go.”
“Jesus, Alicia you didn’t warn me….” Mel whispered into her ear when they arrived. “These guys are… wow.”
Alicia rolled her eyes. They’d missed the press conference song-and-dance, thank god, and arrived in time for the after party. Tables and chairs were scattered about in an attempt to make the cavernous space in the dimly lit giant hotel casino feel like a club. Music throbbed through the sound system, and waitresses wearing dresses leaving very little to the imagination passed through the crowd holding trays of drinks and frou-frou snacks. Alicia gazed around only half-interested in the teeming masses. She stiffened at one point, and gripped her sister’s ice-cold arm.
“Crap, Mel, it’s Josh.”
Melanie patted her hand and snagged a couple of martinis for them. “Yeah, I saw him.”
As if sensing her presence in the teeming room, a tall, blond man immediately met her stare. He frowned then his painfully handsome face split into a huge grin. Alicia stiffened. Josh Kingston, the man she’d dated for nearly a year while they were both at North Carolina, going to class and playing soccer in an endless round of exhaustion. He’d been her first everything—first real kiss, first boyfriend, and first sexual partner.
And first heartbreak—promising he’d love her forever as long as her sultry, slutty roommate, Hallie, had not inserted herself in his life and bed. Alicia hated feeling anything but resentful fury toward the guy, but her heart pounded and her stomach did annoying flips. Dear god, but he was sex on a stick, and she was lonely….
“Hey, ladies!” He pulled Alicia into a not-quite-impersonal hug. She sucked in a breath of him. “Alicia, you look….” He took her hands and stepped back whistling, his blue eyes darkening in that way she remembered as though it had been only yesterday that she’d had a screaming, crying fit in front of his roommates. “Damn, girl.”
“Yeah, nice try, asshole.” Mel tugged on her arm, dragging her away. “Fucking A, why is he here?” she muttered under her breath.
Alicia tried to rally but couldn’t rip her gaze from the lean perfection of Josh’s shoulders, the sharp angle of his patrician jaw, the soft line of his kissable lips. She groaned and slammed the martini way too fast. Josh-fucking-Kingston was hoping to be the star forward on her father’s still imaginary dream team? That really was the icing on her shit-cake of a week.
She forced her gaze from Josh’s backside to find Mel had faded away from her or been absorbed onto the pseudo-dance floor. Alicia felt surrounded by total stra
ngers, many of them over-the-top hot guys blatantly eyeballing her.
Biting her lip, she ducked her head and tried to barrel her way through the throng, seeking a glimpse of her sister’s dress. She stumbled at one point, the martini sloshing around in her nearly empty stomach. Lights flashed, music pounded in her chest, and fury at the sight of so many well-trained athletes in one place, who were actually going to get paid to do what she loved, made her vision wonky.
“Fucking high heels,” she mumbled, clutching at what she thought was a black-draped chair to reach down and slide one of the shoes off. Crazy, alarming tears threatened. Josh. Damn it. A blast from her crappy past she did not need at the moment.
The chair she hung onto shifted or slid, and she began to topple in embarrassing slow motion to the floor. It was perfect, really, a sublime and fitting end to her last week of college, that included rejection for the national women’s team again and tryouts for a lame-ass, second-rate women’s team that would go bankrupt inside six months. Now she had rejoined her sister living in her frothy, teenager-y bedroom under her father’s wing once again.
“Pardon,” a deep voice intoned in a mysterious, exotic accent. “Allow me to….”
But she dropped like a stone, landing on her hip and causing the surrounding party-people to scatter as if she’d lain down to give birth or something equally gross.
She sat a minute, caught her breath, and then tried to get to her feet. When her nose connected with the solid forehead of whoever leaned over her, she yelped in pain and sat back down.
