by Cross,Lexi
I could feel Lucky’s eyes on me the whole time I worked. It was a very uncomfortable feeling. I was starting to get a little self-conscious.
“You can turn on the TV if you want. I have cable,” I told him, hoping he’d want to watch something on TV instead of just watching me.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV these days,” he said.
“Fair enough. Seems like you’d be too busy to anyway,” I said, trying to spark up a conversation and keep him from just sitting there staring at me.
He didn’t say anything back. I waited a moment for him to pick the conversation back up himself before continuing on my own.
“So, what made you call this afternoon?” I asked. “Not that I’m offended you called just to talk, but normally our conversations lead to quick public appearances, things like that. Today, I got the impression you just wanted to talk.”
“Well, it occurred to me that I don’t know anyone else locally. Just you and the team, really. I could call the guys back home, I guess.”
“You mean the guys from your old team,” I said for clarification.
“Exactly, but I didn’t want to let them know things aren’t going well, you know?”
“I guess. I never realized just how important it is for you guys to keep up appearances. That’s astonishing, if you ask me. It just seems too counterintuitive,” I told him, knowing I sounded a little more sympathetic than I should have. I didn’t want him getting the wrong idea, but I did appreciate finally being let in a little more.
I let him talk a little more about his transition from one team to the other while I finished cooking and preparing dinner. He also drank a couple of beers while we talked. He didn’t move from the couch, though, and I was glad for that. I didn’t want him getting up and potentially hurting himself even worse.
Once dinner was served, we sat on either side of the coffee table in my living room. I didn’t have a dining room. It was a very small apartment. He sat on the couch, and I sat in one of my chairs.
I cooked the steak the way I liked it, medium. I watched him cut into his first bite. I watched as he tried the meat, stabbing it with his fork and putting it slowly into his mouth to taste it. He moaned in gratitude and appreciation. It was such a deeply satisfying sound, to know that I had cooked something that brought him pleasure.
“I take it you like it,” I said.
“Damn right, I do. That’s some good steak.” He barely took a breath before his next bite.
We ate mostly in silence. It was always my opinion that a quiet meal meant the food was really good. Either that or there were things that needed to be said that no one was ready to say out loud. I hoped our meal was quiet because we were both too busy enjoying it to talk.
“I know you didn’t sign up for all of this, but I want to thank you for helping me out today,” he said.
I could tell he was feeling vulnerable, and it was probably a new feeling for him. He’d blown into town after being traded to avoid a scandal. He’d acted like it was nothing more than just a change of scenery. He’d taken on our fake relationship almost immediately to prevent any additional problems with his new team. He’d started practice with them almost right away. He put on a tough exterior for the world, and he found himself in a position with me where he couldn’t do that. He was being forced to show me parts of himself that he probably didn’t even show the guys back home.
“I don’t mind, Lucky. We may not be together, but we’re still a team, right? We still have to work together, and it’s always good to know what you’re working with, isn’t it?”
“It is. And you know, you’re the only person here who has consistently called me Lucky instead of Cade. That helps a lot. You have no idea,” he said. He looked at me with something deep and powerful in those brown eyes. He was feeling pretty emotional, I could tell, but I didn’t know what to do to help him out of it.
“Well, you told me that was your name, so I’ve stuck to it. Besides, you’ve been pretty lucky for me, and you seem pretty damn lucky yourself.” I winked.
“How have I been lucky for you? There was that night at the club, when you freaked out. You don’t like all the attention, and you’ve been in the paper every day since we met. How is that lucky?” he asked.
“Easy. You’ve drawn a lot of attention to me and to my organization. People see that even the new guy on the team is involved, and it’s generating interest. We’re getting more funding. We’ve got more people interested in becoming members. You’ve done a lot of good for us, believe it or not,” I explained.
“Good, I’m glad I could help.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back against the couch.
“Want me to take your plate?” I asked him as I got up from my chair to take mine.
“Sure, if you’re offering,” he said.
I leaned over to grab his empty plate, and he reached up to take my face in both of his hands. Before I realized what was happening, his lips were on mine. I almost dropped our plates before I could put them back down on the table. I put my hands on either side of his firm, chiseled face.
Our lips parted as our mouths opened. I received his tongue between my lips, and I could feel myself drifting towards him across the table. My skin tingled as we continued to kiss. Our lips worked together furiously as all the pent up desire between us began releasing itself in that one kiss.
I pulled myself back and looked into his eyes, so full of desire for me. My toes uncurled. The tension between my legs released. I let out the breath I was holding.
I panted. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to let it go wherever it went, but that was wrong. We weren’t supposed to be letting this happen for real. Lucky was just supposed to be a business partner, not my lover.
“If I had known you tasted that good, I would have kissed you a long time ago,” he said.
“No, Cade,” I said, and I saw the shock in his face when I called him by his real name. “We can’t do that again. That was inappropriate.”
“I’m sorry,” he said slowly, his brow furrowed.
“No, I am. I should have known that this was going to happen. I should have seen it coming. All the signs were there,” I told him. And they were. I saw every red flag that had popped up in hindsight, when they had seemed like invitations at first.
“But it was good, wasn’t it?” he said, trying to persuade me to let it continue.
“That’s not the point, Cade. The point is, this is an arrangement. I’m supposed to be posing as your girlfriend, and you’re supposed to be acting as a mentor to one of our Younger Brothers. I think I need to take you home, and going forward, we need to keep this strictly professional.”
I grabbed the plates and put them in the kitchen sink. I felt like such a fool for cooking him a good dinner and leading us both on for so long. I didn’t say anything else to him on the way back to his place to drop him off. We rode in silence.
I didn’t even say anything as he got out of my car and stuck his crutches under his arms to hop up the steps leading to his front door. It killed me to stay quiet, but I wasn’t about to become another notch on his bed post.
Chapter Eight
Lucky
She called me Cade.
My luck was running out. I had agreed to keep things professional and platonic between us after the kiss, but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to uphold my end of that particular bargain. Rather, I didn’t know how long I would be able to do it. It wasn’t a matter of if I gave in to my desires. It was a matter of when.
Still, she called me Cade. My luck had run out with my old team. It had run out on the field, leading to me getting hurt. I hadn’t had any to begin with when it came to my new coach and the team’s owner. But my luck with Kendra, the only luck I had left, was gone.
She’d rejected my advances. She’d told me no. She had stopped me to reiterate that ours was a purely professional relationship.
I had never wanted anyone as much as I wanted her right
then. I had worked on other girls to open them up before, but with the ones I went after, it usually just took a few well-placed compliments. It didn’t take much to get between their legs, or to get into their hearts. With Kendra, I could tell it was going to take some serious work.
She wasn’t insecure like the other girls I’d gone after in the past. She didn’t have the same self-esteem issues that everyone else had. But she didn’t know how beautiful she was, and it seemed to make her uncomfortable to try to make herself look beautiful. She didn’t care much about what she looked like. I wanted to change that.
I wanted to put myself in her life. I wanted to go beyond just being her pretend boyfriend, the business partner from the football team who was going to trade mentoring a kid from her charity for a handful of dates.
No, that wasn’t who I wanted to be. I wanted to be her real boyfriend. I wanted to get her to fall for me. I rarely ever took no for an answer from women I wanted to be with. If I saw something I wanted, I went after it, full force. I was going to do the same with Kendra.
She was already a confident, powerful woman. Trying to build her confidence wouldn’t work. I knew I wanted to show her how beautiful she was, but I knew that wasn’t going to be enough. I thought about the times she had opened up to me and the times it felt like we were getting closer. Those times, I had listened to her. I had shown her I cared, and I had made her laugh. Laughter was always a good ploy. Giving her caring attention seemed to work, too. So I decided to make that my plan of attack. I was going to be attentive to her.
The next day came, and I was stuck at home. I was going to be stuck at home for a week or two, until my ankle healed enough that I could start working with it at practice to make it stronger again. That meant missing the first three or four games of the season. I hated it, but it was necessary.
I decided to text Kendra, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to say more than just, “Hey, how are you?” I wanted to show her that I was concerned about her, not just fishing for a conversation starter.
Hey, Kendra. I hope you’re having a good day. Sorry about last night. Talk to you soon.
I tried to leave it short and simple, but I wanted to put a few things in there for certain, like apologizing for the kiss and leaving the door open for us to talk again another time. She texted back a little while later, and we talked a little, but it was all safe, comfortable small talk. That was fine. I wasn’t trying to get into anything heavy with her right away. I wanted to wait for all of that and build up to it this time so that we actually had a foundation underneath it.
Over the next few days, I texted her once a day just to let her know I was thinking about her. When it got bearable to try to drive, after the first week on my ass, I decided to grab a bite for her to eat and drive it up to her office.
I left the food and a note with the receptionist in her building, telling her not to page Kendra until I was out of the building. I got a text from her later that afternoon.
Thank you for lunch. I hope this means you’re feeling better. Let’s get together soon. Tabloids are getting quiet.
I couldn’t explain how excited that text made me. I wanted nothing more than to get with her again, and to actually get with her the next time instead of just dancing around it, instead of just playing with her.
I texted her back to invite her to dinner at my place. I was going to cook for her. I wasn’t sure exactly what she would have liked, but there were things that worked for any date, especially for cooking at home. I decided to go Italian. I was going to do something with chicken, pasta, and fresh vegetables, maybe with a light vinaigrette over it. I needed a recipe and some supplies from the grocery store.
Feeling confident in my driving, I went to the store to pick up what I needed. She texted back while I was on the way to ask if I felt up to cooking with my ankle. She said she’d be happy to cook for me again, but I told her to come on after work and I would have everything ready.
I grabbed some white wine to go with dinner and the fresh greens, cucumbers, and tomatoes I needed for dinner. I had the chicken, pasta, and vinaigrette at home. I hobbled around on one crutch while I piled what I needed into a basket.
I hobbled up the steps into my house. I was exhausted by the time I got home, but I was determined to make the food and show her the charm that won women over every time—Lucky’s Charm, I called it.
I dressed in light linen clothes while I prepared dinner, and the knock came at my door just in time, just as I was plating the food and serving it up on my table with the wine. I lit the candles, put covers over the plates, and hurried to the front door—as much as I could hurry, of course.
“Kendra, it’s good to see you again,” I told her when I opened the door. I couldn’t overstate how refreshing her beautiful eyes and curly hair were, or how kissable those delicious lips were, but I didn’t want to run her off with too many compliments right off the top like that.
“I’m glad to see you’re up and moving around,” she said, giving me her warm smile and a gentle kiss on my cheek.
“Well, you are just in time. I just put our plates on the table when you rang the doorbell,” I told her.
“Wow, you timed that perfectly, didn’t you?”
“I guess I did. I can get your coat if you’d like,” I offered as she entered through the doorway. She was wearing one of her usual skirt suits. I reached for her suit jacket as she shrugged it off of her shoulders. I turned and hung it up on a hook by my front door.
“Where are we eating?” she asked me.
“In the back. I’ve got a table set on the patio for us. Come right this way.” I put a hand on the small of her back and led her through the house to the patio. I pulled the plate covers off to show her what we were having and pulled her chair out so she could sit at the table.
“It looks great, Lucky,” she said. Yes, she called me Lucky again, after all the time she’d been calling me by my real name, and the times she hadn’t called at all. “But, really, you didn’t have to go through all of this trouble,” she added.
“It was no trouble, Kendra,” I said as I took my seat.
“But your leg,” she protested.
“Let me worry about that. So, how have you been doing since the last time we saw each other?” I asked.
She shot me a brief, suspicious look. She knew what I was up to. There was never any doubt of that. She could see straight through me when she wanted to, and it was one of the things I liked about her so much. That and the fact that she was a hard one to crack.
“Just been busy with work. Enrollment is up. More investors have come out of the woodwork. We’ve got a lot going on. We need to get you in there, get you paired up with a Younger Brother finally,” she said.
“Whenever you’re ready. You’ve mentioned it a few times, but we haven’t done anything yet. I’m starting to think you’re just trying to keep me for yourself,” I joked.
“You wish,” she played along.
“A boy can dream, right?” That one earned me another suspicious look.
“I’ll be honest with you, Lucky. I’m still not sure you’ve changed. I’m not sure you’re ready to put all of that stuff behind you,” she said.
I nodded. “Fair enough, but I’ve been trying to show you that I have. I haven’t been out chasing other women. I’ve been putting all of my extra time into you, into us,” I argued.
“But to what end? The last time we were together, you made a very inappropriate move. You tried to kiss me, and it was a deep kiss.” She laughed. “You weren’t playing around, Lucky.”
“No, I’m not playing around,” I told her.
She blushed as the comment landed just like it was supposed to.
“I’m not taking any of this lightly,” I added.
“You shouldn’t be. Any fooling around could get us both in hot water.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I sighed.
She watched my face while she continued eating her chicken. I figured she was waiti
ng to see how I responded to her comments.
“How’s the food?” I asked, avoiding the topic of taking us to the next level.
“It’s actually really good, Lucky. I never would have pegged you for a good cook,” she said, covering her mouth because she was still chewing. It must have been pretty damn good.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I enjoy cooking for myself and for guests when I can.” Of course I liked to cook. It was an easy way to win women over. I hadn’t found any true love potion yet, but I had found that there were lots of foods that would kick down doors and walls to let me in.
