by Cross,Lexi
“I just figured you’d have someone cooking for you,” she said with a shrug.
“Yeah, I guess that would make sense, but I’d be just as likely to cook for my house staff as I would be to have them cook for me,” I explained.
She nodded. “Well, you can cook dinner for me any time you want. Just no funny business.” She leveled her eyes on me and pointed her fork at me.
“Fine, no funny business,” I played along, raising my hands.
She smiled, and I knew that no matter what else she said about trying to keep our relationship purely professional, I was back in, and I would be able to work my way into her heart and into her pants if I just kept doing what I was doing. I was well on my way to winning her over and making her mine.
Chapter Nine
Kendra
I had encountered Lucky’s kind before. He was just out for the conquest. When I had turned him down after the kiss the other night, he’d really gone and turned up the heat on me. He started texting me every day, a couple times a day. He’d brought me lunch a couple of times. He left it at the front desk and disappeared both times before they called me down for it. I was pretty sure that was by design. He’d sent me flowers for my office—one bouquet and a couple of brightly colored arrangements.
I came out to his place for dinner to give him another chance to redeem himself. I wanted to see if he could behave after taking the opportunity to kiss me like he did last time. And I supposed part of me really wanted to see if he would try it again. I didn’t know if I would have been able to stop him a second time.
As much as I didn’t want to get involved with Lucky, I wanted him. He had the kind of charm and charisma that turned me on. Hell, his smile alone was enough to make me wet and make my knees weak. It would have been so inappropriate, though. It was bad enough I was letting him use me as his girlfriend for show. To actually give in and let it happen would have undone all the work I had done so far.
I asked him at dinner, “To what end?” He was talking about putting time and effort into us, but us was just a charade. It wasn’t real.
He didn’t answer me, even though he kept flirting with me off and on all night. He was going to continue to lay it on thick until he could get me in bed with him. Once he got me to sleep with him, it would all be over. The constant attention would be gone. The special treatment, gone.
I would just be another girl at that point, and all the sweet talk would have meant nothing at all. I wasn’t even sure we would go back to just being a professional couple. I couldn’t predict what Lucky was going to do. So far, he’d seemed to be the exact opposite of his reputation, but guys like him usually did come across that way. That was how they got away with what they did.
“If you know that’s what he wants, though,” I argued with myself on the way home from his place, slapping my hands against the wheel. I was trying to convince myself to go ahead and give in, to let sex be part of our arrangement.
“It makes more sense to sleep with him than to go through all the trouble to sneak someone else into bed,” I told myself, and I was right. To keep them from being noticed by the press, I would have had to sneak any partners other than Lucky into my bed. It made perfect sense to go ahead and sleep with Lucky instead, since we were already seeing each other anyway.
I just had to convince myself that sex was all it was. I couldn’t afford to let myself get hurt like I had before by fooling myself into thinking it was anything more than what it really was. I had fallen for a guy just like Lucky once before, and he’d left me high and dry.
I had been ready to give myself to him completely. I was moving in with the guy. He had me convinced he was going to propose to me and that he was going to marry me if I just went along with his plan. Instead, it turned out he was just passing through. I was just a stop along the way.
“Lucky isn’t like that,” I told myself.
But he was like that. He’d been forced to transfer schools in college because of some trouble he got into with one of the cheerleaders. He’d been kicked out of several schools before college because of his behavior. Then, after being the kicker for his last team for years, he was traded because of a girl.
If I did give in and allow myself to get seriously involved with him, there would be no telling how long it would last, but there would be an end. He would end up finding another team, another town, and he’d bolt, just like he’d done before. He’d end up getting himself traded again.
He already didn’t fit in with his current team. He was an outcast among them. They were all married, serious professionals who treated their sport like the fate of the world depended on their performance. Then, there was Cade “Lucky” Hendrix, playboy athlete extraordinaire. He was nothing like the other guys.
I sat in front of my building forever, thinking to myself in silence, before going upstairs. Being in a new town wasn’t always as fun as it was cracked up to be. The only people I really knew were my team members from Older Brothers and Lucky. I didn’t know the people at Older Brothers well enough to call anyone and vent my frustrations, and they were about Lucky, so he was out of the question.
Was his lifestyle really that much worse than mine?
I got out of the car and walked into my building. I had moved five times in the last four years. If I had been honest with myself, I wouldn’t have been telling stories about how this or that organization went under, pushing me along to my next stop. Sure, a couple of them had shut down on me, leaving me nowhere to go except back on the road, but the fact of the matter was that I had been running.
I ran every time I got close to someone. That was what made it so bad.
I walked into my apartment and tossed my purse onto the couch where Lucky had sat when he came over that night. I could still smell his cologne, though there was no possible way in hell any trace of it still lingered in the air. It had been too long, and my candles, perfume, and incense had surely covered it up by now. Nonetheless, I could smell him all around me.
“Dammit, Lucky,” I cursed him in my empty apartment. “I want you so much. I’d give myself to you in a heartbeat if I knew you weren’t just going to run out on me the next morning.”
I grabbed a beer and plopped down on the couch. I had bought the beer for Lucky, and he’d only had two of them out of the six-pack. I had no problem drinking the rest of them. Not if it stopped me from thinking about him.
I wasn’t sure the beer would, but it was worth a try.
“I want a white picket fence,” I continued, still talking to the empty apartment. “I want the kid, the dog, the nice suburban house. I don’t want a damn playboy in a mansion. I don’t want to be some jock’s trophy wife.”
I crushed the can, dropped it into the trash in the kitchen, and grabbed another. I went back to the couch and kicked off my heels. I shrugged off my coat and opened my blouse, revealing my cream colored bra underneath, covering my full breasts.
It had been so long since anyone had touched me. That kiss the other night haunted me because it was so passionate, and it felt genuine. But Lucky wanted it to feel genuine. His type always did. He’d pursue me until he got me, and then he’d just toss me away like the last beer I finished.
I cracked open my second one.
“You know what? If he wants to fuck me, let him,” I told my empty apartment. “I won’t stop him. But I won’t let him run away either. I’m going to do what I can to make sure Lucky really wants me. I want to make sure he’s not just playing me.” I took a long swig.
My second beer wasn’t my second drink, I remembered, wondering why I was already starting to feel it. I’d had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner at Lucky’s.
Dinner had been nice. I had been impressed by his meal. The chicken was cooked perfectly. The vegetables tasted fresh, and the pasta was amazing. He’d seasoned the chicken and the vegetables. Then, he placed the veggies on the plate to create a bed beneath everything else. Next, the pasta sat on top of that, and the cut chicken topped it off
. It had been magnificent. The boy knew how to cook!
I wondered if he knew how to do other things, in other rooms besides the kitchen.
“I guess I should have stayed and found out,” I told myself as I drank more of my beer.
I realized what I had said and shook my head.
“No, I’m glad I didn’t stay to find out. I don’t need all that. I don’t need to allow myself to get hurt again, not like before. If I could revitalize Older Brothers without his help, I’d do it. I’m not even sure if I should buy his whole good guy routine anyway.”
That was the truth. I had no idea if he was being honest with me about anything. The whole staged girlfriend thing could have just been part of his plan to get into my pants. It was a damn good one, too, except I wasn’t wearing any pants. I dropped my skirt on the living room floor and threw my blouse down on top of it.
I stood in the living room in just my underwear. Where the hell was Lucky? I was practically naked and starting to feel myself getting drunk.
“Come on, Lucky. You feeling lucky tonight? I’m right here, ready and willing,” I shouted into my apartment.
Of course, there wasn’t any answer. Lucky wasn’t there. He was still back at his house. He was missing the opportunity of a lifetime. I was ready to give it to him and ask for nothing in return, except maybe for him to stop playing games and leave me the hell alone.
I threw the second can away and grabbed a third on the way to my bedroom. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it through the third one and stay awake.
Having Lucky’s name attached to Older Brothers had turned out to be pretty lucrative. By making it look like we were setting him straight, it made us look more powerful and more promising as a program for disadvantaged boys. But there was always the possibility I could find a donor big enough to support the program without any unnecessary gimmicks. And Lucky was probably unnecessary as hell.
He was definitely unpredictable and dangerous to keep too closely associated with the program. But Older Brothers wasn’t really why I was keeping him around, and I knew that. I knew I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but I was really keeping him around so I could eventually let him get me into bed.
I took a long gulp of light beer.
There it was, right in the front of my mind, the real reason I was playing Lucky’s game. It had nothing to do with the program and everything to do with how he made my wet lower lips quiver. It had everything to do with the way my thighs trembled when he was near. I wanted him, as much as I knew it was a bad idea to sleep with someone like him again.
I was out before I finished the third beer. I set it on my nightstand and felt sleep tugging my eyelids down. I pulled up my soft, full covers and lay down in the bed. I swore I could feel Lucky’s body lying next to mine. It felt so warm and comforting.
I drifted off imagining him in bed with me, holding me and assuring me that he wanted so much more than just sex with me. He was telling me he wanted a white picket fence and a dog, and dozens of children, a huge family. I laughed, because I knew it was just my imagination, but it was still a damn good fantasy to have.
Chapter Ten
Lucky
“There are a couple of other people I need to convince that I’m settling down,” I told Kendra over the phone.
It had been a few days since we had dinner together at my place. I had seen some cracks in the wall she tried to put up in front of me, and I knew that there were some easy ways to get around her defenses. Plus, my parents had called and were very concerned that I hadn’t been on the field yet. They were not happy to see the backup out there doing my job.
I couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t happy about it either.
“The guys from your old team?” She sounded like she expected me to be joking.
“No, not them. I really haven’t talked to them lately, but I’ll probably call them this weekend. No, I was thinking more along the lines of my parents,” I told her. I listened to her shocked silence as she let the idea of meeting my family sink in.
“Your parents,” she repeated.
“Yep, they are very concerned about me. I haven’t been on the field yet this season, and they also don’t believe I have a steady girlfriend. I really need their support, to be honest with you, if I want to keep moving forward. I mean, I know I don’t talk about them much, but they are really important to me, and they’ll tell you they’re my biggest fans.”
Kendra liked it when I opened up to her, so I tried to make it sound like I was sharing something really personal. I hoped she bought it, because I really wanted to take her to meet my parents when I visited them for the weekend. I wasn’t playing, and I wasn’t going to be at the stadium for the game, so I figured I’d go see my parents and watch the game at their house.
There were so many reasons to take Kendra with me. I wanted her to see my parents’ successful marriage so she knew that beneath it all, I came from a committed background. Also, I wanted her to see that I was interested in more than just getting her into bed. She’d shown me that there was so much more to a real relationship than I had realized.
We had already done more together than I ever did with any of my exes. That was a big deal to me. I wanted her to see what we could have if we just kept at it.
Plus, I needed a driver. That wasn’t a short drive, and I wasn’t all that confident in my driving ability just yet.
“Am I your pretend girlfriend this weekend, then?” she asked me.
I had to seize the opportunity. “Only if you don’t want to be my real girlfriend,” I told her.
“Nice. Classy even,” she said, laughing. “Yeah, I’ll be happy to go with you. But don’t think this means I want to be your real girlfriend.” I could imagine her winking.
“Awesome. Do you mind driving?”
She cackled at the question. “That’s the real reason you want me to go, isn’t it?”
“Baby, you can see right through me.” No, the real reason was because I wanted to get her in bed and use my parents’ love for each other to do it, but I wasn’t going to admit that to her. Hell, she probably already suspected what I was doing anyway. She really could see right through me, but as long as she agreed to it, all was good.
“Yeah,” she said humorlessly. “When are we leaving?”
“Whenever you get here. I don’t really have an itinerary, so whenever you’re ready to go, I am,” I told her.
“I can’t just take off like that whenever I want to, Lucky,” she told me.
“No, I didn’t mean like that. Just whenever you feel like it, I’m ready to go,” I told her.
She started laughing. “I’m just busting your balls. Start getting ready. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”
We hung up and I started getting my shit together to go. I put my suitcase by the door. It was already packed. I had packed it when I decided to take her to meet my parents.
We drove overnight, crossing the state line a little after midnight. I could already feel us getting closer to the guys, my parents, my hometown, and all the stress of returning and having to admit that things weren’t going as well as I had hoped.
Of course, the state of things was pretty obvious to anyone who had been paying attention, but I didn’t want to have to admit it to anyone, least of all the guys. There was no guarantee I was going to get to see them, though. They were probably out of town at a game that weekend.
“So, tell me a little bit about your parents,” Kendra said on the way to their house.
“They’ve been married forever. They were high school sweethearts, and they’ve worked harder at their relationship than anyone else I’ve ever known. When they hit a rough patch, they just hunker down together and remember what brought them together in the first place. It’s really something else,” I told her.
“I can’t wait to meet them, then,” she said.
“Yeah, they are the perfect example of what a married couple should be like,” I added.
“Impressive
. I hope to have a love like that someday,” she said absently.
There it was. I was in. The door was open, and my foot was in.
“I’m sure you will,” I told her. I didn’t want to say it would be with me. I didn’t want her to realize that was what I was thinking. I wanted her to know that she was worth that kind of love and that it would eventually find her. I put my hand on her leg and let it rest there gently as we continued to ride through the night.
The sun beat us to my parents’ house, and that was fine. They might not have been happy to have us pulling up in the driveway before sunrise, especially since I hadn’t told them I was bringing the girl I had told them about on the phone. Kendra was going to be a surprise. I figured they would enjoy meeting the one who was cooling my jets.
