Pinned Down: A Triple Threat Sports Romance

by Cross,Lexi

  I didn’t care if this conversation was the last thing I could ever do for her. I knew she would be furious if she knew what I was doing, and it didn’t take a genius to know that she was eventually going to find out what I was up to. She needed help, and I couldn’t deny how much I cared about her.

  “It’s just a big misunderstanding with an ex,” I told him, not really wanting to get into detail about what was going on.

  “It usually is, son. It usually is. Well, look, you didn’t call me just to shoot the breeze. What does she need?” he asked.

  I was in!

  While we were talking, I’d been sitting at the desk in my home office. I was bouncing a little pen on the desk between my fingers. When her father finally asked what she needed, I grabbed the pen and stood up from my chair.

  “It’s not my place to go into the numbers with you,” I told him. “I’d really rather you call her and get it all squared away with her.”

  “I’m going to do that, but it wasn’t your place to call me in the first place, was it? I’m sure she didn’t give you my number and tell you to call me when she needed help. You probably had to track us down. I also know she’s not going by our last name. I know she’s going by Kendra Boles. She has been since before she left. So tell me, how much does she need?” he asked again.

  “About three million,” I finally answered. It was a lofty number, and there was no way she really needed that much, but it was in line with the previous offer that had been put on the table, and I didn’t want to leave her any reason to reconsider.

  “Three million?” He sighed. “I do need to call her, don’t I?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s a lot of money. And you said this is because the last director of the local office ran off with a bunch of money and left them in the hole?” I imagined he was sitting at a desk, too, probably looking through tall windows at a patio where Kendra’s mother was kicking back on a lounge chair by the pool.

  “Yes, sir. She’s been playing catch up and just can’t seem to get ahead. She’s already sent all the employees home because she can’t pay them,” I told him.

  “And she’s about to lose the office, you said.”

  “That’s right. Part of that money is for the mortgage on the office.

  “I’ll tell you what. Keep my number in your phone. Call me whenever she won’t. I’m going to talk it over with my wife, and we’ll probably give her a call in just a little while. Now, you know she’s going to be mad at you for calling us, right?” His tone had changed to one of gratitude and acceptance. He didn’t sound irritated that I had called to ask for his help anymore.

  “Yes, sir, I’m aware, but I’m prepared to face her anger after she talks to you,” I said, a smile spreading across my face.

  “We’ll see what we can do to help her. Don’t call her and warn her that we’re calling, okay? I want it to be a surprise,” he added.

  “That’s fine. I figure it will be anyway,” I said.

  “Great. At least we’re on the same page, then. Hey, it was good talking to you, Mr. Hendrix,” he said.

  “You can call me Lucky,” I told him finally. I had refrained from telling him that earlier just because I wasn’t too comfortable talking to him at first, but I figured if we were going to talk more, and if he had accepted me as his daughter’s romantic interest, I figured it was appropriate to ask him to call me Lucky.

  “Lucky?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Everybody calls me Lucky.” I felt like a high school kid meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time and trying desperately to make a good impression.

  “Well, are you feeling lucky today, Lucky?” he asked with a straight tone of voice, miraculously managing not to laugh.

  “I am, Mr. Isaacson,” I answered.

  “Well, I’m supposing they call you Lucky because you are pretty lucky? I mean, so far, you don’t sound lucky to me. You’re in some sort of trouble that I hope you know I’m going to look into, especially since you’re seeing my daughter. Kendra isn’t accepting your help, which is not very lucky. And, frankly, you had to call me behind her back, which is not going to end well for you. It might end well for her, and I can only guess that’s what’s really important to you, but still.”

  “They call me Lucky because I make kicks that no one can and because I can get myself and my team out of binds that no one else can. If you can help, I will consider myself very lucky, indeed,” I assured him.

  “Okay, that helps. I’ll go talk to the wife. You’ll know what we decide, I suppose. She’ll probably call you raising hell about whatever we decide to do,” he told me.

  “Thank you, Mr. Isaacson. It was a pleasure meeting you,” I said, ending out the conversation.

  “You, too, Lucky. Thanks for calling us to let us know what’s going on with our daughter. We never really hear from her, so we both appreciate that. Hopefully this all goes over well and we get to meet you in person.”

  “I hope so,” I told him.

  We hung up, and I realized I felt like I’d been holding my breath. I exhaled slowly and hoped that Kendra wouldn’t call me before her parents had a chance to call her. I didn’t want to be on the phone with her when they called, and I didn’t want to feel compelled to tell her what I had done. She was going to find out soon enough on her own. I wanted to be as far away from the phone as possible until that happened.

  I didn’t even know if her parents were going to be able to help her the way Tommy and I had both offered to. I hoped that they would at least convince her to let me help her out. At any rate, they were going to talk to her and reconnect. I had to give her father her number before we got off the phone because he didn’t have it. They talked that rarely.

  I wasn’t looking forward to hearing from her after their conversation, but I knew that no matter what happened between us, she was probably going to be alright. I stared at the black screen of my phone in my hand. I knew there were other people I could call to get help for her. I knew that the guys would probably help me get the money to her. Plus, Jake and Harley probably would have been glad to hear from me. We hadn’t talked since I left.

  I resisted the urge to call them up and set up additional donations from them. We would have made the three million from Tommy look like pocket change, surely. I also had to resist the urge to look into Tommy and see what he did for a living, where he got his money from. It seemed like anyone willing to part with that kind of money had secrets to cover up.

  I wondered if her parents had any secrets to cover up, or if her father would become curious about my secrets once he looked into who I was a little more. On paper, I shouldn’t have had enough money to make large charitable donations. Then again, the paper didn’t show my secrets. Besides, I had already told Kendra too much about my money. I was sure she didn’t want to know anything else. But her father didn’t know me. His tone of voice told me he could get protective when he wanted to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kendra

  I didn’t recognize the number when I looked at the screen, but that wasn’t uncommon in my line of work. I was often answering calls that could have been related to work just because there was the chance that it would be beneficial to the cause, so to speak.

  “This is Kendra,” I answered, figuring it had to be a donor calling me back, though I usually tried to save numbers after speaking with someone the first time.

  “Kendra Isaacson,” the voice on the other end said.

  My blood froze and my jaw dropped. I almost dropped my phone. I couldn’t find any words to speak. I hadn’t heard the voice speaking to me in years. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had spoken to either of my parents.

  My father laughed. “It’s okay, honey. It’s a surprise to hear your voice as well.”

  His voice was deep and smoky and reminded me of my childhood. It was warm and comforting, but it was also hard and stern. I had grown up privileged. As a child, I had been given everything I
wanted. My parents had spared no expense. They were also on the road or in the studio a lot, and their job took them away from home quite often.

  There was never a local artist who needed them. They were always being whisked away to New York, LA, England, even Atlanta. They rarely went down the street or around the corner for work. They would drag me along when they could, of course, but there were plenty of times when I had to stay in school or just couldn’t come along because it was a tour and they were going to be moving from city to city night after night.

  When I left home, I stopped accepting money from them. There had been some money in the beginning, but I got away from it as soon as I could. I needed my financial independence. I wanted to make my own way in the world. I didn’t play any instruments. I didn’t sing. I didn’t want any part of their world, other than what I had already experienced. The money was great, and they had made a ton of it working for the right stars. Their lifestyle just wasn’t stable enough for me.

  I wanted to be in one place at a time. I didn’t want to see the whole world at once the way they had. I wanted to see as much as I could, but I didn’t want to rush. I just wanted to do some good in the world. And I had wanted to do it without my privileged past getting in the way.

  “How did you find me?” Those were the first words I said to my father after not seeing him or speaking to him for years.

  He had a good sense of humor about it, thankfully. He got a good laugh out of the question instead of scolding me for not being grateful to hear from him. There had been times in the past when he’d been angry with me for distancing myself from them. I knew they didn’t have my current number, though. I had made sure of that.

  “It doesn’t matter how I found you, does it?” he asked. “I found you. I always find you.”

  “Yeah, you do.” I sighed. It seemed like it never really took that long for him to find me either.

  “So, how have you been?” he asked me.

  “Something tells me you already know. I’m sure you’re not calling just to catch up,” I said in an accusing tone.

  “You’re right. I heard it through the grapevine that you’re struggling and need some financial help with your current venture,” he explained.

  “Maybe,” I said, carefully waiting to see what he would say back. I wanted to know what he knew about my situation and how he knew. I was sure there had to be something in the news about the troubles I was facing with Older Brothers.

  “So, tell me a little about your current charity,” my father said.

  People always expected my parents to be sentimental types in touch with their emotions because they were musicians, but they were so disconnected at times. They were cold and business-like, despite the warmth in their voices. Instead of trying to make small talk and catch up with me after all the time that had passed, he wanted to get right down to business.

  A small part of me was thankful we were skipping the catching up part.

  I told him about Older Brothers, everything from trying to connect successful men in the area with Younger Brothers from struggling families or other disadvantaged backgrounds, to inheriting crippling debt from the previous director after she was arrested for stealing money from the charity. I told him about Lucky.

  “We were paired up with the local football team, and you know how I feel about sports. I hated the idea of telling these kids the best they could ever hope to do was get into sports.” It felt natural to complain to my father about it.

  “I know, honey, but sometimes it’s the easiest way out for some of them,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. I ended up meeting the new kicker, a guy they call Lucky. As part of a PR stunt for the team, he made a pretty decent donation and agreed to be one of our Older Brothers. He was trying to clean up his image, and since I’m not much of a sports fan, I didn’t know just how bad his image was,” I confided in my father.

  “How bad was it? What happened?” he asked, and I realized that we were actually catching up a little bit.

  “Well, I ended up in the tabloids as his new girlfriend, and I didn’t think that was so bad, so I agreed to actually start dating him. It was supposed to be just for show at first, but it started to grow into more.” I closed my eyes and took a breath. I was telling him too much, but it was so easy to open up to my father.

  “That was before you realized just how bad things were, huh?”

  “Right. I don’t think anything really happened, but his ex-girlfriend sent a bunch of pictures of bruises and stuff to the papers to make it look like he beat her. He didn’t. I was with him the whole time when she said it happened, but it was all over the papers, so I had to let him go and decline his donation to try to save face. Everyone pulled out of the charity then. Now, I’ve got nothing, and I’m running out of time.” I was starting to cry, but I wiped my eyes and sucked it up. I may have felt like telling my father nearly everything, but I did not feel like crying in front of him. That crossed a line.

  “I didn’t realize it was that bad. I guess that’s why he didn’t tell me,” my father said.

  “I’m sorry. Who didn’t tell you?” I asked. I was pretty sure he’d just admitted that Lucky had called them to tell them about my predicament. Behind my back, no less.

  My father sighed. “Your boyfriend.”

  “My who?” I hadn’t expected him to call them, much less to tell them we were dating. Hell, they probably knew everything already. Sure, I had told my father we were dating, but it was different. He was my father, not Lucky’s. It wasn’t Lucky’s place to tell my parents we were together.

  Hell, it wasn’t even his place to call them. I was going to chew his ass out when I got off the phone.

  “Your boyfriend. Cade Hendrix, the kicker. He called to tell us what was going on, since you won’t. He told me you needed money to keep the charity going,” he explained.

  I didn’t know what to say. He had no business getting that involved in my affairs. I still wanted to believe I was perfectly capable of handling things on my own. I didn’t need someone calling my parents and essentially telling on me.

  “Come on, now. Level with me,” my father insisted.

  I felt like a kid again, with my parents trying to get me to open up to them. I didn’t want to be the kid who needed help from home when things got tough. The weight of every single one of these conversations we’d had over the years pressed down on my shoulders. No matter how defiant I had always tried to be, I had always let them in eventually. I realized I was backed into a corner, and there wasn’t enough fight left in me to stand up to my father.

  “The charity is in trouble,” I admitted through clenched teeth. “If I can’t find the money to keep the office, I stand to lose it all. I will probably be removed from my position and the local chapter will be shut down. My staff will lose their jobs. I’ve already sent them home until we have the money to get back to work. We’re at the end of our rope here.”

  “And you don’t have any way to secure the funds? Lucky can’t help you?” He was calling him Lucky, like they were best friends or something. What the hell?

  “I can’t accept his money until he’s been cleared of the charges he’s facing right now. And there are a few less honest options, but I want to be honest about what’s going on. I don’t want to have to hide where or how I get the money,” I explained.

  “I understand. Lucky told me you need about three million,” he continued.

  I wondered just how much Lucky had told him. I was sure Lucky was just using the number because it was what he and Tommy were trying to give me. I didn’t want to say anything to my father about Tommy. I certainly didn’t want him to know I was thinking of trading sex for a donation. My parents were used to going on tour with pretty big names in the music business, so they knew about how sex could get tangled up with work, but there was a big difference between running a charity and playing in a rock band.

  “That’s how much he’s offering,” I said quietly, almost ashamed that I was tu
rning that kind of money down.

  “Is that going to be enough to clear the charity’s debt, pay your employees, and allow you to start helping these kids again so that you can start getting more donations?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, that should be more than enough.” Even though he was trying to help, it felt like a punishment.

  “I can wire the money to you,” he said. “You’ll have it pretty much immediately.”

  I sighed. “I don’t want your help.” I heard the reluctance in my own voice, shocked that I was actually telling my father what I really wanted and how I really felt.

  “I’m not asking, Kendra.”

  “You never do,” I said resentfully. My voice was low, but I hoped he got the point nonetheless.