by Holly Hart
And it was more than that. I wasn't just horny, I was infatuated. I had a crush on the one man who I absolutely, positively couldn't sleep with.
Alex Rodriguez.
"It's ninety degrees at lunchtime, and we've got clear blue skies over Barcelona's training ground for the first open session of the year. With the first serious test of the season coming up with the game against Madrid this weekend, the club reports that they're currently injury free, though backup goalkeeper Florian Wagner, the French international, has been ruled out with an infectious cough. Join us later on WBC Sports for a full roundup of today's action."
I plastered a hundred-watt smile on my face and held it as, in front of me, Tim counted off the seconds on his hands – holding up three fingers, then two, then one. The red light on the front of the camera blinked off.
I dropped the grin, massaging my strained facial muscles. "How was that?"
"Much better," Tim assured me. "Anyway, it's just B roll – for the website."
I jabbed him in the arm. "Only B roll? I thought that was good…"
"Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch." He grinned. "I said it was better, not good!"
"Oh, shut up." I grinned. I looked around, noticing that the flow of excited fans into the ground – mainly mothers with their kids at this time of day – had stemmed, and that only a few latecomers were still trickling in. "Hey, we'd best get into the stadium. We don't want to miss anything."
"Sure thing," Tim agreed, "but I need to get some filler shots from up in the stands. Meet you down by the field in," he looked at his watch, "let's say half an hour?"
I rolled my neck, stretching out the tension caused by being forced to stand with less than perfect posture to look good for the camera. "Sounds good. I'll see you there."
I tossed Tim the microphone and strolled into the stadium, flashing my press pass at a bored security guard sitting on a white plastic chair in front of gate four – the entrance reserved for press, players and staff, and which led directly pitch side. He barely paid it any attention.
The players were running gentle sprints to warm up, and I searched for the only one I really cared about – Alex. I tried to kid myself that I was searching for him for professional reasons, but it was a fiction. Truthfully, I wanted to see him in his training kit – ripped arms exposed, and his thick, powerful legs bulging in a sprint.
I spied him laughing at another young teammate on the other side of the pitch – Rodrigo, if I remembered correctly. The kid was squatting down on his haunches with his head in his hands – he looked ill.
"Rodrigo!" the coach shouted. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing, coach. Just…" He was interrupted by Alex laughing. "Just a headache, that's all."
"Do I need to send you to the medical team?"
I grinned as Rodrigo jumped up like a jack in the box – that was the last thing he'd want, because that way he might have to miss a game. "No, coach. I'm good."
"Then join in with the warmup. You, too, Alejandro," he barked.
They ran lengths for a few minutes, and I couldn't help but notice Alex and Rodrigo lagging behind – Rodrigo significantly further back than even Alex. Either they were coming down with the bug that had laid the backup goalkeeper low, or, and I suspected this was far more likely – they were both hungover.
I rested, out of view of the pitch, against a concrete pillar. The entire squad formed up into small teams of five players apiece, and I surmised that they were going to play a short tournament against each other. It was smart, I guessed – the coach wouldn't want to give any tactical information away, given that the whole world was in attendance, and this way he could still focus on building the players’ technical skills.
Alex was in the first match.
His touch was diabolical. There was nowhere to hide in a five-a-side game – even the goalkeeper was playing as an auxiliary outfield player, but every time Alex received the ball, it seemed to bounce off his foot and end up three yards away from where he wanted it.
The coach blew the whistle dangling around his neck. "Rodriguez, what the hell's wrong with you?"
Alex gasped, already seemingly out of breath. I raised my eyebrow in disbelief. "It's nothing, coach, honest."
"It better not be," the coach barked. "If you want to have any hope of playing on the weekend, you're going to have to buck up your ideas, son."
"Got it, coach," Alex wheezed.
The game restarted, and Alex ran through, clear on goal. He received the ball from a player who was twenty yards away and impressively bounced it off his chest. When it came to kicking it, though, his touch deserted him. The ball bounced off his foot and flew directly upwards, straight into the stratosphere, missing the goal by miles, not inches.
The whistle blew angrily. "Rodriguez! Off!" the coach barked, jabbing his finger at the side of the pitch. Alex stumped off angrily. I bit my lip, imagining what he'd be thinking. His jersey hung against his body, slightly sticky with sweat, and outlined his outrageously defined stomach. I began to dream of lifting it over his head and kissing my way down to…
"You ready?"
I spun guiltily. "Tim!"
He looked at me with surprise. "Expecting someone else?"
I got my breathing under control. "No, of course not," I stammered, leaving an awkward silence in the air.
He shook his head, as though despairing of the entire female sex, and spoke to me like I was a lost child. I couldn't blame him; I was acting like one. "Shall we go pitch side?"
"Definitely," I agreed hurriedly.
"You been watching our boy?" Tim asked conversationally as we walked side-by-side towards the coned-off area reserved for the half dozen or so media outlets who had made the journey down to the training ground.
My voice suddenly sounded high-pitched, even to me. "Alex? No, why?"
Tim stopped, and I overshot him by a couple of yards before halting and turning to face him. "Have you got a little thing for Mr. Rodriguez?" He beamed knowingly. "I think you do…"
My face felt red hot. "No! What makes you think that?"
"Uh huh," he grinned, "you can keep lying to me, or you can tell me the truth."
I turned on my heel and started walking – anything to escape the situation. "There's nothing to tell," I called over my shoulder. "Nothing at all."
"You keep telling yourself that, Diana. We both know it's not true…"
To get to the media box, I had to walk past where Alex was sitting, smoke coming out of his hungover ears. He turned his head fractionally, and his eyes popped with a minor, but noticeable, double take as he saw me stride past.
Behind me, I heard Tim cackling.
I did my best to ignore it, but I couldn't help but study Alex out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting up straighter, and every so often he'd sneak a glance at me. Every time he did, every hair on my body stood on end, my nipples tingled and an electric shiver of anticipation ran down my spine. My god, I wanted him worse than I'd ever wanted anything in my entire life.
Tim sidled up to me and set his camera equipment on the ground. "Looks like someone's noticed you, too…"
"Shut up, Tim," I squeaked. "There’s nothing there."
He hoisted his camera to his shoulder and fiddled with a variety of switches and knobs. "You can keep saying that all you like, Di, but I know true love when I see it."
I stamped my foot on the ground and my knuckles turned white with frustration. "Aargh, you couldn't be more annoying, you know that, Tim?"
The whistle blew in the background, but in the depths of my rotation, I wasn't really paying attention to what was happening on the field.
Tim chuckled. "Funny – that's just the word my sisters use. Hey, look," he pointed, "lover boy's back out on the field."
He started shooting footage, and I imagined that both the network and Alex's new agent would be pleased that we were getting this segment on camera, not the disastrous, abortive few minutes earlier on, because this time he was
playing out of his skin.
"Rodrigo!" Alex called loudly and confidently, pointing to a spot ten yards ahead of him. Rodrigo played a defense-splitting ball, and Alex ran forward, on to the ball, showing no signs of the alcohol-induced malaise that had afflicted him so shortly before. He took one touch, killing the ball's momentum, and it stuck to his foot like glue. Another touch rolled it gently three paces ahead of Alex's run, and the third put it past an astonished goalkeeper into the back of the net.
The kids in the crowd roared their appreciation and chanted, "Ale-jandro, Ale-jandro, Ale-jandro!" He bowed jokingly in appreciation, waving at the crowd of future fans.
"Did you get that on camera?"
Tim turned and shot me a withering glance. "Did you get that on camera?" he repeated jokingly.
I raised my hands in apology. "Okay, okay – I'm sorry."
"I've got what I need, to be honest," Tim said at the precise moment that the crowd roared in appreciation as Alex pulled off a sublime trick. "We'll only get twenty or thirty seconds of screen time tonight, and I've already got hours of footage. I need to cut this into something usable."
"Okay. Do you need me to shoot an outro?"
He nodded, tossing me a microphone. "Keep it tight. On three?"
I adjusted my hair. "Got it."
"Three…"
I straightened up, raising the microphone to my lips and cleared my throat. In front of me, Tim held up two fingers, dropped one, and the red light flickered into life on the front of the camera.
"All in all, it was a mixed day for Alex, but he finished strongly, and he's looking a shoo-in to start on Saturday. That's all from WBC Sports in Barcelona. For more exclusive clips, check out our website…"
Tim gently dropped the camera to the floor and started packing away the equipment into his lightweight black travel case. "And that's a wrap."
I met his outstretched hand for a high-five. "Good job, crew."
He zipped up the case and picked it up, carrying it briefcase style. "Coming?"
I cleared my throat. "Uh, I think I'm going stick around and watch…"
He grinned and raised his eyebrows knowingly, and I felt compelled to reply. "The game, you ass!"
"Whatever gets you to sleep at night, Di."
10
Alex
Coach's whistle blew firmly, the resonant tone immediately bringing the relentless on-field movement to a halt. "That's it for the day, boys." He smiled. "Hit the showers."
I sank down to my haunches, suddenly exhausted. Four hours of sleep hadn't been anywhere near sufficient to repair the damage caused by the nasty hangover that was still lingering from the night before.
"What the hell was that, Alex?" Rodrigo asked in a stunned tone of voice, clapping his hand on my shoulder. "Where did you pull that bag of tricks from?"
I stood up and did a couple of circles with my hips to stretch out my hamstrings. "Oh that?" I asked offhandedly, hiding my own surprise. "Guess I was just well-rested…" Rodrigo looked directly at me disbelievingly, and I couldn't hide a smile that had crept onto my face.
"Bullshit."
I grabbed my ankle and held it up against my ass, feeling a deep stretch in the quadriceps muscle in my right leg. "Okay, you got me. How was the redhead last night?" I grinned.
He sighed. "My friend, she did things to me that I didn't know existed. Dirty things. But you know what?"
I grabbed the other ankle. "What?"
"I think she was thinking of you…"
"And you still slept with her?" I grunted, feeling the stretch pulling against an old injury. I looked over towards the emptying stands as I stood there on one leg, noticing that a gaggle of young kids were still waiting by the tunnel, forlornly hoping to waylay one of their idols and get an autograph.
"Hey," Rodrigo grinned, reaching down for his toes and sighing, "when a girl like that climbs into my bed, I don't care who she is thinking of. As long as it's my cock she's sucking, I don't care whose name she calls…"
I turned my head with sudden interest. "She said my name?"
"No," he chuckled, "but you could tell who she was thinking of, and it wasn't a second string midfielder who spends most of his time sitting on the bench."
"Cut yourself some slack, buddy. That first ball you played me earlier, remember it?"
"The one you kicked into the sky, you mean?"
I grimaced. "The same. That was a bad shot, I'll admit it. But tell you what, you keep playing me balls like that, you'll get in the team."
He looked at me disbelievingly. "You'll get in the team, Alex, because you can put the ball in the back of the net. The squad has half a dozen players who can do what I can."
"Yeah," I agreed, "but it doesn't have half a dozen players who I like. Hell, if Garcia tells any more of them to kick me in training, it'll just be you left. What the hell is that guy's problem, anyway?"
Rodrigo sighed. "You know what his problem is – it's you. You're here to take his place, and he doesn't like it. But you don't help yourself, you know that, Alex?"
I snarled. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, don't play games. You know exactly what I'm talking about. The more you show off like you did today, the more annoyed he'll get."
I felt suddenly chilly and started walking back towards the tunnel, shrugging on a sweatshirt as I did so. "Here, give me a swig of that," I asked, changing the topic and grabbing a bottle of blue Powerade from my companion's hand.
He was like a dog with a bone. "Don't change the topic, Alex. You know exactly what you're doing…"
"I'm not—"
He raised an eyebrow. "Okay, okay," I said, raising my hands apologetically, "maybe I'm showing off a little bit. But that's just my game."
Rodrigo shrugged. "I'm not telling you what to do, Alex. I'm just telling you like it is."
I sighed. "Thanks, buddy. Anyway, like I was saying – you feed the ball into me like you did today, I'll finish it and we'll both be in the team, okay?"
"Okay." He smiled wanly, as if bored of arguing. We were suddenly interrupted by a bout of excited cheering from the stands.
"Alejandro! Alejandro!"
I waved and kept walking towards the locker rooms, but Rodrigo nudged me in the side. "What?"
"Go, go sign some autographs." He beamed. "Go on, you'll make their day."
"Rodrigo," I groaned, "I need a couple of Tylenol and a nap. The last thing I need with a headache like this is to be around screaming kids."
"Just do it." He laughed. "You'll be done in five."
"Fine," I pretended to huff, jogging over to the kids. "Aren't you coming?" I asked, turning my head in surprise when I noticed that he wasn't following.
"Why? They aren't calling my name…" he joked drily.
"People are making a bit of a habit of that, aren't they?" I grinned. He shot me a condescending look and walked back inside.
"Who's got a pen?" I shouted at the crowd, and half a dozen black marker pens immediately appeared from God knows where.
"Take mine! Take mine!" they cried. I took one from a star struck looking kid who didn't appear a day over six years old, ruffling his hair as I did so. I kneeled down to speak to him on his level. "It's your lucky day. What do you want me to sign, kid?"
Mutely, he shoved a soccer ball from the gift shop in my face, and I signed it. I'd spent hours practicing the signature before making it in the big leagues – perfecting it so that it not only had the look, so it was easy to pick out, but it was also easy to scribble. The last thing you wanted at the start of a line of hundreds of adoring fans was to have two inscribe a long, complicated signature on dozens of shirts and hundreds of balls
That was what I assumed, anyway. In truth, this was the first autograph signing session I'd ever conducted – other than those sessions practicing late at night with a pad of paper, and I was kind of excited.
"Who's next?" I called. The clamor that greeted me assured me that I'd be there for quite a while…
&nbs
p; Finally, it was over. I'd signed shirts, headbands, soccer balls – you name it, I'd signed it. I ruffled one last kid's hair then slumped down onto a step in front of the stand as he raced off to his smiling mother who waved a thanks before turning to leave. I closed my eyes, exhausted, and rested my head against the concrete stand.
I was suddenly disturbed by a peal of gentle, tinkling laughter. "Hand sore?"
My eyes snapped open, searching for the source of the sound. "Who said that?"
They found it almost instantly. Diana was sitting on a step to the other side of the tunnel leading toward the locker room, wearing a light red summer dress that danced off her curves and gently accented her glorious breasts. I felt my body respond immediately, and briefly worried that the light gym shorts would do nothing to hide my enormous package, but shrugged – after all, there was nothing I could do about it.
I leapt up and closed the distance between us, which seemed to surprise her. "What are you doing here?" I gasped.
"Same as every day," she laughed, "reporting on you…"
"Only good things, I hope." I smiled teasingly. I wanted to rip that dress from her body, throw it aside and make love to her right here on the concrete, and my body responded accordingly. I tried remembering what had happened the last time she'd tried to make a story out of me – how betrayed I'd felt, in the hope that that would dampen down my growing excitement, but my body didn't care.
Hell, right now, neither did I.
Diana had the good grace to flush at the memory. "Sorry about that," she muttered, looking at the ground in embarrassment.
I put my hand on her chin without thinking, lifting it up, forcing her to look at me. I wanted to see those sparkling green eyes, not have them pointed at the ground, and I stared into them, drinking them in. "Don't worry about it," I murmured, uncomfortably aware of the heat of her body against my fingers. She didn't say a word, just stared at me curiously. I felt like we were both performing a dance – a gentle waltz, when I wanted something more, something exciting. I wanted to tango.
I decided to take control.
