by Erin Hayes
First and Ten
A Team of Her Own #1
Erin Hayes
Margo Bond Collins
Bathory Gate Press
Contents
About First and Ten
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
About the Authors
About First and Ten
When Madison Harte inherits a football team with three hot players who all want her, there’s one problem: when it comes to America’s favorite sport, she’s clueless.
I have the worst luck. Failed tech startup? Check. Cheating ex-boyfriend? Check. No idea what to do next? Check.
Then my Uncle Dusty passes away and leaves a whole football team to me. Never mind that I’ve never even seen a game. Who has time for that, right?
But I can sell the team and turn my life around, so I fly from San Francisco to Birmingham, Alabama, where I find a whole new level of football obsession—and start to develop a fascination of my own. Mostly with the three players who are very, very interested in me.
I never expected to find a team of my own. Or that there would be so many obstacles in our way.
Luckily, Madison won’t have to choose just one man in this contemporary reverse harem where Friday Night Lights and Bridget Jones collide and where—hallelujah—it’s still raining men.
First and Ten Copyright © 2018 by Erin Hayes and Margo Bond Collins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.
Published by Bathory Gate Press
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author or authors.
Created with Vellum
One
The last time I had anything to do with football, Timothy Bartley threw the ball at me during PE, and it hit me in the face. I was left with a shiner for three weeks after that, barely able to see out of my poor eye. Everyone made fun of me, and I still sported a small scar on my eyebrow where my skin had split from the swelling.
That was in sixth grade. Seventeen years ago.
Since then, I hadn’t watched a game, hadn’t paid attention to who’s who, or even glanced at ESPN. That was fine by me. I was happy not having to spend my Saturdays watching the big game. My money was spent on video games, comics, and shoes instead of tickets and merchandise.
Football was in an entirely different universe that didn’t touch mine in the slightest.
Until now.
“Excuse me?” I asked in disbelief, sitting forward in my chair. My black business suit stretched as much as it possibly could, but it still felt tighter than the last time I wore it. Yet another sign that my size-14 waist was now a size 16. I’d put on some weight since my ex Jacob and I broke up six months ago. My boobs looked great though, so I really didn’t mind. He was the one missing out.
“Did you just say what I thought you did?” I asked.
My lawyer, an old family friend named Daniel Reiss, a balding man with a permanent scowl, stopped his reading of my late uncle’s will and looked up. “Which part?”
He must have continued reading while my mind slowly processed what had been bequeathed to me.
“The part about the football.”
He frowned, the wrinkles in his face deepening, and he flipped back a few pages in my uncle’s very long will.
Uncle Dusty had been eccentric when he was alive, amassing a huge fortune that had once covered a vacation home in Tahiti, several of the most expensive cars ever produced, a private jet, and millions of dollars in capital. But, being eccentric, he had spent or sold most of it before he died. Fair enough, I would have done the same. Most of the will consisted of what to do with his coin collection or each of his rare, exotic stamps.
But the part about football was, well, let’s just say unexpected.
Finding his place on the page, Daniel cleared his throat. “‘I leave my football team, the Birmingham Yellowhammers, to my brother’s daughter, Madison Harte.”
Madison Harte. Me.
I blinked. “Is that like a little kid’s team or something? Or his collection of footballs? Or a set of those shirts they wear?”
“Jerseys?” Daniel supplied.
“Yeah, those.”
“No.” He watched at me, perplexed. “They’re a team for the major league.”
I looked at him blankly.
“As in professional football, Ms. Harte.” Ugh. Daniel only used my last name when he thought I was being stupid. I should’ve been used to it by now—he’d used it for the last several months as I refused offer after offer from Jacob to buy out my half of our tech startup, even as my savings dwindled. I finally took him up on it when I had no choice.
I hesitated for another beat, still trying to come to terms with Daniel’s words. “You’re not talking about soccer, are you?” At least I knew something about soccer. I played on a rec team when I was in college. Still terrible at it, but at least I knew some of the rules. Like, you couldn’t use your hands to touch the ball.
Daniel couldn’t hide the derision from his face. No matter how grumpy someone looks, they can always make you feel like the stupidest person in the room.
“No, Miss Harte. American football.”
I worried my bottom lip, a million thoughts running through my head. “Uhm, how can you leave someone a whole football team?”
None of this made any sense.
Daniel sighed and took off his spectacles. “Your uncle was the owner of the Birmingham Yellowhammers. They’re the newest team in the league, and they’re—”
“Birmingham as in... Alabama?” I couldn’t help glancing out the window, which gave me a spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay from the fortieth floor of this high-rise building in the Financial District. Daniel always did like having a flashy office.
My own business, a virtual reality tech startup with an app in development that should have been an amazing success, once had a flashy office, too, but that went down the toilet like all my dreams. Shit happened, as I learned too early in life, and it was really hard to pick up the pieces when things didn’t work out.
But don’t think about that right now.
I could see the Bay Bridge in the distance, and Oakland and East Bay lay beyond. I couldn’t imagine anything more different from my current surroundings than the Deep South.
“Yes, as in Birmingham, Alabama,” Daniel said with barely-restrained condescension. He flipped back to continue where he had stopped, but I wasn’t done with him yet.
“What the hell do I do with a football team?”
Daniel stopped, sighed, then looked up at me. “Well, Miss Harte, you can either choose to lead the team. Or you can sell it.”
I raised an eyebrow at that last option. Selling something I had no inclination of doing anything with sounded really appeal
ing. “And how much would it sell for?”
He frowned again. “Current evaluations are…” He rifled through the sheets of paper. “1.4 billion dollars.”
I let out a shuddering gasp, unsure if I heard that part correctly. “One...point…”
That amount of money was unheard of in my world. Don’t get me wrong, I was admittedly born with a bit of a silver spoon in my mouth—nothing like what Uncle Dusty had—but I had the support of my parents to help me graduate from Stanford and start up my own tech company in the city. I’d had opportunities given to me that 99% of the world never got. And I was thankful for their support through everything, even the worst failures.
But 1.4 billion dollars…
Holy shit.
I’d be set for life. I could help my parents out. Set up a charity. Restart my business without my asshole ex, because I’d have the capital from someone who believed in my product. Me.
Suddenly, the fog of failure that I’d felt for the last six months felt like it was lifting. There was an end to my tunnel of shit.
“That is, if you can find a buyer, Miss Harte,” Daniel added, breaking through my thoughts.
I let out a short laugh. “Well, how hard would that be?” I asked, because I honestly had no idea.
He leaned forward and clasped his hands, giving me a hard look. “Do you want the long or the short of it?”
“The honest answer.”
“The Birmingham Yellowhammers are the least popular team in the league. They haven’t won a game in the last two years, and your uncle was hard at work trying to reinvigorate their fanbase, but ticket sales are down. This season’s subscriber base is down 45% from last year, which was already at a record low.”
“So we just sell it for less then, right?” I mean, I could live with only a billion dollars. I almost giggled at the thought.
“Owning a football team is notoriously expensive,” Daniel said. “Most teams are worth around 2.5 billion.” I tried to not let my eyes bug at that number, but he caught it. “Your uncle spent 1.6 billion to start up the team in Birmingham, and you can see that they’ve devalued in those four years. And with an unpopular team that cannot break even, I doubt there’d be someone who’d want to take a risk on the Yellowhammers. Unless you can make them popular again, Madison, I don’t see anyone willing to buy this team. I wouldn’t, honestly. Not until they’ve won a few games, anyway.”
At least he’d stopped calling me “Miss Harte.”
I sat back in my chair, my too-tight business suit stretching in other ways. “So what do I do? I mean, I can’t be an owner of a football team.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “And why not? At least until you can build them up to sell them.”
And that’s the thought that niggled me on the way home to my apartment in Lower Haight. Sure, I had no idea what to do with football. I couldn’t tell one football position from another. I had no idea why they wore such stretchy, spandex pants.
But hell, I could figure it out, right?
At worst, I’d get to spend hours looking at those tight ends. That was a football thing, right?
God, I need to get laid. Ever since Jacob and I had split up, I’d been missing the sex. Not sex with him, exactly. But the chance for physical contact, at least.
I stopped at a bookstore and picked up a copy of The Football Guide for Idiots. I didn’t appreciate being called an “idiot,” but there was a big picture of a football on the cover and it was thick enough to have lots of information about the game. I’d fill in any other pieces as I went along.
How hard could it be? Preschool kids play the game on Saturdays.
I should have known better than to stop by the comics and manga section on my way to the checkout, though. Because when Ashley, my roommate, came home from work, it wasn’t the guide I was reading.
It was the latest volume of my favorite Japanese comic.
“I’m guessing that’s not a part of what your uncle left you,” she said dryly, dropping her purse by the door.
I blinked and looked up at her. “Shit, I lost track of time,” I muttered. Admittedly, the thought of looking at that damn football guide made my stomach gallop with uneasy butterflies.
She gave me a small smile. “Again, huh?” She knew me too well.
She pulled up an office chair and managed to sit with her legs in a lotus pose. Ashley taught yoga part-time at all the local gyms, and her svelte, flexible body hummed with calm energy. I wished I were like that. Instead, I was lucky to be able to walk the dog around the block without getting winded.
Wait, the owner of a football team didn’t need to play on the team, right?
“So, how did it go?” Ashley asked.
I licked my lips. “It was...interesting.”
“Interesting?”
I sighed and tossed the manga aside on the couch. My dog, a big basset hound by the name of Winston, looked up from his dog bed in the corner of the apartment. He gave me a lazy look before shifting and putting his back to us.
“What do you know about football?” I asked.
Ashley shrugged. “I dated a Niner once.”
“A what?”
“He played for the 49ers, I mean.” She giggled. “San Francisco’s football team.”
“San Francisco has a football team?”
“Don’t you see the team stickers on the back of cars?”
I groaned and combed a hand through my brown hair. “I’m so in over my head.”
“Over your head?” Ashley asked. “Why?”
I looked at her, feeling my heart thud in my chest. I swallowed back the lump in my throat before nodding toward the forgotten football guide on the coffee table. Ashley followed my gaze and frowned at the book.
“My uncle left me a football team,” I said, my voice meeker than I would have liked.
Ashley merely blinked at me. “He what?” The way she said it made it sound ridiculous, and I felt my cheeks turn bright red. Even Winston looked up from his dog bed out of curiosity.
I wanted to do anything to smooth it over. “Apparently, you can own a football team?” I shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with it.” I didn’t even want to think of it. Probably why I’d rather read manga than read about football.
“Let me get this straight.” My roommate put her hands on my shoulders and squared herself to face me. “Your crazy uncle, who you haven’t seen in years, who owned a frickin’ amusement park—”
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I wondered what happened to that place. It was creepy as hell, but more in line with my interests than a football team.
“Madison, focus,” Ashley said, snapping her fingers to bring me back to the present. I blinked at her dazedly. “Your uncle left you a football team? A professional one?”
“I... think so?”
She frowned. “What’s the name of the team?”
“They’re in Birmingham. The—”
Ashley laughed before I could finish. Not that I could remember the name of the team. “The Birmingham Hammers? That’s the team your uncle left you?” I nodded, and she chuckled again. “They’re the worst team in the league.”
That was what Daniel had said, too. “How bad can a team be?”
“Seriously? They’re the record-holders for the worst. Like, comically bad.”
She didn’t wait for me to answer before she rolled her chair over to her computer. She lifted the lid and typed in a quick search. Curious, I got up and walked up behind her.
“‘The Birmingham Yellowhammers,’” she read, “‘based in Birmingham, Alabama, have the worst record in the history of the league.”
“Right. They’ve lost every game for two straight years.” Even I knew enough about football to know that was a dreadful record. I grimaced. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
“What the hell is a ‘yellowhammer,’ anyway?” I asked.
Ashley clicked on a link and brought up a yellow bird. “The state bird of Alabama,” she said, glancing
back at me with a smug expression. “Everyone shortens them to the ‘Hammers,’ though. Because it’s funny to say after ‘Birmingham.’”
I let out a groan. “This is the worst idea ever.” I caught Ashley’s smug expression. “What?”
She held up a finger. “Not the worst idea ever,” she said. “Because there is one good thing about them.”
She clicked on another link and brought up a picture of a bunch of guys in their football costumes, standing on a field with their arms hooked together. There was something oddly homoerotic about them in their tight yellow spandex in such close proximity to each other, but then I saw their faces.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
Ashley nodded sagely. “Yeah. While they are the worst team in the league, they’re voted the hottest team.”
And wasn’t that the truth. I’d never paid attention to football players before, so I couldn’t comment as to whether they were typical of football players, but they were all gorgeous. Big, muscular men with strong, chiseled jaws, roguish expressions, and confidence. Some were white, some were black, and I even spotted a player of Asian descent among them.
All Adonises.
They all looked like they could fit into any pin-up magazine.
And I owned them?
An ache spread through my stomach at the thought of licking one of them. Although I couldn’t tell which guy did what, I thought I wouldn’t mind falling into bed with any of them. It had been a while since Jacob, and my lady parts were waking up to say hi to these hot guys.
“What I would do to date one of them,” Ashley muttered, shaking her head in admiration.
