by Erin Hayes
A flicker of jealousy flared up inside me. Ashley was stunning and beautiful and had no trouble finding men. As beautiful as these football players were—and they were beautiful—she’d fit right in with any of them on a date.
Meanwhile, I was a curvy nerd with an introverted side. The nerd part never bothered me, and I always felt comfortable in my own skin. But I just wanted a chance at any of them.
Yep. I definitely needed to get laid.
Hell, maybe I’d get that chance—or at least a chance to be around the hot players, anyway. Did an owner get to see their team on a regular basis? Or was it more of a figurehead title?
“You are way in over your head,” Ashley said, reflecting my thoughts. She turned back to the coffee table, where The Football Guide for Idiots lay. “I’m guessing that’s why you got that guide?”
“Yeah. I know literally nothing.”
“Well,” Ashley pushed herself to the table, grabbed the book, and rolled back. She slapped it into my hands. “Looks like you’ve got some reading ahead of you.”
Two
I stepped off the airplane in the Birmingham airport at ten p.m. and stared around me. I was a little hungry, but the only place open—the only place I could see at all—was a chicken wings restaurant, and that didn’t sound terribly appealing.
I could get something after I picked up my luggage, I decided.
Initially, BHM was just like any other airport, and I made my way through the low-ceilinged corridors with their beige walls and signs reminding me that I was leaving a secured area and wouldn’t be allowed back in unless I went through security again.
God knows I felt like I was leaving all kinds of security behind. No matter how often I told myself that taking over the football team would eventually lead to freedom, I was walking into the unknown.
If I couldn’t sell the Hammers for a profit…
Fuck that. What if I couldn’t sell them at all? I’d been forced to take Jacob’s crap buyout offer and had started over once already. What if this was a terrible idea? I couldn’t stand the idea of having to admit I’d failed at something again.
By the time I made my way to the baggage claim area, I was thoroughly depressed.
Looking around, I was absolutely certain that instead of walking through the unknown into a new life of freedom, I had just stepped into the worst mistake I’d ever made.
No. I’d just stepped into hell itself.
In the baggage claim area, the belts circled in endless loops, their grinding, thumping noises echoing through the space. Squat columns held up the ceiling that still seemed too low, for all it was plenty high above us. Every time the motion-activated doors leading outside swished open, a wave of steaming air rolled in and over me, leaving my clothes stuck to me by a hot sheen of sweat. As soon as the doors closed again, the extreme air conditioning kicked in, leaving me shivering in the cold air.
I reached into my carry-on bag and rummaged inside for the sweater I had brought. Wearing the cardigan would be miserable during the rolling waves of steam, but it might protect me from the frigid air conditioning, at least. To get to it, I had to shove The Football Guide for Idiots out of the way. For all that I told my roommate that I was going to read it, it had not done me any good.
Oh, I had read it before I left. Cover to cover. Twice.
I still didn’t understand a damn thing about football.
It was like someone had gotten up in front of me and scribbled Japanese Kanji on the whiteboard and said, “Read this!” Only worse, because I could actually read some Japanese Kanji. But these terms—things like first down, 10-yard line, field goal—it was like the words made sense individually, but they were strung together in ways that I could not comprehend.
I finally resorted to downloading a game to watch online—an old one, one that I figured I could find an explanation for online. I watched it with the book open. I paused it, fast forwarded, rewound, looked up terms…and every time I thought I understood what they were talking about, someone did something that made the striped-suit guys throw their arms up into the air and shout unintelligible words into microphones.
Apparently, I was too stupid to understand The Football Guide for Idiots. Even when I tried.
Eventually, I had decided to give up on studying and simply try to watch the game. Maybe if I watched enough, it would soak in.
I had woken up three hours later, when Winston started whining at the door to be taken out. Turned out, the drone of sportscasters’ voices put me to sleep better than anything else I’d ever tried. I was considering replacing my SleepyTime WhiteNoise NightNight Machine™ with football game sportscasts.
Now, as I dragged my oversize, hard-sided, bright pink-and-black polka-dot luggage set off the endless baggage claim track, stumbling under the weight of the bags, my football guide book glared at me reproachfully from the top of my carry-on bag.
“Yeah, I know. I’m stupid,” I hissed back at it. I really should have arranged for a driver to come pick me up. But I had wanted to prove that I could take care of all of this by myself. I wanted to prove it to them—myself, maybe? My asshole ex-boyfriend? My dead uncle? Hell, I don’t know. It had been a stupid plan, and I wished I had a better one.
I had some vague idea that football team owners stepped off airplanes to find chauffeurs in uniforms with neatly lettered signs bearing the last names. I should have done that, maybe? Not that I knew how to set something like that up. “At least then I could’ve gotten some help with these bags,” I muttered to myself as I hefted the final suitcase atop the teetering stack I’d loaded onto a cart.
“Here, miss, let me get that for you.” The voice coming in over my shoulder was deep and smooth, and I glanced up to find a stunningly attractive man balancing the suitcases with one hand—a hand that might’ve been more oversized than my luggage set.
I blinked twice before I remembered to thank him.
“Are you headed to a parking lot?” the guy asked.
“Just to the rental car desk,” I said, pointing.
“I can get you at least that far,” he said with a smile. His dark brown eyes were the same color as his perfectly smooth skin, and the smile he flashed at me was sweet as he began pushing my cart toward its destination. I had heard about Southern hospitality—if everyone here was as nice as this guy, I might actually begin to believe in it.
Hell, I might be able to get used to it.
No thinking like that, I scolded myself. I was here to figure out how to sell the team, and then I was headed back to San Francisco. I was going home as soon as possible. Because I need to get back to...what? My dog? God. Maybe I should have brought Winston with me instead of leaving him with Ashley.
I shook off my sudden fit of homesickness—I’d be back there soon enough. Then, I called out my thanks as the helpful, gorgeous man gave me a little two-fingered salute and another beautiful smile when he dropped me off at the counter.
My gaze as I watched him walk away was tinged with regret. I should have gotten his number. Or given him mine. Or exchanged names, even. I shook my head at my own folly. No. I was way too worked up about being here to even try to flirt.
Shame.
By the time I stepped up to get my rental car, though, I felt a little more self-confident than I had trying to sling the suitcases around by myself.
I was strong and capable and would get through this just fine.
And if that had to be my mantra for the next few weeks while I worked out how to sell the team, so be it.
I can do this. I can make it work.
I ignored the voice in the back of my head that said, “And if you can’t, maybe you can just find someone else to help you out.”
As I approached the rental car desk, the man working greeted me with a deep, soft, Southern accent, his vowels elongated and the A’s and I’s almost reversed. He checked the length of time I had arranged to rent the car
“One of our long-term rentals,” he noted. “What are you in town f
or?”
“Business,” I replied. “For a long time—maybe longer than I have the car rented for.” However long it took me to get the team ready to sell.
He nodded. “If you need to extend the rental, you can do that online.”
“Thanks.”
“Roll Tide or War Eagle?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
Did that have something to do with extending the rental, too? “Pardon me?”
He repeated himself, and I stared back at him blankly.
“Alabama or Auburn?” he clarified, which wasn’t clarifying anything.
“I don’t know what that means.”
He rattled a plastic cup full of burgundy and orange flags. “I’m asking which team you go for. For a flag. For your car.”
I had no idea what I would do with a flag for my car, or how I was supposed to answer. “I am so sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
He spoke very slowly, as if to someone who had a serious mental deficiency. “Your flag shows your support for the football team of your choice.”
Great. I was in one of the only states in the country where everyone had an opinion about football. Except maybe Texas. I had some vague idea that they might be knowledgeable about football as people from Alabama. Then again, that might just have been because I knew Friday Night Lights was set there. Which I had never watched because it was about football.
It suddenly occurred to me that I did have a football team that I could go for. “I go for the Birmingham Yellowhammers,” I said brightly.
The rental agent shook his head sadly. But he reached under the counter and pulled out his small bucket of yellow flags. “Don’t get much call for these around here.”
“But this is Birmingham.”
“The Hammers suck.”
I started to answer indignantly, but from what I’d learned, he was right.
Again, the insistent tattoo beat of failure drummed in my head.
What the fuck am I doing here?
But I took my yellow car flag out to my otherwise unremarkable rental sedan and attached it. I had a team to support, and by God, I was going to do it.
Though by the sound of things, especially the “Roll Tide” and “War Eagle,” we were going to need our own catchphrase if we were going to make it in Alabama.
I can do this, I told myself again. I can make this happen.
My new can-do attitude lasted almost as long as it took me to get onto the highway in my rental car.
By the time I got to the interstate, I was wishing I had asked the team secretary to get me a hotel closer to the airport as opposed to one closer to the stadium. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like Birmingham was made up of little more than rolling wooded hills, and there were few signs to let me know which exits to take. I found myself missing California’s clearly delineated exits—not to mention the long, straight views across bridges and the bay.
My stomach had started growling, too, and I would have cheerfully committed violence against someone for a Carl’s Jr. burger. The only fast food places I passed, however, seemed to be devoted to chicken wings.
“How many chicken wings does one small southern city need, anyway?” I muttered to myself.
I did, however, finally manage to make my way to the hotel, an Aloft. At the front desk, a young woman with an accent similar to the car rental agent’s checked me in.
“Your room is on the fourth floor,” she said as she handed me the plastic key card. “The elevators are in the bank to your left and breakfast is served from six to nine a.m. Roll Tide.”
I decided it must be customary statement that worked as both hello and goodbye—like aloha in Hawaii. If that was the case, I was going to start a one-woman campaign to raise Birmingham’s awareness of its own football team.
“Go Hammers.” I gave her a giant smile.
She blinked at me. “Okay. Sure,” she said doubtfully.
I shook my head. “Is there a hotel bar here? Is it still open?”
Maybe I could at least get food. If only the ubiquitous chicken wings.
Two minutes later, I was sliding onto a barstool in the otherwise empty hotel bar. Not a chicken wing place, thank God. A real bar, named The Bootleg.
“Go Hammers,” I said conversationally, trying out my new greeting on the cute young bartender who slid a napkin over in front of me.
“Excuse me?”
Oh, well. It had been worth a try. “I need a drink. Something really potent.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. What do you have that’s appropriate for football?”
He frowned, his eyebrows drawing down into the center of his forehead in a quizzical expression. “Beer?”
I snorted a laugh. “No, definitely something stronger than that. Don’t you have some kind of mixed drink that goes with one of those football teams I keep hearing about? A Tide Pod or Bald Eagle or whatever?”
Now he was the one who huffed in laughter. “Roll Tide or War Eagle.”
“Yeah, that’s it. One of those drinks.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.”
The cocktail he brought back was red and fruity and potent, like a strong rum punch. I took a long drink through the straw. “This is perfect. Can I get food, too?”
He pulled a face. “Oh, I’m so sorry. The kitchen’s closed and we are all out of everything.”
I dropped my head on my arms. “Even chicken wings?”
“Yeah. Andre got the last order.” He gestured toward the back corner behind me, and I glanced around to see someone I hadn’t noticed when I walked in. His back was to me, so all I could see was that he was broad-shouldered, with dark hair and skin.
Probably a regular for the bartender to know him by name.
He must have felt my gaze upon him, for he turned in his chair to glance at me just then, and I recognized him. It was the gorgeous, polite man from the airport—the one who had helped me with my bags. His eyes lit with recognition, and I smiled almost involuntarily.
Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he stood to come speak to me—and stood, and stood, and stood. He was enormous, something I hadn’t really noticed at the airport. He was well over 6 feet tall, and broad didn’t begin to describe the width of the shoulders. His frame narrowed to his hips in what was almost, but not quite, a bodybuilder’s physique. He was pure, solid muscle, and those beautiful dark eyes in that perfect face sparked with intelligence. And kindness, I remembered from the airport.
“Baggage claim,” he said as he walked toward me, pointing and smiling.
“I prefer to go by Madison,” I said with a grin, holding out my hand to shake his, “but if you insist on calling me Baggage Claim… Well, I might object, actually.”
He laughed aloud and leaned on the bar next to me. “I’m Andre. Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
“If I had known that you’d be here, I would have saved some wings for you,” he added apologetically.
My stomach growled, but I shrugged. “No worries.”
After the Roll Tide drink, I insisted that Wallace, the bartender, make me a War Eagle, just so I could compare them. It had a lot of rum, as well. And orange juice.
By the time I finished that one, I decided that what I really needed was for Wallace to come up with a Birmingham Yellowhammer mixed drink. “Your national-league team needs its own drink, too,” I said, slurring my words only slightly.
Wallace and Andre gave each other a significant glance.
“I’m just saying, it’s your home team. They need a drink.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with,” the bartender said.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Andre said, grinning, and he tapped the bar and nodded to Wallace. “One for me, too.”
“Everyone keeps asking me if I’m a Tide Pod or an Eagle Scout,” I confided to Andre.
“Roll Tide or War Eagle.”
“Yeah. That. I have
not yet determined which team I’m going to ‘go for’.” I paused as Wally placed a yellow drink on the bar in front of me. “But you know,” I whispered, somewhat drunkenly, “Birmingham has its own professional football team.”
For some reason, both men found this hysterical, their laughter echoing through the bar.
“Yeah,” Andre said with a nod, “I’m aware of that.”
“Then,” I said, “you should join my campaign to change the traditional Birmingham greeting from Tide Pod or Bald Eagle to ‘Go Hammers!’”
“It’s a war cry.” Andre stepped in closer. I could feel the heat rolling off his body.
“What?” Something about Andre made me want to just curl into him and snuggle down against his chest, while he wrapped his giant arms around me.
“It’s a war cry, not a greeting.”
I waved away the objection. “Whatever. You should change it with me. Join me.”
“That’s what I should do?”
“Oh yes, absolutely,” I breathed, though by then, I had all but forgotten what we were discussing. I leaned toward him, closing the distance between us and placing my fingertips lightly on his chest. God, he was gorgeous. I tilted my face up toward his, so I could look into those liquid brown eyes. His full lips quirked up in a grin, and he tucked a stray dark hair behind my ear.
“So you think we ought to all say, ‘Go Hammers’?”
“Definitely,” I said. Without looking, I picked up my new drink and dragged in another swallow through the straw. This one was pineapple juice and rum. Delicious.
Andre watched my mouth close around the straw and then open again. We stood close enough that I could hear the hitch in his breathing, feel it in his chest under my fingertips.
“But maybe we should try something else first.” I tilted my head to one side and smiled up at him suggestively.
Without another word, Andre took my drink out of my hand and set it on the bar, wrapped his arm around my waist, and dragged me into him. His lips came down hard against mine as he hauled me upward to kiss me.
Thoroughly.
