by Erin Hayes
Why the hell are you not picking up your phone?? I need you.
Tonight was CRAZY!
You know how I slept with the quarterbacker, Andre? Well, I am fairly certain that at least two other football teammates would be more than happy if I crawled in bed with them, too. The running back (I had to change it from “runnerback,” as I remembered Clancy telling me otherwise—hah, take that, alcohol!) Rodney and Andre nearly started World War III when Andre spilt beer in the other guy’s lap.
Oh and this guy named Clancy Drew split a cab home with me. Clancy Drew, poor guy has such a bad name. I think he wants to investigate my mysteries! And the other two would have to be his trusty sidekicks. Although I don’t think they’d be happy about that.
I frowned as I was still seething over the coach’s email. Should I tell Ashley? Burden her with it?
Then again, what were friends for?
The coach is a real prick, though, I wrote. He thinks women shouldn’t be on the field during practice. Bet he can’t stand the idea that a woman owns the team—much less one who doesn’t know anything about football. I think I’ll hold off telling him that what little I have learned has come from The Football Guide for Idiots. Not that I really give a damn what he thinks about me. I’m half tempted to tell him that I had a one-night stand with his quarterbacker. Fuck I may.
I am so screwed. Or rather, I think I was.
I dropped a winky face at the end of the paragraph and closed the message with a reminder that she had promised to come out here with Winston and save me if I needed it. Then, just before sending it, I added a whole line of laughing-so-hard-I’m-crying emojis.
Then I sent it and stood up, inhaling deeply. I felt much better for getting that out of my system. I’d spend the rest of the night coming up with an appropriate response to the coach. That and drink the rest of the wine in the room, because I needed it. No way was I going to go downstairs to the bar again.
Because I didn’t need to have Andre down there again. He said he was staying at the same hotel, and I couldn’t risk sleeping with him again.
Not that it mattered. After tonight, I was going to get everything in order.
I might not know a damn thing about football, I might not remember having had all the unbelievable sex with the team quarterbacker, and I might not be certain if Rodney or Clancy really were interested in me.
It didn’t matter.
I owned the football team, and I needed to get those boys ready to sell.
Nine
Dammit. I’d left my phone charger back in San Francisco. My iPhone with the super extra-long battery was no better than a paperweight when I woke up the next morning.
And because I’d set the alarm on my phone, it was also after 11 am when I finally did rouse myself from sleep. Granted, it was 9 am back in California, which my body was still clocked into, but that meant that I was late, late, late, late.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I swung my feet over the side of the bed. “Dammit, why does this shit keep happening to me?”
This whole trip to Alabama has just been one screw-up after another. If I were any smarter, I’d pack up and head back to San Francisco and lick my wounds.
But, I was Madison Harte, and I was going to keep going.
Dealing with my hangover, I ran around my hotel room, trying to find something to wear. I picked up my ripped skirt and cringed at the memory of it getting destroyed last night.
Something that wasn’t a skirt then, because I wasn’t going to have my business clothes get torn up again. Perhaps slacks or—
I pulled up a pair of jeans and seriously considered wearing them. Comfortable, tough, and reminded me of home. Was business casual all right for the office? I tried remembering what everyone wore in the office, and it wasn’t like it was casual Friday or anything.
“You own the damn team, Madison,” I muttered as I slipped them on. I could make my own rules as the owner of the team and everyone’s boss. At least I told myself that as I picked a nice blouse to wear over it.
I tugged on a pair of shoes and grabbed my phone. I frowned as I tried powering it on. Fruitless, because I knew it was dead, but I couldn’t help but try. No time to grab a charger on the way into the office.
Maybe someone would have an iPhone charger I could borrow. With my luck, probably not. At least my computer had a charge, so I packed it up—with the AC adapter—so I could check my emails at work.
Lastly, I picked up the Yellowhammers jacket that Clancy let me borrow last night and folded it over my arm feeling somewhat humbled by his gesture. He had been such a gentleman last night, saving my ass literally.
“I’d like to solve yours,” he had said about my mysteries. Did he really mean that? Or did being a slow-talking Southern gentleman mean that he was a natural flirt?
Guess I was going to find out. Along with whatever was happening between Andre and me. And Rodney.
Too many players to deal with. Why couldn’t I be the owner of a single-person tennis team? There’s only one player there, right? Life would be a hell of a lot easier in that case.
With everything gathered up—I thought—I ran down to my rental car in the parking lot of the hotel. Of course, not having my phone charged meant that I couldn’t use the GPS to find my way to the stadium. Never mind that I was there only yesterday, but I couldn’t remember where it was from my hotel. And Birmingham was so hilly, it wasn’t like I could just look on the horizon and see what was there.
I was truly useless without my cell phone.
Thankfully, a quick stop at a random gas station reminded me that Southern hospitality was still alive and well. I parked and ran in, and the old woman behind the counter pointed me in the right direction.
“Jus’ take I-65 and exit for third avenue,” she told me with a warm grin. “You can’t miss it, Sugah.”
I wanted to tell her that with how everything else was going in my life, I could very well miss it, but I thanked her and bought some Funyuns before leaving the gas station. Mainly because it was the closest thing to me at the counter and I felt awkward not buying anything.
I hadn’t had Funyuns since college. I was on a perpetual diet that meant I couldn’t have them, but I felt like I needed something to calm my nerves. Before I turned on the rental car, I tossed in a ring my mouth and let out a satisfied groan, my eyes fluttering into the back of my head. Not as good as that white sauce that goes on the chicken wings, but oh-em-gee.
Thankfully the woman at the gas station got me into the general vicinity of the stadium, and I managed to make my way to a parking spot. I shouldered my backpack while feeling like I had a bit more of a handle on my life, popped another Funyun into my mouth, and headed in.
“Hey, Missus Harte!” Elliott said, giving me a wave.
“Hi there,” I said, giving him a bright smile. “Good morning.”
He opened the gate for me, and I slipped in. “How was your evenin’ last night, Missus Harte?”
You mean other than two of the Hammers using me for a penis contest and ripping my skirt? “Fine. Yours?”
“Oh, just fine.” He gave me a toothy smile. “Glad to have you here.”
And that made me feel all warm inside to hear those words. At least someone was glad to see me, someone who wasn’t a football player that I was interested in or someone who was trying to use me, like the coach.
Elliott directed me over to the elevator, and we fell into an easy chat, like we’d been friends for years. In fact, I was enjoying our chat so much, I made a mental note to arrive early to talk with him a bit more. If my phone ever got charged again.
Which reminded me...
“Oh, wait!” I said, reaching for the elevator as it closed, separating Elliott from me. Damn, I was going to ask if he had a charger. Maybe someone else did.
Ugh. I should have picked one up at the convenience store while I was in there.
The office was still the same, with its water feature and koi pond. The receptionist looked up fr
om the desk and gave me a curt nod.
“Good afternoon, Miss Harte,” she said.
“Thanks, Kathleen,” I said, feeling a little sick to my stomach at the realization that it was after twelve o’clock. I was so damn late, I’d fire myself if I could.
“It’s Kathryn.”
I blinked at the receptionist. “What?”
Her expression wavered. “You called me Kathleen. My name is Kathryn.”
Shit. “Sorry about that. I meant Kathryn.”
Her eyes crinkled. “It’s all right.”
It wasn’t. Not at all. I felt like one of those assholes who couldn’t be deigned to remember her receptionist’s name. Yesterday was a bad day for me, but I could tell that I crushed her spirits just a little bit.
I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat. “Do you, uh, by chance, have an iPhone charger?”
Kathryn—her name was Kathryn—watched me for a moment, her eyebrows pinching together before she nodded. “Yes,” she said. She bent over and rummaged through the drawers of her desk. “We always have a spare cord or two.”
Dammit. That reminded me of the locked desk drawer in Dusty’s—my—office. But when I asked her, Kathryn said she didn’t have a key for it, and then went back to digging through her own desk.
I let out a cry of excitement when she pulled up the white cord. Kathryn was going to get a raise. Just as soon as I figured out how much money I had to spare and give her a raise. Elliott, too.
Until then, maybe I’d get her flowers.
“Thank you so much.” I took the cord from her. “I forgot my charger back in San Francisco, is it all right if I keep this for a while?”
She nodded, her smile a little stronger. “Of course. It technically is your charger since you own the company.”
Oh. Right.
“Thank you,” I said again, as I hurried down the hallway toward my office. As soon as I plugged in my phone, I was going to call and get her some flowers before I forgot, and—
I stopped in the doorway of my office. There were flowers already on my desk, a huge, floral bouquet that took up most of the space, with gorgeous blooms that begged to be admired. Every petal looked so velvety soft. I didn’t know much about flowers or gardening, but I could tell that they were expensive. And well taken care of.
And so typical of apology flowers.
“What the hell?” I walked over to my desk and plucked the accompanying note. It was pink, with a heart on the outside.
Madison -
I’m so sorry for my behavior last night. Let me make it up to you with dinner tonight?
Andre
A part of me melted, even as I rolled my eyes. Trust a guy to give me apology flowers. Jacob used to do that all the time when we’d have an argument. Then, at one point, the flowers stopped, even as the arguments continued. I should have realized that meant he was no longer interested in me.
So did that mean that Andre was interested in me? Or...what?
I leaned forward and sniffed the flowers. They smelled lovely, and I decided that I wouldn’t hold it against them that they were a gift from Andre. Hopefully, to anyone else, they looked like congratulatory flowers.
I guess I would take him up on dinner. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do with my time here.
“Smooth, Andre. Smooth.”
I sighed into my office chair and looked for a place to plug the charger in. And that’s when I noticed a pile of notecards on my desk. Curious, I picked them up, the stack so thick, I could barely hold them all at once. The topmost card had tight, cursive handwriting on it that I didn’t recognize, but it could have easily been done by a calligrapher. Whoever did this must have practiced their letters in school.
Dear Miss Harte,
I told you I’d help you with football, didn’t I? Here are a bunch of vocabulary cards to get you started. If you need study sessions, let me know. And maybe you won’t be such a mystery.
Sincerely,
Clancy Drew
Okay, forget flowers. This was sweet and thoughtful and exactly what I needed. Clancy’s gift game was on point. I flipped through the first few cards, seeing terms like “touchdown” and “offside”. Having zero idea what “offside” meant, I flipped it over to read the definition.
a minor foul, where a defender crosses the line of scrimmage before the snap.
“Well, with that, I’d have to look up defender, line of scrimmage, and snap,” I groaned. Hopefully those terms were in the deck, although I could guess that I was going to have to look up different terms for a long while until I understood all of them. It was like my first computer programming classes all over again.
I’d learned those terms then. Hell, I learned a few programming languages then.
I can do this now. Everyone knew the ins and outs of football. I could too.
Maybe Clancy had included a card that said what a team owner does on a daily basis. Because right now, I was phone-less and had no idea what to do next, other than possibly go through the cards and find lunch.
Phone charger. Get my phone charged, first, and then figure out dinner with Andre and find a way to thank Clancy.
I rolled my chair around the perimeter of the office, trying to find a plug along the baseboards. Seriously, why was it so hard to find a damn outlet?
“Aha!” I leaned forward and the prongs found their way home into an outlet. My phone, being plugged into the other end, lit up with the charging symbol. Now to just give it a few minutes, and I could turn it on and—
“Nice jeans.”
I whipped my head around and realized that I had my ass sticking out toward the door of my office. And, lo and behold, Rodney was standing in the doorway with a sly smirk on his face. And damn, if my heart didn’t speed up at the sight of him, especially in the daytime.
It was from fright. Surely, it was from fright.
I straightened up and made sure to tuck my shirt over my jeans. Damn, I did have a little butt crack showing when I was bent over. I masked it with a smile, but Rodney’s expression told me that he’d had quite the showing from my ass while I’d been looking around for a plug.
“Who gave you those flowers?” he asked with a frown. He nodded toward the Garden of Eden on my desk.
“Andre,” I said haughtily, because there was no use denying it. If I said something else and Rodney found out, I was sure that he’d use it against Andre, and I wasn’t quite ready to deal with that today. “I thought you would be practicing or something?”
If hearing that Andre had given me flowers affected him, Rodney shrugged without giving anything away. “It’s lunch time. I figured we could continue your initiation to the Official Fan Club of Chicken Wings.”
I stared at him for a moment, before I noticed the box that he was carrying. “Chicken wings, you say?”
He grinned and nodded. “I got a 40-pack, because I figured you couldn’t get enough of my white sauce.”
Goddammit, I felt like my insides turned to gush at the stupid double entendre.
“That’s really getting old,” I told him, even though it totally wasn’t.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Is it?” He held out the box and shook it slightly. “Does that mean you’re going to turn down the chance for some more of these?”
I gave him my best unimpressed look. “Does that mean I have to have them with you?”
He grinned. “That’s the idea of it. As an apology for last night.”
Yeah, both Rodney and Andre acted like idiots last night. And I couldn’t very well show favoritism to one without the other getting jealous.
But maybe…
“You got forty wings?”
He nodded slyly, thinking that he had me cornered. “All forty for you, if you want. But I think you should share.”
“We’re going to need more. Lots more.”
He faltered for a moment. “What?”
I got up from my seat, pocketed my notecards, and took the box of chicken wings as I passed by
him. “You need to get enough for you, me, and Andre.” At his horrified—because it truly was horrified—look, I added with the same slyness, “We’re going to have lunch together. And you two are going to learn to play nicely together.”
Ten
I’d been at lunches with warring investors. I’d been to lunches with competing companies. Hell, I’d been to lunch with Jacob after we broke up and he bought my share of our company from me.
But nothing could have prepared for me for how hostile lunch with Andre and Rodney would be. I would have thought they were enemies, not teammates.
The two football players sat across from each other in the chicken wing restaurant across from the stadium. Three baskets of chicken wings with white sauce sat between them, and I was sitting at the end of the table, munching on the wings that were in the box Rodney gave me.
Good thing these wings were so damn delicious. Otherwise, this would have been really awkward.
No, I decided as I looked between the two men. It was definitely really awkward.
Neither of them said anything. Andre had joined us about fifteen minutes ago, after I’d had Kathryn dial him and tell him to come to the restaurant to meet me for lunch, taking him up on his offer promised in his note. There was something like fury and hurt in his gaze as he stood in the doorway, seeing me sit with Rodney.
I’d grinned brightly at him and patted the seat that was catty-corner to me. I made sure that I wasn’t sitting on one side with one of the men. I was going to be Switzerland and neutral for these guys.
And get to the bottom of what was happening between them.
I bit into another wing and groaned softly. “These are so good,” I murmured. “You guys should have some before they get cold.”
Or before I ate them. Even though there was something like eighty wings here, I could probably eat them all if I tried. They were that good.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind when I said let’s do dinner,” Andre said mildly, not taking his eyes off Rodney.
