by Avery Wilde
“Oh yeah?” I hardly dared hope.
“I sometimes forget how much this silly game matters to you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
“While you’re training for this big match, or whatever the hell it is, I’ll lay off. No more girls, no more booze. I’m sure I can spin a story about Liam Croft denying himself to stay keen for the big one. We’ll talk again afterwards.”
“Fair enough,” I replied with a nod. I knew how that conversation was going to go but there was no sense in having the argument now when I could defer it for a while.
Brian nodded and started to leave, before turning back. “But I mean it about the girl.”
“The reporter?” I attempted to scoff and cursed my abysmal acting skills. “Are you still on that?”
Brian held my steely gaze. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Liam. If I see any hint of you and her together then I will end her career with the greatest of pleasure.”
“Why would you take pleasure in something like that?” I asked, letting my guard down for an instant—it barely seemed to matter now.
“Because I’m a bastard, Liam,” Brian said with cold precision. “It’s what makes me good at my job, and what has made you so very rich. Don’t knock it.”
***
I lay on my bed and stared up at the framed medal on the wall again, a smile lighting my face. There were going to be problems, no doubt—for her, for me, for our relationship. But you didn’t throw away something wonderful for the sake of a few problems. No, you damn well fought for it.
And Allison was a woman worth fighting for.
I stood up on the bed and took the medal down, opening the frame and removing its precious contents.
An hour later I stood in a jewelers on Bond Street as a jeweler examined the medal with slim, delicate fingers. “It wouldn’t be cheap,” he said. “Bespoke jewelry never is.”
“I don’t give a shit how much it costs,” I said. “Melt it down and make it into an engagement ring with the biggest damn diamond you can find.”
The all-important match was approaching fast, and when that was over and done with, I was going to make her mine, once and for all.
To hell with everyone else.
Chapter 17
Allison
I hung up the phone and sighed heavily. It was strange how, from time to time, the world would give you exactly what you’d been waiting for all your life, and then it would laugh at you by giving you this generous gift in the most inconvenient way and at the most inconvenient time.
Though I hadn’t seen Liam in person since he’d left my hotel room after our day spent in his home neighborhood, I was more convinced with every passing day that I’d found the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. In fact, I was convinced that I’d found the man I would spend the rest of my life with. I had a job I adored and the man of my dreams.
Now, if only those two things were on the same damn continent…
Alan Granger’s latest call for work updates had featured a sharper tone than previous ones, and who could blame him? It must’ve seemed to him that I was imposing on his goodwill and taking a London holiday on the company dime whilst doing no work whatsoever—even though I was now paying for my stay and was still working when I could. After all, I could get some of my work done from anywhere as long as I had my laptop.
Still, I felt guilty for overstaying. Of course, I could’ve argued that where love was involved there was a higher morality, but I didn’t think Alan would have much time for that argument. He was increasingly of the opinion that a) any rumors about Liam Croft moving to America were no more than rumor, and b) who the hell cared anyway? This was an exclusive he was happy to give up to get his reporter back, as the at-home work was starting to pile up on my desk—the kind I unfortunately couldn’t do from my laptop.
That was another thing. I didn’t like the idea of the work piling up on my desk. First, because I was a conscientious and dedicated employee who didn’t like even the appearance of screwing over my boss, but also because I loved my job. My palms itched at the idea of all that interesting work waiting for me.
In an effort to get myself out of the hotel and give myself something to think about other than my situation, I’d gone for a bit of sightseeing around London yesterday. It worked for a while—I saw monuments and landmarks, red telephone boxes, and London buses. I gazed into shop windows and wondered what would make a nice souvenir to take back home for my Dad. However, what I ended up buying was not at all suitable for my father. The sexy lingerie had immediately attracted my eye when I saw it in the shop window. It had practically winked at me, and my mind was instantly full of images of the fun Liam and I could have if we were to…well, let’s just say I bought the damn lingerie.
Back in my hotel room, having closed the curtains and checked three times to be sure the door was locked, I tried the garment on again and admired it in the mirror. It fitted perfectly, suited me, and displayed me to my best advantage—Liam would love it.
But Liam wasn’t here.
In the window of the store the garment had seemed to call to me, and now it seemed to mock me. I was all dressed up with no one to rip the clothes off me.
The lingerie wound up shoved into a drawer, and I made an attempt at putting some of my notes about Liam to better use, adapting them into an outline for a book that I might never write. Unfortunately, this also proved a bad use of my time, bringing together the two warring factions of my life: work and Liam.
It was a real quandary.
I wanted to write, and I wanted to work, but I didn’t want to leave Liam. Once I was gone, that was it; there was no way I was going to get another London assignment for the foreseeable future, especially given how long I’d stretched this one out. He’d said he’d move to the States for me, and while those words had made me happier than I could’ve ever imagined, I knew I couldn’t make him do that. I couldn’t make him give up his amazing career here in England, just for the sake of my own career in the States.
There was no obvious happy ending in sight, and yet I continued to believe in one—once the big match was out of the way, then Liam and I would be together once again and things would resolve themselves for the best.
At least, that had been my opinion before this most recent phone call.
“As long as you’re there, chasing a story I no longer believe in…” Alan began.
“It’s not my fault. Nobody’s talking,” I said, feeling guilty even as I spoke.
“Whatever. Anyway, as long as you’re there you can cover the final.”
“The Premiership Final?”
“Is that what it’s called?” Alan snorted. “Couldn’t give it a decent name like Super Bowl—worthless waste of time. Anyway, I’d like you to cover it. Wouldn’t usually bother with the English football finals, but since you’re there twiddling your thumbs and waiting for these rumors about Croft to pan out, you might as well give us a decent write-up.”
“Sure.”
“Then you’re on the first plane back the next day—unless Croft announces this alleged plan to move stateside at the end of the match. If that happens, I’ll give you an extra day or two to get another interview with him.”
“Sure.” I tried not to let my disappointment infect my voice. I couldn’t complain at all—there weren’t many bosses who would’ve given me the leeway that Alan had, and I had been deceiving him, after all.
“Great,” said Alan, without the enthusiasm that the word implied. “I look forward to a good story. And like I said, you’ve still got a day or so to tie up the Liam Croft thing if you can.”
‘Tie up the Liam Croft thing’ —that just about covered what I had to do, but in no way hinted at how difficult it was going to be.
***
Having not really spoken for months and then competed for the same job, resulting in the least probable outcome imaginable, Lauren Bilson and I had unexpectedly found ourselves closer now tha
n we’d ever been before. Not physically of course, since Lauren and Dean seemed to be on a mission to see how many different countries they could have sex in, but as friends. Perhaps it was simply that Lauren was the only other person who knew my current situation, and as a career woman herself, she might understand how torn I was. Or maybe I’d finally let go of all of my petty insecurities about her. Either way, we’d been chatting via Skype and Facebook messenger every day, and I was glad to say that I could honestly call her a friend now.
“What did you do?” I asked, leaning back against the headboard of my bed as I spoke to Lauren on Skype again.
“What do you mean?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead.
“Well…you were sent to a football match on assignment, you didn’t get the assignment, and you haven’t been to work since.”
“I had a lot of vacation time saved up,” she said. “I mean, they’re not wild about me taking it on such short notice, but my boss is pretty cool.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I replied, reflecting that I also had a fair amount of vacation time saved up and a pretty cool—albeit very weird—boss.
“To be honest,” Lauren went on, “I just told them the truth and they understood. You know…everyone’s been in love and they can be pretty understanding when you just explain to them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I sighed. What brilliant advice that would’ve been if I’d gotten it earlier. Instead, like an idiot, I’d lied to my boss about why I wanted to stay in London for longer, so it was too late to tell the truth now. Would things have been different if I’d just told Alan the truth? I suppose I’d never know.
I wished I could go back and do it all again.
“Have you told Liam that you have to go home after the match?” Lauren asked.
I sighed again. “Not yet. It’ll just upset him, and I don’t want to distract him,” I said.
“It’ll upset him more if he finds out the same day you leave.”
“I’m hoping something will come up.”
“Like what?”
“Um…a meteor strike?” I suggested.
She laughed. “I think you might want another Plan B.”
“And you think that Plan B should be telling Liam now?”
“Yeah. You’re right; it will upset him, but on the other hand, I think he’s got a right to know.
“What if I told him right after the match? I mean, I still have a day before I have to go after the match is done, and he’s really got to keep his head clear during it. His whole career is riding on that, and it means the world to him. I can’t give him something else to worry about on top of that. He needs to focus.”
“I guess that’s true.” Lauren sounded uncertain. “I really hope it works out for you, hon.”
“Any idea how?”
There was a long pause from the other end of the line, which seemed to sum matters up nicely; there was no easy way out of this. After the match, things would likely go one of two ways—either I’d have a boyfriend and no job, or my dream job and no boyfriend. I simply couldn’t have both.
So which would I pick?
Chapter 18
Liam
My attitude before a match was usually pretty much the same as my attitude at any other given time—the confidence, the swagger, the cocky smile. Why worry? It was just a game, just a job, just ninety minutes work, and then I could notch up another victory.
But not today.
Seated in the locker room, already in my kit though there was still over an hour till kick-off, I tried to make my hands stop shaking. With white knuckles, I clenched my hands over my knees but found that they started shaking as well, bouncing nervously up and down.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Was this how other people felt before a match? How the hell did they function?
There was a lot riding on this match, for my team and for me personally, but there was more to it than that. When the match was over, one way or the other, I would see Allison. I hadn’t seen her for over a week now, and I couldn’t even put into words how much I was looking forward to seeing her. But then came tomorrow, and I would have to deal with what Brian had said; I’d have to tell Allison what he’d said about knowing about her. If she stayed with me, then that would mean the end of her career. I couldn’t ask her to do that.
Of course, there was a flipside—I could sacrifice my own career to be with her, and if she asked me to, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I could go to America and play whatever passed for football there. Brian would still do his level best to ruin Allison’s career out of sheer spite, but it was still worth thinking about. After all, Allison loved her job.
But so did I, and Allison knew it. She’d told me in our little chats that while she loved the fact that I’d offered, she couldn’t make me give up my career any more than I could make her give hers up, and that made sense. It wasn’t fair that either of us had to make the sacrifice—neither of us had done anything wrong. Well…I suppose that wasn’t technically true. Allison had lied to her boss, and I’d employed Brian Thomas despite knowing the man’s slimy reputation and then failed to fire him when that was clearly the thing to do.
But did that really make us deserving of this shitty dilemma?
I tried to push the matter out of my mind—one problem at a time, and right now I had an important football match to win. That had never felt like a problem before, but right now it did. It really did. Somehow it felt like the whole damn world was riding on this one match. I had a strange feeling that if I could win again today, just one more time, then everything would magically be all right with Allison and me tomorrow.
I clung to that thought. With a prize like that at stake, surely I couldn’t lose. But the more there was at stake, the more nervous I felt. I stared down at my still-shaking hands, and for the first time in my professional footballing career, I contemplated the possibility of defeat.
“You look serious.”
The familiar voice made me snap out of my reverie and jump to my feet as if an electric shock had passed through the bench I was sitting on. For a moment I wondered if this was actually Allison in front of me—looking spectacular in a tight but elegant dress—or just a vision.
“And you don’t look pleased to see me,” Allison added jokingly.
I shook my head. “I’m still trying to decide if you’re real.”
“Hmm…okay then. Let me help you make up your mind.” She crossed the room to me with long, swift steps, put her arms around my neck and drew me down into a long kiss.
“Now,” Allison said when we finally broke apart again. “Do you still think I’m a dream?”
I shook my head and grinned, mischief lighting my eyes. “Nah, you kiss better in my dreams, so you must be real.”
“Liam!”
“You know I’m kidding! Not even my dreams kiss like that.”
We kissed again, harder this time, long separation firing our desire, until Allison finally slid a hand between us.
“Might be a good idea to stop while we still can.”
“Yes,” I said, slightly hoarse with arousal. “I might need a cold shower before hitting the pitch.”
Allison giggled. “Yeah, the cold shower definitely seemed to work for you last time.”
I chuckled. “See? This is why I tease you. Revenge for all the teasing I get from you.”
She smiled. “Anyway, sorry to be a distraction. We can catch up properly after the match.”
“Damn right we will.”
“When and where?”
I shrugged. “As soon as we can, and as for the place…anywhere that’s sturdy enough to hold us.”
Allison giggled again. “I meant when and where do you want to meet after the match, you horny idiot?”
I thought for a minute. “The media lounge.”
She smiled. “Where we first met. I like that.”
We stood still for a moment, neither of us wanting to leave but knowing that our time was up once again.
“I’ll score a goal for you.”
Allison leaned forward and winked. “Good. I’ll do you one better. Win the game for me, and I’ll have a very special reward for you...”
I couldn’t help grinning, but I also felt a fluttering of anticipation in my stomach—sex was not the only thing on my mind tonight. “I’ve got something special for you too.”
Allison looked at me with amused curiosity. “Oh? What is it?”
I winked. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
We kissed again, lightly this time, not wanting to start something we couldn’t finish.
“Good luck,” Allison said with a wink. “Not that you need it to win.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I’ll be there.”
I watched her go. There was a right order in which to get things to properly sort out my life, and it went like this: propose to Allison, tell her that Brian was still trying to ruin her career, fire Brian.
On second thought, maybe I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that I’d got that order right…
***
Despite my nerves and despite all the things running through my head, I found that my game wasn’t affected—I played as brilliantly as I always did. But for once, that wasn’t good news…because my team was still losing.
Shit.
It had been one-nil since only ten minutes into the game, when a careless pass had gifted the opposition an opportunity on which they’d instantly capitalized. It was a good goal—if I’d been watching the match, I would’ve admired it, but seeing it now tore my guts out. Still, early goals were better than late; we still had time to redress the balance and pull ahead.
But that proved easier said than done.
Thanks to me, my team boasted the best offence in the Premiership, but we were up against the best defense—a solid wall which we just couldn’t get a damn shot past. Normally that would mean a stalemate, but there’d been that wretched early goal. That was the agonizing thing about football…one goal was all it took sometimes.
As time passed, the match took on a frenzied aspect. I raced up the pitch, ball at my feet, dodging past mid-fielders on my way, only to be overwhelmed by the defense yet again, and as the ball sailed back up the pitch, there began a headlong dash in pursuit of it, one team desperate to extend the gap, the other desperate to keep themselves in contention. Again and again it happened. Each attack was rebuffed, each counter denied. Even the normally raucous football fans seemed to sense the tension; their chants continued, but they were more muted and concerned than usual.
