Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance)

by Avery Wilde

  Playing Dirty

  A Bad Boy Sports Romance

  © 2016

  By Avery Wilde

  All Rights Reserved

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  COPYRIGHT

  Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarities to events or situations is also coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Kate

  Letting out a heavy sigh and rolling over in bed, I looked out the window at the darkening sky. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so lonely. I knew it probably sounded crazy; before I moved to New York City for my TV show, I didn’t think I’d ever feel lonely in a city with over eight million people.

  But here I was, lonely as hell.

  I knew I was unbelievably lucky to have scored my own talk show, though, so I couldn’t complain too much. It was very hard work—lots of research and practice went into it—but it was entirely worth it. It was a talk show called Keeping Current With Kate, and it was aimed at a mostly female audience.

  I’d scored the gig in what seemed like a little piece of serendipity. I’d always been interested in working on TV, although in more of a sideline capacity rather than actually being filmed, and after working as an assistant news network producer for a few years, I’d had a chance to pitch an idea to an executive over drinks at a Christmas party. She’d loved my idea of a show that discussed important modern women’s issues in a relatable way without being kitschy, but for some reason she’d accidentally thought that I was also pitching myself as the host of the show. I hadn’t intended that at all, but she’d told me she loved my ‘vibe’ and attitude, and she’d asked me to host the show after it had been officially picked up.

  I’d been thrilled, terrified and excited all at the same time, and while I knew that being on TV could be horribly nerve-wracking for someone like me who was rather shy, I’d seen it as too big of a career opportunity to be missed. Chances like that didn’t come along every day—for some people, they never came along—and I also saw it as an opportunity for personal growth. Being a TV personality had forced me to come out of my shell a lot more, take risks, and learn how to be far more confident, and it had been worth every second of the nervousness I’d initially felt.

  I checked the clock on my bedside table and frowned. Despite what my sister Lizzy had told me in a rush of excitement before her recent trip, I couldn’t remember whether Manchester was five or six hours ahead of NYC. It was already after seven here, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to relax and sleep until I’d talked to my sister. Besides, she was a complete night-owl. It was hard to imagine her turning in before two or three in the morning.

  The phone rang and rang. Just when I was about to hang up, I heard a familiar, perky voice.

  “Kate!” Lizzy cried. “It’s been so long!”

  I laughed. “It’s only been a few weeks, Lizzy. I know it feels like longer, though.”

  “Damn straight,” Lizzy mumbled in a low tone. “What’s up?”

  “Not much. I can’t believe you’re actually home,” I said, an incredulous inflection in my tone. “Not out partying? Not out chasing after those jocks?”

  “Hey, I came here to study,” Lizzy said in a playfully defensive tone. “And besides, they’re out of town.” I could practically hear the pout in her voice from across the Atlantic. “Is everything okay? Aren’t you going to sleep soon?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not even dark here,” I said. “For your information, I actually stayed up pretty late last night!”

  “Like until nine?”

  We both cracked up laughing at that. The air crackled on the phone line and I shifted position, sliding down and stretching out my legs on the bed. I loved lying in the middle of my giant bed by myself most of the time, but right now it just made me feel even more alone.

  “So what’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice cheery. “Met anyone yet?”

  “Tons of people,” Lizzy said. She yawned loudly into the receiver. “This is a really fun town, Kate.”

  “I bet,” I said. A trace of wistfulness crept into my voice. “Got any plans for this weekend?”

  Lizzy yawned again, louder this time. “I think I’m supposed to meet some of my uni mates for a trip to London,” she said. “But I went last weekend and I think I might stay home this time. Or maybe rent a car and drive around. It’s really beautiful here, Kate. It doesn’t feel like home. Everything feels so ancient. The Peak District is right out of Manchester, you know, that awesome park from Pride and Prejudice. The remake, with that sexy Mr. Darcy!”

  “That’s awesome,” I said. I laughed, thinking about my brash younger sister tromping around in Georgian mansions, looking for a Mr. Darcy of her very own.

  There was a pause. “So what about your plans for this weekend? Hanging out with Josh again?” she asked.

  I bit my lip. “Nope,” I said, aware of how brittle I sounded. “Probably just some shopping and checking out the farmer’s market. I still have a few weeks before the show comes back on the air.”

  “What happened?”

  “We take a break every summer,” I explained. “Some of the producers are traveling and looking for new talent, so we use the pre-recorded episodes and then I’ll do a big special episode at the end of August. I think for that one, I’m going to talk about how current dress codes in a lot of schools can be sexist and harmful to healthy sexual development in high school girls.”

  Lizzy let out a long sigh. “Not that,” she said. “I mean, what happened to Josh? Why aren’t you seeing him?”

  “Um…”

  While I tried to think of a decent enough reply, Lizzy kept going. “You’ve only been together about a month,” she observed slyly. “I thought you were still pretty excited about him.”

  I frowned. As usual, my baby sister had a perfect knack for digging far into my life.

  I sighed. “We broke up,” I said. “He wanted something more, and I wasn’t really willing to give that when he started really pushing for it.”

  “Is that why you’re so depressed?”

  I winced. In addition to being frightfully quick, Lizzy was always the first to nose her way into a situation.

  “I’m not depressed,” I said. “I just feel kind of weird about the whole thing. I mean, we work together. And I didn’t exactly expect things to work out to the point where we’d get married and be together forever, but I didn’t really think I’d have any problems with him, either.”

  “What kind of problems? Do I need to come home and kick his ass?”

  I laughed. “No, but you could do it in about five seconds,” I said, quite honestly.

  Josh was one of the younger producers on my show, and we’d dated casually for a couple of months. From the beginning, I’d been really clear about what I was expecting: absolutely nothing for the time being. I preferred to get to know people well before committing to too much, rather than jump in feet first and risk having my heart broken. Josh seemed to understand my need to take things slow at first, but then he’d quickly started getting clingier and clingier. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him—because I did, at least when we were together—but I felt intimidated by all of the pressure he’d been putting on me, and I was also very put off by his lack of respect for my need to take things slow. Tha
t disrespect didn’t bode well for the future.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  I sighed. “He just…he won’t leave me alone, honestly. And it was okay at first, but since we have to work together, it’s frustrating. He just doesn’t seem to get it that I’m not interested in falling in love with him. Not since he disrespected my boundaries so much.”

  “Men are so arrogant,” Lizzy said with the practiced air of someone who had dealt with similar. I had to laugh; even though she was five years younger than me, she was clearly the more experienced of our pair. I’d always wanted a serious boyfriend, but honestly, finding time to date was hard. And ever since my show started getting more popular, I was suspicious that men just wanted to use me for fame. I was sick of getting dates with supposedly perfect men only to have them spend the entirety of our time together talking about themselves and hinting at how I could get them a job in TV, or telling me how I could improve my show...with public credit to them, of course. It was enough to turn me off dating altogether.

  “They can be,” I said. “I think I just need a break from men altogether, to be honest.”

  “Hey, why don’t you fly out here?” Lizzy’s voice perked up and I could practically hear the gears spinning in her head. “I’ve got an apartment to myself and it’s pretty quiet around here, at least compared to New York. I think you’d love it.”

  My first instinct was to refuse, but suddenly I couldn’t believe how much I actually wanted to go. I didn’t exactly have a reason to stay, and I hadn’t taken a real vacation in a few years. I looked out the window, and I could see a plane in the distant night sky, heading east. Maybe it was a sign.

  “You know what? That’s a great idea,” I said. “I’ll book a flight in the morning.”

  Lizzy squealed into the receiver and I practically dropped my cell into my lap. “This is so great!” she gushed. “I can’t believe you actually said yes!”

  A real smile, the first in days, crept onto my lips. “I think a break is probably just what I need right now,” I said honestly. “Besides, I have a ton of leave saved up. And the show doesn’t start again until the end of the summer.”

  “I’m glad,” Lizzy said. She yawned again and I felt a little twinge of guilt.

  “I’ll let you go,” I said. “I’m going to book a ticket now and I’ll forward the reservation to you. Can you pick me up from the airport?”

  “Of course,” Lizzy promised. “It’ll be just like old times.”

  I knew she was talking about when I first moved to NYC, after college. Lizzy and I had grown up in the country, about as far away from chic New York as we could get. I’d always wanted to get out and do something, but sometimes I couldn’t deny that the big city made me feel claustrophobic.

  Lizzy now sounded much happier than she had when she’d first picked up the phone, and as we said our goodbyes and hung up, I reflected that even though she was the more outgoing of the two of us, she still must have been feeling lonely. After all, she’d only been in Manchester for a few weeks.

  The darkening sky outside no longer looked so intimidating to me, and I smiled and stood by the window of my bedroom, watching the people mill about on the streets. From the twenty-first floor, they looked like little ants.

  Waltzing over to my bed, I sat down and pulled my laptop close to me. I hadn’t checked my email in a few hours, and as it loaded, I felt the familiar twinge of anxiety creeping up my throat. After Josh and I had split up, he’d taken to emailing me almost compulsively. It was something he’d done while we were together, too, but after the split his emails were primarily sent in the middle of the night, rife with spelling mistakes.

  I frowned when the page loaded and I saw I had two emails from Josh. With a touch of hesitation, I clicked on the first one.

  ‘Kate the Great,

  I’m at happy hour, u want to join? I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself. That is, unless u beg me to touch u. ;) PS did u change ur number? I haven’t heard from u in days and I know u must be missing the biggest part of me….

  Josh’

  Groaning, I hit delete and sent the offending message to the recycling bin. I didn’t know how someone could be so obnoxious all the time. It wasn’t that I was prudish, but drunkenly emailing an ex from happy hour just seemed like such a bad, childish move. The kind of thing I would have (maybe) done in college, if I’d had less self-respect.

  The second message was time-stamped an hour ago.

  ‘Katie,

  Can I come over? I really need 2 talk 2 u. We need to work things out, ok? U understand that? Rite?

  Your Josh’

  I rolled my eyes. I knew it was stupid, but he was really getting on my nerves. I wanted to block his email, but he always sent the emails from the television studio-issued iPhone. I briefly wondered if I could report him for harassment, but thinking about that put a whole new knot in my stomach. For a while now, I’d had an odd feeling that the head producer didn’t particularly like me, and I didn’t want to give him another reason to bother me. I could just imagine how that conversation would go, me trying to explain that I’d broken up with Josh and that he was harassing me. I could picture exactly how it would end: we’d both get a lecture on behaving unprofessionally by dating work colleagues, and then Josh would just go on badgering me because he’d know he could get away with it.

  Starting a new message to my boss, I told him that I was going out of the country for a few weeks and that I would be able to stay in touch via email while I was gone. After I hit send, there was a ping of a new message. I was incredulous; I couldn’t believe he’d responded already. My boss was always glued to his BlackBerry but this was unusual, even for him.

  ‘Katie,

  I’m going to come over so we can talk, and don’t shut me out this time. I miss u and we really need to talk about how we’re gonna work things out. I can’t live without u, Kate, I need u in my life. Why don’t u understand that? I---‘

  I clicked ‘delete’ and slammed my laptop shut before I could read any more of Josh’s poisonous words. My head was swimming; I couldn’t believe I’d gotten in such a mess. The whole time, I didn’t exactly think that dating a colleague was a good idea, but I’d had no idea it was going to turn out like this.

  The startling thing about all of it was that for most of the time we’d dated, it hadn’t been like that. Josh had been perfectly content to get some takeout, snuggle on the couch, and sometimes sleep together—as in literally sleep together in the same bed, keeping each other warm. And then as soon as I started pulling away because I thought we were spending too much time together, he got really clingy and intense. The final straw had been when I’d broken a date because I had a splitting headache, and he’d shown up drunk at three in the morning. I’d told him in no uncertain terms to piss off and then slammed the door in his face.

  Predictably, he hadn’t even remembered doing it the next day.

  While I usually told Lizzy almost everything, I didn’t exactly want her knowing about how bad Josh’s stalker-ish behavior had gotten. She was younger, and I prayed she wouldn’t ever have to deal with the same kind of crap from a suitor. Then again, Lizzy was a lot different from me. Over the years, I’d had to really push myself to become confident and strong, while Lizzy had been like that since the beginning. She’d been the younger tomboy to my girly girl. Hell, one of the reasons she’d gone to Manchester was because she was obsessed with some soccer team who were based there.

  Thinking about Lizzy in Manchester reminded me that I should do some research. I didn’t really know anything about England, except for London. And even then, my knowledge of London was outdated—mostly from reading old novels and seeing TV shows and movies that were based there.

  As I checked out a Manchester website on my laptop a few minutes later, I was pleased to read that the current weather there was quite a lot cooler than the humid NYC summers here, but I had to roll my eyes at the constant references to Manchester United. There were even
pop-up ads for flights to Manchester with pictures of the team carousing and partying. Yeah, like I’d want to spend eight hours crammed into a jet with a bunch of drunk playboys, even if they were admittedly kind of cute.

  When I went to the site for the Manchester Evening News, there was an article featuring one of the star players from the team. The large bolded headline practically yelled ‘Belfast Playboy Plays Dirty With the Ladies,' and splashed underneath that was a shirtless photo of a very muscular man named Jay Walsh. Even though I felt like rolling my eyes at the sports worship—I’d never been a particularly sporty person—I couldn’t deny that he was incredibly sexy, and my knees felt a little weak as I took in the picture.

  He had a sculpted face and body—slightly wild, like he could be dangerous—and piercing blue eyes that made my stomach do flip-flops. His dark brown hair was cropped close to his head, and I found myself admiring the strong line of his jaw.

  “Stop it,” I muttered to myself, slamming my laptop closed. The last thing I needed to do was start fantasizing over completely unobtainable men….especially arrogant playboys. From what the article had said about Jay Walsh, he was the kind of guy who took home a different woman each and every night.

  Maybe sometimes even more than one woman.

  Ugh. As I imagined an English person might say, a man like that really wasn’t my cup of tea.

  Standing up, I stretched and walked over to my closet, and after throwing the doors open, I grabbed a handful of dresses and tossed them on the bed. They were mostly the kind of thing I could wear to work; stylish, simple, attractive but not really sexy. For my job, I always had to look perky and relevant. The sexiest I could dare go on the show was ‘girl next door,’ and that was honestly fine with me.

  I smiled when I saw one of the dresses in the pile that I’d selected. It definitely wasn’t a work dress; it was a close-fitting black sheath with lace sleeves and a pencil skirt that hugged my ass to perfection. It was one of the dresses I’d bought right before moving to the city, when I thought that I’d actually be going to bars and looking for men to pick up after being inspired by one too many re-run episodes of Sex And The City. I’d almost never had the nerve to wear it, and I was honestly glad Josh hadn’t ever caught a glimpse of me tucked into the silky fabric. If he had, it would probably be harder than ever to make him stay away, because knowing him, he’d try to say I was ‘asking for it’ by wearing it around him.