Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance)

by Avery Wilde

He gestured towards the table, which was set with two places, some bottles of beer, and a lone daisy stuck in a glass vase. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m almost done.”

  I could barely keep from grinning as I lowered myself into the wooden chair. I’d seen Jay almost every day of the past couple of weeks. His schedule was surprisingly light; save for a few training sessions, I saw him all the time. Lizzy had been very busy with university, at least so she’d told me. I felt guilty about neglecting my little sister—I’d only seen her four times in the last fortnight—but something told me she didn’t mind, because ever since Jay and I had started….doing whatever it was that we were doing, she got to go to all of the training sessions.

  As for me, my time here with Jay had been a real whirlwind. After the first night together, it was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. Whatever tension, whatever ice had been in place between us had long since melted, and now, being with Jay was almost comfortable. Every time he looked at me, every time he walked into the room, I felt a little surge of excitement rush through my body. Sometimes it was easy for me to forget that he was Jay Walsh, star of Manchester United.

  To me, he was just Jay.

  When I actually thought about who he was in the grand scheme of things, I could scarcely believe I was here with him, actually sort of dating him, and I knew I was living in a big fantasy bubble—sooner or later, I’d have to go back to the States, and he’d probably be ready to move on to his next fling by then anyway. But for now, I was happy residing in the big, warm bubble of fun and affection…along with the most fabulous sex I’d ever had.

  “What do you feel like doing tonight?” I leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs at the ankle. “You want to go to the movies?”

  Jay shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “You mean like the cinema?”

  I laughed. I was still getting used to his slang. “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, if you want. There’s a new Batman movie out…”

  “Last time I went to see a film, there were gobs of girls around,” Jay said with a smirk. “I can’t imagine that would be much fun for you.”

  I pretended to pout, but really, I understood perfectly, given some of my own experiences with being a TV personality. Jay sauntered over, still shirtless, bearing a plate with a near-perfect omelet. “This looks incredible,” I said softly as he placed the steaming food in front of me. “Thank you.”

  He gave me a lopsided grin. He cracked a beer and sat down in the opposite chair. “You’re welcome. I know I’m not much of a cook,” he said. “But you can’t go wrong with breakfast for dinner.”

  “I love breakfast for dinner,” I said with a grin. “Toast and bacon and sausage, yes please.”

  He pretended to groan. “I should have made you a fry up,” he replied with a wink. “Beans and toast and sausages, but you’d be out for a week.”

  I stuck out my tongue. “I’ll have you know I’m allowed to eat carbs,” I said. “Just not very many, at least not while we’re filming.”

  Jay gestured towards the plate in front of me. “Eat,” he said. “It’ll get cold soon.”

  I dug in, surprised at how excellent the omelet tasted. Jay had added bits of cheese, green onion, and ham and it was surprisingly filling. I didn’t mind that Jay didn’t want to go out; if I was going to be honest, I didn’t love the idea of fighting off a bunch of his female fans who would no doubt do absolutely anything to be noticed whilst vying for his attention. I was more than happy to stay at home, even though that’s what we’d been doing almost every other night.

  “This was incredible,” I said after I’d taken the last forkful of omelet into my mouth. “Where did you learn to make these?”

  Jay grinned. “You wouldn’t believe me,” he said with a sheepish grin. “But it doesn’t matter, does it, love?”

  I blushed and looked away. It was surreal. Me, Kate, barefoot in the kitchen of one of the world’s most famous men. And he was calling me ‘love’! Of course, that didn’t mean he loved me at all. It was just an expression.

  “What is it?” Jay looked at me with curiosity written on the fine features of his face.

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s just…I can’t believe this sometimes.”

  He stood up and walked towards me with a soft expression on his face. When he was standing in front of me, he leaned down and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

  “Believe it,” he said in a solemn tone. He pressed his mouth against mine and I felt a shiver of desire run through my body. “You want to go to bed?”

  I yawned. “It’s late,” I said. “And we had a long day of doing nothing.”

  Jay smirked and slipped his hand into my shirt, stroking my breasts until I shuddered. “Not exactly nothing,” he whispered into my ear. “We did have that marathon sex session this morning…”

  “You call that a marathon?” I joked. “Here I was thinking you were a star athlete…”

  “Wow, kitty’s got some claws,” he said, chuckling and mimicking a cat in attack mode.

  I laughed. “Come on, you,” I said, getting up from the table. “Time for bed. But don’t worry, I don’t really want to sleep yet…”

  ***

  In the morning, Jay got up at the crack of dawn—six on the dot. He claimed that it was a habit he wasn’t able to break, but as someone who has never been a morning person, I could have sworn he did it just to torture me.

  “Jay, please,” I grumbled, rolling over and reaching for him. He was already gone and my fingers only made contact with the cooling sheets.

  He grinned at me from across the room. Then there was a sound like something buzzing, and he darted off into the other room.

  Sleepily, I closed my eyes. Jay’s bed was so comfortable that I easily could have drifted off for another hour or two. On mornings when he had training, I often did stay in bed until his return, upon which I’d leap in the shower and try to act like I’d been up for hours. But Jay always saw through the ruse, and I had a feeling he’d figured out truly lazy I could be when I was in vacation mode.

  But that’s what I was here for—a break from real life.

  “I’ll be right there, Mary,” I heard Jay say into the phone.

  I sat up in bed, struggling to hear what else he was saying to this ‘Mary’ person, whoever she was. I could hear his footsteps pacing in the other room but had no sense of the dialogue, and after a moment I gave up, flopped back and covered my face with a pillow.

  “Kate?” Jay’s voice was louder this time, and I shoved the pillow aside and yawned. He was standing at the foot of the bed, pulling a sweater over his head. “Are you awake?”

  I blinked. “Barely,” I said in a bleary voice. “What was that?”

  “I have to go,” he replied, an apologetic tone in his deep voice. “I’m so sorry, Kate, I’ll explain everything later.” He gestured around. “Until then, my flat is your flat, make yourself at home.”

  I shook my head, rubbing my eyes with a fist. “I really should get going,” I said. A flash of guilt hit me like a brand. “I’ve been a horrible sister. I’ve ignored Lizzy so much the last couple of days.”

  Jay nodded. “You can show yourself out, then,” he said. Stepping forward, he leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll explain everything later,” he said again.

  I thought I saw a guilty look on his face but he grinned suddenly, crinkling up his eyes. “Just as soon as I’m home, okay? Want me to call you?” he added.

  I nodded. “Thanks,” I said softly.

  Jay darted into the bathroom and seconds later, I heard water running from the tap. I wondered what was making him run away from me so early. Even on mornings when he had practice, he didn’t leave until after seven.

  Once he was gone, his apartment was almost too quiet to bear. I took my time getting ready in his bathroom—Jay had a magnificent soaking tub—and then dressed, putting my hair up in a messy chignon. My stomach rumbled as I let myself out of Jay’s post building. I hadn
’t eaten since the omelet, so I decided to grab some fresh breakfast foods for Lizzy and myself. Maybe we could go to the park and snack and gossip, catch up on things. I felt ashamed for not having been a better sister over the past few weeks, and I vowed to myself that I’d start working on fixing that today. No more getting wrapped up over Jay.

  On the street, I caught a cab. “Can you please drop me off at a grocery store?” I asked, smiling at the cabbie.

  He looked at me with a vaguely confused stare. “At this hour?”

  My smile faded slightly, and I nodded, feeling almost defensive. “Yes. I want to get some breakfast,” I said, sticking my chin out.

  The cabbie laughed. “Blimey…he didn’t feed you, did he?” He laughed uproariously at his own joke. “You modern lasses, all about the fun and games until it’s time for a good bowl of oatmeal, right?”

  I blushed bright red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. The words came out more stiff than I meant for them to. “I’m just going on an errand.”

  The cabbie stared at me the whole way home, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something weird was going on. After all, Jay was famous for being a playboy. Did the cabbie know that I’d been in his apartment? Was I being watched?

  Don’t be ridiculous, Kate, I thought. You’re getting paranoid.

  The cabbie finally dropped me off at a grocer, and I picked up some fruit, then went next door to a bakery and grabbed some fresh croissants. When we were kids, Lizzy always used to tease me by eating all of the bread in sight. She knew I watched my weight, because I had the kind of metabolism that made me prone to gaining it easily, but since she played sports and had the metabolism of a jet engine, she could basically eat whatever she wanted. I grinned as I picked out an array of pastries. Today, diet be damned, I was going to eat exactly what I wanted.

  I hated having to appease my showrunners by restricting all the things I enjoyed, and spending the last couple of weeks with a man who absolutely loved my body exactly how it was had been exactly what I needed to make me see the hypocrisy in my lifestyle. My show was all about issues facing women in today’s society and the unfairness of some of them, and one of those issues was the ridiculous beauty standards upheld by the media. I’d done an episode on body positivity and acceptance, and yet, there I was allowing the producers to tell me how much I was ‘allowed’ to weigh.

  Well, no more.

  I felt a little silly creeping up the stairs to Lizzy’s apartment half an hour later. The building was quiet, almost silent, and I felt almost like an intruder. I realized that it had been so long that I had trouble recognizing Lizzy’s door, but then I remembered that she’d had the lock changed to a different-looking one after the break-in.

  “Hi, it’s me,” I called loudly as I let myself in. “I brought breakfast!”

  There was no reply. Frowning, I kicked off my shoes and dropped the groceries on the kitchen counter. I heard soft voices coming from the other room and a guilty grin snuck on my face. So that’s why Lizzy doesn’t mind that I haven’t been home much, I thought. She has a boyfriend! And I caught them together!

  But when I rounded the corner and walked into the living room, I stopped dead in my tracks. Lizzy wasn’t sitting with a boyfriend at all.

  She was sitting with Josh.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jay

  By the time I’d climbed behind the wheel of my Mercedes and pointed it towards the police station, I was a wreck. All I could hear was Connor’s sister’s voice—Mary’s voice—in my head.

  Closing my eyes, I remembered the phone call I’d had that morning.

  “Connor’s had a bit of a scrape,” she’d said at first, obviously trying to stay cheerful. In the background, I heard a child wailing. “Now, you be quiet!” she said in a soothing tone, but the child kept wailing. “Aw, Christ, Jay, hold on a second.”

  I’d waited a few heart-stopping seconds while Mary had set the phone down and fussed with her baby until he stopped crying, and when she picked up the receiver, I could hear the weariness in her voice.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Seems like Connor was picked up for narcotic possession,” Mary said drily. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Jay?”

  What?

  I blinked, totally and utterly shocked. “No,” I said honestly. “I had no idea. I mean, he used to take the odd thing at parties and the like when we were kids, but I didn’t know he was still using anything.”

  “Apparently he’s been using a lot,” Mary said. She huffed and yelled at another child in the background. “I’d be coming down myself but as you know, I’ve got the three little ones and I can’t leave them at home. And I definitely can’t afford to be taking them all on a trip right now.” She sighed. “It’s been ages since I got myself out of Belfast, and I wish I could come help you. But you’re gonna have to see to him alone.”

  I blinked again. “Is he okay? I mean, is he injured?”

  Mary laughed thinly. “I don’t know, this time,” she said. “There’s been other times, you know.” When I didn’t answer, her voice took on a suspicious tone. “You do know, don’t you?”

  I shook my head, even though Mary wasn’t in the room to see me. From the other side of the wall, I heard Kate rolling around in bed. My loins twitched; part of me wanted to return to her, hang up with Mary, and forget that my best friend since childhood was in trouble. But I couldn’t do that. No way. I knew what I had to do.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t,” I said in a plain voice. “I had no idea he was even having these bloody problems with drugs. How long has it been?”

  “God knows,” Mary said. She let out a heavy sigh. “We barely talk anymore, my brother and me. I wish things weren’t like that, I wish he’d bloody listen to his family. But not anymore, he hasn’t listened to us in a long time.” I could feel her resentment coming through the phone. “He moved to Manchester to be near you, didn’t you think about looking him up every now and then? Or too busy balls-deep in women?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, even though there was a grain of truth to Mary’s words. It was true that I hardly ever saw Connor anymore—and it was partially my fault. We hadn’t gotten together in donkey’s years. When he first moved here from Belfast, I thought we’d see each other all the time. But practice with my mates had taken up a lot of my time, Connor always seemed to be ‘busy’ whenever I called him to catch up, and then there were the women….

  “Well, you’d better get up and go see him,” Mary said. She didn’t sound nearly as friendly as she first had when she’d called. “And give him my love, will you?”

  “Of course, I’ll be right there, Mary,” I said. She’d given me the details of Connor’s arrest, and then we’d hung up.

  Now, I couldn’t believe I’d missed so many signs. Connor had always liked partying hard, and I should have paid more attention to his activities over the years. It was true that our lives went along separate tracks, but I should have taken it as a sign when he stopped calling me every week, asking to get together for a pint.

  I frowned as I shifted the car into gear and drove it away from my flat. I wondered what I was going to tell Kate. Sure, she was sympathetic and smart, but having a best mate with a drug problem wasn’t going to be something she could overlook easily, I could already tell. She was the type of woman who didn’t condone drug use, and I didn’t know how she’d react to my story. Besides, we’d only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks. It felt right to me, but I didn’t know exactly how she felt yet—for all I knew, she’d think it was way too early to be having deep, serious discussions about friends’ problems.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, mate, I thought. No time to worry about the future yet. We’ve got to take care of Connor right now.

  I had no idea what I was going to say to Connor, and the more time I spent in the car, the more guilt I felt consume me. I should have known, I should have paid more attenti
on to my friends…this was all my fault. I cursed the day I’d ever become famous and stopped listening to everyone I’d known from Belfast. I didn’t like to admit it, and I would never have told Connor, but ever since I’d been picked up by Manchester United, I felt distant from my roots. It was easy to forget that my parents had died in a car bombing, that I was from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Belfast. It was easy to forget who I was, especially when I was drunk on the notion of becoming someone else.

  I remembered a party that Connor and I had attended, right after we’d both moved. I hadn’t yet started playing with the team—I knew they were interested, but nothing formal had happened at that point. I’d attended a practice session or two and I’d been amazed at the swarms of girls that took over the team afterwards. These hot, amazing young women would wait out in the parking lot of the field for hours, pouncing on the sweaty players as soon as they were done kicking a ball around.

  Connor met me after one of these practices. We were going to a party together, in downtown Manchester. The girls seemed to know I wasn’t one of the team yet so they mostly left me alone, but I caught lingering, appreciative glances from a few of them. I winked.

  “Hello, ladies,” I said with a grin. “Fancy a good time tonight?”

  Connor whistled through his teeth. “Come with me and my mate,” he called loudly. “You’ll never want to be a WAG ever again!”

  Most of the girls had rolled their eyes, and a few had blown kisses, but they’d all stayed away. As soon as Connor and I had climbed into my beat-up Fiat, Connor peppered me with questions.

  “Mate, holy god! I’ve never seen birds like that,” he said appreciatively as we pulled out of the stadium’s lot. “They’re the most gorgeous creatures I’ve ever seen!”

  “They are a sexy bunch,” I agreed. “But don’t you think it’s a bit shallow, eh? They only want the status, mate, they don’t care about who we are.”

  Connor shook his head. He grinned at me with a devilish look on his face. “I’d still take it, mate,” he said. “One of those girls had an arse that knocked the others out of the park! God, I’d like to see the face on her when I take her out for a date.”