“Ven the bidding begins, I vill be first and last,” Babushka assured.
Huh?
“No. You won’t.” Anna patted her grandmother’s arm.
Babushka harrumphed and said something in what must have been Russian.
Anna replied in Russian.
He tried to follow the conversation, but given that he didn’t speak Russian, he obviously failed.
“Babushka, leave Drake alone. He’s not for sale,” Anna finally said, speaking English again so he could understand.
But about the for-sale thing… Actually, according to his agent, he sort of was. Which was why he needed to catch Medford soon.
Anna looped her free arm through his and the world that had gone topsy-turvy righted itself with her touch.
Denver.
He’d stay in Denver.
Even if Jackson Medford offered him minimum wage or asked him to play strictly for charity, Drake would make it work.
Two more seasons—that’s what his agent insisted Drake had in him. Perhaps a few more if Drake could get his arm to cooperate and managed to pull out a championship in the upcoming season.
When it was all said and done, then...then he had to deal with what came next.
The obvious thing? The thing that made him look forward to the future and not dread it?
Anna.
Off the field, he was just a guy who had no idea where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do.
But Anna knew what to do. That’s one of the things that drew him to her. He had a bag of tricks that he used with fans to help make them feel comfortable around him—a vetted array of rehearsed responses he’d honed over his twelve-year professional career. But beyond his standard chitchat, big events like this one gave him hives.
“Now, vhere vill ve go on our date?” Babushka asked Drake.
“You said you’re buying him for me.” Anna stared her grandmother down. “Now you’re buying him for you?”
“There is enough of him to go around,” Babushka said with an exaggerated shoulder lift.
He ping-ponged between the two of them as they picked up again in Russian. Had he received a head injury around the same time he’d pulled the hell out of his hamstring?
“Apologies. I don’t know what you’re referring to with this talk of purchasing me.” He did the thing where he crossed his arms while giving the fan his full attention. Arms crossed signaled for them to move along—which usually worked—while giving his full attention made them feel valued and appreciated.
Babushka held her program open. Slowly, licking her fingertip between each turn of a page and moving at the speed of a sloth, she flipped the pages until she came to one with his photo and then held it out for him to read.
His gut seemed to take an imaginary punch.
There was a bachelor auction, that he’d known. What he hadn’t known was that he was one of the eligible bachelors up for sale.
There was a photo of him in his jersey holding a football on the field with a shit-eating grin and messy hair in place. Right alongside that was his professional league photo in his suit, still holding the football. Next to the photos were the words Most Eligible Quarterback.
Hell. To. The. No.
His agent’s specific instructions were to lay low while he did his dance with Medford and arranged for the change. A public bachelor auction was not laying low.
As if he’d taken a direct hit to the gut, his stomach clenched, then fell, then tried to empty itself all over the photo spread.
He swallowed—he hadn’t agreed to be the grand prize in the auction. He never would have agreed to do that. He snatched the program, a sheen of sweat probably appearing on his forehead.
Words dried right up. He had nothing. Nada.
Hence his aversion to any social appearances not required in his contracts. Contract-approved events had specific provisions allowing him to escape and catch a break every so often in a prepared private green room of sorts.
This event? Not so much.
But this event had Anna, so he’d sucked it up.
“I didn’t...” He held up the image, tapping it harder than necessary. “This isn’t approved.”
“What do you mean it’s not approved?” Anna asked, as pale as he felt. “The committee chair sent us all emails about how you had agreed.”
“I did not agree to be in the auction. I said I would be one of the announcers for the auction.” He stared at the image of himself. “Damn.”
“Who did this?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know.” He glanced up from the glossy paper and couldn’t help but notice the extra-wide wide eyes she directed toward her grandmother.
“Tell me it wasn’t you,” Anna said, her gaze narrowing in a way he’d learned was not a good thing. “You never even came to committee meetings.”
“I admit nothing,” Babushka said with a heavy wink—dear God, her eyelid stayed closed for an abnormally long time.
He’d begun to question if she was a passive participant in having a stroke when her eyelid slowly rolled open and her eyes sparkled.
A sparkle that gave her ruse away.
“My Roman is becoming very good apprentice,” Babushka said.
“You two put Drake in the bachelor auction without asking?” Anna asked, incredulous.
“It vill be fine.” Babushka shrugged her shoulders up toward her ears.
Which meant fuck a fucking Ferrari, his night just got complicated.
Chapter 4
Drake
* * *
“You have to buy me.” Drake turned to Anna. “However much it costs. Buy me. I will pay you back.”
Anna still had the reindeer-in-the-headlights expression on her face. “I—”
“I vill buy you. It vill be fine.” Babushka patted his cheek and shuffled around him. She continued to speak as she moved forward, but he didn’t catch what she’d said.
“Who do I talk to on the committee to make this not happen? I’ll make a massive donation. Anything,” he said to Anna as he combed his fingers through his hair.
“Um…” Anna shifted her gaze away from his. “I’ll go find one of the committee chairs. It’ll be fine.” She didn’t sound like she believed it would be okay.
Something settled deep down inside of him—that intuition that told a person whether something was a good idea or a bad one, the instinct he relied on when picking a play and a receiver. It told him that this was not fine.
His heart continued to thump unnaturally fast.
“Is there a room? Somewhere I can have a moment?” he asked, his words more clipped than he’d intended.
A private place where he could contact his business manager, agent, and anyone else who would listen and might be able to stop this from actually happening without wrecking his reputation along the way. His agent was exceptional at coming up with solutions created from nothing but chicken wire, a plastic cup, and sparkling tree lights. At least, that’s what he’d thought when the evening began.
“Follow me.” Anna tugged on his elbow, her fingers digging into the fabric of his suit jacket.
He hated the situation he was in. Despised the taste of frustration coating his tongue. But he did not mind at all that Anna had a grip on his arm. She led him through the other guests and around an excessive number of white poinsettias and sheer fabric curtains that draped from the ceiling to the floor. She was a woman on a mission who didn’t stop for autographs.
The look on her face must’ve been effective because she managed to get him through without stopping just as well as a team of his best security gets him to his truck after a game.
They moved behind the stage, Anna flicking the curtain aside as he followed behind.
“Where are we going?” he whispered.
“There’s an empty room back here you can use to call whoever you need.” She slowed, pointed out the cables taped along the floor so he didn’t trip, then moved a precarious stack of what appeared to be em
pty boxes wrapped to look like extravagant Christmas presents, and opened a door.
He followed as she led him into a storage room. Chairs stacked ten high lined the walls, and round tables that had been torn down and set against the wall. Long strands of extra unwound Christmas lights were draped over a couple of the tables.
“Will this work?” she asked, hands on hips as she surveyed the space.
“Perfect.” He pulled his cell from his pocket.
“Then I’ll just leave you…” She grimaced, blew air from her cheeks, and walked back to the door. “…to go let the committee know you didn’t agree to this.”
“Anna.” His throat was thick with her name.
She turned.
He futzed around with the cell in his hand. “We need to talk once I sort this out.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He pulled up the contact for his agent and pushed the call button. No signal.
Shit.
He turned to ask Anna if he could borrow her phone, but she was pushing and pulling at the door. It wasn’t opening.
Four strides and he was beside her. She glanced at him, eyes wide. “It’s jammed. It won’t open.”
No. He did not accept that.
He turned the handle and put his weight behind his effort to pull the door open. It didn’t budge.
“We’ll just call the front desk. They’ll send someone right over.” Anna wiped a whisp of hair from her forehead. “Where’s your phone?”
“No signal.” He held up his no-signal phone in illustration.
“What?” she asked, as though she had never heard of a phone not having any signal.
“I don’t have service in here—” which was totally okay, because “—if we’re locked in here, they can’t sell me out there.”
Logic was totally his friend in this situation. Besides, if they were locked in a room, then perhaps they could hash out the future without the guests’ constant attempts to get autographs or his attention.
Anna held three fingers over her lips and shook her head. Despite the pink makeup highlighting her cheeks, she was totally pale. “That’s not true. They can still sell you. But if we’re locked in here, I can’t buy you. If I can’t buy you, then Babushka will probably buy you and then there will be a scene”—Anna scanned the empty room with her gaze as if she were searching for an escape route—“and then she’ll have stipulations. Stipulations and a scene. And then she’ll shove us together and then we’ll have all of this resentment toward each other.”
Being shoved together didn’t sound so bad. “I won’t resent you if your babushka purchases me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Anna.”
“I mean, how can you know that?” she asked.
“Anna. The scene I can live without. But the other part is going to be fine. No matter what, it’s going to be fine. Because I have every intention of showing you why we’re great together for as long as you’ll let me.”
“We’re great together?” Anna asked, her expression pure shock.
“We are.” He was firm on this.
“We are great together.” She sighed. “I’ve missed you.”
“Whoever buys me? It’ll be fine. It’ll probably be your grandmother and she’ll just give me to you.” That’s the outcome he was rooting for.
“That’s your first mistake. You can’t trust her. Gah, I can’t even tell my friends to buy you,” she continued. “Which means we don’t know who will buy you. Babushka is sort of cheap and you’re a total catch, so if your price gets too high, she’ll find a reason to stop bidding and then she’ll hook me up with one of the barely-not-a-teenager valet guys. I just know it.”
Bad. Yes, that was the feeling. This was not a good feeling. Definitely a bad one. He didn’t particularly want to think about Anna hooking up with anyone who wasn’t him.
“Do you have a signal?” he asked, refusing to sound too desperate, but they might as well be in overtime during the Super Bowl, on the final play, with the coach calling for a two-point conversion.
“A what?” she asked, eyebrows creased.
“Signal. Phone.” He pointed to the signal-less device he held in his hand.
“I don’t…” Anna shook her head. “I don’t have my phone.”
She had her purse. He tilted his forehead toward it. “Isn’t it in your— “
She bit at her top lip, which in any other circumstance would totally be a turn-on for him. “It’s not in there. It was confiscated.”
Say… “What?”
“Long story.” She banged at the closed door with her fist. “C’mon, somebody hear us.”
He tried the handle once more. Nothing. Tried again. Nope. He wished he were a linebacker so he could crash through the thing.
Making a fist, he pounded on the door next to Anna.
The noise from the gala must’ve drowned them out because even after a full five minutes of pounding, no one came.
Anna leaned against the door. “We’re stuck.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Yes, they were.
“I have this friend. You haven’t met her yet, but she’s great. Really smart and perpetually happy,” Anna said, as though that had anything to do with anything.
He raised his eyebrows. May as well see where she was going with this one.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“And she would say that when you find yourself in a situation that isn’t ideal, you should find some bright spots in it.”
She was definitely a bright spot in a locked room. “What bright spots are you finding here?” he asked.
“Well, I mean, we’re stuck in here together and…I’ve missed you. That’s a bright spot, right?” She glanced up at him from under her lashes.
Best bright spot of all.
“You miss me?” he asked, something inside him needing that confirmation.
“Of course, I do, you lug nut.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Answer?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“Because my feelings were hurt.”
“Hear me out. Since we’re stuck here…” He’d just embrace the opportunity to explain things. “The reason I didn’t want— “
She held up her hands, her cheeks turning a festive shade of red. “You don’t need to explain. I get it. You don’t want to be serious. Career importance. All that. I just…” Her voice was progressively cracking more and her speech was getting faster. “I don’t want to be with you when you come back to Denver on the off weeks. I want a real grown-up relationship where I live in the same town as the guy I’m with.”
Last time he’d checked, they’d been doing some pretty grown-up stuff together.
A better job of explaining, that’s what he needed to manage. “There’s a reason I have my team—”
“Because it’s your job,” she finished for him.
“Not my teammates.” His personal team—the people who handled the rest of it all. “My team. My agent. Manager. The lady who picks out my clothes.”
She squinted adorably at him. “You have a stylist?”
Of course, he had a stylist. If he picked out his own clothes, he’d always be in his favorite pair of worn-out jeans. He’d live in the football tees that were always given to him in enormous gift baskets from sponsors.
“I know what I’m doing on the field,” he said.
She nodded. “Everybody knows that.”
“But I’m not so good with people.”
Her eyebrows fell.
“Most people,” he clarified. “I’m good with you. You make it easy for me to be me.”
“Okay…”
“So we can’t be together in Miami.” Because he wouldn’t be there. Which meant there wouldn’t be a them there.
“I got that. Last time we talked.” She crossed her arms, her throat working, tears edging the rim of her eyelids.
Unfortunately, he was really fucking this up.
&nb
sp; He rubbed at the ache forming in his skull between his eyebrows. “I’m not going to be there anymore. You can’t move there because I won’t be there.”
The dawn of understanding rose along with the magnitude of the situation. Her lips formed a circle. “They’re ditching you?”
That was certainly one way of saying it.
“Retirement is the word they insist on using.”
She got quiet, staring at him for a long moment. She seemed to be processing the weight of his words.
“Anna…”
She huffed and shoved her hands against her waist, the movement lifting her breasts up higher. “That’s bullshit. You’ve got more time.”
“That’s what I tried to explain to them.” With backup from three leading sports doctors.
“This is totally unacceptable. How can they get away with this? The fans will never be okay with this.” She spoke quickly, pointing at him with an intense index finger.
He appreciated her vehement support of his ability to still play.
“I’m aging out of the game, but I’m not done yet.” He hoped. “We’re in talks with Medford here in Denver. Hoping he’ll bring me on.”
Her eyes bulged. “You’re coming to Denver?”
“Which is why you can’t go to Miami. Because—” if everything went well “—I hope I’ll be here.”
“Oh.” She laced her hands in front of her, wringing them back and forth. “So that’s why—”
“I had about twenty non-disclosures in play when you offered to come to Miami.” That wasn’t much of an exaggeration.
He swallowed hard. “You’re it for me.”
She shifted her gaze away from his.
“I couldn’t say anything to anyone until ink was on paper and signatures dry,” he said.
“And then you tried to call me.” She spoke to the wall, not looking back at him.
He nodded. “A lot.”
“When I wouldn’t answer…” She glanced back at him, the expression in her eyes one of hurt and hope.
“I stopped by the shop,” he said. “But you were never there.” He chewed his bottom lip. “A lot. I stopped at your shop a lot.”
“Then you got tangled up with Roman and Babushka?”
Ball Sacked Page 3
