A large group of media guys surrounded the cocky quarterback, salivating at his every word. The asshole charmed his prey like a snake seducing a rat, then swallowed them whole. Grudgingly, Zach admired Harris’s ability to say the right thing at the right time, tossing out quotes to be used for headlines tomorrow. Whenever Zach opened his mouth to the media, he either inadvertently insulted someone or created a media hoo-ha over some stupid-assed thing. Yeah, like the time he’d called an opposing team’s quarterback an over-hyped coward who couldn’t knit his way out of the backfield. The next day the guy threw for 350 yards against Zach’s old team and booted their asses out of a playoff spot.
Shoving his wet hair off his forehead, Zach ground his teeth together in frustration. The quarterback played an okay game, but the local sportscasters treated him like old ladies treated the only old man on pinochle night at the senior center.
Their worship stuck in Zach’s craw. His defense had kept them in the game. They should be fawning over Bryson, who’d recovered a crucial fumble, or LeDaniel, who’d intercepted a sure touchdown. Harris had played it safe. He hadn’t lost the game for them, but he hadn’t won it either. Zach’s defense had won it in the trenches.
“We won, no thanks to you,” Zach grumbled once the press had left.
Harris’s hand snaked out and collared Zach around the neck, catching him off guard. He slammed Zach against the locker room wall with a violent force more representative of a defensive player instead of an entitled quarterback.
“What the fuck is stuck up your butt, asshole?” With his legs splayed apart, Harris closed his fingers around Zach’s neck, not enough to choke, but enough to show he meant business.
Flakes of Sheetrock fluttered past Zach’s eyes, just as a poster listing the ten steps to winning fell off the wall. Seasoned veterans busied themselves in their lockers, while rookies scattered like seagulls on the beach. They glanced back over their shoulders as they hightailed it out of the locker room and away from their battling team captains.
Zach blinked a few times, jolted by how strong the quarterback actually was. He only allowed himself a split second of shock before he shook it off and shoved the heels of his hands into Harris’s chest. Harris didn’t budge despite his sharp exhalation of breath as Zach’s full strength compressed his rib cage.
“You’re up my ass, and I’m fucking tired of it.” Zach tore Harris’s hand from his neck.
Harris smirked. “Well, at least I’m warm.” He stood toe-to-toe with Zach, who out-benched him by a considerable amount. Zach gave the quarterback a point for his guts or foolhardiness, depending on how a guy looked at it.
Harris had an inch or so on Zach, and he wielded his height advantage like the warrior with the sharper sword. His chin jutted out, and he stared down at Zach as if he were a lowly slug on a wet Seattle sidewalk. Neither of them moved—two alpha males refusing to give ground.
Zach leaned into Harris’s space. “I don’t like you.”
“No shit. What the fuck is it with you? I’m working my ass off, just like you are.”
Years of frustration bubbled to the surface, years of being stuck on a mediocre team with worthless management and shitty decisions, from the front office to the coaching. All those years, he’d watched Super Bowl after Super Bowl with one goal in mind—to one day be the guy standing on the podium hoisting the Lombardi trophy over his head. Despite a sure hall-of-fame career, all his achievements would mean nothing without that championship ring. Yet Harris had two and didn’t seem to appreciate how lucky he was.
Obviously sensing a change in Zach’s attitude, Tyler frowned and backed up a few steps. Plastering an I-don’t-give-a-shit expression on his face, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against his locker.
“I want a ring.” Zach spoke with more emotion than was wise.
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. You’d sacrifice your last friend on earth for a ring. That’s assuming you had any friends.”
“You stand between me and a ring.”
“Hey, asshole, get a clue. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re on the same team.” Harris rolled his eyes.
“Seems like we’re on opposing teams if you ask me.”
“That might be the way you see it. The way I see it, you’re destroying our chances. You’re splitting the team in half, forcing the defense to side with you and leaving the offense no choice but to side with me.”
“I don’t like what you stand for.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“Everything I hate about quarterbacks.”
Harris raised one dark eyebrow. “And that is?”
“You think the world revolves around you.”
“Damn right. Because it does, dumb shit.”
“You quit on the team last year.”
Harris’s eyes turned dark like a cloud blotting out the sun, and he didn’t deny Zach’s accusation. “I’m not the same guy I was last year. I was going through some…personal issues. I’m fine now. I’m all in.”
“Prove it.”
Harris closed his eyes for a brief moment and sighed, almost as if he’d grown weary of their constant squabbling. “I have been. Open your fucking eyes and get on board before it’s too late.”
“I am on board, but I’m not convinced you are.”
“Fuck you. You are the problem, not the solution.” Grabbing his gym bag, Harris stalked out the door and slammed it behind him.
Zach turned to glare at the lone stragglers in the room, a couple of his defensive guys and a few of the offensive linemen, also Harris’s cousin, Derek, a straight-up guy, even though he had the misfortune of being related to Harris.
His teammates turned back to their lockers and pretended to be busy with whatever the hell they were doing, except Ramsey. He edged over to Zach’s locker and sat down on the closest bench.
“We won, you know. You might want to lighten up a little around him.” Derek’s expression remained open and friendly.
“Why? Is he gonna kick my ass?” Zach sneered, but his surliness didn’t faze Derek in the least. Hell, the guy had spent years with Tyler.
Derek shrugged one shoulder. “Hard to say. He’s got a temper, and he can be a scrapper. Used to get in a lot of bar fights in college.”
Zach snorted. “I find it hard to believe he’d bruise that pretty face of his.”
“Don’t underestimate my cousin. Last year was an anomaly. He went through some tough times, but he’s back on track. He’s not a quitter. He’s competitive and tough. He’s played hurt, with the flu, and everything in between. You’d be smart to remember that instead of focusing on one off year out of a dozen exceptional years.”
“You’re taking his side.”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side, but your bickering is crippling the team. This locker room division needs to stop. I think you’re man enough to check your pride at the door and find some common ground. You both want the same thing—a championship. Work together instead of at odds with each other.”
“So I’m supposed to cave to his demands, like everyone else in this locker room? How’s that gonna look to my guys? I’m the captain of the defense. Do I just lie down and let Harris stomp all over me, then thank him for it?”
Derek rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “If you want a ring as badly as you claim, you’ll do what it takes.”
Like he wasn’t already? Shit. He was busting his balls on the field, while condemned to a hell known as image classes taught by the one person he couldn’t forgive, not years ago and not now. He’d been her doormat once, and he’d be damned if he’d lie down across a mud puddle once again so she wouldn’t get her dainty feet muddy.
Yet he knew Derek was right. They shouldn’t be airing their dislike of each other in front of the team. Zach might have the best of intentions, but his mouth got in the way of his brain, and dumb stuff came tumbling out. The few times he’d tried to compliment the surly quarterback, the jerk took it as an insult. N
ow they were at odds to the point where they couldn’t say a civil word to each other if their life depended on it.
Zach knew his grudge was stupid, and Harris knew it was stupid, but they were stubborn alpha males who refused to show weakness and be the first to back down. He hated to admit it, but maybe he could use a little training in tact and manners.
Off to his side, he heard Derek sigh, and a second later he walked out of the room.
Frustrated by the doubts filling his head, Zach pounded his fist into his locker. But even the dent he left didn’t make him feel better.
Chapter 5—One Yard and a Cloud of Dust
Kelsie consulted the handwritten directions Zach had scrawled on the notepad. She couldn’t afford a data plan on her phone so goodbye, GPS, hello, old-fashioned navigation by paper.
She turned on Sparkling Bay Drive and drove down a street lined with stately maples and historic Seattle mansions, scanning for the correct address. From a block away, she spotted the likely culprit. Not that it was a bad house. In fact, just the opposite. The old Victorian mansion stood tall and proud, defying time and looking down her classical nose at modern development.
No, it wasn’t the house that concerned her. If Zach paid a gardener, he’d better fire the guy.
She was speechless.
As she drove next to the house, Kelsie slowed her car to a crawl and craned her neck. A post with a house number partially obscured by overgrown rhododendrons confirmed her worst suspicions.
Zach Murphy, former poor boy turned NFL defensive star, lived at this address. She turned up the once elegant driveway. A forest of overhanging branches scraped along the roof of her car as she drove past a flock of faded pink plastic flamingoes, one missing a beak, another missing a leg.
Oh, yes, she’d come to the right place.
Unfortunately.
She stopped her car, gripped the steering wheel, and stared. And stared. And stared again. She blinked. Closed her eyes. Counted to ten. Peeked once. Twice. Three times. Nothing changed the landscaping disaster obscuring most of the house from view.
Oh, good heavens.
If a child ventured into Zach’s yard, the two-foot-tall grass would surely gobble him up and he’d never be seen again—if the tangle of feral shrubbery didn’t attack him first. She stared through the car window, expecting to catch a glimpse of the random lion, tiger, or bear that might have taken up residence, also never to be seen again.
Did she dare get out? She was wearing her sensible thrift-store heels, the very heels she would have turned her nose up at in her former life. Now stuff like that didn’t matter so much. In fact, the shallowness of needing to be seen in shoes that cost more than some people made in a month sickened her. Shoes didn’t make the person, what was in their heart did.
Half-hidden under an undomesticated wisteria arbor, the front walkway was cleverly disguised as an Amazon rain forest. She gingerly stepped out of her car, hoping she could find it again when it came time to leave.
Picking her way across a concrete driveway pitted with potholes and clumps of grass growing up through the cracks, she approached the clandestine walkway. An errant blackberry vine wrapped itself around her leg despite her best attempts to step over it. Greedy thorns snatched at her legs, as if she were their next meal. She stepped on the vine with her other foot and pulled it off her, but not before it tattooed her ankle with scratches.
Zach was one of the highest-paid defensive players in the league. She knew this fact because she’d Googled him. He’d also made smart investments, and his net worth would put her parents and Mark to shame, and they’d deserve that shame just as she did. Why did he choose to let his place go like this?
This place was wild and untamed, like Zach, and had a certain crazy beauty about it. She’d have never appreciated such beauty before, but she took a moment to appreciate it now. This was nature being allowed to be her most creative, not carefully constructed order by human hand, but nature as nature wanted to be, not as man wanted her to be. Was that what Zach saw when he gazed around his yard?
Hearing a chuckle, Kelsie looked up. Zach stood on a wide porch, which appeared to wrap around the entire house. A smile tickled his mouth, and she smiled back, unable to help herself.
“Welcome to Branson Manor.” His voice sounded strangled, as if he fought to hold back out-and-out laughter.
“That’s what you call it?” Avoiding another blackberry vine, she mounted the front steps, which creaked under her weight. A tattered, blue suede recliner with duct tape on one arm crouched in a corner of the porch, a stack of beer bottles next to it, and not good beer, but the cheap stuff.
“Well, it’s on the historic register. That’s what they call it. I guess Branson was a Seattle bigwig a century ago.”
“You guess?” She sighed. The poor house had withstood the test of time, but could it withstand Zach?
He shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Uh, don’t really pay much attention to stuff like that. Besides, I like it.”
“There’s something wild and untamed and incredibly exquisite about it.”
His smile faded to shocked surprise, as if he hadn’t expected such insight from her.
She peered through the dense foliage to the barely visible street beyond. “I bet you don’t get many visitors here, or at least none that you’ve found.” Only the bravest of souls would venture forth into this jungle.
Zach’s dark brows drew together as if he didn’t get her humor or her implications. “I’m not much for company.”
“I see.”
“Let me show you the place.” His usual distaste toward her gave way to pride and excitement. She almost hated to burst his bubble, but the place needed a major overhaul before the gala, and she’d only seen a small portion of it.
Bracing herself, she followed him inside. He walked ahead, leaving the door wide open. With a sigh, Kelsie shut the heavy old oak door with the oval, etched-glass window. It stuck halfway. She leaned into it with all her weight and shoved it shut. Zach watched from a few feet away. “A gentleman holds the door for a lady and closes it after her.”
He frowned, looking perturbed and embarrassed at the same time.
The inside of the house shocked her almost as much as the outside, only for a different reason. She fully expected the place to be in a state of disrepair. Looking past junk piled on antique furniture, a Harley parked in the parlor, and the house’s basic unkempt condition, the grand old lady’s bones bordered on incredible. Beautifully finished woodwork shone from years of loving care. A curved oak banister rose to a balcony on the second floor. An antique Tiffany chandelier hung in the middle of the two-story entry. The hardwood floors gleamed under a layer of dust.
“This way. I call this the man cave.” He didn’t wait, just headed for a set of oak double doors. Kelsie hurried after him as fast as her heels would allow. She stopped dead in her tracks. Every bit as lovingly restored as the entryway, the library should’ve impressed. Instead she drew back and stared. A scruffy deer head hung over the mantel. A mishmash of new, poor-quality furniture, mostly recliners, was scattered randomly around the room. A big-screen TV took up one entire wall and blocked an old, beautiful built-in bookcase. The bare walls were devoid of artwork, which perhaps wasn’t such a bad thing given Zach’s taste.
Zach grinned at her. “So? What do you think?”
“The house is beautiful.”
“I did the decorating myself.”
“I can see that.”
“This way.” He led her to a designer kitchen with very undesigner-like adornments such as tacky refrigerator magnets taped to the professional-grade stainless-steel refrigerator, red rooster canisters, and an array of plastic utensils in a mason jar. Zach watched her, as if waiting for her approval. “What do you think?”
“Needs a little tidying.”
“Yeah, my housekeeper quit.”
“We’ll get another one.”
“We?” He grunted as if that’d be a col
d day in hell.
“I bought this house a month ago. It’d stood vacant and tied up in a family dispute for two years after the elderly owner died. I rescued it from some asshole who was going to have it bulldozed to put up some ultra-modern monstrosity with zero personality. I have renovation plans. Just haven’t gotten to them.”
“She has plenty of personality,” Kelsie agreed. She loved the place at first sight. It was just the kind of house she wanted to buy when Mark had wanted one of those brand-new McMansions. Imagine that, she and Zach had something in common.
He gestured for her to follow him out a set of French doors. Turning around slowly on the back porch, Kelsie surveyed the property, looking past the overgrown landscape. The old mansion perched on a hill high above Seattle like a dowager queen on her throne. Below her, the city and Elliot Bay sparkled in the waning daylight. The sun setting over the distant Olympic Mountains cast ethereal rays of red, purple, and gold across Puget Sound.
Stunning. The view made up for everything else.
Thank God Almighty she had almost three months to prepare for this party.
“Seen enough?”
She choked back a very unladylike snort. “Yes, let’s talk.”
A few minutes later, Kelsie sat in a folding chair at the plastic patio table. Zach sank his big body into the only wooden dining chair in the large formal dining room. Frameless posters depicting various football stars were tacked drunkenly on the walls, not a straight one in the bunch. A life-sized depiction of Tyler Harris hung on another wall, darts stuck in his heart and crotch areas.
“A little hostile, aren’t we?”
Zach’s eyes followed her gaze. His face colored redder than his neck. “I, uh… Yeah, maybe.” He held his hands out with palms up and shrugged. “I keep my grudges close.”
“And your enemies closer?” Not waiting for an answer, Kelsie opened her laptop, all business. “Let’s discuss the changes that need to be made before the gala. We have a few months. What’s your budget for improvements?”
“I don’t need improvements. I like this place as it is.”
Offsides: The Originals (Seattle Steelheads Book 3) Page 5
