Blindsided: A Sports Romance (6 page)

I’m suddenly conscious that my eyelids are a little harder to open than usual. I lie there silently for the couple of seconds it takes for me to remember what happened before I went to bed.

I didn’t drink that much—just two cocktails and several glasses of juice over several hours—but that doesn’t explain why I feel so shitty.

And then I
really
remember.

I cried in the cab home. Not the kind of drunk crying where you drop your cheeseburger on the ground and it catapults you into a pit of inconsolable despair. Not justified crying where there’s a damn good reason for it either. No, it was all about Jake Thorne. Jake, who means nothing to me. Jake, who up until a few days ago I never knew existed. Jake, who for some reason only he knows, decided to lie to me about who he is.

I thought about it obsessively as I stood at the bar chatting with Van and a steady stream of football players and hangers on. There was only one possible explanation I could think of. He wanted the chase of someone different to his usual type. Or maybe he just enjoyed the deceit.

Whatever the excuse, I know the truth now. How could I not, when I walked in on him with his face buried so deep in some girl’s cleavage that his forehead was in danger of fusing with her sternum.

I push myself out of bed to go make Sam’s breakfast. It’s only when I’m in the living room that I remember he stayed at Van’s parents’ place last night. Yeah, Van took one look at me and decided it was for the best if I had some alone time.

I shake my head and switch on the coffee maker.

I’d rather be a boring mom than a bad one.

There’s something about Jake that sets off the worst in me. I’m better off without him.

***

By the time I get off the bus on First, I’ve changed my mind a hundred times. I’m being pigheaded and stubborn. I need to hear him out; to find out why he lied. If I don’t like his answer? Well, I’m an adult. I can just walk away and forget him.

I walk along, debating with myself. It’s one way to avoid thinking about work. I might not be hungover but I damn well feel like I am. And that’s not really the way I want to feel before a double-shift. Am I stupid to feel a burst of hope at the thought of seeing Jake? It certainly feels that way.

I’m a rational person and stuff like this is just so damn hard to rationalize. I need to see him; to look in his sober eyes and find out the truth. Alcohol triggers such bad memories for me sometimes that the sight of him drunk was just the icing on the cake.

I don’t have to marry the guy. But I do need to give him a chance.

But he lied.

But so does everybody.

I’m pretty much decided when I pass the newsstand a block from the hotel. My eyes dance over the headlines on the newspapers just like they always do. At first, I don’t see it—I’ve gotten used to tuning out the front page of the Greenboro Gazette because it only every features the sleaziest celebrity news imaginable.

This time it’s different, though; this time, I recognize the face that’s plastered all over the front page. I come to a halt and almost trip up the well-heeled woman who was walking right behind me.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

My hands are shaking as I reach out to take a copy from the rack. It’s a struggle to get the money out of my purse. My eyes are greedy to find out what’s on that page; to see if there’s an explanation in there somewhere. Jesus Christ, I’m pathetic.

Because how the hell do you explain the fact that he’s been caught on camera with a topless woman thrown over his shoulder?

(Hint: you can’t. I’ve got the worst taste in men ever, and I want to go home and hide instead of starting a twelve-hour shift at one of the busiest times for the Greenboro Court).

***

I duck into the restrooms in the lobby even though they’re reserved for guests only. It’s not like I’ve been crying hysterically, but my eyes are red and puffy even though I managed to hold back the tears. I stare at myself in the mirror.

I’ve given up on telling myself that I don’t even know the guy and that he’s nothing to me. There’s no point. I clearly can’t get those facts into my dumb brain. It doesn’t matter if all we did was kiss—he’s crawled underneath my skin and taken root there.

I stare at my reflection. It’s lucky that I’m the most stubborn person I know, then. I may be one paycheck away from the breadline; I may not have done much with my life except for raise an awesome, adorable little guy, but I’m not a pushover.

This is the end
, I tell myself silently, just in case there’s a guest in one of the fancy stalls.
You do not need a man and you certainly don’t need this one.

My heart screams, protesting that I need to rationalize the shit out of this. It wants to pore over every interaction I’ve had with him and dissect it.

But I won’t let it.

I’m nobody’s fool and I’m not going to let that change now.

I turn on the faucet and hold a face towel underneath until the water is almost hotter than I can stand. Then I dab my face, careful not to wipe off the little makeup that remains on there.

***

“Rose.”

My stomach plummets. Marcus is my boss, but he usually spends his days holed up in his office on the club floor. And I prefer it that way. It’s not that he’s unpleasant—not deliberately anyway. But I always get the creeps when he’s around.

“Can you join us in the front office, please?” Marcus says smoothly.

I wonder idly who ‘us’ refers to. I hate to admit it, but for a moment, my mind fills with stupid fantasies of Jake, desperate to make things right and explain the misunderstanding. Yeah, I know it’s dumb—but it’s my fucking brain and it can think what it wants to think.

“Sure,” I say.

I follow him back into the office, still indulging in the aforementioned guilty fantasies.

Um, no.

Not Jake.

Not even close.

Maybe if Jake wore a sneaky smile and was proficient in the art of knowing who to brownnose to extract maximum tip.

“Hi, Luca,” I say flatly.

He doesn’t say anything, just grins back in response.

“Take a seat, Rose,” Marcus says, walking around the messy desk and sitting in the office chair we sit in when we need to do anything more complex than switch around reservations.

I glance over at Luca, who’s sitting comfortably in the other seat in front of the desk.

“Is this something official, Marcus?” I ask suspiciously.

He blinks at me. I don’t like the way he looks to Luca for confirmation. “Um, yes,” he says finally.

“Why is Luca here?” I try to keep my tone light, but alarm bells are going off in my head. We usually have nothing to do with each other—Marcus isn’t even his boss. Plus he’s got a smug grin on his face like he knows something I don’t.

To my surprise, it’s Luca who answers. “I’m the one who approached Marcus with my concerns,” he says simply.

“Your concerns?” I echo, glancing from him to Marcus. “And what might they be? Like I told you before, I’m not going to direct everybody with a simple question to your desk, just so you can extract a tip from them. I tell them you’re there, but if somebody asks me for a recommendation I’m going to give it to them.”

His smile widens—and my blood starts to boil. I clear my throat. I’m still feeling the after-effects of my almost-cry earlier, but I’ll be damned if I cry in front of these two. I clench my fists and dig my fingernails into my palms to try and stay in control.

Marcus clears his throat in the brusque way he does, as if he needs to be somewhere important. All of us in the room know he’s just eager to get back upstairs to his office and watch porn on company time (let’s just say I made the mistake of entering his office once without knocking. There won’t be a repeat of that).

“Rose, it has come to my attention that you’ve been… uh… socializing with the guests.”

I shake my head, confused. “What? No I haven’t.”

He frowns. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I hiss, glancing at Luca and wondering what this snake has said. “I barely socialize on my free time, let alone when I’m at work.”

Luca sighs as if he’s almost disappointed in me. “Marcus, if I may?”

Marcus nods.

“Rose, the other day I noticed something strange. Our penthouse guest, Mr. Thorne, went to his room using his private elevator. As he would. I thought nothing of it and returned to my duty of ensuring our guest experience is the best there is.”

I groan. Is this guy for real? I think he means he went back to cleaning his immaculately manicured nails under his desk. But far be it from me to get in the way of a good story. Besides, I have a lurching feeling in my belly that he’s about to unleash something nasty on me. I wish I knew what.

“It was a normal day. I get a call from Mr. Thorne asking for Rose. Says he wants a woman’s opinion. That’s fine with me; I transfer him over.”

I snort.

“What is it, Rose?” Marcus says.

I shake my head. “Nothing. It’s just that Luca was a lot less gracious about it that he describes.”

I don’t know what it is that puts my senses on high alert. Marcus’s face doesn’t even change that much. But there’s a hardness there that wasn’t there a second ago. It’s like I’ve somehow said the wrong thing without even realizing it. I want to protest but the situation feels like quicksand—struggle and you’ll sink. I don’t get it. There’s something going on here and I’m the only one with no information.

“Time passes by,” Luca says, struggling to keep the smile off his face.

Marcus hasn’t even responded to what I said. I want to repeat myself—to make sure he’s heard. But I force myself to stay calm and dignified.

“Rose excuses herself to go to the bathroom—I see her lean over and speak to Geri and point to the staff area door.”

It feels like there’s an invisible noose tightening around my neck.

“I return to my research of new dining establishments in Greenboro. Anything to provide value to our guests.”

The clock on the wall is silent but I swear I can hear it ticking. Slowly. Like once every ten seconds instead of every second.

“There’s no law against going to the bathroom,” I say, but I can feel my cheeks begin to flush.

Luca ignores me and goes for the kill.

“And then the penthouse elevator dinged again. Marcus, I didn’t think anything of it at first, but I had just seen our guest go up there. So naturally I took it upon myself to rush in here and check the cameras to make sure everything was secure.” He turns in his seat and stares at me. “And sure enough. There was Rose slinking into Mr. Thorne’s room with a look that could only be described as seductive.”

My eyes are bleary and sore by the time I park at the training ground, but I don’t care about that. The clock on the dash tells me it’s ten before nine. I’ve made it. Un-be-lievable.

I don’t know what time I got back to the hotel because I can’t even remember getting there, but I know it was late because I have a dim memory of seeing the sun rise from the back of an SUV. All I know is I didn’t think of setting my alarm and it’s just pure luck that I woke early enough. Well, luck and a blinding hangover worse than anything I’ve experienced recently.

I hit the tequila hard last night—that’s the one thing I do know. The rest of it is a blur of terrible music (I’ll never look at Dale in the same way again) and crowds of dancing people. Oh and Rose. I’m pretty sure I spent my short sleep exclusively dreaming of her long legs and that shimmering gold dress.

I jump out of the car and race across the parking lot to the facility. I want to be sick. And my mouth tastes like something unholy. But I can worry about that later after we’re done schmoozing Vickers.

I’m not even exaggerating how seriously we all take Mike Vickers’s visits. Let’s just say that Coach would never agree to interrupt Training Camp if it wasn’t for one of Vickers’s happy hours, as he likes to call them.

It’s kind of a dumb name: nobody is happy (no team members anyway) and it’s usually more like three hours. I’d almost prefer to attend one of the Grizzlies Galas—at least the proceeds of those go to a worthy cause.

I’m not paying much attention as I rush through the building. None of my teammates are anywhere to be seen—they’ve all either arrived early in an attempt to brownnose, or else they’re cutting it fine like me after one too many shots at the party.

I grin at the sight of Coach Fox and Charlie Cross, the Grizzlies General Manager approaching me.

“Where are you guys going? Shouldn’t you be in the auditorium?”

The grin quickly fades off my face as soon as I catch the looks on theirs. They’re not smiling. Oh no. And Coach Fox and Charlie rarely agree about anything.

“What’s up?” I ask, coming to a stop in front of them.

“My office. Now,” Charlie snaps.

“But the happy hour with Mr. Vickers…”

“Fuck the happy hour. We’ve got more important things to discuss.”

This knocks me for six. Anyone with even the remotest connection to the team knows how important these things are. Fall out of favor with the owner and it’s likely that you’ll find yourself cut from the team. Not only that, but you’ll be branded with the trouble-maker label and find it difficult to get picked up by another team. Now you see why we take it so seriously.

I wish I could think straight. It wasn’t like we had a choice to attend Dale’s party, but I regret hitting the booze so hard.

“Are you sure we can’t do this after?” I say, staring in the direction of the auditorium.

“No,” Coach snaps. “No, we can’t. Now, are you going to come with us? Or do I need to drag you there myself?”

Usually, I’d laugh at that idea. Coach Fox used to be a top class player in his day, but now he’s hitting fifty and the huge bulk he was famous for has mostly converted to fat. Today there’s a challenge in his eyes that warns me he’ll launch himself at me if I even attempt to talk my way out of this.

I get worried. Very worried.

“What’s this about, fellas?” I ask, turning and following them in the direction of Charlie’s office.

We walk on in stony silence. I have no idea what this is about. If it wasn’t a team event last night, then I might have put it down to my drinking. But everybody was there. I don’t know why they’d single me out.

Aside from that, I can’t remember the last time I went out to a bar. So it must be to do with my performance on the field.

“Coach, I can explain,” I say as we turn onto the executive wing. “Practice yesterday sucked. But it was a once off. You have my word.”

Coach Fox glances at me over his shoulder. “That doesn’t mean much to us right now.”

I stare at him in disbelief. What the hell is going on around here? Am I being pranked?

When we walk into Charlie’s office, things get even weirder. There’s a guy sitting on the low-slung leather couch. And not just any guy—he’s the one who Rose walked into the club with last night. I look from him to Coach to Charlie.

“What’s going on, guys?”

In response, Charlie marches to his desk and lifts something off it. We all watch in silence as he slams it down on the table between the two couches.

Ah.

Now this makes sense.

I don’t remember it happening, but there’s something vaguely familiar about the scene.

There I am, splashed across the cover of the Greenboro Gazette. But my slack face isn’t the thing that catches the eye—thanks to the barely dressed girl who’s slung over my shoulder. My hand rests on her ass, just in case the whole thing didn’t look bad enough.

The only thing I can think of is Rose. What’s she going to say if she sees this? It was bad enough that she caught me out for lying to her before I had a chance to tell her the truth.

I look up at the third guy and connections start to form in my brain. Why’s he here? And what’s this got to do with Coach Fox and Charlie?

“Rose,” I say to the other guy. “This isn’t what it—”

Coach goes postal. “
Rose
?” he repeats as if he can scarcely believe what I’m saying. He stabs the picture. “You’re going gaga-eyed for a stripper when your position at this club is on a knife’s edge?”

I look up at him slowly. What’s he talking about? My position at the club? I know I’m not the superstar of the squad, but I’m a solid player.

“What?”

“You heard me, Jake. How do you think this looks? You’re all over the newspaper with some stripper thrown over your shoulder.”

“But all of the guys—”

“You’re the only one who made the papers,” he bellows. “What have I told you about this? You have your fun but you do it behind closed doors.”

“But I didn’t—”

“You were running around the club with her on your back. You had everybody talking about the team alright, but not in a good way.”

Charlie shakes his head soberly. “We don’t need a party boy. At least that’s not your persona here. You’re the family-friendly guy. Behavior like this is difficult for everybody. How do you think mom and pop are gonna explain this to little Stevie or whoever the fuck? Huh? Shit like this loses us fans.”

I close my eyes and sigh. “I’m a football player. Not a goddamn… celebrity.”

“Tell that to these kids and their parents,” Coach snaps. “You’re a role model. You can’t act like this.”

“Alright, alright,” I say, holding my hands up. I’m still wondering what Rose’s friend has to do with all of this. “I’ll take it easy. I didn’t even want to go out in the first place. It’s not gonna be hard to keep a lid on it, I promise. I’ll kiss some babies; bake cupcakes for some grandmas. Okay?”

The other guy has been silent all this time but now he becomes more animated. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, scrunching up his face like he’s just eaten something sour. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

I round on him. “Who are you? And why are you here?”

He smiles at me and I get the creeps. Maybe it’s the hangover, but there’s something seriously off about this dude even if I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is. Or maybe I’m just jealous that—unlike me—he’s somebody Rose actually
wants
to speak to.

He looks at Charlie, who nods.

“I’m Jackson Carter. I’m a public relations expert who’s done a lot of work for the Grizzlies.”

“Good for you, man.”

“Jake! Can it, would you? Jackson, go on. Tell him the plan.”

“The plan?” I repeat.

The guy nods.

My first impression was right because the more I look at him, the more I get the sense that this guy would do anything so long as it makes him look good.

“Jake, this right here.” He points to the newspaper. “Is a big problem.”

I roll my eyes. “Nobody reads that trash.”

“They’ve got a circulation of a hundred thousand,” he says, staring into my eyes.

“Maybe they use it as toilet paper,” I snort.

But nobody else laughs. They don’t even crack a smile.

“Believe it or not, a lot of people not only read what’s in the papers, but they believe it. That’s why people like me have long, successful careers. This is my business, Jake. I’m the best there is and I’m gonna work with you to rehabilitate your reputation.”

Something tells me this is a lot more serious than kissing babies and helping old ladies to cross the street.

He looks at Coach and Charlie before his beady eyes settle on me. “Here’s what we’re going to do first.”