Qualified: A Sports Romance (10 page)

“You know Blake’s abs must be cut like crystal, not
glass,” Meera chortled from where she’d flopped onto the couch.

Blake chuckled and Allie felt him moving around her
while Kelsey let go of Marc to walk the vodka over.

The room was chaos and noise but for a moment the
spinning stopped because she was held by his gaze. Allie thought Marc had
smiled, but maybe she imagined it because no matter how hard she looked she
couldn’t find a trace of it left on his features. He had started to follow
Kelsey but her roommate was still approaching while he had fallen still. His tight-jawed
stare was aimed over her shoulder.

Allie tore her eyes away from Marc to glance up
into their host’s face. Blake looked like a movie poster and felt just as fake.
“I can’t.” She blinked and forced a deep breath into her lungs, fighting
against her swimming vision. The reason churned in her stomach and stung at the
rims of her eyes and she couldn’t put words to it so she marshaled her most
reliable arguments. “Not like this. I’m … I’m a professional.”

“What’s she saying?” Meera wondered.

Blake was still touching Allie, steadying her at
her elbows. His eyes were searching her face. They were light, not dark, and it
was all wrong. “Do you want to go somewhere quiet?”

Going sounded good. So did quiet. She longed to be
far away where her world was stable and she didn’t feel awful. Allie nodded.

“Okay.” Blake waved off Kelsey. “I think she’s had
enough.” He guided Allie’s shoulders to turn towards the hall.

Kelsey pursued them a moment, slinging the bottle
of vodka into the crook of her elbow. Her fingers reached to tuck a lock of
Allie’s hair out of the way as she peered at her with her mouth twisted
unhappily. “All right,” she relented to Blake’s judgement. “You better take
good care of my roommate, Blake Ellsley.” She shoved clumsily at his shoulder. “I
know where you live.”

“I promise,” Blake said as they left Kelsey behind
in the living room.

Allie relied on the strength of Blake’s arm around
her shoulders to aim the weave of her footsteps in the right direction. She
wasn’t sure when everything had gone so wrong. Surely before the last shot and
the flask on the beach. It seemed like it must have been long before that.
Before coming to California, before sitting next to Blake in the training
center’s dining hall. Maybe it happened when she was waiting for stupid Marc
with that stupid sign Violet made. “This is … this is conduct unbecoming,”
she mumbled to herself.

Blake might have laughed. “Come on, up we go.”

She started to fumble up the first stair before the
significance of the direction registered. Everyone was going to know she went
up to his room. Marc was going to know. Allie braced out her arms in a stop
against the banisters. “No.” Her weight fell backwards which had the
questionable effect of leaning her against the solid slab of Blake’s chest.

“It’ll be quieter.” He was still murmuring in her
ear and it was too hot.

“No. I shouldn’t.” Allie didn’t care what Violet
said. This didn’t feel right. She felt sick to her stomach. “Not your room.”
There wasn’t space between the tight of her teeth for tact. “Not you.”

“Allie.”

Just like in Colorado, Allie escaped from under
Blake’s arm before he could try to catch her. It was a lapse in defense. For
some reason, that made her laugh. She felt along the wall until she got herself
turned towards the door. “I should … I should go. Thank you. For inviting
me. But … I should go.”

“Allie. By yourself?” He sounded so reasonable as
he stood there with his perfectly mussed hair in his perfect hallway.

It didn’t matter. Allie scrambled back when Blake
stepped forward. She got her hands on the door and fought it open. “I know the
way. I’m good at navi—directions.” She nodded decisively and that was a
mistake, too. “Just stay there. Here. And I’ll …” Go. The night air
brushed refreshingly across her skin. It made the house seem all the more
claustrophobic with its excess of water polo players. “Goodbye, Blake.”

Marc was trying not to think about
Blake taking Allie up to his bedroom. Kelsey had been right there and it wasn’t
any of his business. Allie had been nothing but professional with him, as much
as he’d tried to push things early on. And it seemed pretty obvious that Blake
was the guy that she was interested in, anyway. Especially after she’d seen the
beachfront house.

He wasn’t expecting to see either of them for a
while, which made it all the more surprising when Blake grabbed his elbow.
Luckily Marc’s reflexes stopped at jerking his arm loose rather than popping
his teammate in the nose.

Blake put up an easing palm. “Hey man, I’m looking
for Adam. Have you seen him?”

“I think he’s out on the patio.” Marc stepped to
cut off Blake’s immediate route onward. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Blake’s look flicked onward. “Allie was
feeling sick and wanted to go home, and they walked over here together.”

“She wants to go home?” Marc ducked his head to
find Blake’s eye, looking for signs of guilt or anger. Had the little fucker
done something to scare her off? Or maybe she was giving him the line about
being a professional, too.

“She left.” Blake lifted his gaze to meet Marc’s
stare. The kid could keep ice water in his veins as well as anyone on the
national stage, that was for sure. For a moment neither of them flinched.

Marc broke it by exhaling a breath. His lips
pressed together in a thin line. “You let a drunk girl out the door on her
own.” He tapped at Blake’s chest and shifted to move around the other guy
towards the door.

“Hey man, she was going. You want me to fucking
tackle her?” Blake swiveled to keep Marc in square sights. “Are you seriously
giving me advice on this?” He laughed.

Marc paused to shoot the younger guy a look. He’d
barely registered the then-eighteen-year-old’s existence during those
disastrous ten weeks of training in twenty-eleven, but it sounded like Blake
thought he knew enough to comment on his past. “You’re going to say that like
you want to step up to me?”

Blake was too good to let his smile slip entirely,
but Marc saw it lose its smug. Blake swallowed.

His reputation did have some utility. As much as
Marc loathed everything the little punk represented, he wasn’t eager to add a
fight with a teammate to a day that had already gone fucking sideways. “Let
Adam know I’m making sure she gets home.” Maybe he should have found his
roommate himself, but he didn’t want to waste any more time while Allie was out
in the dark alone.

It wasn’t hard to catch up with her. She had barely
made it to the next corner by the time Marc got out to the street. Her step was
weaving and Allie was tapping at her phone. Probably sending more messages to
that other chick from Colorado.

She was quick to stuff it away in her pocket when
he walked up. “What are you doing here?” Allie asked him with a frown.

“Walking you home.” Marc paused beside her, tilting
his head in indication of the street to turn down for their building. The
vantage also gave him an opportunity to judge whether she was pissed off or
pissed drunk. “Come on.”

“You don’t have a shirt.” Allie was staring at his
chest.

Drunk, then. He didn’t exactly relish the role of
babysitter, but at least it let Marc feel more justified in coming after her.
“I have a drawer of them at home. Let’s go.”

Allie swam her gaze up to meet his, her brow still
crumpled. “You’ll get sick.” She swallowed thickly. Her lashes dipped and her
weight swayed. “You can’t get sick.”

Always on the job. Marc sighed a long breath. “I
heard you’re the one that’s feeling sick.” He reached a hand to the flat
between her shoulders to coax her onward. It was maybe the most he’d touched
her since that first day they met.

Allie leaned into the pressure, still looking at
him. “I’m better, now,” she mumbled.

“Sure. The fresh air is good for you.” It almost
sounded like she meant something else. But what Marc knew was that just a few
hours ago she’d had Blake wrapped around her with his hand in her hair. “So’s
walking. Let’s get you home.”

“I …” Allie swayed, but finally started to
shuffle forward. “It would be really irresponsible.” She seemed to be talking
to herself. “It’s my job. You have to be …”

“Yeah, your healthiest lab rat.” He’d had so much
practice accepting grim reality it was what felt most comfortable. “So get me
tucked into bed nice and early so I don’t ruin your results.”

That seemed to make her laugh. The sound was a warm
hum. Allie listed to the side and for a moment Marc wondered if he were going
to have to carry her. She must have had more to drink than he realized.
However, once she was stretched along his side for support she seemed to walk
well enough.

They had several blocks to cover and the night was
getting cold. It wasn’t just for her benefit that he wrapped his arm around
her. He held Allie tight with the cup of his hand gripped over her far hip.
They fit well together. Even if he did have to shorten his strides.

“Marc,” Allie finally spoke when they were in view
of their building, “did you date a countess?”

Marc wasn’t expecting that to come up. Perhaps it
would bother him more if the evening hadn’t already been such a surreal mix of
past and present. Allie’s question was less aggravating than Blake’s ignorant
insinuations or Natalie’s bizarre attention. Still, he wasn’t exactly eager to
talk about it. Especially not with Allie. “She didn’t actually have a title,”
he answered with low-voiced dismissiveness.

She nuzzled her cheek against his side. Marc had to
hold onto her tighter when Allie’s weight seemed to sag into the hold of his
arm. “You dated Natalie four years ago, didn’t you?”

“Eight years ago. I wasn’t on the team four years
ago,” Marc reminded tightly. On days like this one, he wasn’t sure he’d be on
the team much longer. That asshole Simon might not be the captain anymore, but
it seemed like there were plenty of people around still taking his side. “It
wasn’t like she was my girlfriend.” He didn’t even know why he was telling her
this. “I don’t really date.”

Allie’s fingers curled and uncurled at his
waistband pensively. “You were arguing with her.” He heard her phone going off
in her pocket, buzzing like it was getting messages. She seemed too focused on
him to even notice.

“I wasn’t.” He didn’t actually remember. It seemed
like all Marc could hear anymore when Natalie opened her mouth were her words
from two thousand eight—
Who’s going to believe you?

In the cooling spring night, Allie’s laugh was warm
against his skin. “You’re arguing with me.”

That nearly made him smile.

“You’re going home with me.” Allie said it so
breathlessly. It sounded like something he wasn’t very familiar with. It
sounded like hope.

He could tell himself that it was merely the
alcohol talking—that right now she might say the same thing, the same way, to
anyone. But Allie had chosen to leave the party alone rather than stay with
Blake. After a few more steps, it was enough of a truth for Marc to claim:
“We’re almost there.”

They climbed the steps to the entryway. Allie was
coherent enough to wrap her arms around his bare ribs while he fished his keys
from his pocket. Once they got into the elevator, her arms fell more and more
listlessly loose with every tick of the panel’s light. At her door he shifted
her from his side until she was balanced with her shoulders leaning against the
wall.

Her hips were thrust at him. His gaze drank
instinctively along that body which had been pressed with such soft warmth
against his. Maybe it was hypocrisy to believe she was any better off with him
than with Blake, but Marc couldn’t care. He wanted Allie with a jealous desire
that was as hard to keep buried at the party as it was hard now to restrain the
bracket of his hands to her hips and force his eyes up to hers.

It would be easier to take her to his apartment.
But he had said he would take her home. “Do you have the key?”

Allie was staring at him with serious
concentration. It took her a second to tip her chin into a nod. “Front pocket.”

Marc let his thumb drift before he looked, feeling
the key’s outline beneath her stretch denim. His fingerprints pressed into the
soft of her flesh through the fabric. He shifted his grip to slip the thick of
his knuckles against the hard of her hip to tug out the key. Before he could
tuck it safely into his palm, her hand lifted to encircle his wrist below the
rubber band of his tracking device.

He froze and his pulse sped beneath the familiar
cuff of her hold. Marc looked back up and found her eyes hooded. She wasn’t
trying to stop him, or to push him away. Perhaps he’d been right from the
start—she kept looking at him like she wanted to fuck.

Allie’s smile spread with drunken slow. “I can feel
your heart,” she whispered.

Gooseflesh prickled along his bare skin. No, he
couldn’t have been right. He had never seen a look like the one that Allie gave
him. Marc didn’t know how to respond to it, so he tugged on a smirk at one
corner of his mouth. “All right, doc.”

That at least got her to close her eyes, rolling
her head into an argumentative shake. “Not a doc.” Her smile grew dreamily.
“Not yet.” Her brows lifted without her eyes opening. “You don’t have a gold
star.”

“Medal,” Marc corrected her. “Not yet.” He
convinced his lungs to inflate and slipped a step back, keeping his cuffed hand
in a steadying hold on Allie while he worked the door.

As it opened she hummed and curled forward with her
hands hugging at his arm. Her head bumped into his shoulder.

“Am I going to have to watch you sleep?” Marc
threatened. He re-angled his arms to half-carry Allie inside. He stepped out of
his sandals and kicked the door closed behind them.

“Because that’s not creepy,” Allie murmured in
reflexive retort. Her smile was dreamy when she let her head loll back to look
at him from barely opened eyes.

Marc led Allie into the hall while she was gazing
at him. Her feet followed the guide of his tug at her waist. Along the way her
smile got lost somewhere. Her eyes were more open. Searching.

“You asked me what I wanted,” Allie said, only
stumbling a little through the words.

“Did I?”

Maybe Allie was trying to nod. More important was
the hand that drifted up to slide across the faintly brine-laced fuzz of his
chest. Her delicate fingers reached to slip over the curve of his shoulder and
up along the line of his neck. She swallowed deliberately. “Marc.” Allie was gazing
at him like there was nothing else she could see. “You’re my Valentine. I want …”

It should have made him run. That word, this day,
on too-innocent lips. Instead he was struck still within her gentle hold.

If this was to be his answer to a question from a
snowy night, he never got it. Instead her eyes went large and her hand snatched
back to press against her mouth. Marc nearly dropped her with the suddenness of
her surge when Allie struggled to her feet and reached along the hall towards
the—“
Bathroom!
”