“It better not.” The vein in Coach’s temple pulsed again. “I’ll let it slide for now, but if I catch one bloody whiff of dissent between you two today or any other day, I won’t be so lenient.
Now get the hell out of here and join your teammates in training. You’ve missed enough work this past week.”
Relief flooded my veins. He wasn’t benching me or making me, I don’t know, scrub the stadium with a toothbrush.
Thank God. “Yes, sir.”
The meeting had gone far better than I’d anticipated, but I hightailed it out of there before he changed his mind.
I only missed warm-ups and the first five minutes of training, so it didn’t take me long to catch up.
The rest of the team didn’t hold my absence on Saturday against me-they had wives, girlfriends, and beloved family members too; they understood-but I could tell by their stares that they were curious about Scarlett and my meeting with Coach.
“What happened?” Adil pounced during our first break. “What did Coach say?”
The other players drifted over, their ears perked as I summarized our conversation.
“You’re lucky, mate.” Stevens slapped me on the shoulder. “If the match had been a loss and not a draw…”
Shudders rippled through the group. If we’d lost, I’d be six feet under the pitch instead of standing on it.
I’d watched a replay of the match. We’d played well, but so had Holchester. They didn’t have any megastars in their current lineup-Bocci was the closest they had to one-but they were incredibly cohesive. That was their biggest strength and our biggest weakness.
Hopefully, that changed this season. We were already playing better together now that Vincent and I had patched things up, but we had room to improve.
“Forget the match,” Samson said. “I want to hear about your secret girlfriend.
DuBois
‘s sister?” He whistled. “Ballsy. Very ballsy.”
Heads swung between me and Vincent, who was walking toward us from the water station.
I was not in the mood to discuss my love life with anyone right now. Luckily, Vincent cut in before I had to respond.
“Is this training or is this a gossip session?” he asked pointedly. “We’re not here to discuss our personal lives unless you want to tell us about the girl you hooked up with during our last away match.”
The rest of the team laughed and elbowed an embarrassed-looking Samson. He’d brought a girl back to the hotel but refused to tell any of us who she was, which was unusual for him. He was typically an (over)sharer.
“Man, Captain, why do you have to always do me like that?” he said with a shake of his head.
Vincent grinned. “You make it too easy.”
We didn’t get a chance to speak further. Greely shouted at us to gather for our next set of conditioning drills, and our good-natured teasing immediately morphed into concentration.
Our assistant coach was running today’s training. He was usually nicer than Coach, but he ran us ragged. By the time practice ended, no one had the energy to do more than shuffle into the locker room for a hot shower and a change of clothes.
“Thanks for running interference earlier,” I told Vincent. We’d finished cleaning up around the same time, and I fell into step with him as we walked toward the car park. “When the guys were asking about Scarlett.”
He lifted a shoulder. “She’s my sister. I don’t want those idiots thinking about her in any romantic way.” He side-eyed me. “Too fucking late for you, though.”
I smirked.
“How is she?” Vincent asked. “I talked to her on the phone last night. She says she’s fine, but you know her. She’ll say she’s fine even if she’s forced to run a marathon barefoot over hot coals.”
“I know.” Scarlett’s stubborn resilience was one of her most admirable and most worrying traits. “She’s feeling better. Still lethargic and in pain sometimes, but she’s taking the week off work to fully recover.” It’d been her idea, which gave me a measure of relief. She wasn’t pushing herself to jump straight back into work. “She has a call with Lavinia today to discuss the tabloid and showcase situations.”
The paps were staked out at RAB again, but Scarlett was most nervous about the showcase. She worried that Lavinia would pull her as the lead.
I had conflicted feelings about the issue. I wanted Scarlett to get the chance to shine, but the thought of her enduring two more months of rehearsals made me break out in a cold sweat.
There was only so much the human body could take.
“Good. I’m glad she really is feeling better.” Vincent sounded relieved. We turned the corner toward the final set of exit doors. “What about the pap situation? They’ve been hounding me too, but not as much as you two.”
“I hired a team. They’re securing our houses.” My place already had a high-tech security system, but it wouldn’t hurt to shore up its defenses. “Once they’re done, we’ll move back home.”
We couldn’t stay at a hotel forever, and Scarlett was getting antsy.
“It’ll blow over.” Vincent seemed like he was trying to convince himself more than me. “The paps have short attention spans. They’ll find a new target soon and move on. But I swear…” His face clouded. “If any of them hurts Scarlett in any way, I will fuck them up.”
“I’ll be right there with you.”
Despite our history of differences, the only thing we’d always agreed on was protecting Scarlett.
He gave a short nod of acknowledgment. “You mind if I drop by the hotel later to see her? I’ll be careful.”
Sloane wouldn’t like it. She was so serious about our lockdown she came up with a convoluted strategy to make sure the paps didn’t follow me from training to the hotel. I had to go home first, wait an hour, then sneak out back to meet Earl-who would, of course, be driving a different decoy car every time.
I could stay at my house, but that would mean leaving Scarlett alone in the hotel since her flat wasn’t as secure as mine. There was no way in hell I’d do that, so Plan Decoy it was.
“Yeah,” I said. Sloane would rip me a new one later, but Vincent was Scarlett’s brother. I wasn’t going to keep him from her. “Just make sure not to drive your bloody Lambo.”
“I won’t-what the hell?” Vincent stopped halfway through the car park. The club’s security must’ve kicked the paps out because there was no press in sight, but the players who’d left before us were gathered in a half circle around one of the parking spaces. “What are you guys looking at?”
The group’s unintelligible mutters ceased. They glanced back at us, their expressions colored with varying shades of surprise, nerves, and pity.
A few shifted uncomfortably, but no one answered. Instead, they parted, creating a clear path between us and the hunter green convertible parked in the space.
That was my car.
A mounting sense of dread hooked into my stomach.
I walked past my teammates and stopped next to the driver’s side door, where I immediately saw what they’d been gawking at.
My dread solidified into cold, hard ice because there was one word-one name-scratched into the side of my favorite vintage Jaguar.
Judas.
ASHER
Nothing brought a team together like an attack from another team.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the keyed car was Holchester’s handiwork. People might think professional footballers were above such juvenile antics, but they weren’t. The
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.