Fair Game: A Football Romance (21 page)

Epilogue

Five years later

Disney World with three kids under ten is a really stupid idea, but when you win the America Bowl, you go to Disney. I have led the Redkings to two America Bowl wins since my beautiful wife helped me walk back onto the field four years ago after the birth of our daughter Raven.

I couldn’t have done it without her; she was instrumental in my recovery. I was optimistic in thinking I could make it back in four months; it took me more like seven, but still much sooner than the eighteen months Dr. Moto predicted.

I did however stand at the altar when we got married. I refused to use crutches or sit in a fucking wheelchair when I vowed to love and protect her all the days of my life.

Now I’m vowing never to go to Disney in ninety-degree humid weather for all the days of the rest of my life.

“Daddy! Go with me on Splash Mountain again, please,” Harper says, dropping her head back dramatically.

“See if Mommy wants to go, my stomach can’t take that drop again. We’ve been on that thing four times today, can’t we do something else?”

I sound like one of my kids whining about going on that ride, but we’ve been here since they opened this morning and it’s four o’clock. The baby needs a nap, Ame needs a good strong drink, and Raven’s little legs are worn out.

Harper is still going strong though, and I hate to disappoint my little girl.

“I’ll go with her, you guys go ahead and go back to the hotel. We can feed her and bring her back after the light parade,” Brea says.

“Yes! Please, Daddy, let me stay with Brea and Roman, please, please, please.”

“No need to beg, Princess, you go ahead and have fun with the childless wonders.”

“Oh shut up, old man, you’re just jealous you can’t keep up,” Roman says, high-fiving Brea.

“You just wait, you’ll have kids that will sap every ounce of energy from your body someday.”

“Nope, no way. I like my freedom,” he says.

“Me too,” Brea says, winking at Roman.

Ame walks up sweaty and tired, toting Sebastian in a side sling but gorgeous as ever.

“We going?”

“Yes, Harper’s staying with these bozos,” I say, hitching my thumb over my shoulder at the fiery redhead and the muscle-bound linebacker.

“Oh great, thanks guys,” she says, and turns without another thought to find an air-conditioned bus. I’m a mere step behind her waving at Harper, who is skipping away with our friends.

“Where the hell does all that energy go when you grow up anyway?”

Ame looks down at the bundle on her hip and then to Raven struggling along next to me without a word.

“Adulting is hard,” she says, pointing at the next bus.

“Daddy, up,” Raven says with her hands in the air.

“Yeah, daddy up,” Ame repeats, some sass returning to her weary voice.

I lift Raven up and steal a kiss from her and then Mrs. Silver.

“Daddy’s already up for you, Mama,” I whisper in her ear.

She groans. “Please tell me we have a babysitter tonight.”

“We have a babysitter tonight, all night. My mom offered to take them in her room.”

“Oh thank the Lord. I need a bath, a massage, dinner, a drink, and a silver snake.”

“That sounds like a perfect night, especially the snake part.”

“I knew you’d like that. I’m beat, but this has been really fun you know, hot and sweaty and exhausting … sort of like sex.”

“I never thought about it like that.” I sit Raven in the seat next to me on the blessedly cool bus and hold out my hands palms up. “Sex, Disney World, sex, Disney …”

“You better stop weighing those options and pick sex or you’ll be sleeping alone tonight, buddy.”

“Sex.” I lift my right hand high with enthusiasm. It was never really a contest.

She giggles, and we settle into our seats watching out the window as the bright colors of Disney World go by.

It’s crazy that the thing that could have ended my career was the thing that brought me back. My injury led me back to Amethyst, and she took my hand and led me back to life.

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EMERSON ROSE

COPYRIGHT 2016 PRISM HEART PRESS

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DEDICATION

To my fans. This one’s for you.

Love,

Emerson

There is a place and a time in the garden of life for order and discipline, but neither belongs where my love and passion grows. – Violet Washington

Weddings. I sigh and turn in a circle, looking at the chaos in my bedroom. My little brother’s best friend is getting married next weekend, and for the eighth time, I am a bridesmaid and not a bride. I’m not the marrying type, or so everyone says, and it must be true because I’m twenty-seven with no husband in sight. The phrase, ‘Always the bridesmaid, never the bride’ was coined after me.

I need to finish packing, but Mom keeps interrupting me. She’s here to help me get my things together for Mattie’s wedding, but she’s not really helping at all. I had to stop and show her where to find the coffee in my kitchen. Twice, she’s shown me things she thinks are hilarious on
Instagram.
I made sure to remind her that she’s a traitor for spending so much time on
Instagram
when her daughter works for
Facebook
. She laughed and flashed another overly sarcastic meme in my face.

“Mom, have you seen my dress?” I call over my shoulder, walking into my closet to look one more time for the damn thing.

“The long, pretty cornflower blue one?”

“Yes.”

“With the low V cut in the back and the pretty sash?”

“Yes, Mother, that’s the one. Have you seen it?” I ask, rolling my eyes. Mom is such a space case sometimes. I wonder how on earth we made it from state to state with our belongings all those years that Dad was in the military.

“I don’t know.”

“Mother, you just described it to a tee, and now you’re saying you don’t know where it is?”

She shuffles around the corner into my bedroom, holding her cup of coffee with one hand while looking at her phone.

She looks up at me briefly. “You asked if I had seen it and I have—just not lately,” she says, leaning against the doorframe.

“That doesn’t help me much. We need to get on the road if we want to make tee off at two thirty, and I can’t leave without my dress.”

“Fourteen thirty, Violet. You were raised with military time. Why don’t you use it?”

I heave another sigh. This used to be an everyday argument when I lived at home, and it’s one I don’t miss.

“Because, Mom, the rest of the world uses normal time.”

“Well, it just makes more sense,” she says, shaking her head.

I’m not arguing. It’s a lost cause and I need to find my damn dress.

“Here, put these by the door,” I say, thrusting the only two small bags I’ve managed to pack in her direction.

She huffs when she’s forced to put her phone in her pocket to hold the bags. “Oh! In the shower!” she yells, and I jump.

“The shower?”

“Your dress. It’s hanging in the shower, remember? You put it in there yesterday to get the wrinkles out.”

“Oh yes, the shower. Take it easy on the coffee, Mom. You just scared the shit out of me.”

I retrieve my dress from the bathroom, and when I pass the large mirror over the vanity, I catch my reflection. I look tired. The circles under my eyes are starting to show my insomnia, and my lack of makeup only adds to the effect.

Oh well. We’re going to be outside drinking beer and sweating on the golf course all day. I don’t need makeup. I’m not trying to impress anyone anyway. I’ve recently sworn off long-term relationships with men. One-night stands? Yes. Boyfriends? No. Crummy luck with men follows me around like a heavy, black storm cloud.

I’m a jerk magnet, and I’ve come to accept it.

Chapter One

Major

Target Girl

“Whoa, shit!” she yells when we crash into each other and no fewer than fifteen personal hygiene items go flying into the air and crashing to the floor. I hold onto my bulbs because, unlike this woman, I don’t try to balance an unmanageable amount of purchases in my arms without a basket.

She’s on her knees collecting her things before I can apologize, which technically, I don’t have to do because it’s not my fault. She ran into me. I should move to help her, but she’s really fucking beautiful . . . down there . . . on her knees. For fuck’s sake, Major, get a grip. You’re a damn Marine. Help her already.

I crouch down just as she’s standing, and we collide again. This is ridiculous. I stiffen when her head cracks against the bottom of my jaw and she moans and grabs her head.

“Ow!” she yells for the second time in a matter of seconds.

“Stop moving,” I say, taking her by the shoulders. “I’ll take care of it.”

Her eyes narrow and her lips press together in a straight line. She looks pissed or maybe shocked—I’m not sure which—but thankfully, she can follow instructions.

She stills, and I straighten up to retrieve a shopping basket from the opposite end of the aisle. When I turn around, someone is standing with her, presumably her mother the way she’s hovering and checking the lump that I am sure is growing on her head. I crouch down, neatly place each item in the basket, and hand it to her.

“Shopping baskets significantly reduce the instance of head injuries in retail establishments,” I say. I’m being serious, but I can see a myriad of emotions crossing her beautiful face, including irritation and anger—but most of all, frustration.

“Watching where one’s going doesn’t hurt either,” she says, flashing me a quick sarcastic smile.

I don’t have time to deal with her right now, even though I would really like to stand here and continue to watch her mocha skin flush and her deep brown eyes flash with anger.

I look at my watch. Fuck. I have nine minutes to get home and get my day back on schedule. I should ask if she’s okay. I should probably apologize, even though it was clearly not my fault, but I’m in a hurry. I step around the two women, grab the razor blades I was after in this aisle, and make my way through the store to the cashier.

Back at home, I install the light bulbs that unexpectedly exploded this morning. I dispose of the containers and recheck twice to be sure I didn’t miss any glass when I swept up earlier. Then I sweep one more time for good measure and breathe a sigh of relief. I had to rewrite my entire list of things to do today just to insert ‘go to
Target
’, but the satisfaction of crossing it off was worth it. My day is back on track, it’s sixteen thirty, and I’m on my way out the door to start my afternoon run.

What a fucking relief. I can relax for an hour now and let my mind go blank while I count my steps.

One,

two,

three,

four. Only 1296 to go before I meet Garcia and Davis for dinner and drinks.

Sweat is dripping down my back and between my shoulder blades. One mile into my run, the sun is in my eyes and the smell of fresh cut grass is thick in the air. California in the summer. It doesn’t get any better than this. My mind is multitasking this afternoon. Part of it is counting my steps, another part is counting the palm trees as I pass them, and another is replaying the Target incident.

I can’t stop thinking about that woman on her knees with her Nike sun visor and her long, wavy black hair in a messy ponytail. When we were finished banging heads and colliding into each other, I systematically assessed her beauty. She was understated and casual, wearing shorts and a tank top. Her glasses made her look like a sexy librarian. She looked like she was going to play golf. In fact, the woman who was with her did too. Mother and daughter golf. How sweet.

There was something about her, something interesting and intriguing. I usually deplore sassiness and disobedience in a woman, but when she spoke back to me, it was a turn on. Fuck, I need to get laid. I’m getting a semi thinking about a stranger at
Target.

I don’t date, and it’s been a while since I’ve had time to go out perusing for someone to bed, but it’s getting harder and harder to go without sex—pun intended. Serious relationships are impossible, and I don’t do casual well either. I can’t stand the loose unpredictability of that kind of setup. I do one-night stands in impersonal hotels where no one gets attached and no one gets hurt.

Things have been hectic on base lately with new recruits arriving fresh out of boot camp. I haven’t had a spare minute to go out for anything other than dinner. Bars aren’t my thing, so Davis and Garcia compromised, agreeing to meet for dinner even though I’m sure they will try to drag me along for a pub crawl when we’re finished. I’ll tolerate one or two for a hookup, but when I’ve found someone to break my dry streak, I’m gone.