Quarterback: Bad Boy Sport Star Romance. (4 page)

Mal:
Did you know there’s a place in Seattle that does crumpets?

Kasey:
Are you having a crumpet craving?

Mal:
I’m just saying. Crumpets. And tea and shit.

Kasey:
Sounds fun. You should check it out.

Mal:
Nobody to go with.

Kasey:
That’s not even a little bit true.

Mal:
Nobody I want to admit to liking crumpets with.

Kasey:
Okay, but pizza. What is Seattle doing about pizza?

Mal:
Woodfiring that shit like a motherfucking hipster.

Kasey:
Give me grease and pepperoni any day.

Mal:
Do you even know what pho is?

Kasey:
Do you even know what New York is?

Mal:
Come and see me. I’ll show you what pho should taste like.

Kasey:
Should you be offering coffee and salmon or something?

Mal:
Would that get you to Seattle?

Kasey:
I saw your hail Mary there. Nice pirouette.

Mal:
It gets the job done. You were watching?

Kasey:
I like a good game.

Mal:
Yeah, I’m getting that.

Mal:
Martinis. Nobody here does them right.

Kasey:
I shake a mean vermouth.

Mal:
Marry me.

Kasey:
What would your adoring fans say?

Mal:
Everything hurts, and all I can think about is your desk.

Kasey:
Would my desk stop you hurting?

Mal:
If you were on it? I wouldn’t even care.

The thing is? I know. I know he’s just flirting. I know cross-continental texts don’t mean a goddamn thing. That doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t flutter when he says things like that. It doesn’t mean I can’t feel the heat of him straight through my core. It doesn’t mean I don’t contemplate booking a flight to Seattle to surprise him.

Until I think of how I’d feel walking in on him and some sports groupie. It’s enough to keep my feet firmly planted on New York concrete.

It’s 10pm on a Sunday night. Lori is over and we are chatting over a bottle of wine each and some late potato soup. She has been coming over lately to watch Mal’s games and bitch with me about whatever floozy we assume he will be going out with that night. Tonight was Mal’s night though. The Seahawks made the playoffs and he shined in so many of the plays. I shouted at the TV while Lori mocked me. Football in PJ’s is becoming our girls’ night in.  After the game, over a pint of Ben & Jerry’s,  I hear the ping of my phone.

Mal:
Did you watch the game? I’ve got a press conference in about 20 minutes. Watch for long distance moral support?

Kasey:
You got it, hotshot! Great game.

A half a bottle of wine, and I’m text flirting right along with him. It’s comfortable in a way I never would have expected.

“Hey, Mal’s got a press conference. Wanna watch with me?”

Lori rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Does he get that post-game glow?”

I laugh. “I honestly have no idea.”

“Well, let’s find out, then.” She grabs the remote and turns the TV back on, flipping through the channels until I spot Mal’s familiar, sober press-face and squeak at her to stop.

It’s a fairly standard post-game report until one journalist, a young woman who looks like she can’t be out of college yet, stands and asks, “Rumor has it you’ve been spending less time out in the clubs lately. Is there any particular reason?”

Action shrugs, and I can read the annoyance on his face at the question, though he plays it off well. “Everybody’s gotta grow up sometime.”

“Does that mean you’re settling down?” the woman, wearing too much eye shadow and a too-bright pink blouse, asks.

“I guess?” he answers, his nose scrunching in distaste. Until we’d started texting, I had no idea just how much he hated people prying into his personal life. He’d always seemed so open with reporters about his activities.

“Any particular reason? Someone special in your life?” The other reporters are starting to look annoyed as well, but Sorority Girl presses on.

Mal hesitates, but there’s a smile playing at the corners of his mouth that I wouldn’t have expected. When he answers, all he says is, “‘Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.’”

The reporter is stymied, but my jaw has dropped.

“What?” Lori asks, looking from the television to my face.

“That’s...that’s Pliny,” I stammer, at a loss for how to respond.

“Pliny…? The… Yeah, I have no idea who Pliny is.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, and I’m already pulling myself to my feet, fumbling in the detritus of our evening in to find my phone. “I’m...Oh, Jesus. I’m about to do something really stupid.”

“Do it!” Lori shouts. She’s even more tipsy than I am. “It’s about fucking time.”

I find my phone halfway to my room as I’m searching for my purse and my wallet. I only pause long enough to type out a quick text.

Kasey:
Keep hoping, hotshot.

I get off the plane at an early six in the morning and catch the first cab to his place. I can’t bring myself to check my phone since I texted him to see if he’s texted me back. I don’t want anything to make me lose my nerve. Fighting the urge to run back to the airport but knowing that all I want is to be in Mal’s arms, I fight with myself the whole way to his door. I knock. I don’t straighten my hair or my shirt. I don’t check to see if I have travel breath, I just knock. When he opens the door, I can’t tell if I’ve just flown across the country for nothing at all.

He’s surprised, sure, but that doesn’t tell me anything. For a moment, I can’t even breathe. I haven’t ever been impulsive like this. Even after Lori’s cheerleading, this seems like the worst decision I’ve ever made.

Then he smiles, a slow spreading warmth that seeps into his expression, softening the fierceness of his face, brightening his blue eyes.

“Fucking Pliny,” he says, and I let out my breath in a rush. I hadn’t even realized I was holding it.

Before I have a chance to respond, he’s scooping me off my feet, carrying me bridal style through a house I only know from texted pictures. When he nudges open the door to his bedroom with one foot, I can’t help laughing as I agree. “Fucking Pliny.”

This book contains the following bonus books.

Small Town Love Story

Emma Jones

Copyright © 2015 by Emma Jones.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book contains mature content, including graphic sex. Please do not continue reading if you are under the age of 18. All characters in the book are 18+ years of age, non-blood related, and all sexual acts are consensual.

Katie hated Christmas.

This time of year evoked so many painful memories for her. It was the time of year when she felt the loneliest, like she had no one in the world to hold on. During these cold December weeks in the Midwest, she barely had the energy or the drive to get out bed. Every year, during these days, all she could think of, was her last Christmas in New York. Not so much of a holiday for her ever again.

Unfortunately, staying in bed during the Christmas season is a luxury the owner of a cupcake business does not have.

She’d started the business after graduating from CIA, New York’s premier culinary school. So many people had expected her to stay in New York City since her graduation. But ever since she could remember herself, all she wanted was to have a simple life, filled with love, sweetness and pastry, in her beloved and peaceful home town, Chrisberg, Minnesota, population, established.

This place had so much history, so much romantic history. It was said to be founded in 25th of December 1689, at Christmas, by a husband and wife in desperate search of a refuge from Native American fur trappers. Forced to flee their home in the dead of the Minnesota winter. The wife was pregnant and the couple had no resources. There no chance in surviving the dark, dense, freezing cold forests. It is also said that they were up against a pack of wolfs that was after them, some say that the pack actually protected them from bears into their journey for survival.

Not only that, but the wife suffered through a painful pregnancy but she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. This birth was considered to be a Christmas miracle, powered by love. And soon after, their survival got well known.

The boy was named Chris. Shortly after his birth, more people wandered through the area that the couple now called home. The travelers were invited to stay and soon began building permanent living quarters. Eventually a town was formed. The town of: Chrisberg.

Every Christmas, tourists from in and out of state would flock to the small town.

There had always been whispers around town that the story of the couple is a myth. Almost 300 years later, whether or not it was fact or fiction, hardly mattered. The myth had created a magical aura around the town. During the tourist season, lovers, young and old, walked the snow-covered streets arm in arm radiating love and contentment.

Seeing all those happy couples only increased Katie’s sense of loneliness and isolation. But ironically it was the best time of year for her business.

It was exactly one week before Christmas and the bells on the front door seemed to jingle every few minutes as townsfolk came in and out of the store all day. The ones that couldn’t come in would make their orders by phone. This time of year, there was never a moment when that thing wasn’t ringing.

A couple years ago, Katie had attempted to bring the shop into the digital age by creating an online ordering system. But the townsfolk did not react well to the idea. Some people even accused her of thinking that she was better than they were because she had been to some fancy New York culinary school and had been featured on national news shows a couple times.

When news of the rumors got around to Katie she didn’t react. She understood exactly why they had responded like that.

In Chrisberg people put a very high value on community. They didn’t mind having to wait on the cue at the store. It was a time to socialize and to participate in a little local gossip, sometimes harmless, sometimes not. People wanted to have an actual interaction with another human being, not a computer.

 That desire for real human contact was part of the reason that the town had kept its quaint charm for all these many years.

“Katie, there’s a phone call for you,” said Monica, one of the local college students who worked in the bakery. She had orange hair and a couple of tattoos on her forearms that Katie always asked her to cover up in the bakery. Despite her suspect appearance, over the last two years, Monica had been her most trustful employee.

Katie answered the phone. It was an executive from ABC television. She had no idea why someone like that would be contacting her and she nearly hung the phone up assuming that it was some sort of prank.

But she did not. She was about to receive one of the biggest orders in the five year history of the cupcake shop.

An ABC executive told her that they would be shooting a short documentary on one of the town’s most well-known people.

When Katie heard that name, she almost fainted. For a moment, she put the phone down and leaned against the wall. She feared that she might have been having a panic attack. That had happened before on more than one occasion.

“Hello, hello, are you still there?” She heard coming from the phone. She took a couple more deep breaths and picked up the phone.

When the phone call ended, Katie stood in her back office trembling. This can’t be happening, she said to herself. It can’t be.