Scoring the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 3) Read online

  “Winnie?” Georgia called softly with a gently knowing look in her eyes.

  With a quick shake to clear my head, I pointed to Dean and decided the only thing I could at that moment.

  “When the waitress comes back to bring you another round, I’m going to need one too.”

  Another week and a couple of degrees Fahrenheit gone, November was officially in full swing. I glanced at the date on the lock screen of my phone and cringed.

  The 20th. Jesus. November is almost over. Where the hell is the time going?

  We were headed straight toward the fucking awful part of living in New York with below-zero wind tunnels thanks to tall buildings and physics, and old, garbage-contaminated snow, but, thankfully, other things were heating up.

  Our season was on fire with a nine and zero record, and Winnie and I burned even hotter than the team. With sex and banter whenever we could manage, I was the happiest I’d been in…as long as I could remember. And when I thought about all the friction we used to build the flames—against walls, bent over desks, in the fucking locker room showers—the need to complain about winter in New York just up and disappeared.

  I glanced up from fiddling on my phone straight into the clear blue eyes of Winnie Winslow herself. With her hair pulled back from her face and a lavender sweater covering some of the sweetest inches of her skin, she looked beautiful. Confident and poised and so goddamn irresistible I had to force my eyes away from her when another person spoke.

  “You need to up your social media game, sir,” Sean Phillips said with an easy, slightly antagonistic smile. His eyes popped against his darker skin, mischief flickering in the light green depths. It was times like these that I could see his relation to Cassie so clearly it was startling.

  “I don’t need to have any social media game,” I told him, Winnie, and the three other players crowding the not-all-that-small space of the training room with their sheer size and bulk.

  Professional football players had a way of looking small on the field, but they dwarfed any normal-sized man. I was comfortable with my height at six foot two, but according to Thatch, being six two in a room full of football players was like being five foot seven on America’s Next Top Model—you were the runt of the professional litter.

  Plus, I wasn’t carrying seventy extra pounds of muscle like these guys.

  “He’s right,” Jeremy Rollins, one of our star wide receivers, agreed. He had a vertical jump fucking cats would envy, but right then, as he agreed with Sean and started an epidemic of pushing me into the social media foray that I knew wouldn’t end with him, I considered taking out both of his kneecaps. “I saw the Bruins owner tweeting all kinds of updates and shit. Really got the fans into it.”

  Winnie’s eyes flared with her agreement.

  Fuck. Maybe I could make Georgia do it.

  Winnie laughed like she knew what I was thinking, and with the amount of time we’d been spending together, she probably did. “Not someone else. You. You should tweet,” she asserted.

  “I don’t tweet,” I said with a curl of my lip.

  “Not yet, you don’t,” Quinn Bailey agreed with a wink. “But we’re going to teach you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes!” Winnie said, excited and nodding.

  Fuck.

  “Fine.”

  All of them just stood there and stared. Winnie with happiness, Quinn with way too much knowledge, and the others waiting for Twitter to grow roots and spring from the ground right in front of me, apparently.

  “Well?” I prompted. “Do I just email it?”

  Earnie Fletcher, one of the best tailbacks in the league and all-around monster runner, choked on a laugh before straightening himself up when my face didn’t change. “Oh. You’re serious.”

  My eyes burned with the effort I put into telepathically saying, Fuck all of you.

  “Okay, so you’re going to need to go to the App Store. Do you know what the App Store is?” Quinn asked with a tremor of humor in his voice, jerking his head to my phone.

  I honestly wasn’t sure I did, but fuck if I was going to let them know that.

  “Yes,” I sneered with a tilt of my head. “I know what the App Store is.”

  Winnie smiled, all the way from her mouth to her eyes, and touched her nose. She knew I was lying.

  Holding up her phone from behind the crowd while the guys looked at me, she pointed to a blue button on the screen. I searched for the same icon on my phone and pushed it.

  “Now, just search for Twitter,” Sean instructed.

  I did that and pushed the little box that said “Get.” I didn’t know anything about this shit, but I also wasn’t an idiot.

  “Now what?” I asked when it loaded.

  It only took them five minutes and a heated discussion over what my “handle” should be to get me in the position to actually tweet something.

  It was @NYMavsTopGun, by the way—a cute play on the movie Top Gun and being the guy in charge. I was both disgusted and impressed by the argument those four men had while strategizing my name. It was a lot like any exchange between Kline, Thatch, and me. Apparently, almost all grown men are children.

  “All right. What do I say?” I asked testily, growing a little frustrated with the whole thing. I wasn’t really great at being the guy who didn’t know what was going on.

  From a very young age, and likely because of the lack of my mother’s influence, my father had raised me to be independent and in charge. Honestly, I think he just needed me to help him raise me by raising myself. He hadn’t planned on having to teach me all of life’s lessons on his own. But men like him never did. They walked into the hospital with a smile on their face and excitement in their hearts—and they left, brand-new baby bundle in their arms, heartbroken and without a wife.

  “Anything you want,” Fletcher offered. I had to focus in order to remember what I had even asked.

  Winnie’s eyes shot to mine, and she almost shouted. “Not anything! Jesus. Don’t get him into trouble, guys.”

  Quinn rolled his eyes with a smile. “It’s just Twitter.”

  Oh, yeah. Twitter.

  “And how many followers do you have on Twitter, Quinn?” Winnie fired back pointedly.

  God, I loved when she got heated. I had to look down in order to conceal my smile, but I peeked up from underneath my lashes so I could watch Quinn’s reaction.

  He didn’t even have to think about it. I was guessing, by the line of his jaw, Southern charm, and cut body, he had a lot. “Point taken.”

  “He could just say something about practice,” Rollins suggested.

  “He should say something funny,” Sean insisted as he jumped up onto Winnie’s table and leaned back on his elbows, feet dangling.

  “How about he doesn’t say anything?” I grumbled.

  Winnie laughed. “Relax.”

  I thought about it, and out of nowhere, something came to me. I moved my fingers over the keyboard and then showed it to the room. “How’s this?”

  They passed the phone around, starting with Winnie, and I thanked fuck I had my messages set to show the notification without the message. I didn’t need something popping up on there while any of them had their hands on it. Especially because, when you were friends with someone like Thatcher Kelly, you never knew what was going to show up at any given moment.

  Winnie’s eyes grew moist, just barely—but enough that I noticed—and I knew no matter what any of the other fucks said, I was posting it.

  “It’s perfect,” Quinn thankfully agreed.

  “He just needs a hashtag,” Sean said as he passed the phone back to Rollins.

  “A hashtag?” I asked. Fletcher smiled when he read the words on the screen and lifted his eyes to mine. There was noticeably more warmth within them—as though I’d finally proven myself as human.

  “Usually something ironic, funny, and common-ground building,” Quinn explained.

  “You put this little thing—”

  �
��The pound sign?” I asked.

  Sean bit his lip and bugged out his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Hashtag: signs you’re old.”

  I was pretty sure the little asshole was mocking me, but as he typed away in order to give me whatever the fuck the all-important hashtag was about, I realized I couldn’t kill him until he was done.

  Winnie, as though reading the murder in my eyes, stepped forward and took the phone from Sean to pass it to me herself. I looked down to read what he’d added.

  @NYMavsTopGun: Season rush yards: 5468. Pass yards: 4367. Lessons from a six-year-old. #areyousmarterthana1stgrader #no

  It looked good to me. “What do I do now?”

  “Push tweet,” Sean said with a roll of his eyes.

  God, this was ridiculous. My thumb hovered for the barest of seconds before making contact with the screen.

  “Okay, done.”

  “Congratulations,” Winnie offered enthusiastically, and the guys laughed.

  “Why does this feel like the beginning of the end?” I asked with a groan.

  “Because it is,” Quinn said with a wink.

  Another fucking winker.

  I shook my head.

  Struggling to take my eyes off Winnie and her warmth, and completely done with the other bozos in the room, I forced myself to focus on the phone in my hands and use it for something other than tweeting and chirping and shit.

  Me: Meet me in the storage room?

  Winnie’s phone pinged, and her cheeks got rosier the instant she read the message. The blush overwhelmed the peach of her skin even further when the guys noticed her reaction.

  “What’s up, Dr. Double U?” Quinn asked with a good-ol’-boy smirk and far more knowing eyes than Winnie or I would have liked.

  “‘Who is it, Pooh?’ asked Tigger,” Sean Phillips teased. He was smart and had a good head on his shoulders—despite being related to Cassie.

  In fact, all four of these young men were smart, and they’d pretty quickly become some of my favorite picks. Picks I’d make again, repeatedly, if fate saw fit to give me a Groundhog Day scenario.

  Rollins and Fletcher were quieter. Reserved. Watchful.

  But what they lacked in exuberance, they more than made up for with intelligence.

  Win squatted down and reached for something from her supplies so she wouldn’t have to meet any of our eyes.

  I kept my phone up, my fingers typing, and my face neutral—what Thatch often referred to as my “natural state.”

  Me: Tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s none of their business.

  She read again, and the very corner of one end of her mouth curved up. I could actually feel her fighting the pull to meet my eyes. And it wouldn’t be the players she’d be telling to go fuck themselves if and when she gave in.

  I typed again.

  Me: Tell them it’s Coach Bennett. They’re all late.

  Her face after I said that was my favorite, the horror and realization of a prospective assumed affair between her and the head coach making that excuse a definite no.

  I was seconds away from sending another suggestion when she killed my fun but put a whole other kind into motion.

  “It’s my babysitter,” she announced to the room. That seemed to calm the inquisitive young minds around us. “I have to make a call.”

  As she approached the door, and me, her eyes finally, briefly, caught mine. They said soon I would pay.

  I just hoped it was in all the ways I liked best.

  Unfortunately for me, when I escaped the guys and followed her to our supersecret location—the storage room—there weren’t actually pleasurable things waiting for me.

  A lecture. But no pleasure.

  Though, really, I had to admit, I really liked when Winnie shoved my shit right back at me. So maybe there was a little pleasure.

  “You can’t text me like that in front of people,” she commanded, backing me into the door with a finger in my face, and I did my best not to smile. Smiling right now would lead to nothing but trouble. Not one goddamn good thing. And I was really trying to be on Santa’s Nice List at the end of this exchange so I’d get the orgasm I’d spent so much time writing the letter asking for.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked as innocently as I could manage. “Spell things out?”

  “No!” She swatted at me. I watched her hand move and then looked back to her face and pretended to think about it.

  “You’re right. Not only would the guys know, but Lex would too. No way spelling will work. She knows more words than I do. So hand signals it is.”

  A startled laugh sounded surprisingly like a bark as it left her throat. Woof, woof, baby. “Hand signals? What?” She parted her lips and pinched her eyes slightly.

  “We’re going to need a highly coded but easily articulated set of hand gestures for communication. If technology is off-limits, this is the only other way.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just use carrier pigeons?” she asked sarcastically, and she gave me a little shove so that my back tapped the door.

  “Of course,” I deadpanned. “They’re completely unreliable.”

  She relaxed her face, and just the hint of a smile curved her lips, but she didn’t step back. Thank God.

  “Plus,” I added dramatically. I put one hand to her hip and pulled her even more tightly against me. “There’s also the whole bird flu thing.”

  “Wes—”

  I held up my free hand and showed her the inside of my fist. I held it like I was a fifth grader, determined and ready to master all the facets of a real kiss.

  You know you did it too.

  “What’s that mean?” she asked with frustration, a grown woman stuck playing children’s games thanks to an aggravating man, but it didn’t last long.

  I’d never liked the tell part of show-and-tell in class, and this was no different.

  As my lips met hers, I didn’t think there’d ever be any doubt what this hand signal meant—to either of us.

  “Oh! Go, baby, go!” Georgia shouted across the field, clapping her hands and jumping up and down on her high-heeled boots like a giddy-chic teenage girl, as the rugby match started. Her eyes were on her husband, and she looked like today—and every day—she wanted to swallow him up whole. And by the tender yet fierce intensity of the return smile he gave her, it was safe to say, he only had eyes for his wife.

  Georgia and Kline were quite literally beautiful together—she was his world, and she didn’t know one existed outside of him.

  I want that.

  God, I want that so bad.

  I wanted to be loved in a deep, all-consuming way. The kind of love that made you feel invincible and special and like the huge expanse of the world had somehow, some way found time for the tiny speck that was you—because the two of you together was that important. So important that it did things for people other than the two of you. Kline and Georgia and Thatch and Cassie had those kinds of relationships. They gave the people around them energy and hope.

  And most of the time, when I wasn’t having a pity party for one, that was a good thing—the best.

  Wes could be that man for you, my heart told me. Sure he’s headstrong and stubborn, but he respects you and…

  Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

  Where had that even come from?

  I glanced around the bleachers to see if anyone else had noticed my moment of temporary insanity, if I’d somehow mistakenly mumbled all the crazy things aloud. Because that’s what it had to be, thinking a man like Wes—a man who didn’t even acknowledge me as anything more than a fucking friend in mixed company—could possibly be the other half of my whole. Temporary insanity.

  I looked to the field just as Wes ran by and shot one of the sexiest fucking smiles to which I had ever paid witness over his shoulder.

  God.

  It’d been aimed at the other guys on his team, but sweet Jesus, it slayed me all the same.

  Shit. Could Wes be that guy? My guy?

 
He had been spending a lot of time with my daughter, teaching her football, occasionally taking her to practice, and going out of his way to do little things for her that only a child like Lexi would understand and cherish.

  And the flirting and teasing and fucking with him was…incredible.

  No man—no man—had ever touched me, pleasured me, understood what I needed like he did.

  My mind recognized all the red flags, but my heart was doing a bang-up job of ignoring all the fucking evidence. My heart and my goddamn horny vagina—both of them, mutinous.

  And that scared the shit out of me.

  I forced my attention out of my head and onto the field, where the guys played on, mostly oblivious to the ludicrous happenings on the sideline. My personal treadmill, Cassie’s angry cankles, and Georgia’s completely misdirected enthusiasm.

  But once my eyes caught sight of Wes, serious and determined and looking like the sexiest motherfucker I had ever seen, I could do nothing but ogle him.

  His biceps rippled and stretched as he sprinted smoothly toward a player on the opposite team, the thick muscles in his thighs demanding attention with each powerful step.

  Jesus. Did he really have to be that perfect? It was cold out, for fuck’s sake. I was wrapped in a blanket, and he was in shorts. They all were. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with all of them? Those hot, stupid, ridiculously muscled men.

  Christ, I needed to go to more sporting events if this was what they were like.

  As crazy as it sounded, it made sense that my physical attraction to Wes was so horrendously out of control. I’d known what kind of man he was—spotted it from the very first second—and still, under the spell of his swoony hazel eyes and chiseled jaw, I’d completely abandoned my six-year run as a smart woman.

  Of course, then, I’d gotten to know him, and I’d based my hiatus from sanity on his serene yet quiet confidence. The way he carried himself and the way he handled himself in all things, business and personal.