Wildcat (Mavericks Tackle Love Book 1) Read online

“Any purposes,” he clarified, and I blushed under his flirtatious gaze. “All the fucking purposes.”

  I blushed harder. Smiled. And then giggled nervously.

  Good God, he is dangerously charming.

  It was our turn to file off the train, and before I managed to walk down the exit steps that led to the platform, Quinn gently squeezed my shoulder from behind, whispering into my ear, “I’ll call you. Have a safe flight back to New York.”

  “Okay.” I smiled at him over my shoulder. “And you too.”

  Our eyes locked as we stepped onto the platform, and for one brief yet very reluctant moment, our feet grew roots that held us in our spots. The crowd from the train moved around us, but neither of us seemed to care.

  A hesitant goodbye suspended in time.

  Eventually, in the name of getting to the airport on time, I had to break the trance. With a soft smile and a little wave, I felt his name roll off my tongue. “Bye, Quinn.”

  “Bye, Cat.”

  And that was that. Quinn walked in one direction, and I went in the other, both of us heading toward completely different destinations.

  As my heels smacked across the cement platform, I felt disappointment over the idea of time. It was moments like these when I realized it passed too quickly. I wanted a redo of my train ride to Birmingham with Quinn.

  But it wouldn’t really be a redo, because I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I just wanted to experience it again for the first time and try to find a way to savor how good being in his presence had made me feel.

  It probably didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I was insanely attracted to Quinn. I’d felt that attraction the instant I’d seen him in seat 2A, and it only grew stronger when he’d joined Casey’s Journey rendition and made himself comfortable in the seat next to mine.

  Attraction was a thought inside your head that said, “There’s something about this…”

  And believe me, when it came to Quinn, there was definitely something about him.

  I couldn’t stop myself from gravitating toward this man who so easily had captured my attention, and the more time I’d spent with him and the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to learn about him, the more I wanted to experience all that was him.

  Over and over again.

  If Quinn Bailey was the metal, I was the fucking magnet.

  With my purse securely on my shoulder and my carry-on sliding behind me, I followed the signs that directed me toward the main area of the train station—where I would find a taxi to take me to the airport.

  And thankfully, I had plenty of time to actually get to the airport, check in with my gate agent, and get my plane ready for the flight back to NYC.

  Although, as Casey had finally pointed out, I could have avoided this altogether.

  You wouldn’t trade last night for anything, my mind taunted. Not even less hassle.

  I couldn’t even argue with myself. I knew my mind was right.

  The platform was busier than I’d expected at nearly four in the morning, but my tired legs navigated the cement path just fine, moving with ease around motionless bystanders and stationary bags.

  By the time I reached the door that led toward the inside of the train station, the chatter behind me grew louder until I heard a familiar name being called out several times.

  I stopped in my tracks and turned to find a small crowd of excited people surrounding Quinn on the other side of the platform. His back was toward me at that point, but it was apparent he was laughing and smiling with the crowd, the screens of their phones catching his every move, some lucky enough to even get a selfie with him.

  I imagined this was what it would look like if Kim Kardashian had stepped off that platform.

  Shocked, I watched as he took several of their pens and scribbled what I assumed was his name across newspapers and notebooks and pretty much anything they could find for him to sign.

  Am I hallucinating?

  I mean, considering I’d just taken a late-night, nearly four-hour train ride after working most of the day, it was possible. But the scene that lay before me was too real. Too vivid.

  Each flash of a camera and excited murmur was not fogged over or hazy in a dreamlike way. No. It was most definitely happening.

  But what I couldn’t understand was why.

  Was Quinn Bailey someone important? Or more than that, someone famous?

  And if that was the case, how in the heck had I not known that?

  If one of The Real Housewives or Khloe Kardashian had been sitting beside me on a four-hour train ride, you could bet your ass I’d have known who they were. I might have been overworked as a flight attendant, but I didn’t live under a rock. I was hip to the pop culture game. I kept up with US Weekly, and pretty much every show on E! was on regular rotation on my television.

  I felt like an idiot for not understanding why the person I’d just spent most of my night with was being treated like royalty. Without drawing any attention to myself, I exited the platform and found a quiet, secluded spot inside the train station to pull my cell phone out of my purse.

  And then I did what anyone in my situation would do.

  I consulted Google.

  My fingers tapped out the letters of his name until Quinn Bailey stood proud in the search bar. With one quick tap to the enter button, Google gave me everything I needed to know.

  About 1.5 million search results to be exact.

  My eyes read the first little snippet of a result, which just so happened to be Quinn Bailey’s Wikipedia page.

  He has a fucking Wikipedia page?

  Quinn Matthias Bailey is an American football quarterback for the New York Mavericks of the National Football League (NFL).

  Holy moly. He was a professional athlete.

  I honestly wasn’t an expert when it came to anything sports-related, but I knew enough to know that NFL meant he was a huge deal, and I was reasonably certain the quarterback was pretty much the most important guy on the team.

  Quinn Bailey was an NFL quarterback. For the New York freaking Mavericks.

  And I’d just spent four hours talking to him like he was just some regular guy off the street. How had I not asked what he did for a living? Was I that distracted by his good looks and easy lead of the conversation?

  Not to mention, I’d given him my phone number with the internal hope that there was an actual chance he’d call me and ask me out on a date.

  The outlook of a phone call from Quinn was feeling less positive by the second.

  I mean, didn’t celebrities and famous people generally stick to each other?

  I was a flight attendant from Cincinnati. Not Selena Gomez.

  Sure, I had a pretty rocking greeting card shop on Etsy that I’d been doing with my dad for years, but that was about it. My life was probably boring compared to what Quinn saw on a daily basis.

  Hell, the only red-carpet event I’d been to was Black Friday at Target.

  Ten minutes passed, my head in my phone in the exact same spot in the train station, scrolling through Quinn Bailey’s page on the Mavericks roster, followed by three pages of his Google Image results. I’d thought he was dreamy in his everyday clothes, but Lord Almighty, he looked fucking ah-mazing in a football uniform.

  Had I really just spent an entire night sitting next to this guy?

  He hadn’t even hinted at the fact that he was someone whose handsome face was known by millions of people across the world.

  The whole thing was surreal. Hands down, it was the weirdest day I’d ever had in my entire life, and it had literally just gotten started.

  Okay, Cat. It’s time to stop gawking and move your ass again.

  I had a flight to catch, and that meant I didn’t have time for OCD-level fixation and overanalyzing. But as I grabbed my carry-on and headed toward the taxi line, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, Pfft. Yeah. Probably don’t hold your breath waiting for Mr. Famous Quarterback to call you…

  It took nearly f
orty-five minutes to sign all of the autographs I needed to in order to actually make it out of the train station and into a taxi.

  I never minded it, giving my fans a little piece of myself as they waited patiently with excitement wherever I happened to be. I remembered what it was like to be one of them, to look up to the guys in the league with adoration and goals fluttering through my mind. I saw myself in all of them, and so I gave with the same amount of care and attention I would have wanted from one of my heroes.

  Unfortunately, this time came with a price—having to live with the look of shock I’d seen on Cat’s face as she’d taken me in with them. Her step had stuttered and her eyes had widened, and I swore there’d been a brief glimpse of betrayal in her features.

  And holy hell, that made me feel rotten.

  It’d been clear from the beginning—hell, from the plane—that she hadn’t known who I was. It seemed so clichéd, but I’d done the stupid thing, been the girl in the horror movie who hides under the bed, and I’d kept it secret from her—all for the thrill of feeling her open up to me, laugh openly, and talk to me like a regular human being.

  It felt good to be teased—something anyone other than my teammates, brother, and Jilly rarely had the guts to do—and linger in the background while I focused on getting to know her.

  As soon as people knew I was any kind of celebrity, all focus shifted to me. And frankly, I was bored with myself. Focusing on someone else, delving into their likes and wants and dreams, felt soul-enriching—like I was filling a hole inside myself.

  I shook off my negative thoughts and got over it.

  Those four hours had been some of the best of my life. I was still going to call her, and I’d deal with the fallout when I did.

  Resolved to my new plan, I took out my phone and texted my traitor brother.

  Me: I’m in Birmingham. Not that you care since you decided not to pick me up and MADE ME GET A CAB, ASSHOLE.

  Denver: Busy…sleeping…bye

  Me: I’m flipping you off.

  He didn’t answer.

  Just for fun, I sent him one more line of text in one-word increments.

  Me: I’ll

  Me: Call

  Me: You

  Me: When

  Me: I

  Me: Get

  Me: To

  Me: Mom

  Me: And

  The buzz of my phone interrupted me.

  Denver: I WILL END YOU

  I laughed out loud, and the cab driver’s eyes came to me in the rearview mirror.

  And then he did a double take.

  Busted.

  It took him a minute to work up the courage to ask, but when he did, his voice was strong. “Are you…are you Quinn Bailey?”

  I smiled my charming public smile. “Guilty.”

  “Oh, shit, dude!”

  The car swerved, and I grabbed on to the seat in front of me as I laughed. “Easy, buddy.”

  “Oh, shit!” he yelled, swerving back into the appropriate lane.

  “Don’t worry.” I glanced at his GPS with my home address programmed in. “It looks like we’ve got about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to know one another. You just take your time.”

  His eyes were manic as they flashed to the road, back to me in the mirror, and back again several times. “No shit? You don’t mind talking?”

  I shrugged and extended a long arm against the top of the whole back seat. “Just as easy as sitting here, I figure.” I was tired as all hell, but that wasn’t my driver’s fault. For him, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I tried not to fucking crush people’s dreams when I could help it.

  “Kick. Ass. My friends are never gonna believe this.”

  When I climbed out of the taxi an hour and a half later, we’d talked about last season, this year’s draft, training schedules, teammates, favorite stadiums, and my favorite team picks for the year—other than us, of course.

  And through all of it, I’d managed to keep thinking about Cat to a scorching-low grand total of forty-seven times.

  I smiled distractedly for a picture with my driver—as I was still climbing out of the car—and pulled my phone from my pocket. I scrolled to her contact information and hovered over the button to draft a message.

  I wasn’t sure what to say, but I couldn’t stop myself from being curious about whether she had made it safely to her flight or not.

  “Thanks so much! For the picture and talking and yeah…the ride’s on me,” my driver blathered on, pulling me out of my thoughts and making me concentrate.

  My eyebrows pulled together as I protested. “No way, dude. I just brought you well out of your way from normal airport pickups.”

  I reached into my pocket to pull out my wallet, and his smile deepened even further. “Man, Quinn Bailey. Football legend and nice guy.”

  I smiled. Now that, my publicist would be happy to hear.

  I pulled a hundred-dollar bill off my stack and handed it to him. “Keep it. But promise me you’ve got the Mavericks front and center in your fantasy picks.”

  He nodded excitedly. “Of course.”

  I gave a wave and started across the dirt drive toward the front door of my childhood house when the door burst open and an angry six-foot-four man came charging out.

  “You’re dead to me!” my brother whisper-yelled.

  Thankfully, when I glanced back, Paul the taxi driver was waving and pulling away.

  “Whoa,” I called on a smile. “What’d I do?”

  “It’s what you didn’t do!” he explained. “Someone didn’t call Mom to tell her that his plane got diverted. So when you didn’t show up, I’m the one who got the angry phone calls in the middle of the night!”

  I laughed. “Serves you right, traitor. You should have picked me up in Birmingham, and maybe I could have shared some of the heat.”

  “As if. You’re the golden boy. You shit rainbows and pee sunshine, and I’m your gay misfit knock-off.”

  “Hey,” I chastised. “Definitely gay. Maybe misfit. But you’re no knock-off. One hundred percent Bailey original right here,” I teased, knocking my fist against his chest.

  “Yeah, you’re hilarious too. Could God have paired me against a steeper opponent?” he called to the sky, as though he were reaching out to God himself.

  “Den,” I said seriously, pulling him into me with an arm around his neck. “Stop now. We’re a team, not opponents. You know I am always in your corner.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed, leaning into my embrace. “I know. It’s just Mom and Dad.” He shook his hands as though he was wringing an imaginary neck. “You know they make me crazy.”

  I smiled. “I know they do. What are you doing here so early anyway? I figured after you bailed on being my ride, you’d delay your arrival as long as possible.”

  He grimaced. “We’re supposed to help out over at high school football tryouts, remember?”

  “Ohh,” I moaned. “Yeah, I’d forgotten.”

  “Well, I hadn’t,” Denver grumbled. “I don’t know why Dad insists on my being there too. I’m not a professional football player.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You play for the University of Alabama—one of the best college football programs in the country.”

  “Only because Dad would drop dead if I didn’t.”

  “Aw, see,” I teased. “You care about his survival. So that’s something.”

  “He’s all,” Den deepened his voice to sound more like my dad, “‘I produced two of the best football players in the country from my loins, and damned if I’m not going to exploit it a little. Those high school boys’ll piss their jockstraps with the two of you there during tryouts. Really up the ante.’”

  I chuckled as I opened the front door and shoved Denver inside.

  “Quinn?” my mom called out instantly, her voice the perfect mix of poise and Southern sophistication. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I called back, drumming up my Southern manners and settling in for a
n interaction with my parents.

  Traditional thinkers—real grassroots Southern people—my parents were conservative in a way that was really more like conservative’s older, more conservative friend.

  They believed in three things: Family, Jesus, and Football—and not in that order.

  Denver wasn’t completely overdramatic with the way he talked about them and the life he’d lived. He was a gay man in rural southern Alabama, but in our house, he wasn’t. Not because he hadn’t told our parents—he actually had, and I’d never been prouder of him than I had been in that moment—but they refused to acknowledge it. They didn’t set him out or make a stink—they just pretended his deepest confession had never happened.

  From time to time, they even tried to set him up with well-bred girls from town.

  I was heartbroken for Denver, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t pretend he wasn’t gay around my parents, and I supported him whenever he chose to share with someone else, but beyond that, I felt trapped.

  I couldn’t even imagine how he felt.

  Denver tried to escape my hold and scoot up the foyer staircase, but I ratcheted my elbow tighter and pulled him to me.

  “Quinn,” he hissed.

  “Come on, Den. I want to see you. Just hang out. I’ll do all the talking with—”

  “Hitler and his mistress.”

  I shook my head with a smile. Denver was always nicknaming our parents—really awful things. I’d like to say I was above it, but secretly, my anticipation was eternally high, waiting to see what he would come up with.

  “Mom and Dad,” I corrected, “and you can keep a running tally in your head of things you’d like to say to them for later. I’ll let you rant about them while we binge on Sons of Anarchy.”

  He squinted his unhappiness, but he stopped fighting to get free from my grip. “Goddamn you. You know Jax Teller is my weakness.”

  I raised my eyebrows as I waited for his full commitment.

  “Fine. I have to spend the morning with you and Assbag McBallsac anyway. I might as well get a warm-up in.”