Playing the Field (Los Angeles Devils #1)
Chapter 1
Gracie
I’m not exactly a sports fan. I know, I know. It’s blasphemy in a sports town like Los Angeles, but let me explain.
For my entire teenage life, I spent my evenings and weekends sitting on the sidelines of some sport or another.
My parents were diehard basketball, baseball, football—you name it—fans, and to them, “family time” was hours spent tailgating and watching games.
Or eating nachos at home and screening playoffs on TV.
Or asking me to pick up my younger brother from his sports practices once I had my driver’s license.
I also kept track of behavior. “Watch how he takes that second touch right before he passes left. Someone should be guarding that side.”
It worked a little too well. My family members began showcasing my knowledge like a party trick. Instead of feeling like I was in on the joke, I felt like the butt of it.
So I tucked my knowledge away and started bringing a book wherever I went, generally a romance novel or a scientific journal because I knew my macho dad and brother wouldn’t talk to me about that.
It worked.
I read from starting whistle to ending applause, even if I couldn’t invest in the reluctant duke or the heartthrob earl because I didn’t identify with the female character.
Her life would never be mine. I lived firmly planted in a reality supported by statistics and numbers, and nerd girls from small towns didn’t generally seduce royalty.
But as long as I was with my family, attending counted as bonding.
When I moved to college, I declined the student tickets to Stanford football games, even when we were on a winning streak.
I clung to the reading pretense when athletes strutted into the dining hall in their practice jerseys, just as everyone else clambered around them like groupies.
I ignored the occasional Super Bowl invitation and delighted in a library.
It’s worked out just fine.
Until now.
“Dev-ils, Dev-ils!”
Now, I’m sitting at a Los Angeles Devils soccer game against a Houston team in heaven knows which league.
Only now, I’m thirty-three and going hard on the numbers because this may be my new job—watching pro soccer players, compiling their performance data, calculating their odds of future success—in a town I don’t understand because half the people here are too beautiful to be real.
In the time since my plane landed, I’ve seen tanned limbs, pouty lips, impossible bodies, and social media-perfect hair.
Maybe it just happens from living here. Maybe it filters in from the infernal sunshine.
I’m not used to it. San Francisco fog is legendary, and I’m at home in the cool, damp weather.
The scientist in me is curious about how things work in LA. This fashion-backward wallflower is intimidated.
I forget all about that for a second because there’s drama on the field. Fans are standing. People are yelling.
I crane my neck for a better view and see a Houston player charging ahead with the ball. He dribbles up the field and passes to another who makes a run toward the goal, with no one in his path.
Unless the keeper stops it, the point is all but guaranteed for Houston. It would put them ahead with only minutes left in the game.
The fans are going nuts, yelling unintelligible things that blend into a collective roar.
The player takes one step too many before trying to pass the ball, and he’s cut off in his tracks by a Devils defender.
And not just any defender. This one I know by his statistics and reputation as one of the most aggressive in the league.
Hunter Reyes.
He was my brother’s best friend growing up, but I haven’t seen him since he was a gorgeous teenager with an attitude in our kitchen. Probably just as well.
Playboy off the field, hothead on it. He has one of the worst penalty records in the league, more red cards than almost anyone, and more defensive victories. Fans can’t get enough of him. And, if the rumors are true, women can’t either.
Coaches, not so much.
If I take the job as head of analytics, one of my first tasks is to run data analysis to decide whether the Devils should keep him or throw him out on his tight, muscular rear end.
That is why I have an iPad in my lap and I’m adding data to the trove I already have on Hunter and his teammates. I need to be thorough and impress my potential future bosses, even if I’m ambivalent about taking the job.
On the field below us, Hunter attacks like a missile, slide tackling a Houston player, deftly sweeping his legs out from under him, taking possession of the ball, and kicking it away to end the play.
Houston fans shout their disapproval at the reckless move. Devils fans cheer for the expert defense.
The Houston player lies on the ground, gripping his ankle and writhing in pain.
Hunter paces in a circle like a wound-up animal.
Every muscle flexes in preparation for the next fight.
From my center field seat, I see a sheen of sweat fly off him when he kicks his toe into the ground.
More beads of sweat launch when he flips his damp hair off his forehead.
He's like a stallion stalking the field, all lean muscle and almost frightening power. I have no idea if he’s as menacing in person as he looks down there, huffing angrily. Fortunately, I can do my job better from a distance, so I enter my notes quietly as the fans around me continue to go nuts.
Marching over to Hunter, the ref blows his whistle, pulls a red card from his breast pocket, and holds it high in the air. The Houston fans in the stadium cheer for justice, but the overwhelming number of Devils fans let out a loud, collective “boo!”
A guy next to me hurls his arm with a pointed finger at the field. “You suck, Ref.”
Hunter gets in the ref’s face and yells, pointing at the injured player and gesturing madly.
I may not love sports, but I don’t think there’s ever been a ref in the history of sports who’s changed a call because a player copped an attitude.
But all that testosterone is hard to wrangle, and apparently, Hunter has more than the average male.
He comes just shy of decking the ref, who shakes his head and points him forcefully to the sidelines. Hunter stomps off to a chorus of more loud booing, but the damage is done.
The Devils are now down a player for the rest of the game. He may have scored a goal, but he’s made it harder for his teammates to compete. If Houston scores on them, Hunter will take some of the blame for leaving the team weakened.
I watch Hunter storm to the team bench. His coach says something to him that makes him blow up again, pointing at the ref. But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s out of the game.
Two hours later, I’m stuck at the airport. My flight back to San Francisco was delayed by weather in the Pacific Northwest, leaving me with time to kill.
My brother Kyler is away on business, and I don’t know anyone else in LA, so hanging out at the airport seems like a good plan. I can always put on my headphones, catch up on work, and mull whether I can see myself moving to LA.
Not like I have much of a choice, thanks to a little meltdown in my former boss’s office at AIFund, a huge Silicon Valley tech company, which finances all the biggest artificial intelligence startups.
I’d gone to bat for a qualified candidate without bothering to mention that he was my boyfriend.
We’d only been dating for a couple of months, but I loved him, and I wanted to help him.
He got the job, and shortly thereafter, he ratted me out. Then he broke up with me.
Turns out the job he really wanted was mine, and now that I’m gone, he has it. That’s right. I may be the only woman in history who slept my way to the bottom.
And because I signed a non-compete agreement, I can’t work at any other Silicon Valley tech firm for two years.
I learned my lesson. Work and romance don’t mix, a hill I will die on. At least, if being the chief data analyst for a sports team is the same as death, which is how it feels.
More sports. More soccer. More hotheaded Hunter Reyes.
Ugh.
I grab a seat at the Sip ’n Fly restaurant bar, where the menu includes one of my all-time favorite dishes—stuffed potato skins. At least things are looking up on the dining front.
I order the potatoes and fish my iPad out of my overstuffed purse. I have at least a dozen unread books queued up, plus I can recalculate my analysis of Hunter Reyes with the new data from the game. New data is my happy place.
Soccer highlights play on one of the TVs over the bar, and I roll my eyes at it, not interested in seeing any more post-pubescent displays of macho behavior. I’ve had enough for one day, thank you very much.
My diet soda arrives, and I take a healthy sip while cuing up the first chapter of a new novel set in eighteenth-century Scotland. In moments, I’ll be swept off to the Highlands to lose myself in a guilty pleasure about a strapping young Scot who’s good with his hands.
I’m so single-mindedly focused that I don’t notice anyone sidle up on the stool next to mine until a gruff, rumbling voice disrupts the images of heather fields and icy lochs in my mind.
“This seat taken?”
By the time I turn to acknowledge the man next to me, he’s already seated, so I wave him on and go back to my book. I hear him order a beer, then cancel it. “Just sparkling water, actually,” he says, sounding annoyed.
I should put on my headphones and tune him out, but I’m also a people watcher, so I chance a look in his direction, wondering what bug crawled up his britches.
I’m met with a face in deep distress, forehead creased, and mouth turned down in an irritable frown. But that does nothing to dampen just how spectacularly gorgeous he is.