CHAPTER 11 Liam Bradley
Earrings
We spend the night tangled together, and I wake feeling ready to go again, but when I glance over at her side of the bed, it’s empty.
That’s when I hear the shower.
I debate going in and surprising her, but I check the time.
Shit!
Brunch starts in fifteen minutes, and I cannot remember the last time I slept until ten forty-five. I’m guessing Penny’s thinking the same thing.
We didn’t get back to the hotel until pretty late, but I still got somewhere around nine hours of sleep. I guess that’s Vegas for you. Or Penny. I wasn’t drunk, exactly, until I got back to her room and felt fucking wasted on her.
I should probably get over this addiction to her. Fucking her after inviting her to live with me was a stupid idea, but I can’t change it.
I shove those thoughts aside because I need to get back to my room so I can change clothes and get upstairs for brunch.
I find my clothes from last night scattered on the floor and put them on, and I hear the shower shut off as I finish getting dressed.
I head over and knock on the door.
“Come in,” she yells, and she’s wrapped in the hotel robe when I open the door.
“Good morning,” I say. “I need to go. I didn’t realize it was so late.” I walk over to her and wrap my arms around her, and that’s when I notice a little bruise on her neck. I finger it gently. “Is this from me?”
“Is what from you?” She walks over to the mirror, and her eyes widen. “Oh my God! Liam!”
I can’t help a laugh. I barely bit her there. Apparently she bruises easily. Duly noted.
She mock smacks me in the chest. “Don’t laugh! What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to say you accidentally poked yourself in the neck and nobody’s going to think twice about it. And then tonight, I’m going to give you one on the other side to match.”
Her eyes widen, and she purses her lips as her eyes meet mine in the mirror. Rather than tell me to go to hell, she simply says, “Deal.”
God, I love her.
I mean…not literally. I hardly know her.
But I love…this. Whatever we call this. Sex. No strings. Addiction.
“I’ll see you at brunch,” I say instead of any of the nonsense in my head.
“Save me a seat if you get there first.” She tugs on the belt holding the robe together, and her gorgeous body is in full view.
I groan. I know we don’t have time for this, but we can be late…
Before I can even move toward her to take her right here in the bathroom, she ties the belt back up.
“Just giving you something to think about until tonight.” She wiggles her brows up and down, and I shake my head as I look up at the ceiling and try to focus on something other than her luscious tits underneath that bathrobe.
I force myself to walk out of the bathroom without another word, and I’m definitely not thinking straight since my mind is on Penny’s tits. So I open the door and walk out into the hallway only to crash directly into Madden and Kennedy, who both look fresh and ready for brunch.
“Oh, hey, good morning,” I say. I try to think fast, but I’m just a little hungover this morning, either from Penny or from last night’s drinking, and I’m not quite firing on all cylinders yet. Do I just fall into step with them? Do I admit this isn’t my room?
Both of them look at me funny, and Kennedy says, “Weren’t you wearing that last night?”
She looks beyond me into the room I just exited, and I turn around, too, just as the door closes but not before we both catch a glimpse of Penny walking out of the bathroom in her bathrobe and into her room to get her clothes.
Kennedy’s eyes widen. “Wait a minute. Was that Penny?”
I glance back at the door and then at Kennedy, my eyes wide.
“Uh, yeah. She, um…” Come on, Bradley. Think! Quick! “I, uh…her earrings. She dropped an earring last night on her way back here and texted me asking if I’d seen it. I found it on my way back here this morning.”
“You didn’t spend the night in your room?” Kennedy asks.
I shake my head.
“So Everleigh is paying for your hotel room, and you didn’t even use it?” Madden asks, shaking his head and apparently believing my ridiculous lie.
“I’m about to go use it now to change my clothes ahead of brunch.”
“You’re going to be late,” Madden admonishes.
I shrug. “Ev won’t care. I’ll be up soon.”
“Wash your hair, you slob. You look like you were on the bottom all night,” Madden teases.
“I wasn’t,” I mutter, and I shoot him a smirk. “In fact, I was behind.”
“That’s my man,” Madden says, raising his hand for a high-five. Kennedy just rolls her eyes at our antics, and they move along on their way to brunch.
I take a ten-second shower, give or take, brush my teeth, run a comb through my very clean hair, and throw on shorts and a T-shirt before heading up to brunch good as new.
When Madden opens the door for me, I see that Penny isn’t here just yet, and I’m only three minutes past eleven.
“That was fast,” Madden says, opening the door wider to let me in.
“That’s not what she said,” I quip, playing on the old that’s what she said double entendre.
Madden laughs. “Tell me about the girl. Some random you met at the club?”
I nod. The lie is much easier than the truth.
“Are you going to see her again?” he presses.
“Stop living vicariously through my shenanigans and go enjoy your woman,” I mutter.
“Oh, I’m enjoying her. Don’t you worry about that.”
There’s a knock on the door behind us, and I turn and open it to find Penny standing there. She’s wearing one of those one-piece romper things, a pale pink thing with flowers all over it, and she looks pretty. Her dark eyes fall to mine, and she offers a smile.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Morning,” I murmur warmly.
“Yay!” Everleigh says, walking over and clapping her hands together. “Everyone’s here.” She leans in to give Penny a hug, and when she pulls back, her eyes go to Penny’s neck like some sort of laser focus for sniffing out hickeys.
“Oh my God, Penguin!” she screeches. “Is that a hickey? What have you been up to, lady?”
Fuck, she’s observant.
And she called her Penguin. I seem to recall that Everleigh has a penchant for calling Penny basically anything that starts with Pen, and Pen dishes it right back by working her name into anything that has any variation of Everleigh.
“No, it’s not a hickey, Beverly,” Penny says, rolling her eyes in exaggeration. “I poked myself in the neck last night when I was getting ready for bed. Just a dumb, drunken mistake.”
My chest tightens at her assessment. I know she doesn’t mean me, but still, hearing her call anything from last night a dumb, drunken mistake has my hackles fully rising. I don’t like it. It wasn’t dumb, and it certainly wasn’t a mistake.
I know that’s not how she means it. Hell, it’s what I told her to say, and she’s just selling it.
It still has me on full alert.
Everleigh narrows her eyes at Penny as if she doesn’t really believe her, but she lets it go. Instead, she looks around the room and starts talking loudly.
“Welcome, everyone! We’re so happy you’re here.
We have gifts for you all, and then you can help yourself to the buffet and bar.
” She indicates the counter filled with food and nods toward the bar, and then she passes out bags to the bridesmaids while Maverick hands bags to the groomsmen, ushers, and anyone who has helped with the wedding—like me, who has stopped by the mansion no less than twenty times over the last couple months with construction updates.
I peek into the bag and spot a bottle of Blanton’s.
It’s some special edition bourbon along with a crystal decanter set.
There’s a card in there, too, that I’ll probably read later, and a small Cartier box.
I open it to find cufflinks that I’m presumably supposed to wear to the wedding.
It’s a nice sentiment, and honestly I didn’t come here expecting to leave with parting gifts.
“Thanks, Mav,” I say, giving my future brother-in-law a bro-hug.
“It was all Everleigh,” he says, nodding toward his bride, and I don’t doubt that it was.
And then Everleigh’s voice breaks through the din of everyone opening their gifts. “I went with necklaces and bracelets for the bridesmaids since Penny doesn’t wear earrings, and I’d love if you wore these with your bridesmaid dresses.”
I freeze.
Penny doesn’t wear earrings?
It wouldn’t have mattered literally fifteen minutes ago, but the lie I came up with on the spot as I was caught exiting Penny’s room this morning was apparently the one wrong lie. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot both Kennedy and Madden as their heads whip in my direction.
I don’t make eye contact with either of them, opting instead to set my gift bag down so I can get started on the buffet.
I’m starving as fuck after expending several calories last night, and I fill my plate with eggs, ham, bacon, and fruit.
I take two yogurt parfaits, and I fill a second plate with carbs. Croissants, waffles, and muffins.
I head over to the table and set my plates down, and I grab a mimosa from a little bar set up in the other corner. I see that everyone else is in line for the food now…except Madden, who meets me by the bar.
“You found Penny’s earring?” he demands. “Penny doesn’t wear earrings.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
“What’s going on with you?” he snaps under his breath. At least he’s being quiet over here.
“None of your business.”
“Aha!” he cheers triumphantly—and less quietly. “You didn’t say nothing. If it were nothing, you would have said nothing. Instead, you said it’s none of my business, which means it’s not nothing.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” I grit out.
“Why?”
I glance over and see Penny and Everleigh laughing together as they fill their plates with food. I move a little more into the corner. “I ran into her at the bar around the corner from my place a couple days ago, and we had a night. Okay?”
“And a second one last night?” he correctly guesses.
“She’s got kids. My future’s uncertain, but likely two thousand miles away from Chicago.” I shrug. “This isn’t a thing. We’re just having some fun, and we don’t want anybody to know.”
It’s more than fun to me. Already. Like I whispered to her last night as I ejaculated inside her tight pussy, I’m fucking addicted to her. I don’t want this to just be fun. I don’t want it to not be a thing.
But at the same time…how can it be given where we both are in life?
“I swear to God, secret relationships are a fucking Bradley family rite of passage,” Madden mutters.
“First me and Ken. Dex and Ains. Ev and Mav. Ford and Tatum. Not Archer, which tracks since he’s always trying to be different from the rest of us.
Now you? Don’t tell me Ivy’s next. My heart can’t take it. ”
“It’s not a relationship, bro. Sometimes things feel like they should be right, but the timing just doesn’t work out. It’s not like I’m actively looking to settle down, and it’s not like she wants to hop right into something when her divorce isn’t even final.”
He raises his brows. “You know excuses are like assholes, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone’s got one.” I don’t mention that my finger was in hers last night. Two of my fingers, actually. And my cock will be next.
Fuck. I need a cold drink, not more alcohol.
“Just…keep it between us, okay?” I beg.
He nods. “Of course, Liam. Just be careful. For both your sakes.” He steps away without anything else, and he beelines for Kennedy, who looks over at me as he talks to her.
All that does is tell me he isn’t keeping it between us at all, but as long as it doesn’t go any further than Kennedy, we won’t have a problem.
Penny sits far away from me, and I avoid looking at her so I don’t arouse suspicion.
Everleigh rented several cabanas by the pool, and it’s even harder not to stare at Penny in her black swimsuit. Her body fucking rocks, and all I can think about is when I fucked those gorgeous tits.
I guess I don’t bother to pretend like I’m not staring at her since my eyes are hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, and I also don’t get up since I have a boner the size of Texas that I’m doing my best to conceal.
I sit around drinking instead because that’s a solid way to spend a Saturday in the offseason.
My agent calls a little before four, and I excuse myself to take the call since the music is blaring by the cabana. I head inside toward a quiet hallway.
“Hey, Scott.”
“Liam, hi. San Diego was impressed and made an offer.”
“Hit me with it,” I say.
“Two years, a one million signing bonus, and another one guaranteed. Two point seven per year with incentives could push you over eight million for two years. They really want you.”
Damn. That’s actually far more than I was making on my rookie contract in Pittsburgh.
I look out the doors to the pool area, and my eyes land on Penny.
For just a second, I contemplate what to do.
It’s not like I’m going to get offers from teams at home in Chicago.
The flight home from San Diego is about three hours longer than it was from Pittsburgh, but it is what it is.
Maybe we can keep this thing going, or maybe not.
Either way, it’s not enough to base a decision about my entire career on it when we’ve slept together twice.
I don’t have a choice.
“It’s a yes from me.”