Chapter 1 #2
I pretended to be offended. Penny eyed my plunging neckline adorned with ruffles and the short hemline of my tight pink skirt.
“Aren’t you a kindergarten teacher?” Penny asked.
I laughed. “Your point?” I didn’t wait for an answer. We exchanged a quick hug. Penny pretended to tolerate me, but deep down she adored me. “Can’t waste my big chance to nail a football player this weekend.” I winked. “Pun intended.”
Penny shook her head. I’d known her since college because Cat had me come over to the house sometimes to hang out.
As her dad’s longtime personal assistant, Penny had been a fixture.
She was a cross between big sister and buffer between Cat and her dad.
Though we weren’t close—I mostly knew her for her baked goods and encyclopedic football knowledge—even I wasn’t surprised when she and Coach finally hooked up.
“I’d love you to find someone special, Natalie,” Cat said. “These guys are all wonderful men—and lucky for you, half the team happens to be single.”
“How many of them are hot?”
She rolled her eyes again, knowing it was a rhetorical question.
“I need to get registered,” I said, eyeing my luggage where I left it back by the front desk.
“Don’t worry about that. I already registered you. You’re staying in the adjoining room to mine. At least until Saturday night and the wedding. Then you’ll room with Kristen.”
Giving her a long look, I weighed how big a deal I was going to make of this with Penny standing there watching me as if she were waiting for the bull to finish circling and charge the red flag.
I should have been rooming with Kristen, another sorority sister bridesmaid, the whole time.
I knew this was Cat and her damned generosity trying to save me money.
But I swallowed my pride and instead of arguing, I heaved a sigh.
“You’re the bride. Whatever you want, you get. Let me grab my bags.” Turning on my heel, I charged toward the desk to retrieve my easily identifiable battered and mismatched luggage. And ran smack into a hard body. Naturally I bounced off and stumbled backwards. Cat and Penny rushed over.
“Are you all right?” Three voices said at once. Dismissing the two female voices of Cat and Penny, I regained my balance and looked up into the face attached to the hard body, the man gripping me by the arm, steadying me. Holding me up against said body.
It was him. Mr. Parking Lot Disaster Hottie.
“Oh. It’s you.” My unfiltered response popped out when my more poised kindergarten teacher self screamed at me to say thank you, to make a gracious quip about him being my white knight. But his blue eyes paralyzed me, my heart hammered, and my normally mouthy mouth went silent.
I felt Cat’s eyes on me, knew she was waiting for said mouth to get outrageous. But he was the first to speak. Right after he shot me with a devastating, warm smile, as if we had some private joke. I guess we did.
“The one and only man you seem bent on running into.”
Man, he was good. That comment could be taken so many ways and my head spun with giddiness as I breathed in his complicated scent of salt air, spice, and manly intoxicating sweat.
“You’ve met Natalie?” Cat asked him.
“Hello, Natalie.” He let go of my arm, gave me some unwanted space, and winked.
I turned to Cat and Penny. “We met . . . informally.”
“I’m Max Devon.”
“He’s our backup QB and sometimes fullback and slot receiver,” Penny said.
Keeping my eyes on him, I rolled the information around in my head and came up jackpot. My hammering heart didn’t slow down even as I noticed the touch of gray at his temples. It might have even sped up for some insane—even for me—reason.
“He’s definitely quick on his feet,” I said. Then I took a moment to appreciate the twinkle in those heart-palpitating baby blues of his.
“When did you two meet?” Cat said.
“Meet? That would be an exaggeration,” he said. “We ran into each other in the parking lot.” He kept those eyes on me and added. “Close enough to take notice.”
I kept my eyes on him too, but I also saw Cat and Penny’s curiosity as they watched us and exchanged glances. Tearing my attention away from him when I should have been thinking of something smart and alluring to say, but I couldn’t because my brain was melting, I spoke to Cat instead.
“Max and I almost kissed.” My rule of thumb was that if I couldn’t think of a pithy remark, let an outrageous remark fly instead. The key was to be memorable. Worked either way.
The way Penny’s mouth stuttered, I could tell she almost spat with surprise. Cat laughed. I was afraid to see Max’s reaction. He said nothing but I could feel the air suddenly seize up with tension.
“Stop with the shock and awe, Natalie. Poor Max doesn’t know you well enough for that.”
“I’m learning fast,” he said. I swung around to give him sass for that remark, but Penny cut me off at the pass, so to speak. Besides, the intensity of his interest made my lady parts clench and beg.
“On that note, I think I’ll go find Coach.” Penny said. “Time he tore himself away from his game film to join the fun.” She lifted her brows with a pointed look at Max that caused his smile to fade.
We said our see-ya-laters and I turned back to Max, hoping to keep him around.
“I should get going.” His intention was contradicted by the flare in his gorgeous blue eyes.
“Not worried about the coach playing chaperone, are you?” I said. “Tell him, Cat. Coach doesn’t care as long as there’s no inter-team intermingling.”
“That’s true, but—”
I moved in and hooked my arm through Max’s. “Join us for—”
“There you are, Max. We’ve been looking for you.” The shout came from the front doors where a group of juicy men walked in, an indistinguishable mob of muscle and facial hair, rendering me momentarily mute again. I hardly noticed when Max slipped from my grasp.
“Nice seeing you ladies. I’m sure I’ll see you later.”
“Likely tonight at the patio dance,” Cat said. “We have a band for dancing, drinks and food at eight for all the wedding guests who came early.”
He nodded and left us to join the group of men before they got close enough for introductions, or before their stares became more than mildly curious.
“Let’s go.” Cat took my arm and pointed us toward the elevator. Dragging my bags along behind me, I walked with her.
“A dance party? What about your bachelorette party?”
“My father and Penny insisted on the band and dance party in lieu of bachelor and bachelorette parties. I could understand Dad, but I’m surprised at Penny not giving us some space.”
“I suppose it’s more convenient this way,” I said. “There wasn’t a lot of time for planning with preseason camp underway.”
“I know, I know. I rushed things,” Cat said. “But it was the only window of time between playoffs and the season and I refused to wait another year to marry Hunter.”
“I can’t say I blame you.” Hunter was the perfect mix of brooding and kind, dark and fun and all hunkalicious. One of my disappointments in life was that he didn’t have a brother. Not of a suitable age at least. I refused to date a high school boy at my advanced age of twenty-five.
We got to the elevator and waited.
“Meanwhile, what about that man-hunk Max?” I asked.
“Seriously? He’s so . . . old.” She gave me a puzzled look. “Don’t get me wrong—he’s super nice, a real pro. Never a blip of controversy or trouble with him. A team player.”
“Seriously?” I mocked her because that’s what I generally did when I didn’t need to worry about setting a mature, adultlike example to my brothers or my munchkin students.
“I’m not looking to recruit him for a game of football.
” I changed my mind. “Although maybe I wouldn’t mind catching a few of his passes, come to think of it. ”
“You’re incorrigible, Nattie. He’s too old for you by ten years.”
Ignoring her comment and the little frisson of mysterious excitement, I let my curiosity run wild.
“Max Devon.” I tested his name, to feel it on my tongue.
I liked the sound. It didn’t sound too old.
It felt exciting to say. Cat knew me, knew how I went for guys, developed crushes.
Or at least she knew how I used to operate.
No more. I needed something more in a relationship, something solid with someone solid. Maybe someone older.
Someone to entice me to leave the tension of my dad’s home with the too-young stepmom. To extricate myself from the constant competition for my brothers’ respect and affection. After all, they were my brothers, they’d always love me best. Right?
The elevator doors finally opened and we stepped inside.
“Tell me about Max,” I asked again.
Cat looked at me as if I were a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces not there, but she would wisely decide to give me an answer because she knew I’d hound her, or even more likely, she knew I’d find out by boldly asking one of his teammates, likely Hunter because he was the only one I knew.
Not that asking strangers bold questions would be past me.
“Divorced. Twin girls. Lots of baggage.”
The elevator doors opened, we stepped off and I followed Cat down a hall carpeted in a rose floral pattern that would look great on drapes. In an old cobwebbed haunted house.
I scoffed. “You’re not trying to discourage me, are you? Because you’ve just about slapped my face with a white glove challenge telling me that stuff.”
She, predictably, rolled her eyes. I grinned.
Cat stopped only five doors down from the elevator and opened the door.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I should have known better.
The Marinis always went first class. And why not?
Her dad was the longtime head coach of the NFL’s Boston Militia and worth a fortune.
But even the posh rooms that had to be the bridal suite didn’t distract me from the prospect of nailing the mouthwatering, if challenging, Max Devon.
“So he has baggage? Who doesn’t? I can help him unpack his baggage. My specialty is loosening up gorgeous men and making them feel at home.”
“Stop pretending to be a whore.”
The suite was gorgeous. Bouncing to my room, because I was still stoked with the picture of Max in my head—or picture of him in my bed, to be more exact—I said over my shoulder, “I’m not a whore. Not anymore. I need someone to rescue me from my Dad’s house.”
“So now you’re Cinderella?” Cat laughed.
“If the shoe fits.”
She slipped her shoe off and threw it in my direction but I closed the door against her giggles.
Too bad this was no laughing matter. I seriously did need to get out of my dad’s house. But with the salary of a schoolteacher starting out and massive student loans, I couldn’t afford a place of my own. Not yet anyway.
Guilt pinched at me as I heaved my luggage onto the king-size bed—a waste of decadence if I didn’t work fast. Sure, I’d been concerned about my brothers needing me to be there for them, but it had been several years now and I was discovering that teenage boys had little use for an older sister hovering in their business.
Arranging to leave for this four-day weekend, the longest I’d been away from home since before Mom had died, if I didn’t count college—which I should since it had proven that my two brothers would be fine without me.
They were hardly ever there to eat the dinners I made and didn’t care who the hell did their laundry.
They never commented anymore on the notes I left in their lunch—when they’d taken a lunch.
At sixteen and eighteen, they were becoming independent young men, responsible and thriving.
I’d done my job as big-sister-turned-mother.
Problem was, I had nowhere to aim all that love and nurturing.
Solution was, I needed to find a good, decent man for more than some discreet fooling around. I needed to find a man worthy of loving and who would love me back. I needed to find the future father of my children.
Good luck to me. I knew I’d be joining the overpopulated ranks of young women in the twenty-first century version of the marriage mart. Pulling my pink push-up bra and matching panties from my bag, at least I’d be dressed for the competition.
And this weekend gave me a head start on the race with a hotel full of gorgeous, mostly eligible men to be lured. Somehow the prospect, which had been exciting when I thought about it earlier, now seemed completely irrelevant. Because I couldn’t get past my throbbing attraction to Max Devon.
Older? Sure. Baggage? Maybe. Interested? Hard to tell. But it was possible I had more than enough interest for the two of us. In fact, I was quite certain I could lure him to my bed. I was very good at that.
The issue would be getting him to stay. How did I get a man to be interested in more than being bedmates?
I was less experienced at this part of relationships with men.
Okay, I was not experienced at all with this part.
I’d have to go all the way back to seventh grade to remember a guy I had a relationship with beyond sex and that was because we didn’t have sex at all.
Then my mom died and things went downhill pretty fast. No men after that until I was seventeen.
And then it was all about the sex ever since.
I’d behaved as if I were a married woman having flings with men, except I was married to my responsibility for the family and trying to make up for Mom not being there.