Game For Love:
Game On
(a Kindle Worlds Novella)
Cat Johnson
In the
game for love, only the winners walk away with their hearts intact…
Trent
O’Shea is a superstar athlete on the football field, but for one week each year
he escapes into anonymity at an exclusive resort in the Florida Keys that
caters to the rich and famous. Armed with a fake identity, he’s happy to sit by
the pool and do nothing except enjoy some breathtaking scenery—and maybe ask
her if she needs help putting sunscreen on her back.
Laurel
Burnett never met a bad boy she couldn’t catch. Cheating spouses. Deadbeat
dads. Scammers. Once the determined PI sets her sights on them they all fall,
and the next alleged perpetrator in her crosshairs is none other than the San
Francisco Outlaws’ Trent O’Shea. The super-sexy linebacker who Laurel’s client
hired her to track will be her biggest trophy yet. She’ll do anything to bring
him down, even follow him to a resort paradise and use herself as bait.
But things aren’t always as they
appear and Trent and Laurel both learn that sometimes even perfectly planned
plays can go wrong when love and lust are involved. Then it’s game on!
Please enjoy this first chapter of GAME ON
EXCERPT
(rated G)
CHAPTER ONE
“To the end of another season.” Cole raised his beer in a
toast.
Trent would gladly drink to that. He clanked his longneck
bottle against Cole’s and added, “And here’s to having a break from it all for
a little while.”
A cold beer. A corner table in a dark bar. His good friend
and teammate Cole Taylor seated opposite him. That right there had all the
makings of a good evening in Trent O’Shea’s opinion.
Of course, how long it would last was up for debate. It was
only a matter of time before the damned reporters tracked them down. Or one of
the other patrons recognized that two of the San Francisco Outlaws defense were
among them.
Then they’d either come over and ask to take a picture—which
Trent didn’t mind—or they’d start trying to sneak one by holding their cell
phones up and pretending to search for signal. As if he didn’t know they were
really taking a picture to share on whatever the hot new social media site was
this month.
That pissed Trent the hell off. It made him feel as if he
was being hunted like some sort of human prey. Back in Texas, years ago when
he’d been a normal guy, he would have pummeled a guy for less. But that was
before the full-ride football scholarship to the University of Texas put his
face on every television in the country. Before he’d lost all semblance of
privacy and a personal life. Back when he could see a pretty little thing in
the local honkytonk, take her out to his truck and not worry she’d sell the story
to the papers the next day. Or make a play for a wedding ring and his millions.
A hottie with more boobs showing than he’d seen outside of a
strip club sauntered by the table and shot him a heated glance.
Yup, that was just the type he knew would say she wanted to
have his baby. . . and then take all his money.
With a sigh, Trent yanked his gaze back to the safe zone.
God, he missed the old days when he was a poor nobody. And he really, really
missed sex.
A crooked grin tipped up the corner of Cole’s mouth. “You
really do hate it, don’t you?”
“Hate what?”
“The game.”
“The game? No. I love to play football and you know it.
Hell, I’m from Texas. You don’t love football from the time you can walk, they
run you out of town on a rail.” Cole laughed as Trent continued, “The other
bull that comes with it though? Yeah, that I could do without a’ight.”
Just thinking about the paparazzi and the press had Trent
turning to look for the waitress to order another round and see if he could
spot any tabloid photographers who might have snuck in while he wasn’t looking.
He got the server’s attention and raised two fingers, then
turned back to Cole. “You can stay for another round, can’t you?”
“Yeah. Anna’s baby shower should be going on for a couple of
hours and I was warned it was girls only and to steer clear of the house.” Cole
absolutely glowed when he talked about his wife and his impending leap into
fatherhood.
Trent was torn between feeling scared and envious at the
thought. Still, it must be nice to have someone to go home to, especially
during the off season. “You have plans for the time off?”
“Yeah. I’ll be spending twenty-four/seven keeping my very
pregnant wife happy.”
“Is Anna feeling okay?”
He figured she must be nearing the final stages of the
pregnancy. She had to be. She was huge. She was still beautiful, but yeah,
there was no doubt there was the baby of a linebacker growing in that belly.
Poor little thing looked like she’d topple over if her front side got any
heavier.
“She’s doing good.” Cole’s gaze cut to Trent and then away.
“She’s in the stage where she’s, um, more demanding than usual. It’s supposedly
all the hormones.”
“You mean like bossy?” Anna seemed as sweet as usual to
Trent last he’d seen her.
“No, demanding in the bedroom.”
Cole had dropped his voice low for that revelation, but not low enough for
Trent.
“Dude. No, I don’t wanna hear that. TMI.” Trent buried his
head in his hands trying to block his ears from the information he didn’t want.
Cole laughed. “What? It’s no secret. It’s in all the
pregnancy books.”
“Well, I don’t happen to be up on my baby book reading so
keep that shit to yourself, please.”
“Okay, sissy boy.” Cole rolled his eyes. “You’d probably
crawl right under the table if I told you about mucous plugs and afterbirth—”
“Ugh. Cole, I swear to God, don’t make me knock you right
out of that chair.”
Trent had pulled his share of calves during calving season
back on his granddaddy’s ranch. He’d been elbow deep inside some pretty gross
shit that Cole wouldn’t even be able to imagine, but hearing this kind of stuff
about his friend’s wife was too much. He had to look Anna in the face next time
he saw her and when he did he didn’t want to think about any of the things Cole
was putting in his head.
Thank God the waitress appeared with their beers and gave
Trent a reprieve from more talk of birthing horrors.
When the waitress had left them alone again, Cole eyed
Trent. “What are your plans for the break? You headed home to Texas?”
Trent wobbled his head. “Eventually, yeah. But first I’m
taking a week away from everyone, including family and friends. Someplace where
no one knows me.”
It sounded horrible, but he really did need some time
completely alone to decompress from the demands of the season. Especially a
season when the Outlaws hadn’t made the Super Bowl. It seemed the press was
even more vicious and relentless in pursuing the losers of the final playoff
game, than the winners. That he and Cole had made it out of the team meeting
and to the bar without fighting a throng of paparazzi was a miracle.
Cole snorted out a laugh. “Where do you think you can go
that no one knows you? You buy a ticket to the space station? Because I’m
betting the guys at NASA are fans too, so that plan could backfire on you.
You’ll be floating around in zero gravity, running over game plans with a bunch
of astronauts who’d wanted to play pro football when they were a kid.”
“Ha, ha. And no, not the space station. I got a place.”
Miles of sandy beaches. The prettiest water he’d ever seen. Sunsets amazing
enough to make even a jaded man like himself slow down long enough to take
notice. An entire week of nothing but a cold drink in his hand and the warm
breeze at his back.
“Really?” Cole raised his brows. “Do tell. If this paradise
really does exist, I want in.”
Cole was right. It was paradise. Trent’s paradise and he wasn’t sharing.
“Nope.” Trent shook his head. “Sorry, man. It’s secret.”
A furrow creased Cole’s forehead. “What do you mean it’s a
secret? You won’t even tell me?”
“Especially not you.”
“Why the hell not? Don’t you trust me?”
“Hell yeah, I trust you.” It was most everyone else in the
world Trent didn’t trust. “But if you show up people are gonna recognize you.
Once word spreads that the Outlaws vacation at this place, I’ll never be able
to go there again.”
“Come on. You’ve been there and no one recognized you,
right?”
“Because I take extreme precautions to make sure they don’t.
And I go alone, not with a wife who’s been in the press as much as you lately.”
Trent shook his head again, more adamantly this time. “Nope. I can’t risk it.”
When Trent said extreme precautions, he meant it. Fake name.
Adding blonde highlights to his normally brown hair. He was so careful he kept
a tank top on even at the pool to hide the Texas Longhorns tattoo he’d gotten
on his chest senior year.
Two years ago he’d even considered brown contact lenses to
cover his green eyes. That plan had fallen through before it even got off the
ground. Day one in the eye doctor’s office Trent had found that though he could
face the biggest meanest opposition during a game, he was too scared to stick a
piece of plastic in his eye. Luckily, he’d gotten away with sunglasses during
the day and fake eyeglasses at night for two years running with no problem.
Letting Cole in on the deal knowing his fame? Nope.
Including his friend would be the end of Trent’s annual
retreat. Cole’s longtime infamy with the press had only been escalated by the
notorious bad boy’s recent marriage to and pending child with Anna. A superstar
couldn’t marry a completely unknown first grade teacher on a whim in Vegas
without causing some pretty big ripples in the press.
“I can’t believe you.” Cole scowled.
“Sorry, Cole. I love you like a brother, but you’ll have to find
your own hidey-hole. This one is mine.”
“Fine.” Looking pissed, Cole took a swallow of his beer as
Trent laughed at his expression.
His friend would get over it by the time he finished this
bottle. Trent, on the other hand, might just lose his mind completely without
his annual weeklong escape from the hell of being famous, and that price was
too high to pay even for friendship.
He was heading to Florida and he was going alone.
Want to know when Cat has a
new release?
0 comments:
Post a Comment