by Mignon Mykel
Playing To Win
An Elite Athlete Anthology
Copyright © 2020
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Image Photographer: Regina Wamba/The Stock Alchemist
Cover Designer: Oh So Novel
Contents
The Winning Bracket
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Epilogue
About Mignon Mykel
Also By Mignon Mykel
Making the Leap
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Epilogue
Afterword
About Aubree Valentine
Also by Aubree Valentine
Stay Connected
Long Shot
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
About Jennifer Bonds
Also by Jennifer Bonds
Personal Foul
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Epilogue
Do you want more Colson and Sydney?
Acknowledgments
About Brooke O’Brien
Also by Brooke O’Brien
Throw Like A Girl
1
2
3
4
5
6
About Tina Gallagher
Also By Tina Gallagher
Double Contact
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Epilogue
About Christy Pastore
Fierce Fighter
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Rocking Player Preview
About Victoria Pinder
Also by Victoria Pinder
The Winning Bracket by Mignon Mykel
When the Olympics are cancelled, professional volleyball player Samantha Piper finds herself going home to Montana, but what she doesn’t expect is to fall—fast—for the former fiancé of her high school enemy. As they play alongside one another in the summer couple’s volleyball league, the stakes are high—each win has a fun, and eventually sexy, incentive. Can the final winning bracket include love?
Making the Leap by Aubree Valentine
From the outside she looks like a high-society princess. He's no more than the family's ranch hand. But that's not the reason they're bad for each other, nor is it the reason they've held back. Can they get past all the reasons why they couldn't work out, and accept the real reason why they can?
Long Shot by Jennifer Bonds
Wes Kaplan is rich, entitled, and a total pain in my ass. Worse? He’s hot AF, persistent as hell, and totally off-limits. Because in a town where gossip spreads faster than pollen on the wind, the only thing worse than hooking up with your uptight boss’s son is falling for him.
Personal Foul by Brooke O’Brien
What will happen when the smooth-talking and irresistible basketball recruit sets his sights on the head coach's daughter? The risks are high with the heat of their sexual tension mounting. Giving in to their desires is one personal foul neither of them can back down from.
Throw Like a Girl by Tina Gallagher
After knowing each other for years, Penny Montgomery and Kenny Hanover enjoyed a mild flirtation but didn’t move things beyond that. Besides the fact he’d been warned away by her overprotective big brother, she was only in town for a short visit before heading out to join the Olympic Softball Team, and Kenny wanted more than a fling. When the Olympics are canceled months later, Penny takes a well-deserved vacation at the beach and finds Kenny in town for a friend’s wedding. Still drawn to him, Penny wants to explore their attraction, she just needs to figure out how to convince him to do the same.
Double Contact by Christy Pastore
As a professional baseball player, women have never been a challenge. Until I met her. Brunette. Beautiful. Vivacious. Just as I’m ready to take my shot, my teammate jock blocks me. Turns out he saw her first. That was two years ago. As luck would have it, our paths crossed again, and this time, I don’t waste a second. I want my chance.
Fierce Fighter by Victoria Pinder
Stone Steel only has one shot to success. Wrestling. He’ll prove it in the Olympics that he’s the best. But he takes time off his training to go to his cousin’s wedding. He hadn’t expected Vanessa, his ex, to be a bridesmaid. Vanessa hopes to avoid Stone at the wedding. She never told him when he left town, she was pregnant. However weddings are intimate and Vanessa and Stone’s chemistry is off the charts. But if she tells him her secret, she’s worried he’ll never forgive her. Can she take a chance on him, this time?
The Winning Bracket
Mignon Mykel
1
Samantha
“So. Do you remember Jacquie Germaine?”
I stared at my best friend. Did I remember Jacquie Germaine?
Why, yes.
I did remember Jacquie Germaine, and my best friend for as long as I could remember would know that.
Jacquie Germaine was the on the top of our Senior class at Glenview Falls Academy back home.
Yes, I said on top of, and I didn’t mean academically.
Socially.
...Sexually.
You know the girl.
Clearly the ten years since high school graduation didn’t numb the dislike I had for the woman.
“You know I do, Nikki.” I shook my head lightly and picked up the large Hydro Flask I’d just sat down on the wooden planks we sat upon. I needed something to do with my hands, and playing with the flipped handle would just have to do.
After being stuck in the house for the last few weeks, her husband finally put the dock in the lake that their property butted up against, and Nikki and I decided to hang out there while soaking up some much-needed Vitamin D.
The world was in a bit of a strange place at the moment, and if it weren’t for the fact I was bunkering down at her place for the summer, I’d probably be isolated somewhere near Anaheim, California, in hopes I could get back on the volleyball court sooner than later.
You see, I was supposed to play beach volleyball for Team USA this summer in Tokyo, but...
Well.
The world.
So, instead of training hard for next month’s big games, I found myself in the position of deciding to stay near the training facility, or go back home.
And because California was far more populated than my little town in Montana, I op
ted to head home. However, with parents in their sixties, I didn’t think it was smart to hunker down at their place and instead, found myself in Forever, Montana at my best friend’s place.
“I’m sorry! It was just, I don’t know, an opening,” Nicole “Nikki” Brayshaw, formerly Plant, answered.
Nikki and I had been friends since she started at the kindergarten through grade twelve academy in the third grade, and during our high school years, we were two parts of the winningest volleyball team in U18 club volleyball.
She knew all of my secrets, just like I knew hers.
She held my hand and hugged me while I cried, after I found out my boyfriend for all of high school succumbed to Jacquie Germaine’s ways. Stupid, teenager me had hoped that he’d realize Jacquie wasn’t everything she said she was, and he’d come back to me.
I loved him, in that way a seventeen year old girl thinks is a forever kind of love.
Unfortunately, also thanks to Jacquie Germaine, that potential I saw never had a chance to come to fruition, because the next time Nikki held my hand and hugged me while I cried, it was after the entire town found out Ryan had been in a fatal car accident the week before graduation.
He’d been on his way home after spending the earlier hours of the night with Jacquie. He’d been drunk and driving too fast.
Even now, older and wiser and ten years later, it hurt to think about.
At twenty-seven, I knew that settling for a guy who put you to the side because a “hotter piece” was looking at him, was stupid, silly, and naïve.
But I hated that that was how Ryan’s life ended, and I hated how Jacquie had zero remorse about the entire situation.
“Well, you know Cody and I play in the summer volleyball league, right?”
“I do.”
“Cody has this friend. We’ve played with him and his girlfriend-turned-fiancée for the last two summers. Cody and the fiancée were signed up to play this summer but, well, they’re not together anymore.”
“Let me guess. The fiancée is Jacquie.” I wasn’t stupid. Nikki opened this conversation with Jacquie’s name, so it only fit that she was the woman.
Nikki gave me a grimaced-grin. “Yeah. Don’t hate me! But Cody and Sam are really good friends. They were roommates in college and I didn’t even realize Sam knew who Jacquie was, let alone was engaged to her! But college seemed to change her, because when Cody and I had our first couples-dinner with them—” she coughed and mumbled three, “—years ago, she seemed to be different and more grown up but then Sam—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I held up a hand before staring at my best friend. “You’ve been hanging out with Jacquie Germaine for three years?”
“Can I plead the fifth?”
“Nicole!”
“It was really only in the summer! It’s not like I hung out with her, but more like, Cody was hanging out with Sam, and Jacquie just happened to be there. They were, like, this...unit.” Nikki moved her hands in front of her, locking her fingers to mimic a togetherness.
“And you didn’t know they were engaged?” This wasn’t adding up. How could she not know this guy friend was engaged to Jacquie? I could only imagine the ring size the woman would want, and how she would flaunt it in everyone’s faces.
“No, no, they were engaged before I met them, err, well, Sam.”
“They were engaged for three years? What was the hold-up?” This was an oddly unbelievable story. Three years was a long time to be engaged but not actually tie the knot.
Nikki shrugged. “Sam was finishing his pediatric residency.”
Okay, well that I could understand. My older sister, who was six years older than me, was a peds doctor in Billings. She’d been in her final year of residency at UC San Diego when I first arrived to Anaheim for my first Olympic games training, five years ago.
While San Diego and Anaheim weren’t incredibly close geographically, we’d been close enough that we got together once every couple of weeks.
“All right, so, Sam and Jacquie are your couple friends—”
“When you put it like that...”
“—and now they’re not together. I take it you guys kept this Sam guy in the break-up?”
Nikki stifled a giggle before composing herself. “Yes. We kept Sam. Cody’s-Sam. Because, you know, you’re Nikki’s-Sam.”
“Okay. All of the Jacquie drama aside—”
“Oh, you don’t even know the half of it.”
“—you guys play summer volleyball with Sam. Let me guess. He needs a partner and, viola, your professional volleyball playing friend is home for the summer, and you want me to team with him.”
Nikki didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
“Doesn’t he have other friends?” I wasn’t necessarily against playing in a fun intramural league, but it did come with some unfair advantages.
“Well, sure, but... It’s... Well.” Nikki took a deep breath. “Shit, Sam. It’s a couples league, and he doesn’t have any female friends, and you’re home, and you live for volleyball, and I thought maybe you’d enjoy it because it’s just for fun and not stressful.”
My eyebrows lifted in surprise—couples league?!—and I opened my mouth, but Nikki cut in again. “I’m not saying you have to date the man, Samantha! Just be his partner so his fees don’t go to waste. And if he doesn’t play, then the brackets are all screwed up, because registration ended yesterday.”
It dawned on me then. “You’ve been holding on to this information, haven’t you? I’ve been here for a month, and you waited until the last possible minute to ask me, because you knew I’d basically be guilted into taking Jacquie’s place.”
Nikki’s smile was overly-wide. “You love me.”
The things was...
She was right.
And I really did live for volleyball.
“Ugh. Fine. I’ll do it.”
2
Sam
“Boy Sam, meet Girl Sam.”
Nikki pointed her hands in both mine and the tall blonde’s direction, and now she kind of resembled a two-spouted “I’m a Little Teapot” dancer.
Meanwhile, her husband looked highly amused behind her.
Cody told me last night that they found a partner for me for this summer’s couples volleyball league, and that they wanted me to come by the house today to meet her.
It wasn’t like I was hellbent on playing this summer, but Nikki had been, on my behalf.
From the moment I told the Brayshaws that I found Joshua Parker—a guy who was supposed to be one of my groomsmen—fucking my fiancée on my bed, it was like Nikki was on a mission to save me.
After, of course, sharing stories with me about the woman I thought I’d wanted to spend forever with. I think she was trying to tell me that I dodged a bullet, but fuck, I’d been with Jacquie for eight years.
Cody, Josh, and I had been tight in college. Roommates turned best friends.
Then there was Jacquie, who I met our senior year.
She was beautiful.
Thoughtful.
And yeah, the sex had been great. When you’re twenty-two, the action between sheets ranked pretty high on your list.
After I left for medical school with Jacquie in tow, and Cody and Josh returned back to Billings, the boys and I remained close. I’m not sure when the Joshua and Jacquie thing started, and frankly, I didn’t care, but it had to have been sometime in the last two years, after transferring to Missoula to finish my residency.
When I told Cody and Nikki about the change in my relationship status, the summer league hadn’t even been on my mind, regardless of the fact Jacquie and I had registered only the month prior.
Between the craziness of the world and being a first-year practicing pediatrician, volleyball was the absolute last thing on my mind.
Hell, when registering I’d figured that the league wasn’t even going to happen this summer, but what was a loss of seventy-dollars?
Unfortunately, the league was happening, and the first
games were coming up.
I’d have happily bowed out, but Nikki had other plans.
Which was how I found myself at the Brayshaw house at three in the afternoon on a Saturday, with steaks on the grill, sitting across from a woman who looked like I should know her, but couldn’t place my finger on how or why.
Maybe Cody’s wedding? No, she would have been in the bridal party. Nikki said she and Sam were best friends since they were eight. I’d stood for Cody; I would have met “girl Sam” then.
So why wasn’t she at the wedding? Or maybe she was. Maybe I recognized her from the reception? But then, why wasn’t she in the wedding?
Whatever.
Not worth the brain cells trying to figure it out.