Take The Shot (Philadelphia Bulldogs #1)

by Danica Flynn

  Acknowledgments

  Honestly, I never thought this book was going to be a real tangible thing. This book started as a NANOWRIMO challenge to myself just to see if I could write romance. Then the couple from book two muscled their way into making an appearance in this book. So I said to myself, “Okay, I’ll try to write a second romance book and that would be it. This is just for fun.” Then while vacationing in Canada, I got the idea for a third book in this series. Um, and then I wrote a fourth book and had an idea for a fifth one? So somehow I had a romance series on my hands. So it felt like maybe I should just really try my hand at this thing.

  I love hockey and romance books, so what a perfect way to marry my two loves. To be fair, my YA contemporary WIPs are also about hockey, so maybe this wasn’t a stretch for me. And I always thought about writing a romance book about one of the brothers’ from that book. (SPOILER ALERT: He might show up later in this series.)

  I have to thank my partner Jordan for supporting me always, even when he had no clue what the heck I was talking about. When I got drunk on my birthday and starting spouting that I should just self-publish these books, he was nothing if not really supportive. Even more so when I threw myself full-in to researching how to really go about self-publishing my books. Thanks for hugging me when I worried that everything I wrote was just a pile of garbage and listening to me vent when I was really unsure about things in my books. Especially telling me to just “continue to write and get better” when I expressed worry that maybe I am actually terrible at everything I do.

  To Jim Kenyon for being my first BETA reader and being able to look me in the eye at work after reading all my sex scenes. Thanks for reading this story and telling me I don’t suck. Also shout out to my friends Phil and Megan for being so supportive of this book, even though you haven’t read it yet.

  Thanks also goes out to anyone who was intrigued by this book and bought it. You the real MVP! I can’t wait for you guys to read Riley and Fiona’s story next!

  Sneak Preview of Score Her Heart

  FIONA

  I bit my nails nervously and this time my maid of honor, Katie, didn’t slap my hand away. For the fifteenth time, I fixed the veil on my head, but I still thought it was crooked. Deep in my bones, I knew something was off. As soon as I woke up this morning, I knew something was going to go wrong. That’s not exactly the feeling you want on your wedding day. Especially since the groom was missing.

  What the fuckety, fuck!

  “Did he answer?” Katie asked and studied the bouquet of flowers that I was gripping a little too tightly. Her white face was tinted red with frustration and her brown hair was starting to come undone while she raked her fingers through it in agony.

  I looked down at my phone still in my hand. The little light at the top of it was blinking to indicate a notification, but when I unlocked the black screen it was just a text from my best and oldest friend, Aaron Riley.

  RILEY: Girlllll!!! I can’t believe you’re getting married today. Can’t wait to see you tonight!

  “Well?” Ellen, my bridesmaid, and one of my other childhood friends, asked. With her tanned skin and perfect blonde hair, I was kind of annoyed that she wasn’t as frazzled looking as I knew I was right now.

  I shook my head and put my phone down. My fiancé was late for our wedding and I couldn’t help but have a bad feeling about this. Like Han Solo flying into the Death Star bad feeling.

  I only had two people in my bridal party, well three if you counted my mom who was the matron of honor. Eric didn’t even want to get married to me, and I never pushed it because I had been happy with him, but his mom kept pushing the marriage thing. After his dad died he finally asked. He hadn’t even done it very romantically, he just turned to me one night, sighed and asked, “Hey, should we just get married already?”

  So romantic.

  I had wanted a courthouse wedding, but neither of our moms’ would go for that. Somehow, by the grace of the hockey gods, we had managed to keep this wedding pretty small, but Eric had insisted we do it in Vegas. I had never been a Vegas person or interested in gambling, so we fought a lot about it. Since he was the one that asked me to marry him, I eventually gave in.

  Honestly, I would have had a better time if we had just eloped in Vegas, but we were basically told we would have been shunned if we did that. I didn’t really care for weddings, they were fine for other people, but not for me. I felt like it was just a pageant for my parents and I was honestly pissed about it. Especially since they complained about how much money it was, even though I told them we would rather pay for it ourselves, but dad had insisted. Irish men were so stubborn, I guess that’s where I got it from.

  I chewed my bottom lip some more, and turned at the sound of the door opening. My mom stood there in her wine colored dress and her dirty blond hair pulled smartly into a chignon at the nape of her neck. I was hoping for good news, but her mouth was a thin line.

  FUCK.

  “Anything?” I asked, but couldn’t help hearing the slight hitch in my voice.

  She shook her head sadly, her brow furrowing in a worried expression.

  “FUCK!” I screamed out loud this time.

  Mom narrowed her eyes at me. “Fiona Marie Gallagher! Language!”

  I rolled my eyes, but wanted to yell, “Fuck you, mom, this is my wedding!” Yeah, that would have gone over well. This was turning into a fucking disaster. Where the hell was Eric?

  Katie was tapping away on her phone. Katie was Eric’s older sister, but we had grown close over the years, since I had been with her brother for five years. I was bad at making friends and Ellen was one of the only one’s besides Riley who still put up with me. Scratch that, I was good at making friends, but bad at keeping relationships intact. I just assumed everyone would eventually abandon me so what was the point? Why put in the work when everyone would disappoint you in the end?

  “The guys brought him back to the hotel early last night. So it’s not like he’s passed out drunk somewhere,” Katie commented, but worry was still etched across her pale face.

  A stone dropped down into the pit of my stomach. This was really bad. Ellen put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Maybe he just slept through his alarm,” she tried to reassure me, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  Somehow, I knew that we both knew that line was complete and utter bullshit. Eric never slept through anything. I pulled out my phone and started texting him some more while Katie tried to call him for the tenth time.

  ME: WTF!!!

  ME: Where are you?

  ME: Mother fucker, I know you aren’t passed out drunk somewhere.

  ME: Answer me!

  I saw Katie was repeatedly saying the word “okay” into her phone but she wasn’t looking at me. Almost like she was too embarrassed to look me in the eyes right now.

  I looked back at my phone and saw the three dots indicating typing, then they disappeared, and immediately came back up. Finally I had an answer on what the actual fuck was going on.

  ERIC: I’m sorry.

  ERIC: I can’t do this. I don’t want to get married. Can’t we go back to the way things were?

  ME: Are you FUCKING kidding me?

  ERIC: I just don’t want to marry you.

  ME: Go fuck yourself. Get your shit and get out of my apartment.

  ERIC: It’s our apartment.

  ME: And everything’s in my name. Kindly go fuck yourself gently with a chainsaw.

  I wanted to hurl my phone at the wall, but instead I just hurled myself out of the room.

  “Fiona, where are you going?” Mom shrieked after me.

  “The fucking bar!” I yelled back and hitched up the skirt of this ridiculous dress. I couldn’t even think of the fiasco this would cause for my parents, I just needed a drink. I parked myself in front of the hotel bar in a huff.

  The bartender blinked at me in surprise. He glanced over my shoulder and then back at me. “I think you’re early?” he asked in con
fusion.

  “It’s off,” I seethed. “Give me a whiskey.”

  His face fell and he nodded before getting to work behind the bar. He put a glass of whiskey down in front of me. “On the house, Miss.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, no, don’t pity me.”

  He pushed the glass closer to me. “I insist.”

  I cocked my head at him. He was kind of cute with his spiky blond hair and five o’clock shadow. Maybe I should fuck him just to get back at Eric. Maybe it was the fact that my sex life had been lacking in the past couple months that I was entertaining the idea of sleeping with a stranger. I took the drink and downed the hatch in one fell swoop. I looked at my phone and saw four more texts from Eric.

  ERIC: I was happy before, but I don’t see why we had to get married.

  ERIC: Marriage is stupid. We don’t want kids.

  ERIC: Fi, don’t be this way. I know you don’t want this wedding either.

  ERIC: Let’s just go back to being together.

  I frowned, but noticed my drink had been refilled. The cute bartender winked at me and I nodded my head at him in thanks.

  The truth was — we hadn’t decided that we didn’t want kids, Eric had decided that and never gave me the chance to really think about it. I had been fine with that because I had loved him, but the fact that he didn’t want to go through with this meant he didn’t love me. How could I expect him to be committed to me if he didn’t show up on our wedding day? PLUS! Cancelling all of this shit was going to cost a shit ton of money. I didn’t even want to think about it. My dad was going to be livid, if he wasn’t already. I might need to get him a whole bottle of whiskey to apologize. Maybe even a freaking case.

  I maddeningly typed out my response into my phone.

  ME: AGAIN, how about you go fuck yourself you fucking asshat? I can’t believe you did this to me. We are DONE. Have a good life, Eric!

  My phone was blowing up with texts from guests wondering what was going on, but the only one I looked at was Riley’s.

  ME: Don’t come.

  RILEY: What’s going on?

  ME: Wedding’s off. Just don’t come, I’m sorry, I know it was hard for you to get here with your hockey schedule.

  RILEY: Where are you?

  ME: Bar.

  I put my head in my hands and finished off my second glass. I put my phone down and decided answering all those texts was just not what I was going to do right now. When I pulled my hands away my eyeliner was smudged on my hand along with some wetness. Great, I was the crying bride left at the altar drinking alone at the bar.

  Way to be a cliche, Fiona!

  A glass of water and another whiskey was placed in front of me. “You want to start a tab?” the bartender asked me.

  Before I could answer, a deep voice from behind me said, “Yeah, put it on my card.”

  I turned to take in Aaron Riley in all his glory. He looked great in that suit, his broad shoulders and thick biceps filling it out nicely. His blonde hair was tousled in that “I couldn’t care less” style that really meant he spent a long time on it. I’d only seen him a few times this year, with his professional hockey career and my writing career we both were traveling a lot and sometimes not in the same city. But damn, he looked good today filing out that suit tailored specifically for him. I felt heat pool in my lower belly, but maybe it was just from all the whiskey. I definitely wasn’t thinking about what Riley’s mouth on me would feel like. Not at all.

  Riley slid onto the stool next to me and ordered a beer. When the bartender handed him his beer, that’s when he turned to me and pulled me into a big bear hug. Maybe that’s all I needed, because I relaxed into his strong arms, leaning my face against his hard chest. But then I started crying again. To his credit, Riley was a good sport who just let me cry on his shoulder as he rubbed my back soothingly.

  It felt like an eternity had passed before I pulled away. “I’m sorry,” I apologized.

  He placed his hands gently on my cheeks and wiped my face with the pads of his rough calloused thumbs. “Don’t apologize. That dickweed should be the one apologizing. Fi, I’m so sorry. You want me to fight him?”

  I slunk out of his arms and took a sip of my drink. “It’s not your fault. And maybe…on that last part.”

  He eyed me cautiously and took a sip of his beer. The way he was looking at me was sending shivers down my spine. Here’s the thing, Riley was kind of a player, which was fine, he could do what he wanted, but we also lost our virginity to each other in high school. Then proceeded to experiment with each other. Okay, we were fuck buddies. So sue me, Aaron Riley was hot back then and even more so now. Seeing him here looking sexy AF in that nice tailored suit had me thinking a little too much about what his mouth would feel like on mine again. Fuck. I shouldn’t have drunk so much whiskey in such a short time. Whiskey makes me horny. And it was no secret that my best friend was the hottest man I had ever seen. EVER.

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  I sighed and took a huge gulp of my drink even though it burned like a bitch going down. “He said he couldn’t do it, but wanted to just go back to the way things were.”

  Riley narrowed his blue eyes at me, they flashed in anger, but I knew it wasn’t aimed at me. “What the fuck?”

  I raised my arms in triumph. “Thank you!”

  “What a fucking asshole,” he spat out. “This douche can’t show up to your wedding, but expects everything to go back to normal?”

  I hung my head. “I can’t even imagine all the cancellations we have to do now. My poor parents.”

  He ran a hand down his clean-shaven jaw as if he was thinking really hard about something. He had this weird look in his eyes and it made me feel uncomfortable. “Well, do you still want to get married?” he asked.

  I nearly spat out my drink. “To who?”

  He smirked that signature crooked grin that I’m sure melted all of the girls’ panties. Mine included, but that might have just been the whiskey talking. He pointed a finger at me and then to him. “It’s Vegas, right? So let’s get married.”

  “What?!?” I screeched in shock.

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  About the Author

  Danica Flynn is a marketer by day, and a writer by nights and weekends. AKA she doesn’t sleep! She is a rabid hockey fan of both The Philadelphia Flyers and the Metropolitan Riveters. When not writing, she can be found hanging with her partner, playing video games, and reading a ton of books. Take The Shot is her first novel.

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