by Ali Parker
“What did you think about him?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. That he was a high and mighty pro athlete who was head over heels in love with himself.”
“And he’s not?”
I laughed. “Well, he does like himself a lot. But that’s not a crime, right? Especially not in this pro, self-love society we’re living in.”
“As long as it’s love and not an obsession, I don’t see anything wrong with it.”
“Me neither. How are things with you? How’s work? Tell me everything. I miss you like crazy.”
“I miss you too.” Janie sighed. I could hear her moving around, and I pictured her holed up in our little apartment with a cup of tea and a piece of toast with avocado smeared all over it, one of her favorite snacks. “Not much is new here. Work is keeping me busy. Jackson already has me working with the new guys for next year’s club.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
Janie laughed. “Yep, this is an annual thing, Piper. We have to stay on top of it to keep it running smoothly. I gotta say, your guys are better than this new group.”
“That makes me feel better.”
“Not that it matters, of course,” Janie said.
“Sorry?” I asked, sprinkling a bit more Italian seasoning into my sauce and adding two heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
“The guys don’t matter, right? You’re in it for the million big ones at the end. Unless something has changed?” Her tone was suggestive, almost cunning, like she was trying to pull one over on me.
“Nothing has changed, Janie. This is a business deal. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
“A business deal with serious perks. I’d be more than happy to bend over for a guy as hot as Easton if he—”
“Janie!”
“What?” she cried innocently. Then she burst into a fit of giggles on the other end, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling too. It felt so good to hear her carefree laughter. I wished I could have a night with her in our apartment just to decompress and feel like myself for a bit.
I put the lid on the sauce to let it simmer for the last half hour and went about prepping the rest of the things I would need for the salad and baguette. Once everything was laid out, I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms under my chest. “I have to admit. I think I’m kind of into him.”
“Easton?”
“Yes, who else?” I asked.
“Just checking.”
I stared around at Easton’s massive gourmet kitchen. His life was a whole lot different than mine. It was the polar opposite in almost every way. “We kissed.”
Janie gasped playfully. “Did you now? Well, you’re a big girl. You can handle one little kiss, right?”
“I wanted more.”
“Like I said. If I had Easton, I would let him do whatever he wanted to me. I don’t blame you for wanting more.”
“But I feel guilty.”
Janie went quiet for a good thirty seconds. Then, finally, she said softly, “Is it because of Joshua?”
I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me.
“Piper?”
“Yes,” I said hurriedly. “It’s Joshua. I still think about him all the time. And I miss him constantly. And it’s taking everything I have not to just up and call him.”
“You can’t call him, Pipes.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said again. “It’s just hard. We became so close so quickly, and I know he would say everything I needed to hear to make me feel better.”
“But at what cost to him?”
I licked my lips. That was a good question. Calling him would be selfish. He knew I was spending the month with Easton, and I was sure his imagination was running wild with ideas of what me and the pro athlete were doing with our time. Calling him and unburdening my troubles would only make his worse, and I cared too much about him to do that.
“I’m glad I have you, Janie.”
“Forever and always, babe. I’ve got you. Tell me what you’re doing right now.”
I swept my hair off my forehead and lifted my chin, trying to shake off the sadness that had crept into my chest after thinking about Joshua. “I’m making dinner for Easton and me. He’s going to be back in about half an hour or so, and I wanted him to come home to a homecooked meal. Did you know he orders in almost every meal? Sometimes, he makes his own smoothies for breakfast, but other than that, his lunches and dinners are totally catered to him.”
“Piper, I bet a lot of these guys will be like that.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Janie said flatly. “I think most men in general would leap at that luxury.”
“Well, I’m going to knock his socks off with this pasta. He won’t know what hit him.”
“Careful. Don’t knock his socks off too hard. He might take his pants off too and bend you over the kitchen table.”
“God damn it, Janie. Knock it off, will you?”
“All hot and bothered over there?”
I bit my bottom lip. “No.”
She laughed, and I could tell she was most definitely laughing at me. “Oh, Piper. I’m sorry. It’s just too easy. And I’m finding it hard to muster any sympathy for you right now. You have the month with one of the hottest dudes in the NFL. Make the most of it, girl. Because you know what? Joshua isn’t your end game. None of these guys are. The money is. You have to keep your eye on the prize if you want to pull this off.”
“You’re right.”
“Always am. Always will be. Now, I hate to do this, but I have to head to yoga. You’ll be all right tonight?”
“Of course. Have a good workout. We’ll talk soon.”
“Not soon enough. Love you, babe. Have fun tonight.”
We ended our call, and I stood alone in silence in the middle of Easton’s kitchen. I still had at least twenty minutes to kill before he got home, and I didn’t want to spend it alone with my thoughts.
So I tried calling my mom and dad. But neither of them answered their phones. They were probably busy with restaurant business.
I went for the next best option and called my brother Phillip. He answered almost right away, and his voice was full of eager excitement. “Piper!”
“Phillip.” I grinned, putting my phone back on speaker so I could fill a pot with water and put it on the front element of the gas stove. I cranked up the heat. “How are you?”
“I’m good. I miss you, sis. So do Mom and Dad. They talk about you all day. And, no offense, but it’s getting real old.”
I lifted the lid off the sauce, and steam wafted upward. “Only ten months and three weeks to go.”
“Shoot me now.”
“How are things?”
My brother was quiet. “The same.”
“I wish I could be there to help you.”
“It’s all right. You are helping. Hell, you’re doing the most out of any of us. Are you sure you don’t want Mom and Dad to know what you’re up to? I think they’d come around.”
I shook my head. “No, they can’t know. Dad would be furious. And Mom would have a heart attack if she knew I was spending my time with men like Easton Price.”
“I’m still pissed about that. You don’t even like football.”
“Neither do you,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but still. He’s a pro athlete. A big cheese. And I bet his house is insane.”
I leaned against the counter beside the stove. “You have no idea.”
I heard the front door open and close.
I flipped the phone off speaker phone. “Sorry, Phillip. I have to go. Easton just got here, and I’m preparing dinner. Talk soon?”
“Sounds good. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Like ask for him to sign my boob?”
“Shut up, Piper,” Phillip scolded before hanging up.
Giggling to myself, I turned around and made to leave the kitchen. But Easton arrived, his wide fr
ame filling up the doorway. He greeted me with a big smile and then lifted his nose to sniff the air. “What on earth smells so good in here?”
“I’m cooking you dinner.”
“Really?” he asked, looking genuinely surprised.
“Really.” I nodded and motioned for him to come over to the stove. I stirred the sauce as he peered down into it and then lifted the spoon for him to take a taste.
He closed his eyes as he savored it, and I admired the strong line of his jaw and his smooth skin. “Damn, that’s good.”
“It’s my recipe, and I’ve been perfecting it over the last few years.”
“I’ve never had a homecooked meal from a woman before.”
My words became caught in my throat. I stared blankly at him. “Seriously?”
He nodded as he popped open the top button of his white collared shirt. I tried to look him in the eye rather than stare at the bare bit of chest exposed. “Seriously.”
That bit of information hurt my heart.
I leaned in and wrapped my arms around his waist. At first, he was stiff in my embrace. His hands hung by his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. Then as the seconds passed, he lifted his arms and wrapped them around me as I rested my cheek on his chest.
I closed my eyes when he rested his chin on my head and listened as he drew in a deep breath. His heartbeat was steady and calm, and I could have stood there with him listening to it for hours. But the few minutes we shared were good too.
Chapter 15
Easton
Piper refused to let me help her finish with the final preparations of dinner. She poured me a glass of red wine and led me by the hand to one of the stools at the kitchen island, where she forced me to sit. She brought over the mixing bowl for the salad and chopped everything up before adding the dressing while I sat across from her.
I was more than happy to sit and watch her work.
She looked beautiful tonight. Her dark hair was swept up in a coiled knot at the base of her neck. Loose strands hung around her face, tempting me to go and tuck them behind her ears just so I had an excuse to stroke her cheek with my thumb.
The girl was making me soft.
She was wearing the leggings she’d worn to my game on Sunday, as well as a long-sleeved black shirt that showed a bit of her flat stomach. Just enough to catch my gaze but not enough to show more than a half inch of skin.
“How did the meeting go?” she asked as she gave the salad a final toss.
“Uh. Good. We just covered the basics from the last game.”
“What does that mean?”
“We watch a replay of the whole thing, and our coaches point out areas where we can improve and mistakes we made on the field.”
“In front of the whole team?” she asked with wide eyes.
I nodded.
Piper pushed the salad bowl to the edge of the counter and then grabbed the baguette from its bag. She opened the oven and placed it on the rack. “That would be kind of nerve wracking, no? To have everyone there while someone else points out your mistakes?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t bother me. I guess we’re used to it. It’s been this way forever.”
Piper moved about the kitchen in a blur to drain the water the noodles were cooking in. Then she left them in a strainer and took the baguette out of the oven. She sliced it into pieces and put them in a basket, which she brought over to my fully set dining table along with butter and the salad. When she returned to the kitchen, she scooped the pasta onto plates and pushed one into my hands. “Is that enough?”
I stared down at my very full plate. “That’s plenty. Thank you.”
We took our plates and glasses of wine into the dining room. She’d set the table nicely with a dark blue tablecloth and silver chargers. A few candles burned in silver and blue holders that reflected off the silver chargers.
It was almost romantic.
“This is a nice thing to come home to,” I told her as I swept my napkin off the table and draped it over my lap like she had done with hers.
“I’m glad you like it.” She smiled, tucking her chair in. “Bon appétit.”
I dug into the meal. The pasta was rich and spicy, yet sweet, and it sent my taste buds into overdrive. Piper giggled and blushed under my praises, and I used the bread she’d cut up to scoop up any leftover sauce on my plate when I was done with the pasta. The salad offered a nice fresh crunch that complemented the meal nicely, and by the time we were finished eating, we’d made our way through a second glass of wine.
“Better than takeout?” Piper asked as she leaned back in her chair, bringing her glass of wine with her.
I nodded. “Much better. It doesn’t even compare. Takeout doesn’t come with a beautiful host, either.”
She smiled shyly. “I’m sure there are some cute delivery girls who love bringing you your meals.”
“None quite like you, Piper James. You’re a whole other level of woman.”
“What does that mean?”
I hadn’t expected her to call me on that. I swallowed and reached for my wine. “You’re different. In a good way. Like I said before, I knew there was something different about you.”
“It’s the working class in me.” She giggled.
“Maybe,” I mused. “But there’s more to it than that. There is something sexy about a woman with a work ethic. Something I haven’t had the privilege to see much of. But you have more than that going for you. You’re…” I trailed off.
She leaned forward, hooked on my last word. “Yes?”
I looked down. “It’s stupid.”
She reached out and put her hand on mine. “I’m sure it isn’t.”
I lifted my gaze back up to hers. Would she think me a fool if I said what I wanted to say? It sounded stupid in my own head, and I could only imagine how foolish it would sound when the words actually left my lips.
But it was the truth, and it was what I thought of when I looked at her.
I gathered my nerve. “You’re like the sun, Piper. Strong. Beautiful. Warm. Brave.”
“Brave?” she asked as her cheeks turned the brightest shade of pink I’d ever seen.
“You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met. Hell, maybe even the bravest person.”
“I don’t know where you get that idea from.” She laughed nervously.
“No? Let me try to help you see it, then. You’re here. You entered a competition that favors women who lead completely different lives than you. And on top of that, you entered late, knowing you were leagues behind in terms of exposure. None of us had laid eyes on you before, and you came into this knowing you had one shot. You seized it, and you made it count. And here you are.”
“I don’t consider that bravery. I think it was unbridled stupidity.”
“Lies,” I said.
Her eyes glittered. “Go on then.”
“You forgave me for being an ass on our first night. I knew you were coming. I’d known for months. And yet I avoided my own house, and you waited for me. Patient. Calm. And when you had the chance to call me on my bullshit, you didn’t. You started this thing out on the right foot. You maintained control.”
Piper chewed the inside of her cheek. “I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I just wanted to get along with you. I knew we had a whole month ahead of us, and to be honest, I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of you,” she said simply.
“Why?”
She wouldn’t meet my eye. “I’m a nobody. A waitress at a restaurant that should have closed down years ago. And you?” She gestured at all of me and shook her head. “Well, you’re Easton fucking Price.”
She laughed. I didn’t.
“I hope you don’t still feel that way, Piper.”
Her smile was warm. “I don’t. Not even a little bit. I think… I think I know you. Like, really know you. Does that sound creepy?”
“Not at all.”
Her words were like a
release for me. I couldn’t remember a time where I’d ever felt seen or understood, but Piper made me feel that way.
It was going to be hard when she left me at the end of the month. How would I go back to my normal everyday life? And how the hell would I ever find a girl who could compare to her?
Because one thing was certain in all of this. She would not choose me at the end of the year. I had never been so sure of anything in my life as I was of that fact.
I stood up and collected our dishes. “Should we clean up?”
Piper stood as well, and we brought all the dishes into the kitchen. I opened the dishwasher, and Piper shook her head before pushing it closed with her foot. “Let’s do it the old-fashioned way.”
She piled all the dishes in one side of the sink and then filled it with hot soapy water. She made me stand on her left side and handed me a dish towel. I was in charge of drying after she cleaned and then putting everything away.
It was the first time I’d done dishes in years. Literally years.
As we cleaned, we talked.
“Are you excited for your next game on Sunday? If you win this one, you advance toward the Super Bowl, right? And if you lose?”
I shrugged and opened a cupboard to put our two plates away. “If we lose, we’re out of the running, and we go into the off season. I don’t think excited is the right word. It all feels like more of a job to me. It would be like me asking if you were excited to go into the restaurant tomorrow.”
She pursed her lips. “Makes sense. I used to be excited to go to work when I was younger.”
“Me too,” I said.
“What’s your favorite part of the sport?” she asked as she scrubbed the bowl the salad had been in.
“Mapping out game plays. Building strategies based on the weaknesses of the other teams and studying their game. Sharing my knowledge with my team. That sort of thing.”
“None of what you just said is actually playing football. You realize that, right?”
I stopped drying the bowl she’d just handed me.
The corners of Piper’s lips curled upward, and she kept her gaze fixed on the dishes in the sink as she continued scrubbing. “It sounds to me like you’d make a good coach, Easton.”