Out Of Bounds
Mary B. Moore
Contents
Out Of Bounds
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
The Quick Snap Novella Collection
Also by Mary B. Moore
About the Author
Out of Bounds
A Quick Snap Novella
By Mary B. Moore
Out of Bounds
A Quick Snap Novella
Mary B. Moore
Copyright © 2020 by Mary B. Moore
All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. All characters and storylines are the property of the author and your support and respect are appreciated. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Photographer: Reginald Deanching, RplusM Photography
Model: Quinn Biddel
Editing: Emma Mack, Ultra Editing Co
Cover Design: Kari March Designs
Published by: Lady Boss Press, Inc.
Chapter 1
Kip
Dragging my training top over my head, I tossed it in the direction of the hamper, snorting when it missed. Five months ago, my ex, Missy, would have been yelling at me for making a mess. Now, I just had sweet peace and quiet.
Focusing back in on my body, I groaned at the tense muscles in my legs. Training had been tough today and I needed a shower ASAP, both for smell and muscle relief.
I’d just gotten to the threshold of the bathroom when my neighbors’ security light came on. This wouldn’t normally be an issue, but Hayden was a player for the Seattle Sounders and was playing away from home this weekend.
Pulling my phone out, I used the app to switch the lights off in my bedroom and walked over to the window. With the way our houses were built, I had a clear view of the side of his house and the annex above his garage. And there was someone climbing up the damn trellis that I’d told him to get rid of.
With the amount of light available, if I squinted, I could just make out the small form of the person trying to break in.
Phone still in hand, I ran back down the stairs and out the kitchen door, dialing 911.
The call was answered just as I was crawling through the thinnest area of the tall bushes that divided our gardens.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Someone’s climbing up my neighbor’s wall,” I whispered, cursing when my sweats got caught on something. “He’s away on business just now, so I need the police.”
After giving her the address and lying out my ass that I would wait for them to turn up, I hung up on the guy. See, I was tall and had at least one hundred pounds on the person I could see. Hanging around and talking to the dispatcher wasn’t conducive with me stopping someone from breaking into a house and stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff.
Pulling my legs out of the bush and glaring at the hole now in my favorite training sweats, I crouched and moved toward the trellis.
Just as I got there, the burglar screamed and I heard a snap, followed by a, “Shit!”
The next thing I knew, I was taken down by something heavy, ending up on my back, and groaning at the new pain in my legs.
Then, a female voice whispered as the weight pressing down on them lifted, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
“If you’ve ended my career, I’ll…” my rant was cut off by the sound of a siren and the screech of tires not far away from where I was lying.
“Police!” a voice yelled.
The burglar stood up with her hands in the air, and with the extra light coming from the car, I finally got to see more of her details. Color me surprised when I saw she was dressed in a smart skirt and shirt, with red heels on her feet that were at least four inches high.
Who breaks into a house in a business outfit and heels?
Skimming my eyes higher up, I frowned when I saw her face. She looked familiar. Not like I’d seen her before, but as in she had features that were familiar. And seriously pretty dark red hair in a huge bun on the top of her head.
“Sir,” the police officer called. “Can you stand up and show me your hands, please.”
Figuring it would be a good idea to do as he asked, I pushed myself up with a loud groan. “I’m the one who called you. My name’s Kip Sutherland, and I live next door.”
Three voices—two males and a female—all said at the same time, “Kip Sutherland?” just as a torch was pointed at my face, almost blinding me.
“Holy shit, I watched you play last season. You guys totally kicked ass!” One of the officers shouted.
Nodding, I shot a cross between a grimace and a smile in the direction the voice had come from and held my hand in front of my face to indicate to him that he was blinding me with the torch.
“Shit, sorry,” he muttered, and the beam moved from my face to the floor. “Had reports of a break in here.”
“There’s no break in,” the woman hissed. “I live here.”
Rolling my eyes, I said exasperatedly, “No, you don’t. Hayden Wilkes lives here and has done for four years.”
“Oh, man,” the other officer breathed. “I’ve been to every Seattle Sounders home game since I was thirteen. Is he home?”
This was the problem with being who we were. Here I was, semi crushed after a burglar landed on me, and these guys were focused on the fact we were players on their teams.
“No, he’s in New York getting ready to play,” I told them drily. “And this woman,” I waved at the woman who was still standing with her hands in the air, “was trying to break into his house.”
“Is this true, ma’am?”
I only just stopped myself from banging my head on the wall when he asked that.
Finally dropping her hands, the woman crossed them over her chest and huffed, “No, it’s not true. My name’s Ashley Wilkes, and Hayden’s my brother. I moved in here three days ago to live in that apartment,” she pointed up at the annex over the garage. “I was just trying to get into my home.”
Frowning, I looked at her again and winced when I realized the reason she looked so familiar was because she looked like her brother.
Shit!
“Where are your keys, ma’am?” the officer asked as both of them closed the distance between us.
“On the table by the front door. I forgot them this morning, and the front door locks automatically so I couldn’t go back in to get them. I was also running late, and Hayden said to just climb up this thing,” she shook the trellis and sighed when the piece of wood she was holding came away in her hand.
Yup, that sounded like something he’d say.
“Do you mind if we corroborate this with Mr. Wilkes?”
Looking around, I saw I’d dropped my phone on the ground when she’d landed on me, so I moved to pick it up, pulling up Hayden’s details as I straightened.
Putting the phone on speaker, we waited for him to answer.
“Miss me already? If you need me to tell you how to play a real man’s game, I’ve got ten minutes to spare,” the smart ass said as he answered.
“You wish,” I snorted. “A real man makes contact with the opposite team and doesn’t cry when he
gets hit, you pussy. And that’s not why I’m calling. There’s two police officers waiting for confirmation that the woman who was trying to break into your house is your sister.”
The woman sighed when he burst out laughing.
“Put me on FaceTime and I’ll double check,” he wheezed. Hitting the screen, I pointed the camera at her and did my best not to laugh at the glare she was shooting at my phone. “Hmm, she’s got the same colored hair, but it’s hard to be sure with it being so dark.”
Being the helpful guy that he was, the officer with the torch shone it straight at her face, making her screw it up in response.
“Ah, there she is. Yeah, I think that’s her. It’s the scrunched face that did it seeing as how she’s always pissed.”
And what did she do to that? She shot him the bird. “Must you always be such an awkward asshole?”
“Yup! And you look like shit. You should try smiling more, you know.”
“And you should try arsenic,” she snapped.
Seeing that this was going to end up in a sibling war, I cut the video on it and returned to just speakerphone. “So, you’re confirming it’s definitely her?”
“I guess,” he sighed. “But if the police arrest her, make sure you get it on video. If you’d listened to what I told you when you rang me this morning, there’s a keypad entrance to the back door, Ash. Maybe try that instead of breaking in.”
And with that, he hung up leaving three out of the four of us snickering. The one that wasn’t was the small redhead who was muttering about disowning her brother and football players with too much time on their hands.
“Well,” one of the officers said in a tone that sounded vaguely disappointed. “I guess we can leave you to it.”
Flashing them a grin, I took a step back in the direction of my house. “Thanks for coming, officers. We appreciate it.”
Apparently, that wasn’t actually the case, or, at least, Ashley wasn’t exactly grateful to me.
“If you want to arrest him for wasting your time, I’ll stand witness.”
Both men laughed, and just walked back to their vehicle, leaving me behind with the woman who looked like she was trying to kill me with her eyes. Sadly, I was immune to that look seeing as how my ex had used it on me constantly for the last three months before we broke-up.
So, I just grinned widely at her and raised my hand. “Nice meeting you.”
I was fairly certain that through her hiss she called me an asshole, but who knew?
Chapter 2
Ashley
My co-worker, Demi, was excitedly chattering about meeting the Seahawks players as we laid out our stuff in the room we’d been assigned to do the measurements and alterations in.
Outwardly I smiled at her and nodded, but inside I winced. I had an issue with football players seeing as how my dad was one and had apparently cheated on my mom every chance he could. A lot of his teammates had been the same, so I had zero trust and respect for them. That might sound a bit harsh, but I’d seen the devastation and hurt their actions caused to not just their wives, but their kids as well.
Sure, not everyone was unfaithful, but the football players I’d known had acted like it was their God given holy right to stick it where they wanted. In fact, one of the guys from Dad’s team had said just that during his divorce. So, I enjoyed the games, but avoided football players at all costs.
If I was brutally honest, I avoided most sports players. The only exception had been my soccer playing ex who’d ended up cheating on me with my boss in Ohio, and had then moved here after I did to try and join the soccer team my brother played on. Such a dick!
The door opening and loud voices entering the room pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Where do you want us, ladies?” one of them asked as they all lined up against the wall.
Glancing at Demi, I gave her a nod to proceed with organizing how this was going to happen.
The clothing and sewing company I’d just started working for, Because I Said Sew, had been tasked with outfitting the team with suits for business functions, and tuxedos for official parties. There was a charity gala happening in two weeks, so today was the day we were making the final alterations to the tuxedo part of the project.
“Okay, your tuxes are in garment bags with your names on them. If you could go and put them on, we’ll do the adjustments in here.”
The men followed their orders and left the room, all laughing about something that had happened the day before. If I’d been listening instead of now reading a book on my phone, I might have realized that it involved the incident between myself and Kip Sutherland, but the book had just hit a really interesting bit while we’d been waiting, so I was invested. I’d give myself until they came back and then part with it.
Within minutes, the first players were back.
“I’ll take you over here, and you can go over to Ashley,” Demi ordered, and I shut my phone off and put it to the side.
Picking up the pin cushion that fastened around my wrist and the little piece of tailors’ chalk that I’d need, I readied myself for the player to get up onto the step.
Immediately I saw an issue. One of the legs wasn’t falling properly, like the inseam was twisted at the top. Squatting down, I tried to think of something to say to break the awkwardness of the position, but the guy got their first.
“What is it with you and my legs? The guys have been teasing me about the bruises you left on them all day.”
Some people might apologize or defend themselves. Me? I got such a shock that it was him that my hand jerked as I pushed the pin through the material and buried it in his thigh.
Before I could move to pull it out or apologize, he let out a yell and slapped the area, pushing it even deeper.
“What the hell?” he yelled, growling when he hit it again.
Wincing, I reached forward and did my best to grab the bright pink pearl on the end of the pin. With him moving around, though, I had to keep jerking my hand away to avoid being the one to hit it.
Finally, out of patience I snapped, “If you’d stand still for a second, I’d be able to get it out. You hitting it is just pushing it farther into your thigh, you…” I paused, trying to think of a word that wasn’t overly offensive, unprofessional or a curse word. Oh, I had many that immediately came to mind, but all of them would end with me being fired. “Silly Sally,” I finished weakly.
“Did she just call him a silly Sally?” the player that was with Demi snickered.
“Harsh, girl, harsh.” One of the other players—who, when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw was Will Montgomery—chuckled.
Looking back up at Kip, I took in his clenched jaw and the way his bright blue eyes were watching me like I was an alien or a species as yet undiscovered. “Will you please get that giant ass needle out of my leg. Like, now.”
Giant ass needle? What a pussy!
Shrugging, I did a quick grab and pull, and had the puny little pin in my hand in seconds.
Holding it up for him to see, I spoke without thinking. “Wanna keep it as a souvenir?”
During the incident, the rest of the players had come back from getting changed, and as soon as I finished talking, they all burst out laughing.
Not taking his eyes off me, Kip waited for it to die down before he introduced me, making the shitty situation even worse.
“Guys, allow me to introduce you to Ashley Wilkes. Ashley is Hayden Wilkes’s sister. Ashley apparently likes to go wall climbing in her spare time. Ashley is also the one responsible for the bruises you’ve been laughing at all day. Ashley is also the one responsible for my new piercing.”
It was like the worst version of a dating introduction ever. There were no long walks, helping kids, doing stuff for charity, none of the stuff that gave a hint that the person you were meeting was a good person.
Instead, I sounded like a crazy person who was responsible for multiple injuries to the guy. Oh, and I had a brother who was a well-known soccer player
for the Seattle Sounders. That was the extent of my resume.
Thinking she was helping but was in fact digging my grave that little bit deeper, Demi recounted the story I’d told her on the way here. “She also has a partially blind Yorkshire Terrier that she used to take to the pediatric ward at the hospital, but he got into some cupcakes and had diarrhea in one of the rooms. She’s not allowed to take him back.”
Glaring at her, I considered correcting the parts that she’d gotten wrong—like the fact that it was one of the nurses who kept feeding him the aforementioned cupcakes even though I’d told her not to—but decided that silence was better.
Eyes wide, Kip gasped, “That was you? We got there ten minutes after that to hand out some stuff to the kids, and the smell almost made me puke.”
I held in the wince that wanted to break free. Admittedly, it’d been horrific, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him.
Instead, I ground out, “He’s getting a vest that says not to feed him. Once he has that, he’ll be allowed back because the kids loved him.”
“That’s if she doesn’t use him to break her fall or as a voodoo doll,” Will snickered, making everyone else in the room laugh.
Sighing, I rolled my eyes and got back to work.
After that, the day went better than it had started, and I was able to forget about all of the bad things that I’d been thinking about the new ‘Seattle solidarity’ mentality, where big companies and sports teams used Seattle based companies for their merchandise which led to me having to deal with big assholes.
That was until I got home and my brother called to ask me to go in his place to the charity gala I’d just been outfitting the Seahawks for. Oh, and my boss somehow found out thanks to him Tweeting about it and decided I had to go to represent Because I Said Sew, too.
Out of Bounds: A Quick Snap Novella Page 1