Playing for Keeps: An Enemies to Lovers Sports Romance

by Stephanie Queen

  “Truthfully, I don’t know what happened there because neither of them is talking to me.” She laughs. “But seriously, I think I didn’t know them well enough to do a good job and I’ve learned a lot from the experience.”

  She turns to me with a speculative look. “So, Tate, you’re looking for someone special?”

  Raising my hands, I say, “Yes, but I can handle the job—”

  “Let me help you. I bet I can find someone for you. Let me play matchmaker.”

  “No way in hell,” I say automatically. My upbringing is too conventional, too vanilla to consider this seriously. Saying no to anything unusual is my kneejerk reaction. Though, in truth, I’m trying to work on resolving that, to expand my horizons.

  “Why not?” Hunter says. “I’ll put money on my wife.”

  “Hell, I’ll pay money just to see it happen,” Gabe laughs. “I want to be there for the fix-up.”

  Sean perks up. “I’ll take that bet, Hunter. A hundred bucks says she fixes him up and it doesn’t work, ’cause I don’t think he’s ready to settle down. He’s too good a wingman for that.”

  “You’re on,” Hunter says.

  “Guys, you’re forgetting something,” I say. “I haven’t agreed to this matchmaking scheme.”

  Cat turns her eyes on me then and the others all look at me expectantly.

  “I promise it’ll be painless, Tate. What do you really have to lose?” She pauses and they’re all waiting, but she’s right. I haven’t been making any progress the conventional way. Besides, matchmaking is a lot like a blind date setup, isn’t it? And that’s not so crazy really.

  “Okay. I’ll agree to one blind date. We’ll see how you do with that.”

  She gives me a big smile and the others high five each other.

  “You won’t regret it. I’m excited about the challenge.” She has a scary gleam in her eye. “I’ll be in touch with the details. I’ll arrange a dinner party.”

  “Sounds good,” I say. It is good. I need this. A decent woman—who’s also gorgeous and smart whether I deserve it or not—to take my mind off a certain girl reporter. I’m not looking for love and roses at this stage, but I’m no player with women and I’m not interested in being a monk either., Some day I’ll be looking for serious, but not now. First things first. I need to seal the deal on my new contract.

  Then it’s the promised land, the security I crave because I can’t escape my midwestern upbringing, the conventional need of the regular guy to have a regular life. It’s who I am underneath the football player, before I was ever a pro in the NFL. Some day I’ll go looking for a a woman who, like me, will appreciate a regular life, to share it with me. But that’s not until football is over.

  The rest of the team starts trickling off the practice field and Hunter asks, “What did you and Chloe Smith talk about at lunch?”

  Fuck it. I get an instant gut clench, but I listen.

  “Sorority sister stuff. No football talk, I promise.”

  He nods. He’s happy to leave it at that and I have no business prodding her, but everything in me wants to know. I am interested enough to ask, but no way I’m going to indulge my curiosity because Chloe isn’t my concern and Cat is a professional. She’s on our team and I trust her not to say the wrong thing. Or anything about me that hasn’t already been said, like a bunch of bullshit about the promise of a new season with a healthy start. I’m saved from embarrassing myself with an inappropriate question when Sean Patrick claps my back and says, “I’m heading inside.”

  Practice is over. Looking up, I see there’s no one left on the field. Most of the men are squeezing us out to get drinks. Knowing this signals the media that it’s their time to come at us for Q&A if they can catch us, I follow Sean and we all head into the tunnel.

  The media storms us as we’re heading to the locker room and I know they’re going to follow us all the way inside, armed with cameras and mics. But I need to ice my shoulder and back and I don’t need the media knowing about it. Scanning the crowd, I don’t see the crazy chick Chloe. I get that blip of something I’m choosing to interpret as relief, but my tension doesn’t go down, it spikes. So, hiding in a huddle of offensive linemen, the biggest of the bigs on our team, I slip away to the training room.

  Aside from icing, getting my lower back massaged is my number-two priority. The nagging pain there hasn’t gone away, naturally. But I can keep it managed with ice, heat and massages and every other damn thing the team has at its disposal to keep us in the game.

  I’m alone, with ice strapped to my shoulder and pedaling a bike, when I look away from the TV screen showing the endless loop of our recent Super Bowl championship game, and I stop.

  “What the fuck are you doing in here?” The bane of my existence—and the woman I see in my sweaty restless dreams, Chloe fucking Smith—walks in as if she belongs, as if she’s going to strip down to shorts and jump on the bike next to me. I should be yelling at her to get out, but I start pedaling again, keeping my cool. It’s the only way to handle her. In spite of my best intentions, my heart rate picks up and shows on the monitor and it’s not because I’m pedaling super fast, because I’m not. An ice bath for my back sounds like a good idea right about now. I need to submerge my entire lower body in ice to keep my dick from straining in her direction.

  She’s wearing a fitted pink sheath dress that looks like silk as it shimmers over her perfect curves and strappy silver sandals like she’s going out for cocktails as soon as she leaves here.

  “I came to check up on my favorite . . . player.”

  I don’t like the way she says player, as if she’s hungry and sizing me up for a meal. Of course my cock loves her voice, all smoky and intense, and I know she’s playing games with me. But today I’m not full of whiskey and we’re not out at a club. This is my turf and I want no part of her.

  “I came in here to get away from you.” I don’t bother mincing words, don’t care if she trashes me on air, calls me unfriendly or worse. I’ll talk to any and all of the other reporters, including the others from her station. That ought to send a message. “Besides, you ought to be covering the coaches’ Q&A, the star players. Talk to Gabe. He loves to talk.”

  She snorts. “Too easy. And since when do you get to tell me how to do my job?”

  “Turnabout—”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken. There’s nothing fair about the game we play,” she says and comes closer so I can smell her heady perfume, making me want to reach out and touch the soft curls of her hair, feel them brush against my face, my—fuck. The last thing I need is visions of her going down on me. I need to find a real woman, one I might have a future with, to dwell on if I’m going to go there.

  “Get out of here, Smitty, before I have to escort you out. Wouldn’t want to make a scene.”

  “Why not? It would go a long way to enhance my reputation around here.”

  “You’d be a pariah.”

  She laughs. “I already am, big boy. Didn’t you know? I’m the pathetic little girl of the late-great master trying to fill her daddy’s shoes and never gonna make it.”

  I stop pedaling, my lower back is protesting anyway, getting crankier by the second, and I take a long look at those intense eyes. Is she playing me, or does she really believe her own sob story?

  “I thought you were his legend reincarnate? I didn’t figure self-pity was your style.”

  She shrugs. “You don’t know me. Besides, it’s not self-pity. It’s confusion.” She narrows her eyes. “Something about you and your no-bullshit attitude gets to me, makes me all girlie and talkie.”

  Rolling my eyes, I can’t help a smile, because now I know she’s playing me. Except for that admission about her confusion.

  “Get out, Chloe. It’s time for me to strip down and take an ice bath and I wouldn’t want you to get overexcited and out of control.”

  “Now you’re talking. I sense a reverse psychology invitation in there.”

  I can’t help my l
augh, genuinely amused. “You’re a pip.” I pull the ice pack off my shoulder and toss it onto a shelf and walk around the corner to the room with a row of ice baths lined up and waiting. There’s a guy in one of them. A rookie who was hurt yesterday.

  “What the fuck,” he says, looking past me. And I know Chloe has followed me. Turning and blocking her from going farther or seeing anything, I put my hands on her shoulders to move her back out of the room. The minute I touch her, my senses explode and my cock lifts my shorts. Ignoring the damn appendage because I need to get her out of here, I spin her around and escort her straight to the nearest exit. I’m not sure where it goes, but it doesn’t matter.

  “You sure have a thing for the forbidden, don’t you?” I scold her under my breath.

  “Why, I didn’t know you cared, Fontanna. Look at you, saving me from myself and all.”

  She doesn’t resist, I notice as I shake my head, wondering if she’s right. I shove the door open and shove her through it, noticing she ends up on the side of the building near the fence and the street. Far away from the action. Serves her right.

  As I close the door, she slips her high-heel sandal in to stop me and I know it has to hurt but she doesn’t flinch. Tough as nails. Tougher than some of the guys on the team some days. Can’t help the admiration meter in me rising simultaneously with my irrepressible cock.

  “Wait, I’m only doing my job, not trying to blindside you—I have no camera, no recorder, not even a scrap of paper on me.” She raises her hands to prove it, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  “What do you want?” I ask, realizing a fraction too late that we’re standing too close in the half-open doorway. She leans closer.

  “I want to know how far you’ll go? How much you’ll give up to play the game, how injured you’ll allow yourself to get and still play—”

  “Go away, Chloe,” I grit my teeth and try closing the door again. This time she lets me. But not before one last parting blast of nerve-tingling charm.

  “See you Saturday at the station for the interview. Wear a suit.” The door shuts. My pulse spikes even though she’s gone.

  Why I didn’t give her my stock answers to her questions, the same ones that have basically been asked before a hundred times, if not in so many words, and not with quite such intense passion, I can’t figure.

  Maybe it’s that passion, that sense of something personal, like she’s actually worried about me—trying to save me from myself—that makes her question seem different. Made me want to push her and her questions away. And at the same time, if I’m being honest with myself, made me want to take her in my arms and . . . I don’t know what. Don’t want to go there again. Need to banish her from my thoughts. Because let’s face it, she’s the last fucking woman I need to get involved with. She’s a damn reporter and I need to keep under the radar with my contract negotiations underway. My agent said the team’s representative specifically asked about my back and my love life. They’re digging into everything. No more Chloe.

  Until Saturday. Fuck. I have only a two-day reprieve.

  Chapter 7

  Chloe

  The buzz in the studio on Saturday morning is extra sharp as the director, Henry, Duff, and a couple of assistants and interns bustle around to set up for the interview. Or maybe it’s me, in my head, but the extra jolt of nerves is a good thing, keeps the edge on me. Rushing to the ladies’ room for one last look at myself, because I have no dressing room and no make-up artist in the studio today, I examine my face with a professional eye. It’s not the first time I’ve done my own make-up and it won’t be the last.

  With hard work, drive, concentration, and luck, I won’t be at a minor league station with a half-ass studio for long. Immediately, I feel a pang of loss and regret, because, like my father, I like the rough side of things, the striving and overcoming of obstacles—like no dressing room.

  “We ready to go?” Henry calls out. I give him the okay and step up onto the platform with the chairs that passes for a talk-show set. It can’t be called a stage, but it has a professional background with excellent lighting and a table between the two chairs. That’s all I need.

  “Send him in,” I say. Tate’s been waiting in the so-called green room. Wistful that I couldn’t scare him by sending him to make-up, I still myself as one of the grips leads him out to the set. He steps up, his eyes on me, a seemingly genuine pleasant smile on his face. Telling my pitter-pattering heart that the smile is not genuine, that he really hates me and everything I embody, I stand and reach my hand out to shake his, welcoming him to the studio.

  This is a performance for Henry and the staff as much as for the TV audience. We sit and I tell him which camera to look at and that the intro is playing and when it’s done I’ll introduce him and all he has to do is answer my questions in the most charming way he knows how.

  “And I know that shouldn’t be hard for you because you’re a natural born charmer.”

  “Takes one to know one,” he says, double dimples on display, almost setting my panties on fire. I see the two female interns practically swooning as they stare. Star-struck much?

  The director shouts, “Three . . . two . . . one,” and points a hand at me. The red light of the camera flashes and we’re on. Ignoring my racing pulse, ignoring the magnetic pull of the man seated in the chair next to me, I beam my most sincere professional smile at the camera.

  I ask him what his favorite Boston landmark is—a toss-up between the USS Constitution and the statue of Red Auerbach in Faneuil Hall Market—and what his favorite restaurant is—not Louie’s. There’s a secret acknowledgment, a subtle look that passes between us, that Louie’s is not to be shared with the wide world at large.

  “Do you expect to win tomorrow without most of the star players in the line-up?”

  He squirms. It’s the first football question, but he had to expect some talk of him and the team, didn’t he?

  “We always expect to win,” he says, grins. “But it’s pre-season.” He shrugs and I’m charmed in spite of myself. “This is the time for new guys to show their stuff, to win a spot on the roster.” Canned answer number one. Banal as shit. Stilling my instinct to go bold and shake him up, I smile and move on to ask him about his favorite ice cream and his favorite player growing up.

  “Now this is an important question,” I say, “What’s your favorite charity, Tate? The one you’re promoting at the Militia’s Foundation Gala next Friday night. I understand each of the Militia players—along with many other heavy hitters from Boston’s sports elite, will be auctioning off items. What’s your item?”

  “I’ll be auctioning off a signed game jersey and the proceeds will go to my foundation, The Frank Foundation, in honor of my uncle, my mentor, the man who was largely responsible for getting me where I am today.”

  “Tell us about what the foundation does.”

  Now he really smiles, leans forward and is fully engaged, talking to me like there is no camera, oozing passion and sensuality that I can feel down to the pulsing between my thighs.

  “The Frank Foundation supports sports and camps for disadvantaged kids in Ohio. We started in the city where I’m from, Dayton, and have now spread to other areas. We’d like to keep growing. Frank always believed sports was one sure-fire way to help kids stay on the straight and narrow through difficult times.” I suspect there’s more to that story but there’s no time to go into it right now, so I make a mental note to find out later.

  “Sounds very worthy—and very effective, from what I understand.” He nods and I turn to the camera because we’re close to wrap-up.

  “Of course NESH will be at the Militia Foundation Gala where the city’s big stars will auction off everything from jerseys to nights on the town—even a bachelor auction. I’ll be there to bring you scenes from the silent auction with exclusive interviews,” I say to the camera. There are four seconds left and I go for it.

  “Will you see any playing time in tomorrow’s game?”

  “Not
likely.” He doesn’t expand. Henry gives me the eye from off stage and I smile.

  “I suppose it’s just as well so you can give your shoulder—and your back—some rest.”

  He opens his mouth, then clamps it closed as outrage makes him glow like a bonfire. Henry takes a step, closer, but I turn to the camera and wrap up the interview.

  “That’s all we have time for today, but count on Tate Fontanna to return for another chat as the season gets underway in a few weeks.” The red light in the camera blinks off and the show goes to the outro and commercial. I stand and both Fontanna and Henry come at me at once. I stand my ground and take the flak because, let’s face it, I deserve it.

  “What the hell kind of—“ Tate blurts.

  “Smith, I want to see you in my office. Five minutes.” Henry kindly gives me a chance to wrap things up with Tate. I’d have preferred he said he needed to see me immediately. But I need to face Tate and I’m no coward. We’re still standing on the platform. His bulging arms are folded across his massive chest as he stares in accusing silence. I don’t know if I want to gulp or cream my panties. Probably both.

  “Thank you for coming in, Tate. Good interview.”

  “Don’t stand there and pretend you didn’t just insinuate I have an injury. My back? What the hell is that about? I don’t have any fucking back injury.”

  “Maybe not, but I bet it’s bothering you. I can tell by the way you carry yourself,” I lie through my teeth. He looks perfectly fine when he walks.

  “Bullshit.” He doesn’t move, stares me down, makes me feel like he’s getting bigger or I’m getting smaller.

  “Is it?” I pick up an empty cup from the table and toss it to his side. As predicted, he leans, putting an arm out to grab it, snatching it out of the air. But it’s a long reach and he stretches sideways pretty far to get it. I see the flinch. I raise my brows and fold my arms across my chest.

  He glares back at me for a long, tense, silent moment and I swear I can hear the clock ticking, except there is no clock. No more flinching in him and no backing down. And not a word as he brushes past me and heads for the exit.