Daddy Player
A BILLIONAIRE SPORTS BABY ROMANCE
Holly Jaymes
Copyright © 2018 by Holly Jaymes
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.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Author’s Note
His Fake Fiance Chapter 1 Preview
His Fake Fiance Chapter 2 Preview
About Holly Jaymes
Also by Holly Jaymes
Chapter 1
Beth
The team meeting was in full swing, and I was still thinking about Vince Woods.
It wasn’t like I wanted to daydream about him. I would have much preferred to just focus on the meeting, forget about that hot body and move on with my life. After all, it wasn’t like something like that was ever going to happen to me again, not to a girl like me.
It was a fluke, a freak accident, and I was pretty sure that he regretted it already. He was probably just too drunk to even remember.
Our team leader, Nathan, was pointing to the graphs on the board. He took stats really seriously, laying all his trust in them for projecting what our future tactics should be.
Like a lot of things in my life, being a part of a trendy social media marketing agency was not something I pictured for myself. I wasn’t exactly one of the popular girls in school or in college. I kept myself to myself, never venturing out of my immediate friends' circle which comprised of my two best friends Suzy and Gia. I studied hard, focused on my grades and practiced my art as a hobby.
I was always creative, but academics were given first priority in my family. So, I did my math and chemistry and agreed that becoming an engineer or an economist would be more fulfilling as a career than a photographer.
After all, where was photography going to lead me?
This job happened by accident. Just like sleeping with Vince Woods, one of the hottest NFL players in the country; happened by accident too.
I got hooked to social media pretty early, not because I wanted to display my ‘happening’ lifestyle to the rest of the world; but because I was curious about how it worked. Pretty soon, I’d figured out how trends functioned, the technicalities of these platforms and as soon as I got out of college—Soletraders offered me a job based on my blog.
They were a brand new social media marketing company and were looking for young people to join their teams, who intrinsically understood the way the internet and these platforms worked. I was one of them.
Coincidentally, I happened to have a working knowledge of photography, which was another skill they were impressed with. I joined the company when I was twenty-one, and within two years I was already working with my own clients.
Back then, there weren’t too many of these companies around. We were one of the firsts and in high-demand. Fast forward five years and everyone was on social media. Everyone wanted a piece of that cake. And our agency happened to be one of the few companies in the country with a lot of experience in the industry.
At the tender age of twenty-eight, I was already an expert in the field and highly regarded by my peers. Nathan trusted me, and I still couldn’t believe I now found myself in such a ‘cool’ position.
It was refreshing to be seen working at a company like this one—with the fancy cafeteria and open plan offices, bean bags and sleeping pods in the rec-rooms. Within just a few years, our agency had gone from being pointless to hot, and I was at the center of this—a nerdy small-town girl from Portland, who was supposed to study engineering but had somehow ended up here, in one of the hottest companies in New York.
But my past and my future and the wonder of it all—were not the things I was thinking about at this meeting today. My mind was filled with thoughts of Vince Woods. About how I’d slept with one of the most desirable men in the country, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it.
I didn’t even realize I was attracted to men like him. He was big, tall, muscular, with dark hair and neatly trimmed facial hair. He had the strength to swing me around in his arms like I weighed nothing. I've seen those tattoos under his shirt, and they had turned me on even more. I don't even watch NFL! The only reason I knew who he was was that Gia and Suzy were gushing over him as he walked towards us across the nightclub floor.
I knew I shouldn’t have gone on that trip to Miami. Spontaneous weekend vacations weren’t my thing. I preferred planning and to-do-lists, but Gia and Suzy had talked me into it. Now, look what I’ve done. I ended up having a one-night stand with a man who wouldn’t even remember my name!
My cheeks flushed in the middle of the meeting, and I stared down at my lap, trying not to give myself away.
One night stands weren’t my thing either, and now I couldn’t stop thinking about him and how hot the sex was. How did other men and women do it? How did they just sleep with someone and get over them the next morning? Maybe it was because they detached themselves from feeling anything? Perhaps I found it difficult because I was foolish enough to actually like him and to enjoy his company in the short time that we talked.
Going to Miami for the weekend and sleeping with Vince Woods was the most spontaneous thing I had done in my life and now I regretted all of it. I wished I could go back to feeling nothing and to not be thinking about this guy that I couldn’t have.
“Beth?” Nathan’s voice snapped me out of it, and I looked up at him with a deer-in-the-headlights expression on my face.
“Hi,” I mumbled, hoping he didn’t have anything important to ask me. Nathan smiled, with an expectant look on his face.
“Is there anything you would like to add to that, Beth?” he said. I gulped and shifted in my chair, trying to come up with something, anything to say. I hadn’t heard a word of what he had been saying.
“No, nothing. Absolutely nothing,” I said, hoping that was going to work, and thankfully it did. Nathan looked away and turned his attention to someone else. I breathed in and shook my head.
I needed to do something about this private obsession that was taking over my life.
Chapter 2
Vince
I wasn’t sure how to handle them. There were three kids in my house other than me with no adult supervision. Most of the time, I found I needed my very own adult supervision to stop me from doing something stupid.
But now I had Evie, Oscar, and Isabel to look after, and for some strange reason my friends seemed to think that I would do a good job of it.
They were practically babies. Evie was the oldest, nearly four, while Oscar and Isabel were between one to three. I lost track. In my eyes, they were toddlers and not much differentiated one from the other. One of the girls showed me how to change diapers, and I had no idea what I would do when the time came to actually do it.
Thankfully, Isabel, the youngest, was sleeping all the time, so I had one less baby to worry about. Evie was running around a lot and saying things which I didn’t understand. Oscar had recently started making sounds and trying to say words too. So those two were a handful.
Under the girls’ strict instructions I wasn’t supposed to let any of them out of my sight, not even for a moment. How was I supposed to take a piss?
I took their instructions very seriously and made sure I avoided all liquids all morning, so I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.
What madness had possessed my friends to assume I would actually be able to do this?
I loved these kid. They were family to me, and I would have done anything to protect them, but entertaining them and making sure their bottoms were clean wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.
Still, it was my turn to help out with the family. I think that I will look into hiring a nanny for the next time though.
Before I even knew what was happening, we had turned into one big family. Just a few years ago, it was the four of us Sawyer, Isaac, Cliff, and I. Just four guys who knew each other since college and we were best friends. It was Sawyer who dropped first. He fell in love with Faye, and they had Evie. Then it was Isaac. He and Margo had Oscar. Then it happened to Cliff. He was the guy I didn’t expect to actually fall in love and have a family. He rekindled his long-forgotten romance with Piper, and before we knew it, Isabel was born. Within four years we went from four to ten.
It kept us busy, and I was now always surrounded by my friends who were family, but I had to admit that I was overwhelmed by it all. Since Isabel’s birth, over a year ago everyone was now looking at me. They hoped that I would find someone too and complete the circle, but the truth was that my friends didn’t have any real expectations of me.
I was never in a relationship. I had also never fallen in love. The closest I came to having a girlfriend, was a French supermodel two years ago who I was sleeping with for a month straight. But I didn’t speak French, and she didn’t speak English, and it was never going to work out. That relationship was based on little more than sex, and my friends didn’t approve.
I liked my life like this. I dated beautiful women. I played my game and traveled the world, and thankfully, I was still able to maintain my privacy. I stayed out of the limelight and the media as much as I could and dedicated my free time to my friends. Being around these kids filled me with joy, but I knew I would panic and run for the woods if I had to have one of my own.
I wouldn’t be able to deal with that kind of responsibility, and my friends knew that too.
They were expecting me to turn into their forever-bachelor friend who was the fun uncle for the kids.
Today I was sitting in my living room on the carpet with Evie and Oscar, while Isabel slept in her cot beside us. I cleared out all the furniture in the room earlier, because I was paranoid about one of them hurting themselves. Evie and Oscar were playing nicely with the building blocks, and I watched over them, trying to resist the urge to go to the fridge and pull out a can of cold beer.
I needed to stay focused on these kids, and I needed to avoid the bathroom so I couldn’t drink.
Now that I had nothing to do, my mind drifted to my recent Miami trip. I just got back three days ago. I met a girl named Beth. Did she say her name was Beth Thomas?
I decided I was thinking about her this often because the sex was explosive. The reason for that was probably because it was so unexpected from her.
From a distance, she seemed shy, refusing to meet my eyes, dressed in a Boho-chic floral dress that hung loosely over her shoulders. Her wavy chestnut hair was messy around her shoulders as she tried to dance with her friends, and was clearly so uncomfortable in that nightclub scene.
I wasn’t quite sure what had attracted me to her. I was too drunk to remember clearly right now. But I remember noticing her and being drawn to her. Maybe it was because she looked so different from all of the other girls in their flashy sequin dresses and glittery makeup. Beth looked simple, and casual as if she just walked into the nightclub from the beach. She stood out.
Now, in my house, while I was supposed to be watching my friends’ kids, I was fantasizing about this girl, who I would definitely never see again. It was the sex. It was just the sex and nothing else.
Chapter 3
Beth
Shortly after the meeting which I had somehow managed to dupe my way through, Nathan called up the line at my desk and asked to see me. I went to his office, unsure of what this could possibly be about.
When I walked in, Nathan was sitting at his desk-less chair. His office was a glass done, in keeping with the theme and decor of our company.
“You wanted to see me?” I interrupted his humming. He had headphones in his ears and was humming along to some tune. He plopped them out and looked up at me with a smile.
“Have a seat, Beth,” he suggested as I looked around dejectedly. I’d never been a fan of these bean bags which he had around his office. I picked a purple one, which looked to be the most comfortable, and I sat down. I tried to cross my legs while on it, but that was impossible.
“So, tell me, Beth, what’s going on with you?” Nathan asked. I smiled at him, trying to rack my brains about everything I could throw at him right now.
“You mean with my clients?” I asked, and he raised his eyebrows.
“Well, Potpourri has their new line of earrings out, which I’m planning to attack this season via the new one-minute story features,” I started rattling off. I stopped eventually when I saw Nathan shaking his head.
“I know you’re on top of your clients, Beth. That is not what I’m asking. What is going on with you?”
I looked at him with my brows crossed. Was it that obvious? Had he somehow found out about Vince? How could that have happened?
He must have noticed the color leaving my face because he was now doubly sure there was something I was hiding.
“You can tell me, Beth. I would like to think we’ve become friends over the years,” Nathan said.
I tried shifting in the beanbag, but that wasn’t successful either. No, I didn’t consider Nathan my friend. Yes, we’d been working together for a few years now, and he was technically my boss, and I knew he relied on me because I was the most experienced on his team. However, our work methods were different, and we often knocked heads and didn’t see eye to eye. For some reason, Nathan always saw me as competition.
Nathan relied a lot on statistics and what the numbers told him, while I relied on gut instinct and a feel for what was going to sell.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I told him. He drew in a deep breath.
“For the last few days, Beth, actually ever since you came back from your long weekend trip to Miami; you seem to be somewhere else. This morning at the meeting, I knew for a fact your mind was just not in it. You had no idea what I was saying.”
I gulped and nodded.
“I’m so sorry about that, Nathan. I really am. I promise you that will never happen again,” I apologized.
“And what about that report on the Henderson’s, which was supposed to be on my desk at six last evening?” he continued.
Shit.
I’d completely forgotten about that. I hadn’t even started working on it!
“Oh my God, Nathan, I’m so sorry. I’m going to get that to you in two hours. Just give me two hours!” I said, struggling to get up off that bean bag again.
“Don’t bother. I need you on something else instead,” Nathan said, in a dry voice.
I sat back down with a thump on the beanbag.
“Okay, yeah, anything,” I said.
“I need you to get on the first flight to Boston. We got a call this morning from Vince Wood’s agent. I’m assuming you know who he is?”
As Nathan’s voice floated through me, I thought I imagined all of this. I could do nothing but blink at him.
“Okay, good. That man is the most popula
r NFL player in the country, but he has close to no social media presence. His agent is worried and wants us to do something about it. Which means that I want you to do something about it.”
Had I heard that right? Vince Woods? The Vince Woods?
The guy who was haunting my dreams and my bed since Miami, Vince Woods?”
“Now, whatever’s going on with you, Beth, I want you to just put that stuff on the back burner and focus on this guy for some time. I need you to start a social media campaign for him and prove to his agent that we can handle him full-time. Are you hearing me?”
Nathan’s voice grew firmer, and I had no choice but to nod.
“Yes, of course, sure, whatever you need, Nathan!”
“Good. You’ve been our star performer for years, and as you know, the higher-ups want to promote you. They'd like to make you team leader in the next quarter. You get to be me,” Nathan commented, with a nervous laugh.
“If you want me to recommend you, you need to get Vince Woods on board as a client for our team,” he added.
I nodded, gulping profusely to wet my drying throat. I was panicking, and starting to break out in sweats. How could this be possible? Had he done this on purpose? Could it actually be possible that Vince Woods had tracked me down and wanted to see me again?
I blushed hard and tried to suppress a smile as I ran out of Nathan’s office. The possibility that Vince wanted to see me was overwhelming. Until I stopped in my tracks because I remembered that I never told him where I worked, or what I did for a living. I hadn’t even told him which city I lived in or where I’d grown up. Beth Thomas wasn’t the kind of name that was one in a million. There was no way that Vince could have just pinpointed me in a matter of four days.
Daddy Player: A BILLIONAIRE SPORTS BABY ROMANCE Page 1