by Lucy Snow
Contents
Before You Begin...
CHAPTER 01 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 02 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 03 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 04 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 05 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 06 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 07 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 08 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 09 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 10 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 11 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 12 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 13 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 14 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 15 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 16 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 17 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 18 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 19 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 20 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 21 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 22 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 23 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 24 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 25 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 26 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 27 - MACKENZIE
CHAPTER 28 - HUDSON
CHAPTER 29 - MACKENZIE
Afterword
Hi! I’m Lucy Snow, and I wrote the book you’re about to read. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you read the rest of my books!
If you’d like to get emails about my new releases and opportunities to read my new books for free, please sign up for my mailing list by following this link:
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The book you’re reading is part 3 of The Alpha Ballers Trilogy. It is a standalone story with a full HEA!
If you would like to read parts 1 and 2 first, which introduce several of the characters in this book (and contains complete nifty romances as well), please check them out with the links below:
Tackled: A Football Romance; The Alpha Ballers, Book 1
College football’s most infamous wide receiver wants to show her that everything’s bigger in the pros.
If I know what's good for me, I'll stay as far away from Drake Rollins as I can...
I have loved football since I was a kid, and now I cover a team professionally.
So it’s just my luck that I get stuck following Drake Rollins around as he tries to make my favorite team.
We knew each other in college, and though I can't stop thinking about him, I know I have to stay away.
He's radioactive, in danger of throwing his life away, and it looks like I'm one of the only people on Earth who sees any potential in him.
How long can I resist this gorgeous and sexy man?
Sacked: A Football Romance; The Alpha Ballers, Book 2
I have one cardinal rule in pro football that I never break.
During the season I don’t date.
Until I met Charlotte, I've had no trouble following the rules.
Charlotte Calloway is sweet, caring and the hottest girl I've ever seen. She's also my physical therapist and trainer. And she's entirely off limits.
The trouble is, I didn't know who she was when I met her. And I had no idea we’d be working together. It was her job to keep me healthy, help me recover after games and prepare for the next one, and I showed her a lot more than that.
But after that first passionate night - how can we work together?
The rule says I'm not supposed to date anyone. I'm definitely not supposed to undress Charlotte with my eyes and with my hands every time she clings to me.
Well, too bad.
I don't want to date her. I don't want her in my bed. I want to get back on the field and help my team get to the playoffs.
But in the meantime, I’m in danger of losing my heart to Charlotte Calloway.
And I might be OK with that.
CHAPTER 01 - MACKENZIE
“Mackenzie? You still here?”
“Huh?” I whipped my head around, blinking rapidly, guilty that I had been totally busted.
“You…with us?”
“Y-Yes, please go on.” Ugh, please just let this meeting end already.
For a winter’s afternoon, the sun was out in full force and I looked out my window more often than I should have, breaking my concentration. It had snowed overnight again, and I had always loved the snow - sometimes I loved it more when I was safe and warm inside and staring at it through a window like I was doing now, but even then I was always looking forward to getting outside and being in the snow again.
Unfortunately, during these last few weeks my chances to get out and frolic in the snow had been few and far between. It was January, and for me, this year January meant playoffs.
In addition to all the other usual stuff that piled up when you worked on a football team. Getting into the playoffs, which was every team’s goal, right in front of winning the championship, was just another layer to work through, a new set of headaches and decisions to make.
At the same time, though, there was nothing like it. We had a shot to win the entire thing. We could be the best professional football team in the country, and by extension, in the world. It was a tantalizing and elusive goal, and it was still in our grasp.
That was more than could be said for 20 other teams in the league, teams whose records didn’t measure up, who would watch the playoffs from their couches. The Patriots had been like that many years in the past, but not this year.
This year we had a shot. The facility practically hummed with the electricity of the playoffs atmosphere, and everyone had a little extra pep in their step, me included.
This meeting was boring, but even so, these people had gathered here in my office for a reason, and a big part of that reason was me, so I should probably be paying attention instead of looking out at the long grass of the park next to the Patriots’ facility rolling in the light wind.
I sighed, out loud before realizing how rude that would seem, and covered my mouth quickly, turning my head back into my office. The assembled members of the front office team must have picked up on my lack of interest, because one of them piped up and said we could finish this some other time. I nodded and thanked them, and they filed out of the room.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my work. I was lucky enough to be in one of the family businesses, and in this case the family business was owning and operating a professional football team. I never took how lucky I was for granted and never had stopped appreciating the opportunity I had been given.
But at the same time, working in professional sports wasn’t nearly as glamorous as it might sound. Certainly not as flashy as the players’ lives, certainly not as colorful and fast-paced as ESPN made it out to be.
Still, there was nothing I would rather be doing. I had been around the Patriots since I was a child - my father had been a season ticket holder almost since the team’s inception. When his business acumen and savvy made him wealthy, one of his first extravagant purchases, well, really, one of his only extravagant purchases, was buying the struggling New England Patriots. As he had juggled his other various business interests over the years, he had always worked tirelessly to try and elevate the team out of the basement of the league.
And now, all that hard work was starting to bear fruit. I looked over at my wall where I had a giant blown up depth chart of the team, listing each of the players, their salaries for this year, and how many years we had them under contract.
I planted my fingers on my desk and stood up, walking to the chart so I could stare at it. My father had many businesses, and in his prime he made them all hum, but this, this roster in front of me on the wall, this was my hard work.
I had helped put this together, and it looked for the first time in a long time like the Patriots were poised to build something special and make a run at the trophy. It
was an exciting time, and I couldn’t think of anything else.
Except when I looked out the window. Down on the field, where the groundskeeping staff had spent hours clearing away the snow this morning, were the players, fresh off their victory in the week 17 divisional game, practicing and getting themselves prepared for the upcoming wildcard game.
The players. Professional football players running around and practicing right outside my window, in tight pants, barely stretched over taut and powerful muscles. Every day.
Yeah, I was a lucky girl. It was like a chippendales show right outside my window whenever I wanted. Especially when practice ended and the guys ripped off their pads while walking slowly back to the locker room, bodies covered in sweat under the sun, some drenched in water from their bottles.
Lucky girl, indeed. The sun was shining today, helping melt the snow, and practice was just wrapping up. I watched Coach Armstrong call the last couple plays to practice on offense and defense.
Lance Parker, his red no-contact jersey tight around his body, took the snap from center, dropped back 5 steps, nimble as a fox, took a couple quick glances to either side, before stepping up in the pocket and firing a quick strike down the field right into Drake Rollins’ outstretched hands.
I shook my head in disbelief - it was like the two of them could talk to each other without words, and they had only played together for 5 months now! That kind of quarterback-receiver connection was something a team and a front office went years looking for - and I had helped find it and now we were enjoying the results.
Almost absentmindedly, I picked up my notes on Drake Rollins. I’d watched his fall from grace in the eyes of the league with interest - I had seen all the reports of character concerns that made other pro teams loathe to spend draft picks on him.
I’d been following him since he’d gotten to college, one of the hundreds of players I kept information on for future reference, and Drake had always struck me as a brilliant football mind and athletic body, but his skills and talents had always been wasted at the high school and college level.
The moment I had watched him go undrafted, I’d pulled Coach Armstrong aside and convinced him that Drake was someone we could take a flyer on and the blowback would be minimal if things didn’t work out.
And now Drake had just completed one of the greatest rookie seasons by a wide receiver in league history. For him to have gone undrafted would go down as an historic blunder by all 31 of the other teams. But not the Patriots. No, we’d taken a gamble on Drake Rollins and it had paid off in spades.
I turned back to the window and watched them run the same play over and over. The defense adjusted slightly each time, the defensive coordinator barking out orders from the sideline, desperately trying to move his guys around to stop Lance and Drake from completing another sure-touchdown.
Finally, after 2 more reps, a linebacker lurched over to get into position near Drake and help out the cornerback guarding him. The play started and while the cornerback stuck to his man despite Drake’s blistering speed down the field, when Lance threw the ball, the linebacker reached up with a giant arm and pulled the ball right out of the air and into his grasp, breaking free and running back toward the offense like he simply refused to be stopped.
He ran at full speed till he was behind the offense with no one in front of him to get in his way before he slowed to a jog. I knew who it was already, just by the number on the back of his jersey, flowing in the soft winter sun, but when he took off his helmet, spiked it and the football on the ground before dancing around each of them in a figure 8, I couldn’t help but crack up laughing.
Hudson Asher was the life of the defense, and probably the entire team. Everyone on the team looked up to him like an older brother, and that wasn’t difficult since he was also the tallest player on the team, at a whopping 6’6”.
I leaned over and slid the window open just a crack, shivering slightly as the cold air crept in, covering my bare forearms in goosebumps. Hud kept right on dancing, jumping up and down and hollering about how he’d gotten inside Lance Parker’s head, disrupted his flow, and how Lance would never throw a touchdown again on Hud’s watch.
Parker started laughing, and I could just hear him yell back that it was good they played on the same team. Coach Armstrong took the opportunity to end practice, and the guys started pulling their pads and jerseys off. You’d think none of them would want to walk around in the cold Massachusetts winter with so little clothing on, but after a couple hours of running around and smashing into each other like coordinated bumper cars, I’m sure none of them felt cold.
I wasn’t about to complain about the view. Especially not on Hudson Asher. The man was built like a statue carved out of fluid muscle, an Adonis among a team full of them. These men stretched the boundaries of human conditioning, strength, and physical skill and experience, and among them, Hudson Asher might have been the most physically gifted of all of them.
I had a free view of scantily clad ridiculously toned and muscled men whenever I want, but whenever I spent any time around the players, if Hudson Asher was in the room I had to make sure to avert my eyes so it wasn’t super obvious to anyone who looked at me that Hud’s body made my mouth water with lust.
It was mortifying to me just how much I had fantasized about him. It was totally unprofessional and I had never admitted my crush to anyone, not even my girlfriends after one too many drinks. This was just something I couldn’t talk about. And not just because it was so embarrassing how much his smile could set me off, but mostly because I couldn’t bare any sense of impropriety about my work.
I knew that the business of professional sports was an arena all its own, completely separate from the actual playing of games. And I knew that the combatants in this arena were nearly all men, most of whom still held antiquated beliefs about what careers were appropriate for women near and dear to their hearts.
If I’d had a dollar for each time a man in this business had given me a funny look when they’d found out that I wasn’t some executive’s wife or girlfriend or intern, but an actual real-life front office employee of the New England Patriots, I’d be able to buy the team from my father.
So yeah, no one could know about my lust for one Hudson Asher. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t look at him from time to time and imagine those massive shoulders towering above me, those huge arms wrapping themselves around me.
Down, girl. Remember, this was the office. No time for that now. I took a deep breath and looked at the clock, cursing under my breath as I realized how late I was getting. All this watching the players was taking up just a little bit too much time today, and I had a schedule to keep.
But I did have time to visit the field really quick before I left the office for the day. I gathered up my things, wrapped my coat around my shoulders, perking up as the warm wool covered me, and I left the office, saying goodbye to my coworkers as I walked out and down to the field level. I’d be seeing a bunch of them in a few hours anyway.
The rush of cold air hit me as I opened the door out onto the field. Most of the players had gone into the locker room by now, but a few milled around and joked with each other, going over notes from practice, giving advice and admonishments in equal amounts.
Hudson Asher was still dancing around that football he’d caught and returned for a touchdown. No one on the team was surprised - Hud was widely known as the team’s biggest joker and prankster.
I thought about going to talk to him, but I had more pressing matters at the moment.
Coach Armstrong stood on one of the sidelines, hands gesturing wildly back and forth as he and a position coach argued about a play call. I walked right up to him and we locked eyes for a second, after which Coach Armstrong dismissed the position coach and turned to face me.
“Can I help you, Mack?”
“Hey, Coach, nice practice today. Team’s looking really good. Gonna be ready on Sunday?” I already knew the answer to the question, but Coach Armstrong ha
d little patience for anything except for football.
“They’ll be as ready as I can get them,” he replied, tersely. Then he added, under his breath, “more so if we didn’t have this fucking thing to attend tonight.”