Most Valuable Playboy

by Lauren Blakely

  I lean against the lamppost by the water as a seagull lands by my side, squawking for food. “I don’t have any. Go find Ford,” I tell him. But this bird is one of those seagulls that doesn’t speak English, so he doesn’t move.

  Quickly, I learn that Ford was right. The local online media has picked up on last night’s auction news, dubbing us The Quarterback and the Hometown Girl in one article, The Renegade and the Stylist in another. My favorite headline is one from a local gossip rag calling us The Baller and the Babe.

  That’s some honest reporting right there. Violet is a total babe. I read the brief mention.

  Ladies and gents in the Bay Area who’d been hoping for a night with the most valuable playboy will be crying in their cereal. The Renegades new starting quarterback is off the market since the fox from his hometown claimed him at auction last night. It turns out the baller who leads the team and the babe who snips hair in Sausalito have been locking lips for a while now. Let’s all just sigh and moan because it’s not fair that hot athletes only date models or hometown girls. How about us regular gals? Do we ever stand a chance with a superstar? At least the receiver is still single. Have you seen Jones Beckett’s hands?

  Damn. The press jumped all over the event like paratroopers from a plane. I hop over to Twitter to see what fans are saying, and a quick search reveals exactly why Violet’s shop is suddenly on the map in a whole new way.

  Darn, I’d been planning on flashing my boobs at him during the next home game.

  * * *

  The universe hates me. Not only is his GF hot, she’s also so sweet. But on the plus side, a new salon for me!

  * * *

  If I go to Heroes and Hairoines, maybe the Renegade hottie will show up and realize he wants me instead!

  * * *

  Who cares about dumb athletes? Did you see her hair? I’m so jelly of those locks!

  I scoff at the last one, muttering, “Three-point-five GPA in college, thank you very much. And it was not inflated. But, Violet’s hair is pretty.”

  As I scroll some more, I find cell phone shots of a woman standing outside the salon, pointing her thumb at it, wearing an Armstrong jersey. There’s one from last night of us answering questions on stage. Then a photo of us kissing. Then another. Then another. I zoom in on one, like the pervert I am. In this shot, I’m holding her face, my lips are crushed to hers, and her arms circle my neck. Spreading my thumbs on the screen, I enlarge the photo even more, zeroing in on her hands on the back of my head. Her fingers are threaded through my hair, and she’s clutching me tight. That does not look like the way a woman holds a man who kisses her weirdly.

  That looks like a woman who wants to be kissed. Who wants to be touched. Who wants to be taken.

  My blood heats as I remember the kiss. How my head was a haze and my body was amped full of electricity. How there was nothing else in that moment but the feel of her.

  And now, as my skin heats, I want another moment like that.

  Get yourself together.

  I refuse to get turned on from a cell phone shot.

  I jump out of the underbelly of the Web and return to the keypad. I try to call Violet once more, but her phone goes straight to voice mail again. Time to head into the fray. I slip my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, cross the street, and walk to the entrance.

  “Excuse me,” I say as I weave around a mom pushing a stroller.

  “No problem,” she says, then her lips twitch up. “Go Renegades!”

  I give a quick fist pump then dart around a few more people crowding the sidewalk. A teenager up the street lifts his phone and takes a picture as I push on the mistletoe-decorated door.

  The receptionist looks up and then beams, her bright green eyes wide and eager. “Hi, Cooper!”

  Several faces snap in my direction at once. Customers seated on a white leather couch in the waiting area gawk, while a woman in a salon chair with tinfoil in her hair peers over the top of her glasses. A lady with cherry-red hair stares my way as one of Violet’s half-dozen or so stylists snips her hair.

  There’s no point pretending I’m anyone else, so I give a friendly wave, then drum my fingers on the receptionist’s desk.

  “Hey, Sage,” I say to the woman with silvery-purple hair and bangles up to her elbows. “I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping to see—”

  “Your girlfriend,” she says brightly, her voice matching the jingle of her jewelry.

  I don’t answer right away. I let the word girlfriend bang around in my skull for a little longer. The last time I had a girlfriend was in college. Kelly was a track star, and we were a good fit since we were both more obsessed with sports than schoolwork, partying, or, frankly, even the opposite sex. Don’t get me wrong—we engaged in plenty of horizontal exercise, but neither one of us was keen on anything that dug much deeper on an emotional level. Hell, maybe that was why we were together for an entire year. We were easy, we were painless, and we were good. We broke up when she transferred to another school that had a better track team.

  “Yes, I’m here to see my girlfriend,” I say to Sage, and I hear whispers behind me.

  A few seconds later, the click of heels across the tile catches my attention. Violet walks toward me, and it takes me a few seconds to process what she’s wearing. Black leather pants. Holy hell, she’s wearing black leather pants, and she looks like a rock star in them, and I want to know how they’d look wrapped around my hips as I push her against the wall.

  Rewind.

  The pants are off in this fantasy. But she can leave those black boots on. They hug her calves and stretch all the way to her knees, and I bet she’d look hot as fuck in those boots and nothing else. I’m so damn glad she loves to wear boots. My eyes travel up her body. A flowy pink top clings to her breasts. A long gold chain with a feather on it hangs between those beauties. Her clothes are so fucking lucky.

  Her smile is wide and devious. “Hey, baby.”

  Baby?

  “Hey, sweetie pie,” I say, trying that on for size, if we’re going to toss terms of endearments at each other now.

  When she reaches me, I steel myself for a number of possibilities. She might be pissed that everyone is still calling her my girlfriend. She might be annoyed because her landlord is a dick. Or she might be ready to remind me that I shouldn’t show up without an appointment.

  Instead, she grabs my hand, tugs me over to the nook in the front of the store with shelves of shampoos for sale, then throws her arms around me. She tugs me in close, pressing those sweet breasts against my chest.

  Well, hello there, angels. So nice to see you again.

  She threads a hand in my hair, and heat sweeps over me. She tilts her face up and nibbles on the corner of her lips. An electric charge surges down my spine. When she curls her fingers around the back of my head, I’m ready to call a two-minute warning because if she moves any closer, she’ll know there’s nothing fake about the way my body responds to her.

  I’ve gone from zero to fully aroused in less than ten seconds. She presses her cheek to mine, her soft lips brushing near my earlobe. My chest rumbles. What the hell is she doing to me? Forget aroused. I’m ridiculously turned on, and also confused as hell. But I’m a physical man, so I go with it. I wrap my arms around her, holding her close.

  “I texted you,” she says softly. “Did you get them?”

  I can barely think with her lips so close to me, with her soft voice floating in my ear. “No. I mean, yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” English is hard with her breasts getting acquainted with my chest, and me wanting to know how they’d feel without all these clothes between us. “Then Ford ambushed me and there were ducks, so . . .”

  Yes, speaking in complete sentences is far too difficult.

  “I sent you a couple. I left you a voice mail, too.”

  “Sorry. I missed them,” I whisper, and I hope she keeps this conversation up all night long, because her hair smells so good, and her body feels amazing, and I can’t
even think about text messages or voice mails when her hair tickles my neck like that. My brain short-circuits as I imagine my hands threading through all those soft strands. Yanking it back. Exposing that pretty neck. I’d suck on her jaw, lick a path up the column of her throat, and nibble on her ear. Then I’d kiss the breath out of her. Kiss her so damn hard and good that she loses her mind with pleasure. Like she’s doing to me in my head.

  “Anyway,” she says quietly, “I called because I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  Her voice drops lower, goes even softer, and I can barely make out the words, but they sound a lot like, “Is there any chance you could pretend we’re still together for a few more days?”

  I break the hug, meet her eyes, and say, “Funny, I was coming to ask you the same thing.”

  11

  An hour later, Violet says goodbye to the final customer, waving and blowing a kiss. “One more picture?” the brunette with a short blunt cut asks as she stands in the doorway.

  “Of course.” I drape an arm around my pretend girlfriend.

  The woman giggles and points upward. God bless mistletoe.

  I drop a kiss to Violet’s cheek for the camera. She turns and plants one on my lips, and that’s like a shot of lust straight to my groin. To my mind. Through my whole body. This whole pretend girlfriend ruse is pretty awesome if it involves so much kissing for random cameras. Then I remember, Violet isn’t into me. These fake kisses can suck it.

  She breaks apart and says goodbye to the brunette. As soon as she’s gone, Violet yanks down the blinds, locks the door, then breathes.

  “So . . .”

  “So . . .”

  “You want to start?” I ask, as I park myself on the leather couch in the front of the shop. “Because it’s a helluva lucky break that we both need a plus-one.”

  She sits next to me, crossing those lovely legs of hers. “I had the meeting with the landlord. He basically said he has offers left and right for a higher fee on my space. And my lease is up in a few months. Which means he’ll be jacking up the rates.”

  “What an ass.”

  “But, if I can keep up this kind of business, then I can make the salon more popular, and I can afford the increase. So that’s why I was calling you earlier. To see if you’d be amenable to pretending to be mine.” She fiddles with her bracelets. “I don’t want to put you out, though. I know last night was an exception, and if you have dates or whatnot planned with other women, or if this will cramp your style . . .”

  I laugh loudly, setting a hand on her arm. “It’s all good, and I don’t have a style.”

  She knits her brow, speaking softly. “You kind of do, though, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I did, but I’m all about football this year,” I say, pointing straight ahead. Eye on the ball.

  “And that means you’re a monk?”

  “Took my vow before the season opener.”

  She tilts her head. “Jones was serious when he said you kept your . . .?” She lets her question trail off, not repeating the phrase my buddy used last night.

  “Snake in a cage?”

  “Yes. That.”

  “I took my vow of chastity at the start of the season. He doesn’t come out to play.”

  She arches a skeptical brow. “For real?”

  I nod. “Yeah, for real. I did that for me, to keep my focus on the game. Then it became part of this informal pact between the four of us once we started playing well—Harlan, Jones, Einstein, and me. As soon as we had a winning record, we figured we needed to maintain our superstitions, so we’ve kept them up.”

  “And why that one for you?”

  “Two reasons. First, my right hand still works. Like, really fucking well.”

  She laughs loudly.

  “Oh wait. I forgot. No monkey-spanking comments in front of you.”

  “Please. That applied to my brother. It doesn’t bother me if you mention it.”

  “Good. Feel free to talk about your solo habits, too.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Keep dreaming.”

  “I will.”

  “Is pretend-dating me going to be a problem for your monkhood?”

  I laugh. “Since it’s pretend dating, no.”

  “What was the second reason for the vow?”

  “I just figured focusing on football only would be best for my game, and I need my game to be excellent.”

  She nods, taking it in. “Hence, the vow of chastity.”

  I pat the belt loops on my jeans. “Here’s my chastity belt.”

  She slams a hand on her thigh, laughing. “Oh, Coop. I think your chastity belt was broken a long time ago.”

  I laugh with her because that’s the thing about best friend’s sisters. They know your dirt. They know who you were when you were six, moving to a new town with next to nothing. They know who you were when your face was covered in zits and your voice seesawed from high to low during the most awful time of life ever—puberty. They overheard you telling your buddy about the night you spent with Katrina Smith your junior year of high school, and how quickly you came when you lost your virginity with the head cheerleader. Violet knows who I am. She knows who I’ve been. But there’s something I don’t know about her. There are parts of her that have simply been private.

  “When was yours broken?” I ask, curiously.

  A pink blush spreads across her cheeks. She lets her hair fall over her cheek. I can’t resist. I brush it away. “Tell me,” I say softly. “Was it Jamie? The guy I filled in for at prom?”

  “Actually,” she says, taking her time with her words as she folds her hands in her lap, “that’s why he broke up with me. Because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  My jaw falls open. “Wow. He’s a total ass.”

  She nods. “He said if I wasn’t going to put out, he didn’t need to shell out for prom.”

  “Ouch,” I say, cringing.

  “Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly interested in putting out for anyone after that.” She meets my eyes. The look in hers is shy. “I lost my chastity belt when I was twenty.”

  I try not to imagine her soft, sensual twenty-year-old body, but it’s a futile effort. Just talking about sex and virginity has me undressing her in my head, and that’s the shit I need to stop.

  Instead, I reassure her that I don’t think it’s odd she took her time. “Nothing wrong with waiting, Vi.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely. Better to wait until you’re ready. Until it feels right.”

  “I believe that, too,” she says, and for a flash, I wonder if it would ever feel right to her with me.

  Then I reroute the conversation for real this time. I glance around her shop, gesturing from her to me. “It’s kind of ridiculous that something like this—us supposedly being together—makes a shop more popular.”

  She pats my arm. “Sometimes, I think you don’t realize the effect you can have on people.”

  My brow pinches. “What do you mean?”

  “You think just because Jeff was so popular that you can fly under the radar. That doesn’t happen anymore. Everyone wants to see you succeed because they love the team. They equate things like this—you and me supposedly being a thing”—she puts a heavy emphasis on supposedly, maybe as a reminder that it’s all trumped up—“as part of the key to success.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Greenhaven certainly saw it like that, and I don’t want to rub him the wrong way. The GM basically does what Greenhaven wants when it comes to keeping players and letting players go.” I give her the lowdown on what the coach said, then on my meeting with Ford. “He made it clear he doesn’t want me backpedaling during the negotiations. It’s all very sensitive. Like a dance.”

  “How long do you think they’ll last?”

  I drag a hand through my hair. “I’m not sure. Sometimes it takes a few days. Sometimes it takes weeks.”

  Her eyebrows inch up, and she stares at me as if I’ve done something t
erribly wrong.

  “What?”

  She leans closer. “Your hair.” Her voice is softer, like it was earlier.

  I watch her lift her hand. “Sticking up again?”

  “You messed it up.”

  “You’re dying to fix it, aren’t you?” I ask, teasing.

  She runs her teeth over her lip. “It’s taking enormous self-restraint not to.”

  I throw down a challenge. “I’m not sure you can fix it without your lotions and potions.”

  She lasers me with a sharp-eyed stare. “You doubt me?”

  “Yes. I doubt you,” I say, loving the twinkle in her light brown eyes.

  She pokes me in the sternum. “You don’t see me getting on the field and telling you that you can’t get the ball in the end zone. You don’t come into my shop and tell me I can’t fix your hair with my bare hands.”

  My smile spreads. Damn, I love this feisty side of her. “It’s so sexy when you talk like that about your . . . bare hands.”

  She lifts them, as if she’s Wolverine and these are her weapons. She rises to her knees, inches closer, and smooths a hand over my hair. I tell myself to be cool, to be still, to not get turned on. Like I can enter the mind-over-erection zone.

  But the funny thing is, I don’t ruminate on how good it feels when her hands slide into my hair.

  Instead, I study her. I stare at her neck. I’m mesmerized by the way she swallows—almost harshly as she licks a few fingers to wet them. I’m intrigued by how her shoulders rise and fall in a steady rhythm. My ears home in on the sound of her breath hitching as she slides her fingers back onto my head.

  My chest burns, and the space between us falls silent. Her fingers glide through my messy hair, smoothing, straightening, taming. The only sounds are the hum of the heater and the faint sound of traffic from outside.

  Her voice breaks the quiet. “I don’t think I’ve told you this before . . .”

  “Told me what?” I ask, my voice raspy, and for the briefest second, I hope that she’s about to utter something magnificent like I’ve never been this turned on before or can I just rub my tits against your face?