“Trust us the woman plays a seriously mean game of hard to get,” Matt answered. “She’s very picky.”
“So, she turned you down?” I guessed and narrowed my eyes at him.
“She did, but not just me,” he replied and bit the inside of his lip.
“Right, well, you better get your checkbook out.” I turned my focus back to Denver. “Two hundred grand says I sleep with her the night before the game. I’ll even send you a picture.” I could be such an ass sometimes.
This time was perhaps the biggest.
“You’re on, newbie.” Denver put his hand out to shake mine. I took it and smiled wider.
This was going to be the easiest two hundred g’s I’d ever made.
Back in high school, Vanessa Cartwright had wanted me bad, even when she knew I was the devil.
She’d all but served herself up to me after homecoming when she waited for me in my bedroom and offered up her virginity.
She could play hard to get all she wanted with these jerks. They weren’t me.
This was going to be easy and very enjoyable.
Back then, I never took what she was offering and regretted it.
Now would be a different matter altogether.
“You’re on.” I smiled and looked at her just in time to catch her glancing my way with those wild emerald green eyes.
Chapter 2
Vanessa
Sometimes… I truly, truly believed that the universe was out to get me.
It had to be to explain the bad spell of things that were happening to me lately.
It was just a matter of crazy that every time things went all haywire in my life, that guy was always around.
Cole, Coleridge Buchanan, as in high school Coleridge Buchanan. Who I’d thought I was rid of when he left high school. But oh no, no, no.
I got that part wrong. My nightmare came back three months ago, and just when I’d put myself on this mission to lose my V-card.
Just when I’d finally decided to actively do something, he came back like a bad dream and everything started to crumble.
He was like a reminder of why I still had it. He was my bad experience that had put me off sex completely, and the bad experience that had damaged my confidence in so many ways.
Then, to add salt to my ten-year wound that never closed, he was always around wherever I went, and always when something was going on with me.
The worst was a month ago, when I’d found out that Tony, the guy I’d been seeing, was married with a child. I was sitting in the restaurant when in came his wife and the said child.
No one had to guess what was happening when his wife started screaming at me on top of her lungs calling me a homewrecker.
Me, the virgin.
Vanessa the Virgin, as my sisters had called me, like Joan of Arc, was being called the homewrecker.
As I’d gotten up to flee, my eyes landed on good old Cole sitting at the bar with a smirk on his face like the devil he was.
Then, every time I’d seen him since, he had that smile. It was one that told me he remembered my stupid high school mistake, and one that showed amusement.
It was the same smile he wore now as he glanced at me from the booth area of the bar. Like he found something funny about me.
Like he knew when I was having a bad day, and it amused him.
Today’s shit was being asked to arrange the editorial campaign for the football season.
I worked with my mother and sisters at Cartwright Marketing. I’d fallen into the client engagement aspect of things as well as doing all the literature and articles for the company. Having done marketing and creative writing back in college, it was just my thing, and I absolutely loved it.
It wasn’t the first time I’d arranged the campaign for the football season. To be honest since I’d started working at the agency I’d looked forward to this time of year. It was just different this year because there was one Centaur player I was trying to avoid like the plague.
Of course, no one, however, knew that.
“What do you think, Vanessa?” Mia asked, poking me with her cue stick.
I’d been staring into space and didn’t even realize it. I blinked to refocus and glanced at her, not sure what on earth she was talking about.
“Maybe he’ll do it this weekend,” Mia added, bringing her hands together. “Oh God, what if it’s not what I think?”
She was talking about her boyfriend, Eric Declan. I couldn’t get a word in on Sunday night when she’d called me to tell me he was going to be taking her to Bora Bora in six months, which was after the season ended. Mia’s voice had risen several octaves when she added that he’d tell her more in a few weeks and that she’d come back different from this little trip to Bora Bora.
Neither of us could think anything other than that he was planning to propose and that the wedding had to be in Bora Bora.
She’d been talking about it every day since, every chance she got. So, while I may have zoned out in my Cole-filled worries, I knew what she was talking about.
“Girls, can someone take a shot?” Gage said with a very deep frown.
I looked to him. I actually almost forgot he was here. Now I felt bad because like the good cousin he was who’d always taken care of me, he was here tonight for me.
“I’ll go,” Mia said, taking her shot.
My sister didn’t even try to hide the fact that she didn’t have a clue as to what she was doing. She leaned over the pool table and instead of levelling the cue stick to take her shot, she hit the balls in a similar fashion to how you would play golf. Except as she hit the ball, it flicked up in the air, bounced across the table, and went down the hole.
“Yesss, I got one.” Mia clapped her hands and pumped her fists in the air,
I couldn’t even laugh because Gage didn’t find it funny. He looked at her like he was going to breathe fire.
“Mia, Jesus Christ.” Gage narrowed his gaze on her, crude and hard. “I really don’t know how we’re related.”
Mia answered by hitting him with her stick. “You pompous asshole. What the hell is that supposed to mean? You talk to me like I’m the one with the problem. You can’t stand it that I’m better than you at this game.”
Those two had always been like that. No love between cousins when it came to them. For me though, yes.
They were both worried about me. That was why they were here. It was why they’d suggested this place. Mia wouldn’t have normally come here without Eric, and this was the best place Gage knew for pool, although I knew it wasn’t his scene. Plus, I was sure he would have preferred to just see me and not Mia. The way he was looking at her now made me grateful he couldn’t breathe fire.
They were both here for me because of my bad dating spell that had left me down in the dumps since Tony.
“Mia, you can’t play pool for shit,” Gage informed her. “Nobody plays pool like you.”
“I was good. I got a hole in one.”
“That is golf talk, Mia.”
“A hole’s a hole whether it’s golf or pool. They both have holes. Now shut up,” she argued.
“Damn it, girl, you are pushing my buttons.” He bared his teeth at her.
“You too,” Mia shot back.
“Guys, please,” I cut in. I couldn’t believe them sometimes. They argued like that because they were the same age. Twenty-eight now, nearly two years older than me.
Gage was CEO of the property development side of the business, and I was sure no one would believe he could argue with Mia like they were still children. She wasn’t joking when she called him a pompous asshole. Much as I loved him, it was actually true.
They both looked at me when I cleared my throat with insistence, and whatever magic that made them come together for my benefit kicked in. The tension receded from their faces, and Mia gave me a little smile.
“Can’t we just play and have a nice night?” I asked, trying to sound like I was okay. Honestly, I would rather be at home watch
ing Fashion Police, but since we were here, I figured I’d make the most of the time with them. Even with Cole looming over the place like a shadow.
“Sorry,” Mia said. “Your turn, Vanessa.”
“Thank you.” I bent over to take my shot.
I just wished that when I did, I didn’t feel the devil’s eyes all over my ass. The gaze was so intense it lulled me to look behind me at the man I’d been trying so hard to avoid.
And there he was checking out my ass and not doing anything about it when he’d been caught, besides smiling. Smiling a wicked, sinful smile that I seriously wished had no effect on me.
It was the same thing as high school. Ten years had passed, and I hadn’t learned. I still couldn’t figure him out either. Never knew if him smiling meant he was ready to taunt me, or if like a normal person he was being nice. Chances were with my knowledge of him, it wouldn’t be the latter.
Regardless of what the smile meant one thing was annoyingly clear, I was still a slave to the front of his charm and his looks. Except ten years on Coleridge Buchanan was not like ten years on the ordinary person.
People got older. I’d seen most look old even in their mid- to late twenties like we were. Too much drinking and all manner of crap could do that.
Ten years on him, however, made him look better than the Greek god he’d been back in high school. It turned him into a masterpiece. A mingle of beauty and temptation, sin. That was what he was. The poster boy for sin.
While he’d still worn his dark blond locks longish so it brushed the edge of his shoulders, the rest of him had changed. His body was muscle on muscle, and height, like the perfect specimen of an athlete. Powerful shoulders along with bulging biceps were on display in his fitted t-shirt, and his face all angles and planes. Sharper and manlier. That was what his boyish good looks had turned into.
“Vanessa?” Mia came closer to whisper into my ear. “You know, instead of just staring, you could go talk to him. It’s not like you don’t know him, and damn, he’s gotten hotter over the years.”
I snapped my gaze around to her and frowned. “What? What are you talking about?”
“She’s talking about the asshole from high school,” Gage filled in, talking loud on purpose. He gave me a pointed stare first as if to chastise me for indulging in Cole, then he switched his stare to him.
The only person who hated Cole as much as me was him. Gage hated Cole because he gave him hell in school, and when I say hell, I mean hell. Cole was how Gage found out his parents were getting divorced. Cole was how the whole school found out that Gage’s parents were getting divorced because his father, our dear Uncle Patrick, got their maid pregnant then tried to pay her off with too little to keep her silence.
Yeah, that was what Cole was like back then. I didn’t know what he was like now. Gage had reason to hate him, much more than me.
I got the usual teasings because I was a late bloomer who wore braces. He’d called me all sorts of things whenever we spoke from pancake girl with metal teeth, to flat chest with metal teeth.
In junior high he and his friends made fun of me when I had chicken pox and came back to school with the scars. I was Pizza Face for a long time after and he’d always do nasty things like leave dead rats in my bag and locker. That was because he and Gage always had some kind of beef and Gage was always with me.
It was all hurtful awful things but they weren’t the reasons for my strong dislike toward him. It ran much deeper than that. My wound was emotional, a little like Gage’s, but different.
I hated Cole because he’d rejected me.
I knew better than to go crushing on the school bully. My senses just never kicked in when it came to him.
He’d rejected me when I so foolishly threw myself at him. It was perhaps the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me. All of it.
“Guys, why don’t we just continue the game,” I offered, shaking my mind free of the memories.
Mia smiled at me. “Awww Vanessa, you shouldn’t be so shy.”
I didn’t know why she was telling me that when she knew what Cole was like.
“I’m not shy, and I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Why the hell not?” she winced.
“Because she has a brain,” Gage filled in.
“Exactly, so she should talk to him if she’s interested.”
“She’s not interested,” I answered for myself.
I took my shot and frowned when I watched my balls split off toward the sides of the table, none going in the holes. I was usually so good at this game, and it normally served as a great distraction.
“I’m sure he’s different now,” Mia said as I straightened up. “He’s been watching you since we got here.”
She was only saying that because since she’d gotten together with Eric, her mind had become a lot more open. Prior to Eric, Mia used to preach that all athletes were jerks. Eric was the linebacker for The Centaurs and in my opinion not like the usual jock who was more like Cole.
Eric was a nice guy. My sister Abby’s husband, Gilly, who was the quarterback for the team, was like a brother to us. Cole wasn’t comparable to either of them.
“God knows why,” I scoffed.
“Oh Vanessa, you know you’ll always be a virg—” Mia swallowed her words thankfully just in time.
I glared at her, and she bit back a smile. Gage knew I was still a virgin, but he didn’t know that she knew, and she would never forgive me for telling him and not her first. She probably would never forgive me for being closer to him than her for the simple reason that I’d always found him to be more down to earth and logical.
“I mean you won’t be able to get rid of that little problem of yours if you don’t put yourself out there,” Mia amended with a nod.
“Mia, stop filling her head with nonsense,” Gage warned.
“I am not. I’m simply guiding my sister and helping her select the best.” Mia nodded.
Gage frowned. “That guy is not the best.”
“Whatever. We’re not taking advice from you.”
“Mia, I don’t need advice, and not about him,” I cut in, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.
I had three sisters and they were all very similar. Very beautiful, had the sex drives of animals, and talked about sex non-stop, like they had to have it to exist.
They were also very fickle. From one to the next, they were the kind of women who were what I called easy to manipulate, and while I knew that sounded terrible for me to think, it was true. They’d only just now become more mature as they’d each found their men. I didn’t want to have to go through the type of shit most of them went through to find my guy.
Gage was the only one of my cousins who I hung out with on the regular because I’d always been able to talk to him and reason things out. He was always on guard and ready to take charge.
Like now.
He full well remembered how Cole was ten years ago and would never assume otherwise because so many years had passed.
I should be the same and not get bamboozled into thinking his continuous stares meant anything other than him just looking at me.
“Sometimes advice is good,” Mia stated.
“And sometimes it’s bad,” Gage replied, answering before me.
“Sometimes, I just want nothingness,” I jumped back in.
Gage actually looked happy with that answer.
“I’m gonna grab some drinks, and then we’ll go,” he interrupted and headed to the bar. I could tell he’d had enough of Mia. He’d never been as forgiving as her of Cole’s mishaps. I also thought his presence was probably a reminder of the past.
Gage’s parents had the worst divorce ever, and I knew he deeply resented Cole for spilling the family secrets out in the open when he wasn’t prepared with the hit himself.
“Vanessa, you know what I mean, right?” Mia said, tapping the edge of the pool table.
“I know what you mean, and we are not having this convers
ation in relation to that guy,” I snapped, but then her eyes widened and sparkled with delight as she looked over my shoulder.
I turned and wished I hadn’t.
Because he was right there.
He’d walked up to us and stopped practically a breath away from me.
“What guy?” he asked with a bright smile. “Anyone I know?”
That voice… his voice. As much as I knew ignoring him was best, there was never anything I’d ever been able to do when I heard that voice. Deep, rich, very masculine, and what got me was it was filled with an air of seduction. Always.
Our eyes locked as he stared at me, and looking away wasn’t something that crossed my mind.
“Well, Mr. Cole Buchanan,” Mia intoned, “if you’re lucky, you just might find out.” She looked from him to me, and her face brightened the way it did when she thought she’d done something good.
“Yeah?” he asked her, but he was looking at me.
“Yes, you just might,” Mia answered for me.
Poor Mia. It seemed like she believed she was doing me a favor. If only she knew. Of course, I’d never told anyone I’d been foolish enough to throw myself at a guy like Cole. But then she probably wouldn’t have thought my sixteen-year-old self would have thought to do something like that. Sometimes I couldn’t even believe it.
“No,” I said in an expressionless tone, stopping the conversation before it could go any further.
“No?”
“No.”
“This is the first we’ve spoken in ten years, and it’s a flat no?” His gaze clung to mine, and those champagne-colored eyes of his darkened with desire. Desire I’d never seen in relation to me.
“It’s a no, whatever it is.” This was such a weird conversation.
“Why no?” he countered.
“It just is,” I shot back.
“I’m surprised by that. After our last encounter, I always felt you’d say yes to me. You never did come back.”
My eyes snapped wide as heat rushed to my cheeks then flushed right through my body. My lips parted like I was getting ready to say something, but no words came out.
Not Before Game Night (Bad Boy Bachelors of Orange County Book 4) Page 2