Not Before Game Night (Bad Boy Bachelors of Orange County Book 4)

by Khardine Gray

  I set the phone down, not bothering to answer. Maybe I would later.

  The plan for tonight was to plan for this project. The articles and magazine. I was still buzzing with excitement about the whole idea.

  I used to dream about writing for a magazine. I just wasn’t sure which I’d write for, or what route I’d go down. I was one of those people who hadn’t exactly fit into a category. I loved writing about everything. That was why I liked working at the marketing agency. The work was varied and different from one month to the next. I could be working on literature packs for events which I created myself from scratch, or doing articles online for the website. Or doing more practical hands on tasks like booking venues for events. It was fun. This though was even more exciting because it would flesh out my creativity in abundance.

  The plan for tonight was also to not be at work late, just in case I ran into Cole. That was why I’d left work early. A lot earlier than I would have on a regular day.

  Most days saw me there until late, sometimes well past eight. I mostly went over the websites and checked out various things across the enterprise. Some evenings, I’d meet up with Gage and his sister Amelia, and we’d all have dinner.

  Other times, I spent it with my sisters. That was how my life usually worked. I flipped back to the beginning of the book. Maybe it was best to start there and work my way through it, no matter how much I cringed. At least I’d know a thing or two if and when the day came when I decided to give my cherry away.

  There were three sections. Each labelled by the different types of guys Madam Phoebe set out. Mia swore by her, and she’d been her guide for a lifetime, so maybe I could learn something.

  After the sections were tricks of the bedroom, which was where I’d seen the blowjob lessons.

  Section one was the gentle guy, section two was the explorer, and section three the rebel.

  I was supposed to pick. I just didn’t know which I wanted. Did I want the gentle guy, the explorer, or the rebel?

  I went for the rebel the first time without guidance. It was curiosity that made me flick to that section. I just wanted to see what it said.

  My eyes glued to the top of the page as I started reading, completely sucked in just from the first few words:

  The rebel will always be unpredictable. He’ll always try to surprise you and shock you. The chemistry between you is electrifying, as will be your lovemaking. Be prepared for wild, sexy fun and a lot of sleepless nights.

  Your rebel will want to please you in every way, but expect him to do everything he can to make you feel he owns your body.

  Make sure you please him too, so he knows he’s yours.

  My God, I had to swallow hard.

  That actually appealed to me. Big time. But seriously… I knew it would.

  The idea of wild, sexy fun and a lot of sleepless nights was no bad thing. Neither was being pleased in every way possible.

  Could I really have that though?

  Didn’t I want a nice guy like the gentle guy? I flicked to that section and read the first paragraph.

  Your gentle guy is a gentleman in every way. He’ll go with whatever guidance you give him on how you want to be touched. He’ll make love to you slowly, to soft, temperate music to enhance the romance and passion between you.

  You can always count on him. Be careful of falling into boredom. This is the kind of guy who will rely on you too, so always come up with ideas to add spice to your lives.

  Well… that was nice and kind of different. It was the safe option, unlike the rebel. Not as exciting though.

  I practically jumped out of my skin when my doorbell rang.

  I wasn’t expecting anyone.

  So, who could it be?

  I set the book down and went to answer it, making the cardinal mistake most women made when they didn’t look through the peephole first. I just opened the door and welcomed the shock of seeing Cole standing on the doorstep with a bag of groceries.

  “Wonderful. I like your hair like that.” He beamed and didn’t wait for an invitation before he stepped in and made his way to the kitchen with ease, like he’d been here hundreds of times before.

  I didn’t even have the few seconds it would take to process the fact that he was here.

  I went to the kitchen to see him laying out the groceries on the granite worktop and frowned.

  “Cole?” I walked right up to him and set my hands on my hips.

  “Yes, baby?” He looked at me with expectancy, as if this was really normal.

  “What are you doing here? How did you even know where I live?” How did he know indeed? And back to the first question, what was he doing here?

  “Catching up. This was my perfect idea,” he answered, tilting his head to the side and waving his hand over the food. “We can eat and talk.”

  I blinked several times, trying to process the ridiculousness of what he was saying to me. And, he had the audacity to look at me as if it was me who’d gotten something wrong here.

  I continued to stare, and for the millionth time this week I had that feeling of not knowing what the hell to say to him.

  “Are you crazy? You can’t just come to my house with…”—I looked at the food he’d set out on the worktop. It was all fresh vegetables and pasta sheets—“food. You can’t come here with food like this.”

  “Why?”

  “Cole, do you realize how weird this is?”

  “Vanessa, you worry too much.” He walked around to me, took my hand, and marched me over to the stool nearest him. “I’m making vegetable cannelloni. Hope you like it.”

  “I hate vegetables,” I lied.

  “Well, tonight, you will eat them and like them. Don’t hate until you’ve tried my cooking. Go on now, sit.” He motioned to the stool.

  What was I supposed to do in this situation? He was clearly the rebel who wanted to shock and surprise me all at the same time.

  I sat and continued to stare at him.

  “Baby, you like peppers?”

  Baby?

  It was as though I really had fallen into some alternate dimension.

  I looked at him, not answering.

  “Vanessa?” he prodded.

  “Cole, this is ridiculous. You’re at my house. I’m not even dressed for visitors. We’re supposed to be talking somewhere, not here, and not tonight, about my article on you, and this isn’t my idea of a business meeting.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’s my bad. I should have made myself a little clearer. This isn’t a business meeting.” Mischief flickered in his eyes. “This is not business at all. It’s a social visit.”

  “A social visit? Since when are we social?”

  “Since now. I cook for you. You watch me. We eat and talk, then… we see what happens next.” He nodded.

  I bit the inside of my lip and continued to stare at him. “What happens next? Cole, I have to say you seriously are the strangest guy. Pretty sure there’s many things you could be filling your time with on a Wednesday night, other than a social evening with me. Especially when we should be talking business.”

  He shook his head. “Let me be clearer. This is how this is going to work. It’s how we’ll roll. Or there will be no interview.”

  Now I straightened. “What? What do you mean by no interview? You’re supposed to say yes to these things. We don’t have to interview your ass; in fact, I’m sure there are better people I could be interviewing, but my mother being the saint she is chose you.” I couldn’t believe he would be so arrogant.

  “No, no, no, and I’m sorry, sweetheart, but your Ma wasn’t being a saint by choosing me. And there is no better than me. Those Centaur pussies can run around all they want thinking they’re God’s gift, but they haven’t played with me yet.” He winked at me.

  “Do you just love to hear the sound of your voice?” I threw back.

  “Yes.”

  Why did I bother to ask? “You also know you aren’t the only member of the team, right?”


  “Yes. Vanessa, sweetheart, you have a lot to learn. A team’s a team, but as individual players, you are your own island of subsistence. You’re on your own out there with your own job when you don’t have the ball, and when you do. It’s a system. Like a car. The wheels are the wheels, and the engines the engine. Each is different with its own level of responsibility, but together it works as a whole. That is how a football team works.”

  I straightened, trying to process this. I wondered how I was supposed to start this article of mine.

  Coleridge Buchanan, pompous asshole who just told me there’s no one better than him and the rest of the guys are a bunch of pussies.

  I was pretty sure Gilly would be the first to punch his lights out. Eric next.

  “Cole, is there any part of you that’s like a human person who can just act in a civilized fashion?”

  “Woman, I’m here cooking you dinner. How much more civilized do you want to get?” He raised his shoulders.

  He had a point. He had a very valid point. I just didn’t know why he’d taken to being social with me.

  I gave him a pointed stare, holding his gaze, looking deep into his warm brown eyes and doing my best to focus. I’d come a long way since high school. That version of myself would have never stared a guy like him down.

  “Why? Why are you cooking me dinner? Why the social visit? Why the interest? Did I pass the Coleridge Buchanan breast size test?”

  “Your tits are fine, Miss Cartwright. I’m more interested in you.”

  “Me?” I didn’t think the disbelief on my face could have been any more distinct.

  “Think of this as my first steps to correct a past wrong.”

  Now what should I do with that declaration?

  “There are so many. Which past wrong are we talking about here?” I was just talking. Half playing along, half prodding to see what this guy before me was truly up to.

  “You know the one I mean.” His eyes dropped to my breasts and lingered there until I cleared my throat. Heated desire filled his eyes when his gaze met mine again and I almost believed the desire was genuinely for me. “I’ve had you on the brain since getting back to good old Orange County.”

  Ugh, my stupid brain and heart. Both be damned. Something weird was truly at work here. It was obvious, and yes I had to agree that this weirdness had been present since he got back. Yet, both my brain and heart were betraying me, melting at his words. As if I didn’t know who he was. Or, what he was.

  If Mia were here, she’d tell me to have some kind of open mind.

  What I needed though was to be on high alert. I should steer my brain at the very least back to logic and beware of this devil.

  Common sense told me to do just that.

  He grabbed one of the packets of chilis and smiled. “Now, do you like chili?”

  “I like chili,” I answered.

  I’d do dinner and tread softly. Then, like he said, see what happened next. All I wanted was my article.

  It would be wise not to want anything else.

  I survived two hours of him.

  We were in the dining room sitting across from each other. Anyone who walked in here would have definitely mistaken us for old friends catching up over a home cooked meal.

  Admittedly, he’d soothed away a lot of my concerns with that meal of his.

  The man could cook, and it was a meal fit for God himself and his heavenly host. Chili vegetable cannelloni was served up to me, and I devoured it.

  Aside from the meal, he too surprised me.

  I’d watched him cook, while he talked about Boston and I listened. Then we ate together, and I found myself talking about writing while he listened to me.

  When the meal was over, I was still talking, and he continued to listen.

  It wasn’t until I realized I was just talking about me that I stopped myself from continuing. I got like that when I talked about writing, and because I was getting the chance to do this project with the magazine, I was on a damn roll.

  On a roll, and I should probably bring this social visit back to business.

  “So, when can we meet to talk about the article?” I asked.

  He smiled at me. “Not sure yet.”

  “What? What do you mean you aren’t sure? You just pick a date and we meet.”

  “No, if I do that, you’ll go back to being all weird on me again. Acting like you don’t like me.”

  I had to laugh, and he sat forward resting his thick forearms on the table.

  “It’s not an act.”

  “Right, tell yourself whatever you want.”

  “I’m not. You’re the one who’s acting like I didn’t go to school with you. You’re the damn high school bully. I feel like I just had dinner with the devil.” That wasn’t a joke. At one point in my life I was sure if you looked past the luscious blond locks you’d see horns on his head.

  He laughed and gave me that wicked smile. “What’s wrong with being the devil?”

  I widened my eyes at him. Who said things like that?

  “Everything.”

  “But you still like me. You know why Vanessa Cartwright?”

  “Why? Why do think I like you Cole?” I was real interested to hear this.

  “You like me because I’m the rebel and I make life interesting. You like wild and unpredictable. You want a taste of the dark side because it excites you.”

  He could have been reading from Madam Phoebe’s book.

  Cole was definitely 100% the rebel indeed and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his. Heat rushed to my cheeks and I was pretty certain from the excitement that flickered in his eyes that he knew what he was doing to me.

  “You’re the good girl and you don’t want a repeat of that boring as shit fucktard I saw you at the restaurant with,” he added.

  “You can’t possibly know what I want,” I attempted.

  “Bull shit. I think I do. We’re a long way from high school Vanessa. Full grown adults who can get up to whatever badness they want. You like me, but you’re the one who’s denying yourself of what we could be doing next.”

  “What comes next is my interview. Do you just want me to make something up?”

  “No, we have time.”

  “We want the article up on the first Friday of the games. Plus, I want it all done outside your training.”

  “I’ll make time for you,” he answered simply. “My place tomorrow.”

  I shook my head. “No. I am not going to your house.”

  “Afraid of what we’ll be doing at my place?” He gave me a lascivious smile.

  “No.” Yes, of course I was. Now I was very wary of what tricks he had up his sleeve.

  “Come on, Miss Cartwright, you had a bug up your ass the size of Texas because I wouldn’t sleep with you. I’ve been at your place now for the last few hours. You’re seriously going to tell me you’re not in the least bit curious to find out what it would be like to be with me?”

  My breathing stilled, and I shook my head. A blatant lie.

  “I have absolutely no effect on you?” he asked in a daring voice.

  “Nope, and I don’t have a bug up my ass. High school was high school. It’s the past. I hardly think about it, and I definitely don’t think of you when I think back to high school.” I’d gotten so good at effortless lying it was scary.

  He smirked, stood up, walked around to me, and crouched down. He looked at me, long and hard, like he was trying to figure something out, then he nodded.

  “Rose petal pink,” he breathed.

  “What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. What the hell was he talking about now?

  “Your cheeks turn rose petal pink when you’re lying through your teeth. You blush from your neck up, and it creeps up your cheek when I shock you, or when you’re embarrassed. It’s different.”

  I just looked at him. I didn’t even know that about myself. I knew I blushed a lot, and heaps more than the average person, and that it didn’t take much for me to go beetroot red,
but I didn’t realize there was a difference. Or that I did it when I was lying.

  “You… can tell all that about me from one evening?”

  “No, that’s from high school.” He chuckled and continued to stare at me.

  “Well, I’m not lying, so you must have made all of that up.”

  He laughed at that. “You had a lie ready for me every time I asked you what you were looking at when you were obviously staring at me. You’d pull whatever the hell you could think of out of a hat if you could. A bird, the grass, shit. Lies. And your cheeks would turn pink like they are now. But …just for me.”

  I straightened and swallowed hard. Damn my stupid self. Why did I have to be so transparent? Ugh.

  “Still think I have no effect on you?” he taunted.

  “Of course.” I would be stubborn until it killed me if I had to be.

  The corners of his lips turned up into a wicked grin. “Okay, then… if that’s true, kiss me.”

  My lips parted, and I sucked in a sharp breath. “I will not kiss you.” Much as I was now thinking about it, that would be like opening Pandora’s box.

  “It’s payment for the food.”

  “I never invited you to dinner; you invited yourself.”

  “And you ate all the food with no complaint. Ate it right up.”

  I stood up and glared at him, shaking my head. “Cole, you are weird and… just plain weird. What the hell is the matter with you?”

  He rose to his feet. “I just have different tactics. Come on, it’s just a little kiss, which will have no effect on you. Unless I’m right and you were lying.”

  No way was I going to allow him to think he was right. Even though he was.

  “Fine.” I marched up to him, grabbed his shirt so I could pull him down to meet my lips, and planted a kiss on his lips.

  This was the part of me that was daring. The part that never thought first before she did things.

  A little kiss?

  No.

  The minute my lips brushed against his, a blast of electricity shot through me. The heat of it pulsed from his lips to mine and glued me to the spot, rendering me useless to myself.