Punt: A British Bad Boy Football Romance

by Vivian Wood

  He was addictive, and she wasn’t close to quitting him.

  The next day slipped by, with Audrey and Liam staying in bed, barely surfacing for food.

  When she finally went to grab her phone, thinking to check her messages, Liam plucked the phone from her fingers.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Stay with me. Come back to bed.”

  And she did. For the first time in her life, Audrey threw caution to the wind, tumbling back into bed with Liam, laughing and moaning as he touched her breasts, nipped her neck.

  Another day went by, then a week. Audrey made sure his endorsement contracts got signed, but when she protested that she should be taking care of her other assistant duties, Liam merely laughed.

  “You are assisting me, love,” he teased as he pulled her naked body onto his lap to straddle his hips. She sank down onto his cock, the feeling so perfect and natural that Audrey thought she would die from it.

  There was no more talk of her job after that.

  When Liam was declared fit to return to practice, Audrey thought that their pattern would change. But no, every morning he would kiss her and ask her to wait for him.

  “Just like this,” he’d say, his big hands shaping her hips. “This is where I want you to be when I get home. I promise to reward you…”

  So she did. She’d long since let her phone die, and now she spent her days watching tv and going for long runs. Avoiding the outside world, ordering groceries delivered to the house.

  It was a daydream, a fantasy, but for the moment it was her life.

  Just one more day, she kept thinking. This can’t last…

  A week turned into two, turned into three.

  Jack finally showed up, demanding to know where she’d been. She just shrugged and gave him a sleepy, satisfied smile.

  His scowl said he knew just what Audrey and Liam were up to, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew that the second her brother left, she and Liam would kiss, he’d lift her onto the kitchen counter and fuck her like the world was ending.

  Sometimes, she would read to Liam, once they’d worn each other out. A little from the new Donna Tartt book she was reading, or from The Little Prince, which never got old to Audrey.

  Sometimes they talked. About Liam’s career, about his motivations. About Audrey’s dreams for the distant future, her desire to work with fine art again. Own a gallery, maybe.

  Sometimes they would watch football matches together, lying naked on the couch, eating mangoes and commenting on the game. Kissing the juice off each other’s lips, laughing at themselves.

  It was… comfortable, in a way that made Audrey a little uncomfortable.

  In the back of her mind, she knew it was all too good to be true. She wasn’t living in reality, she was playing house with a man who could never settle down, not like this.

  He couldn’t give her what she wanted, not in the long term. But in the short term…

  In the short term, Audrey felt warm and safe and content.

  She felt… loved.

  15

  Audrey

  Audrey stood in the kitchen, staring at the big blue pill in her hand. Plan B, or the morning after pill.

  Because she wasn’t quite sure that she’d got her birth control right. She kept counting her pills, but…

  Better safe than sorry, right?

  She took a big sip of water, then washed the pill down.

  She hated it, the reality of it. Real life invading her fantasy world. She and Liam had made it five weeks without coming down from the clouds.

  Five incredible, heart-pounding, lust-driven weeks. She could smell Liam on her skin still, though he’d left for an early game hours ago.

  Maybe she was asking for too much.

  No, scratch that. She was definitely asking for too much.

  She picked up the newspaper she’d snagged at the grocery store. A photo of Liam in last week’s game was splashed across the front page. He was sprinting toward the goal, a look of pure determination on his face.

  She was working on getting a nice copy of it to frame and hang in the house, a surprise for Liam. Still, she thought he’d appreciate seeing it.

  Especially since the headline read, BAD BOY BRIT DOMINATES ATLANTA UNIFIED.

  She headed for his bedroom, where she’d essentially moved herself in over the last couple of weeks.

  No Liam there, or in the shower. No Liam in the back yard, where he’d taken to spending his moments of solitude. No Liam anywhere in the house, actually.

  Finally she noticed that the front door was open a crack. She headed outside and saw him standing by his Range Rover, phone pressed to his ear.

  “—have to think about it. It would be a big decision,” he was saying. “Yes, Stuart, I understand that it’s a lot of money. I know, it’s what I’ve asked for.”

  He turned and spotted Audrey, then gave her a hesitant smile. “Stuart, I’m going to call you back.”

  “Hey,” she said, giving Liam a long look. “Come back inside, it’s hot as hell out here.”

  “Right you are,” Liam said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Straight back to bed for the both of us.”

  “Look what I found,” she said, presenting him with the paper.

  “Ah, apparently you’re not the only one who gets a taste of my dominance, love,” he teased, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.

  Audrey rolled her eyes and giggled, the phone call forgotten when Liam scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way to the bed.

  Liam’s conversation with his agent popped back into her head in the wee hours of the morning. She was already a little restless, having drank too much coffee the evening before.

  Now, she couldn’t stop replaying his words. A lot of money. A big decision.

  Checking to make sure Liam was dead asleep, Audrey got out of bed and put on her robe. She headed for the living room, where a huge stack of mail awaited her.

  Liam seemed uninterested in signing any more deals, so this week she hadn’t even opened any of the fat manila envelopes that arrived daily.

  Now, she was curious. Clearly Liam’s agent wanted him to sign some lucrative deal, thought it was pretty important.

  But which one?

  Hefting the stack, she walked to the couch and began opening envelopes.

  The first few were endorsement deals.

  Gatorade. Armani. Crocs shoes, which was fairly funny.

  She sifted through them, then picked up an envelope marked URGENT. It mostly caught her eye because of the British stamps on the front.

  The return address was labeled England National Football Team, with a tiny logo next to it. The logo was plenty well-known to Audrey.

  After all, Liam had a much larger version of it tattooed on his chest and torso. Blue lions and small red flowers, set into a blue crest.

  Suddenly Audrey felt a little tense. She turned the thick packet over and opened it, pulling free a thick sheaf of papers.

  Words started jumping out at her — club contract, three years, exclusive.

  This was a serious job offer, for the team Liam worshipped.

  Audrey blew out a breath when she flipped through far enough to find out how much England National was offering Liam. It blew Atlanta Unified out of the water, that was for certain.

  This is it, she realized. My fantasy life is over, and I need to be prepared. Any day now, Liam’s going to leave.

  Audrey and Jack would be fired from their jobs, not that Audrey was even doing hers these days. Liam would vanish back to England, and it would basically be like the whole thing never even happened.

  Like she and Liam never met.

  All that would be left were memories. She’d known it all along, but…

  It still hurt, badly.

  She shoved the contract back in the envelope, then stuffed the whole stack under a couch cushion. She’d deal with them later. No need for Liam to know that she knew about the offer.

  After all, it seemed
that the only rule between them was that they never, ever talk about their relationship. About the future.

  Audrey respected that, in a weird way. She’d wanted Liam, wanted to spend time with him, and she’d gotten that.

  She stood and walked back to the bedroom, crawling under the covers and snuggling up to Liam.

  His eyes opened for a moment, and he wrapped a big arm around her to pull her close.

  “Okay, love?” he asked, already drifting back to sleep.

  No, Audrey wasn’t okay. Far from it, in fact.

  Still, she wasn’t going to let her last days with Liam be ruined. She rolled over and let him spoon her, comfort her, even as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek.

  No need to let Liam see her cry, no matter how hard this became in the coming days.

  16

  Liam

  “This is Audrey, leave me a message!”

  Tinny machine beep.

  “Aud, where are you?” Liam said into her voicemail. “I haven’t heard from you all day.”

  He left it at that, disconnecting the call with a growl.

  Audrey was killing him lately, truly she was.

  The fact that she’d even fallen into bed with him in the first place was startling enough in its own right. Then there was a month and a half of breathless, exciting sex — they’d barely been able to take their hands, or lips, off one another.

  Liam had never felt anything quite like this. He was obsessed with Audrey, the way her body fit with his, the way she smiled at him or rolled her eyes at his jokes.

  Just seeing a flash of her red hair got him hard, and feeling her pressed up against him as they slept was…

  He didn’t even have words for it. Life-altering, to say the least. He told her everything, his whole fucked-up life story, and she never judged.

  She told him everything, all her secret worries and hang-ups, and he never flinched.

  They were more than compatible. Their connection was deep and intense, and Liam found that even when he went a handful of hours without seeing Audrey, he missed her.

  For the first time since he could remember, Liam actually worried about someone else breaking things off with him.

  Part of him was worried about it, but another part of him was determined to enjoy every last happy second of it, to hell with all the rest of the world.

  After all, things between him and Audrey could never last. They were so different, from such different places…

  And he was a proper bastard. He’d only even had two or three girlfriends, and those were short lived… because he always cheated on them, without much regard for whether he got caught.

  Liam simply wasn’t the type to settle down. He’d never seen himself with the perfect little house, the perfect trophy wife, the couple of perfect kids who grew up to be just like him.

  Who’d want that, after all?

  Still, knowing all that about himself hadn’t stopped him from buying Audrey a ring. He’d been walking by a high-end jewelry store in Buckhead, and something just… caught his eye.

  It was this huge, sky-blue sapphire, surrounded by diamonds and rose gold. It reminded him so strongly of Audrey that it almost took his breath away.

  He’d walked straight in, bought it, and then promptly fled the store, feeling like an idiot.

  What the fuck was wrong with him lately?

  It’s not an engagement ring, he promised himself. Just… you know, something pretty.

  He knew full well that you didn’t buy a woman a seventy-five thousand dollar ring just because you thought it complimented her looks. It would only confuse their already muddled relationship, blur the lines a little further.

  He put the ring in his safe, under his bed, and refused to look at it again.

  Let this be enough, he told himself as he held Audrey in his arms later that night, made her come over and over again until they were both exhausted.

  But it wasn’t enough, and it seemed like Liam wasn’t the only one who’d realized it.

  The last couple days, something had been off between them. Audrey was acting funny, like he’d done something wrong, but he had no idea what it could be.

  Between her and Liam’s agent, he was pretty sure he was going to go mad. Stuart was calling several times a day to update England National’s offer, trying to figure out what it would take to get Liam on board.

  Apparently he’d been out of trouble long enough, only garnering positive press in Atlanta, and England National was looking to make some bold player acquisitions for the next season.

  “I’d have to bring Jack along,” Liam told Stuart over the phone. “He’d need a spot on England National.”

  “It’s not possible,” Stuart said, sounding increasingly aggravated. “He’s not you, Liam. He can’t just play for one of the best teams in the world.”

  “So find him a place on another team, somewhere based in London or close by,” Liam said.

  Stuart waited a long beat. “It’s none of my business who you sleep with, but… is there going to be a gay scandal coming out? Just tell me in advance.”

  “Jesus, Stuart,” Liam said, giving a startled laugh. “No. I’m in love with his bloody sister, for chrissake.”

  And there it was, out in the open, the words out of his mouth before he could even think about them.

  In love. He was in love with Audrey.

  The very thought made him feel thunderstruck.

  “Stuart, can I call you back?” he asked.

  “Liam, take this seriously. You have two weeks to sign papers for next season. Two weeks isn’t very much time, so you’d better figure out where your priorities lie, what you really want.”

  “I know.”

  “This has been your dream for years, Liam. I’ve never known you to hesitate. If you need to lock down your girl, so be it, but this is the offer of a lifetime.”

  “I know, Stuart. I understand. Do me a favor, put out some feelers about getting Jack onto an English team. Any team, really.”

  “I will, if you’ll agree to come up to New York this week and sign some initial paperwork,” Stuart said. Always negotiating, was Stuart.

  “Find him a spot on a team somewhere, and I will agree,” Liam pushed back. “Doesn’t Arsenal owe you a favor or ten?”

  Stuart grunted, then agreed with a sigh.

  “I’ll call in that favor if you’re here in two days,” Stuart said. “But there’s a condition.”

  “There always is.”

  “This deal with National is completely under the table. No one knows about it, and no one can know about it. They’re counting on the element of surprise, going into next season. That means you can’t tell your buddy Jack, can’t tell his pretty sister… nobody. Don’t tell a fucking soul, Liam.”

  Liam was quiet for a minute. “You just told me to get my ducks in a row, Stuart. How can I do that without telling my girl what’s happening?”

  “I mean it, Liam. Don’t say anything until you’ve signed the papers. National wants to control the press on this, and you’d better fucking let them have what they want. We’re talking millions at stake here, and that’s just my cut.”

  Liam blew out a breath. “All right, all right. We can hammer out the details in a couple days.”

  “I’ll have my secretary book a private plane if you come tomorrow,” Stuart said. “Give you a taste of your life once you ink this deal.”

  Liam had to laugh. “You are quite the deal maker, aren’t you, you smarmy bastard?”

  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” Stuart said. Liam could hear him grinning through the phone.

  “Fine. Book it for tomorrow morning, not too early.”

  “See you then,” Stuart said, hanging up.

  Liam heard the front door slam. He pocketed his phone and went to the living room, finding Audrey walking in with a brown paper bag of groceries. She was frowning, and looked a bit… off.

  “Are you all right, love?” he asked. “You look a bit pal
e.”

  “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I went and got some of that Vietnamese beef soup I like. I got you some, too.”

  “I tried calling you,” he said, following her into the kitchen.

  “Oh. I’m not really sure where my phone is,” she said with a shrug, setting the bag on the counter and unpacking several containers of kimchi soup.

  “Do you want to settle on the couch, let me wrap you up in a blanket?” Liam asked.

  Audrey slid him a humorous glance. “You’re being awfully nurturing.”

  “Well, I’m feeling a bit guilty, actually,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

  She paused, looked at him, then went back to hunting for spoons. “Are you, now?”

  Something in her voice made him worry.

  “I have to fly to New York tomorrow, for business.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Way to let a girl know she needs to pack, Liam.”

  “Well, actually, it’ll just be me going,” Liam said.

  She set the two spoons on the counter with a click.

  “Oh,” was all she said.

  “It’s sort of… well, I can’t really tell you yet, but it could be really big news for me,” he said.

  “Sure.” Audrey’s face was perfectly smooth, untroubled, but he could tell by her voice that she was angry.

  “It’s probably two, three days tops,” he said.

  “Fine,” she said. “Not to worry.”

  She picked up her soup and a spoon, and walked toward her own bedroom.

  “Audrey, where you going?” he asked.

  “My room,” she said, not slowing.

  “Audrey, wait!”

  “It’s fine! I understand,” she said.

  He moved to follow her, but her door slammed shut.

  Jesus. You really fouled that up, he thought.

  “Audrey,” he said, knocking on her door. “Can we talk about this for a second?”

  No answer.

  “I can explain!” he said, louder this time.

  Nothing.

  Nor did she answer any of the four times he knocked on her door later that night.

  Early in the morning, as he was preparing to catch a taxi to the airport, he finally got her to open her door.