Shut Out

by Liz Crowe

  He’d already made plans for the night and wanted to rest up before hand anyway. This goofy welcome pep talk would be as good a time as any. Letting his thoughts wander to the nightclub catering to gay men and promising full discretion, he forced himself to stop obsessing over the failed therapy session.

  The door clicked open and all eyes landed on the tall, blond man who snuck in, backpack on his shoulder, dressed to play. Nicco’s scalp tingled at the sight of him—strong torso, long legs, firm jaw covered with several days’ worth of fuzz. Good Christ but he was a perfect specimen. Nicco kept his casual stance but startled when the kid’s bright blue eyes and huge white smile landed on him.

  He resisted the urge to smile back. Something about the man made Nicco distinctly uncomfortable but horny at the same time. He suddenly wished he’d held onto the shrink’s business card.

  “And Parker will be working with you, Nicco.”

  Nicco sat up, knocking his water to the floor as Rafe’s words got his immediate attention. What the fuck? He stared at the polite hand the kid stuck in his face then over at Rafe. His throat closed up between the proximity of the impossibly handsome man and realization of the fact that the vision of masculine perfection he’d lusted after for the last few seconds wanted to take his spot on the field.

  Oh hell no. He leaned back again and ignored his brain that clamored for him to be nice, to take the kid’s hand. To smile and act like an adult.

  Instead, he smirked, ignored him, and turned to face their coach as if suddenly fascinated by what the guy had to say. Parker stood a minute, and Nicco watched his face turn red before he sat in the one empty chair nearest the door.

  Rafe passed out new phones, instructed them that they were obliged to “tweet” and “post profile updates” on Facebook at least three times a day. All shit that Nicco already knew. Rafe’s hot young lady assistant issued key cards to the ones who’d just arrived, including the kid Nicco studiously ignored but whose very presence was making the front of his jeans uncomfortable.

  He shifted in his seat, trying to get control of himself, a bizarre combination of anger and lust spinning around his brain. The room rose, and Nicco joined them making their way out into the hallway.

  A gaggle of kids and parents awaited them, and the team spent about an hour signing soccer balls, slips of paper, jerseys, getting photos for camera phones. Nicco joined in to prove his ability to schmooze like a pro. At one point he caught sight of his new young coach with his arm around a tall, attractive, pregnant woman with coal black hair. Rafe caught his eye and beckoned him over.

  “Nicolas Garza, this is Maureen, my wife and her son, Adam.” A dark-skinned teenager next to the stunning woman stuck out a hand. Nicco took it, noting the kid’s own club kit and backpack. He took Maureen’s hand, kissed it, and eyeballed Rafe.

  “Well done, young Rafe. What a vision. How did a loser like yourself rate such beauty?”

  Maureen frowned but her eyes sparkled. “Spare me, Nicco. I’ve heard all about you.”

  “I have no doubt of that lovely lady.” He gave a short bow. “But may I also say, congratulations on the coming joy.”

  She smiled at him, and he mirrored her liking her already. He valued women who took no shit from him. He winked at Rafe and made his way back into the teeming throng after nodding at the woman’s son who didn’t look that much younger than his mother’s new husband. But when he turned he immediately locked gazes with the blond American usurper and his throat closed up. The man stared at him wide-eyed and innocent, and Nicco had to grip the back of a chair to keep from saying something utterly stupid.

  He’d wager his left nut that young Parker had never been with a man, but the sheer sexual energy that poured off him was intoxicating. His fresh, clean good looks spoke of a typical American, upper class upbringing, expensive soccer clubs and college scholarships. Shit that Nicco usually despised and denigrated.

  He broke the eye contact and set his jaw. The kid had another think coming if he honestly believed he’d be taking Nicolas Garza’s place on the team. Pure and simple, no matter how fevered his sudden fantasy over popping the kid’s cherry. He ran a hand down his face and swallowed hard. Things had certainly gotten complicated and then some. But he knew that he had a focus now—keeping his starting spot ahead of the delectable Parker.

  Red Card

  (The Black Jack Gentlemen – Book 2)

  Metin studied the attractive woman sitting across from him at the huge kitchen island. Musing that she probably would just as soon pour him a lovely glass of cyanide as sit and drink red wine with him, he smiled, trying not to overreact to her unsubtle hostility.

  “So,” she said, sipping and staring at him. “How is Graciella?”

  He forced an ever-wider smile. “Fine, I am assuming. She is on a photo shoot in Italy for a month. I haven’t talked to her in…a while.” He lifted the glass to his lips, not breaking eye contact.

  Melanie Matthews Miller could be a model herself. Something he was sure she’d heard plenty of times. Her dark brown hair was thick, curly, barely contained by a headband. Dark eyes shone in her angular, handsome face. He noticed that her hand shook when she put her glass on the granite surface. Unable to resist, he reached for it. She yanked it back as if he’d touched a lit match to her flesh. “Your mother must have been a stunning woman.” He said, softly, as if to a cornered, frightened animal.

  “Yeah. She was,” Mel polished off her first glass. Metin poured her some more. “Spare me the lecture. I’m not an alcoholic.”

  He looked up, shocked. “I wouldn’t think of calling you that.”

  “Sure you would. I see it in your eyes.”

  “The only thing in my eyes right now is terror.”

  She scoffed, left the newly refilled glass on the counter and propped her chin on her hands. The defeated slump of her shoulders made the natural caretaker in him want to soothe. But he knew better than to comfort her, at least at that moment. He took another drink of his wine, and the silence took on a life of its own. Clearing his throat, he put his glass down, deciding if anyone could take him being straightforward, it was this woman.

  “I love your sister,” he said.

  Mel just stared at him, her face betraying nothing. “No you don’t. You’re just a collector of women. And Alicia is something new and exotic to you. Get over yourself.” Her hard voice fit her. It was as if she had sharp edges he would wound himself on if he were not careful. Her face was nearly perfect—high cheekbones, large expressive eyes. In a different situation, she would be his type. “I won’t let you hurt her, soccer boy. We clear on that?”

  He nodded, believing silence was the better part of valor at the moment. “Tell me about him,” he finally said, unable to stop himself. “This man. Your… husband. Who hurt you and made you into this….”

  “Bitch?” Her laughter hurt his ears.

  “No, that is not what—”

  “Yes, it was. It’s okay. I’m getting use to it now. Scott was the guy who swept me off my feet, knocked me up, installed me in a house while he went to work at the bank. I caught him fucking his secretary one day, right in that very house, when I was supposed to be volunteering at Zach’s school.” She gripped her glass, gazing into the middle distance. “I left. Came home to my father’s house with my son. Told him we were through. And started going out, to clubs, bars… you name it. I was a total slut. As I’m sure you will confirm, being the traditionalist that you are. Men can stick their dicks in however many women they want and they are super studs. I go out a few nights, let a few strange men do that to me, and I’m a whore.”

  He gulped, forcing away that very reaction, reminding himself that this woman’s life was absolutely none of his business. She glared at him, holding the stem of her wine glass in a death grip. “And then, bam, I was pregnant again. And Scott said he’d take me back, wanted me back, needed me back. Blah blah. Whatever.”

  “Oh, um, Tanner is not…”

  “No, Metin. I
don’t know who Tanner’s father is. How about that for your traditional principals? Shocked enough by me yet?” Her eyes darkened.

  He sat up straighter his ire rising at her seeming need to prove how bad she was for some reason. “I don’t shock that easily.”

  “Sure you do.” She got up to pace. Her wild, curly hair kept escaping from the headband and haloed her flushed face. In an instant, he saw what appeal she did hold, when she was not being so bitter.

  He glanced around. The giant house was freezing, empty, positively cavernous. He couldn’t fathom it. His family was huge, loud, and annoying, but that was a whole hell of a lot better than this empty, echoing space filled with nothing but unhappy people.

  “Mom!” An older boy stomped into the kitchen from the laundry room, slamming the garage door behind him. “I thought you were… oh, hello there.”

  Metin stood and held out his hand. “Hi. I’m….”

  “I know who you are. My mom and aunt have been doing nothing but argue about you lately.”

  “Oh, well.” Metin ran a hand through his hair, watching the boy’s body language around his mother. “Sorry, I guess.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. They don’t need much excuse to fight.” He dropped his soccer bag to the floor of the kitchen. Metin fought his inner neat freak. His mother never tolerated his soccer kit anywhere but out in their garage. And a cuff to the head was all it took for him to remember it. He and his three brothers had all played, which made for a pretty smelly garage.

  “Mom, where’s dinner.”

  “Order out,” she said, her voice low and distant.

  “Whatever, I’m going out anyway.”

  Metin stared as they did their non-communication dance for a few more minutes then got up before the urge to smack the smartass kid upside the head got too strong.

  “Sorry, Metin.” Mel’s voice was soft. “We’re hardly the exemplary family. I have no business being mad at you for judging us.”

  “I am not judging…. Oh, thank god,” he said when Alicia strode in, her gorgeous face dusted with makeup, amazing curves draped in a silky black dress. “You are beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” She blushed, which he loved. “You guys getting along okay? Zach, are you being your usual teenager jerkish self?”

  “Sure thing, Auntie.” The kid grabbed a few cookies from the jar and walked out without another word to his own mother.

  Metin shook his head.

  “Okay, stud. Let’s go to dinner. Or whatever.” She shot a worried glance at her sister, but the other woman kept her back to them. By the time Metin realized Melanie shoulders shook from crying, Alicia was pulling him out of the room.

  About Liz Crowe

  Best-selling author, beer blogger and beer marketing expert, mom of three, and soccer fan, Liz lives in the great Midwest, in a major college town. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse. While working as a successful Realtor, Liz made the leap into writing novels about the same time she agreed to take on marketing and sales for the Wolverine State Brewing Company.

  Most days find her sweating inventory and sales figures for the brewery, unless she’s writing, editing or sweating promotional efforts for her latest publications.

  Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very much “real life.”

  With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and many times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate, and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.

  www.lizcrowe.com

  www.brewingpasssion.com

  www.twitter.com/beerwencha2

  www.goodreads.com/LizCrowe

  www.facebook.com/lizcroweauthor

  www.facebook.com/groups/lizcrowefans

  Other Books by Liz Crowe

  Start with The Stewart Realty Series

  Where it all began, the “Jack and Sara Trilogy”:

  Floor Time

  Sweat Equity

  Closing Costs

  Or read them all in one eBook in:

  Stewart Realty Anthology: The Jack and Sara Trilogy

  Then read Blake, Lila, and Rob’s story:

  Essence of Time

  Find out about Maureen and Rafe (and the aftermath of Essence of Time) in:

  Escalation Clause

  Go back in time and read about Jack Gordon’s history in:

  House Rules

  Then get caught up in Evan and Julie’s exciting journey:

  Mutual Release

  Continue the saga with all of the families and meet the next generation:

  Good Faith

  Don’t forget about Jack Gordon’s latest project, Detroit’s hottest new soccer team, The Black Jack Gentlemen:

  The Black Jack Gentlemen series:

  Man On (The Black Jack Gentlemen Book 1)

  Red Card (The Black Jack Gentlemen Book 2)

  Shut Out (The Black Jack Gentlemen Book 3)