Pinned Down: A Triple Threat Sports Romance Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  PINNED DOWN copyright 2016 by Lexi Cross. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

  Lucky

  “Do you know why I called you in here?” Coach asked me as I sat down in the small metal chair in front of his desk.

  His office wasn’t much more than a utility closet with a desk in it. He had a few pictures on the walls of himself as a college quarterback, over a lifetime ago. There were a couple of plaques hanging up as well. His desk had a defunct computer monitor and a phone connected to a landline he rarely used. Whenever he relied on technology, he always used a cell phone and a tablet that had been provided by the team’s owners.

  He rarely even used his office, except for meetings like these, where he would sit one of us down and chew us out for screwing up. These come-to-Jesus meetings were pretty much routine for me. I’d screw up, take my lecture and ass-chewing, wait a while, and screw up again. I had repeated this process several times since I’d joined the team.

  “I’m guessing I’m in trouble,” I told him, using my normal tone—sarcastic and defiant as hell. I always challenged him to do his worst when I came into the office. I wasn’t worried about the consequences.

  I was the team’s kicker, and they all called me Lucky. I made the kicks no one else could make, got the girls no one else could get, and got away with more shit than anyone else could.

  Jake, Harley, and I made big plays on and off the field. We had earned the reputation of being notorious playboys. Women didn’t stand a chance with us. Jake had been a running back before being taken off the field due to an injury and getting married. He usually just referred to himself as the receiver. He caught the passes that no one else could. He ran more yards than anyone else on the team. If we were in a tight spot and needed to score, he was the man to turn to. On and off the field. Harley was our quarterback. He was the star of the show, like the lead singer in a rock band.

  I didn’t get the same women those two got. Harley and Jake always got the groupie types who would hang around after the game to get autographs, phone numbers, whatever they could get. They got the women who sought out football players and wanted to be seen with them. They got the supermodels who didn’t mind showing a little skin to get what they wanted.

  Jake, of course, wound up marrying an old flame, Brooke, after running back into her. No one had expected him to settle down like that, but he did, leaving just two of us to carry on what had become a tradition for us. Our triple threat had been knocked down to a dynamic duo, and I couldn’t have imagined two people with more different taste in women.

  I got the quiet, more reserved ones. Women didn’t seek out the kicker. I had to seek them out. I’d target the pretty little thing who wore long sleeves to the bar and kept herself mostly covered up because she didn’t think she was anything special. I’d always find those women and make them feel better about themselves by giving them attention and showing them just how damn sexy they were.

  It was great watching someone who was closed off in a little shell come out for the world to see. I always thought about what I did as a kind of public service. I helped beautiful women realize their true potential, and then I would leave them to go after men like Jake and Harley once I got my fill of them.

  “This is why I called you here,” Coach said, snapping me out of my head and back to his desk. He threw a tabloid magazine down in front of me. Raven, the beautiful brunette I’d been seeing for a while, adorned the cover with her dark hair and green eyes. According to the tabloid headline, she’d gotten herself in some kind of legal trouble, and I was being linked to it because they had all known about us being together.

  “Now, you know we broke it off,” I reminded coach.

  “I don’t care, Cade. The problem is you’re still being linked to her. You’ve got to learn to keep it in your pants, or at least keep it out of the papers, son,” Coach snapped.

  “So, what, am I going to be responsible for every move she makes now?” I asked him.

  “That seems to be the case, doesn’t it?”

  “Coach, I don’t even know what she’s in trouble for,” I argued.

  “That doesn’t help, Cade.” He only called me Cade when I was in trouble, but I was usually able to laugh about it with him. He didn’t seem to be in a laughing mood.

  “Alright, what do I do?” I asked, giving in.

  He sat down and sighed. “There’s nothing you can do this time, kid.”

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t like his tone. Mr. Clark, the team’s new owner, had threatened to trade anyone who couldn’t maintain the proper professional image he wanted for the team. Of course, no one thought he would actually do it. I had a feeling that I was about to be the first one to get traded for poor behavior off the field.

  “Mr. Clark is not going to settle for this kind of behavior,” Coach Hawkins said.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve heard it plenty of times,” I replied, laughing. I had hoped that my laughter would have been met with some in return, but Coach looked at me with serious, harsh eyes.

  “You’re going to be traded, Lucky,” he said. “I tried to warn you guys about Mr. Clark and this reckless ass behavior of yours.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You heard me. We’ve had too much trouble from you with this behavior, even after being told, when Mr. Clark took over, that this kind of behavior would no longer be tolerated. You just can’t seem to stop, so he’s not going to put up with it anymore. You’re out of here as soon as we can find a team willing to take you,” Coach told me.

  “No way.” I couldn’t imagine leaving Jake and Harley behind, leaving the practice facility, my new hometown.

  “Don’t worry about it too much. With your record on the field, I’m sure it won’t be hard to find someone willing to put you in the game,” he assured me.

  “What the hell did she get herself into?” I a
sked absently. “It had to be pretty bad if I’m being traded away for being associated with her.”

  “I don’t know what it was that she did, and I really don’t care. You know I don’t give a shit what you guys do off the field as long as we keep winning games, but it has more to do with the amount of crap we have to put up with, Cade.”

  “We’re not even together anymore, Coach. Doesn’t that count for something?” I asked.

  “Hopefully it does with your next team,” he said, letting me down with his tone.

  He placed a hand on my shoulder as he walked past me, leaving me in his office to mull over my fate. I wondered how long I had with the team before the trade was situated and finalized.

  While I thought about it, it occurred to me that being traded wasn’t the worst that could have happened. I was going to get a chance to start over. I wasn’t going to be weighed down with the things I’d done here in this town, with this team. I smiled and nodded to myself alone in Coach’s office. I was going to get the chance to get mixed up in a whole new world of shit.

  I got up and left the closet-office. I was going to skip out on the rest of the day’s practice. I stopped by Jake’s desk on the way out. Jake had been moved to the head of PR and marketing. He represented us to the public at large.

  “Hey, Jake,” I said, poking my head in his door, “I need to see you and Harley this evening after practice. Meet me at the bar for a few drinks.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I just tapped the doorframe and walked away. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be returning to the practice facility or not. I left the building, hopped in my car, and drove to the bar. I figured I’d just wait for the guys to get there later.

  “So, how’d the talk go?” Jake asked, clapping a hand to my shoulder as he and Harley came in and sat on either side of me at the bar later that evening.

  “It must have been pretty serious if you left practice early,” Harley added.

  “I’m being traded, guys,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” Harley said. He nodded at the bartender and ordered a beer.

  “I’m not buying it,” Jake chimed in.

  “Guys, it’s for real,” I insisted, nursing my latest bottle of beer. I was drinking slowly, not trying to drown myself in my disappointment, but just trying to take the edge off.

  Harley laughed and shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Mr. Clark finally found someone to axe because of a girl.”

  “It’s more than that, man. She’s a nightmare. Letting him trade me is actually going to help me get away from her,” I told him.

  “It’s still bullshit.”

  “I’m with Harley on this one,” Jake added, giving in and ordering a beer, too.

  The three of us hadn’t gone out together to drink in a long time. Jake had been the first to fold under the new owner’s pressure. He’d gone out to find someone to pose as his girlfriend and ended up getting himself into trouble with her over a planned marriage. I still wasn’t completely sure what all had happened, because he had distanced himself from us when it all started. It was pretty cool to have him back, even if it was just for a night.

  “I get a new town, a new start. I don’t have to deal with my past mistakes physically tracking me down like they regularly do here. I get a whole new pool of women to choose from. Plus, this allows me to position myself closer to some of the other guys in the league that we’re already working with. You know what I’m saying?” My impending trade had some benefits for the three of us, business-wise.

  “You make a good point,” Jake said.

  “Well, hell, here’s to the future,” Harley toasted us, raising his bottle.

  We tapped our bottles together and drank. It was the end of an era for the three of us, but it had been coming for quite some time. When Coach Hawkins came into the training room and told us the new owner wasn’t going to let us continue screwing up the way we were, I should have known then that I was on my way out the door.

  It was good, though. Leaving was a good thing. It gave me new opportunities. There were networking opportunities, new women, and new fans to reach. There was new trouble to seek out. When I found out where I was going, I packed up and put my house on the market. I went and found a new house in my new hometown. I moved ahead of my start date with the new team, giving myself plenty of time to get across state lines and get settled in my new place.

  I tried to keep my head down, out of the tabloids, but there was only so much I could do. Everyone knew where I was going and which team had accepted me as their new kicker. Luckily, I was only the kicker, so I didn’t have to worry about women and fans flocking to meet me as I arrived in my new city to start practice with my new team at the beginning of the new season.

  I had to seek my women out, which gave me a better chance to pick and choose, and in a new city, surrounded by beautiful women, I felt pretty damn lucky indeed.

  Chapter One

  Kendra

  My first fundraiser event with the local charity organization Older Brothers was a media circus, and it really made the local non-profit look like a joke. When I arrived, I saw that the local pro football team was swamped by photographers and self-styled reporters keeping the players from being able to interact with the kids we were all supposed to be there to help.

  Not cool.

  Also, my staff wasn’t helping matters at all. A couple of them were glued to their phones, probably following the tabloids online and getting updates as the interviews and impromptu photo sessions were taking place. A couple of others were talking to reporters. I hoped they were at least talking about what Older Brothers was doing there.

  We were trying to connect local at-risk youth with positive role models in fields that would catch their interest. I had my reservations about pairing at-risk kids with the standard go-to answer of sports, but it was better than letting them hang with the local drug dealers and street thugs. Unfortunately, with the tabloids and sports papers hogging the spotlight, the kids were pretty much just getting ignored.

  Not cool.

  I wasn’t helping either by being late. It was my first event as the new director of the program, and I was showing up after the event was already supposed to have started. I had spent the morning fighting with my clothes, with my hair, and with my purse. Then, I had spent an immeasurable amount of time searching for my keys. I felt like a train wreck walking onto the field at the state-of-the-art practice facility the city had installed just a few years ago.

  Lucky for me, the whole thing looked like a train wreck. I probably looked like I had it together compared to the Older Brothers staff playing on their phones and sneaking bites of food from the refreshment tables.

  My first order of business was to gather my team and organize them so we could show the local businesses and private investors, who had agreed to help us make this happen, that we were professionals and that the program had some merit. I pulled everyone away from the food, away from the reporters, and certainly away from the kids.

  “Look,” I leveled my eyes with each of my staff members, “we’ve been given grants. We’ve been given donations. We’ve been given an opportunity today to show the community at large that despite the past problems Older Brothers has faced, we’re serious about helping our children. I take this very seriously, and I’m counting on each of you to help me show that dedication to our investors.”

  There was some hemming and hawing. There were a few rolled eyes and smacked lips. I saw the kind of ship the previous director had run before she had been taken away in handcuffs by the authorities on abuse and embezzlement charges. Something told me she hadn’t been the only one treating the charity as some sort of joke.

  Well, I wasn’t going to allow it. Older Brothers was my last chance. I’d failed at my previous charity position, though it was nothing as epic as what had happened here. I just hadn’t been able to overcome the apathy that had settled over the community.

  “If any of you think you won’t be able t
o help out properly, or don’t feel like you can take this charity seriously, you can leave today. If you are still here after I grab a cup of coffee, I’m going to assume it’s because you want to be, and I’m going to expect you to act accordingly. But remember, I’m not afraid to clean this organization out if I have to,” I warned them before walking over to the refreshment table to pour a cup of coffee.

  While I was there, I watched the jocks getting their egos stroked by the reporters and cameras in their faces. They weren’t here for the kids. They were here for the publicity. I wondered if we would be seen the same way by aligning ourselves with pro-football. Over the years, it seemed that professional athletes had begun lowering themselves to the levels of other celebrities. They were known for parties, sex, and drugs. It seemed like there was always one or another among them in the news for their poor decisions. I wasn’t sure we needed to line up behind them, but it was the best I could come up with right away.

  When I returned to my crowd, everyone was still there. Phones had been put away, and they were talking when I walked back up. I didn’t mind interrupting their conversation and establishing my authority.