Fair Game: A Football Romance (52 page)

EMERSON ROSE

COPYRIGHT 2016
PRISM HEART PRESS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher or author. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or received an advanced copy directly from the author, this book has been pirated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

EDITING:
Valorie Clifton

COVER DESIGN: LJ Anderson,
Mayhem Cover Creations

DEDICATION

I want to thank my children for putting up with the take out pizza and five minute meals you had to eat while I was writing this book. Shush. Don’t tell that I always give you take out pizza and quickie dinners - it sounded good for the acknowledgments! But seriously I know you get tired of seeing the back of my head from my office door, please remember, I do it all for you. I love every single one of you so much.

I also want to thank my publisher at Prism Heart Press who saw me struggling with kids a full time job and trying to write. She picked me up, brushed me off, pointed me in the right direction and said; “Go this way.” Thank you for believing in me and helping me believe in myself.

- Emerson AKA “Mama”

Prologue

HOLLAND

I miss my baby girl.

God, she’s not even a baby anymore. She’s three years old today. I fidget impatiently as the musicians around me shuffle their sheet music while preparing for tonight’s performance. Today is supposed to be a joyful day of celebration with Barbie dolls and pink balloons, but instead, the tuning of my colleagues’ instruments has me well on my way to a migraine. The pre-show butterflies I feel in my tummy every year on this particular day have turned to cement.

Focus, I tell myself. These people are looking to you for direction and leadership. You can’t be distracted, not even today.

The buzzing crowd is the winner of my attention tonight. Hands down, concertmaster or not, my mind isn’t on the orchestra tonight. It’s on my daughter.

Scanning the audience like I do every year on this date, I pray I’ll see him sitting out there in the dimly lit auditorium, with my daughter swinging her little feet back and forth in the seat next to him.

It’s a dream I’ve been having every night for three years. I’m sitting on stage in the Lincoln Center, consumed by the music and focused on leading my string section, when out of the corner of my eye, I see King sitting in the third row with our beautiful raven-haired daughter, Juliette, next to him. The room blurs, and my violin slides from my hands, clattering onto the floor in slow motion as I stand. The members of the orchestra stop playing in waves, beginning with the musicians closest to me, until only the percussion people are left clanking and rattling.

A hush falls over the room when I call out her name.

I bolt backstage, but when I arrive at their row, the seats have been abandoned. I turn to look up the aisle. No one is there, but there are hundreds of glaring eyes fixated on me. I glance back at the vacant seats in disbelief and see something glimmering where Juliette sat. If the lights hadn’t been turned up in the house because of my unheard of behavior, I would never have seen it. I push past patrons decked out in sequins, fur stoles and tuxedos and lurch for the eye-catching sparkle. It’s a charm bracelet with a tiny diamond violin, a music note, and three circular charms with the letters H, K and J stamped on them.
My
charm bracelet. King gave it to me in the hospital after I had our baby three years ago, before he took her and disappeared.

Chapter One

Four Years Earlier

HOLLAND

“Don’t you dare say no, Holland. You don’t have much time left.” Savannah barges into my bedroom, throwing a huge duffle bag onto my bed. We’d just hung up. I thought she was at home, not in my driveway.

“I’m going to Juilliard, Savannah. I’m not dying.” I shake my head. I can’t believe she’s making me do this. She shoots me a death glare that would probably hurt my feelings if it were genuine, but there’s a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth.

“Come on, be
young
have some
fun
.”

“I
do
have fun.” I fling myself onto my back next to the duffle.

“Um, no. No, you don’t. Sitting in this bedroom day after day, doing homework, and playing the violin until your fingers literally bleed is
not
fun.”

“Maybe not for you, but it is for me.”

“You’re having
real
fun this summer if it kills me.” Savannah digs through her duffle bag, tossing bottles of this and cans of that on the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“You know what we’re doing. We’re going out. Put on something sexy.”

“I’ve got a ton of homework. We have finals next week. You know, graduation and all that.” My voice drips with sarcasm. I roll onto my belly and bury my face into the comforter. Savannah slaps my ass and struts across my tidy bedroom to the closet. “Hey, that hurt.” I rub my butt and get up to follow her. “Don’t mess up my closet. Everything in there is just where I want it, and it’s color coded.” She turns to me with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her lips.

“Separating black and white isn’t considered color coding. You have to have
color
for that.”

“Black and white are always appropriate.”

“Well, we’re going for the opposite of appropriate tonight, honey. It’s time to start breaking in these fake IDs, my friend. I paid a fortune for them, so come on! Get dressed.” She fans the IDs in my face, lifting her eyebrows.

“I don’t know, Savannah. I mean, I know everybody does it, but we’re only nineteen. We don’t look old enough to be in a bar.” Savannah takes me by my shoulders and turns me toward my full-length mirror on the back of my closet door.

“You have on yoga pants and a sweatshirt, your hair is in a sloppy knot on top of your head, and you’re not wearing makeup. When I’m done with you, you’re gonna be smoking hot.” I sigh and glance at my homework on my desk, and then at my violin in its case on the floor, before meeting her eyes in the mirror.

“Trust me,” she says in her thickest southern drawl, squeezing my shoulders and giving them a quick jerk before turning back to rummage through my closet.

“I’m supposed to practice. Mama will be listening.”

“I don’t understand why you have to practice when you’re world class. You’ve been considered a . . . what do they call it again?”

“A child prodigy.”

“Yeah, that . . . since you were eight, for shit’s sake.” Savannah slaps the plastic hangers against each other like she’s disgusted, and she probably is. After a few minutes of critiquing everything I own, she sighs.

“There is actually not one single sexy piece of clothing in this closet.” Her arms fly up and she drops them against her sides with a slap.

“Just go start practicing. I’ll get ready first. It’ll give me some time to think about what I’m going to do with you. I’ll have to work around the violin when it’s your turn.” She spins on her heel and heads into my en-suite bathroom with a frustrated sigh.

“I’m good because I practice, by the way,” I call after her. I’m doomed. Savannah’s relentless. I may as well just give in and go along with her insane plan.

“You’re good because you were born with a violin in your hands,” she yells.

I hear her spreading cosmetics and hair styling paraphernalia all over the counter.

I pick up my violin and rest it on my shoulder. All of my tension melts and flows from my fingertips into my music. A calm washes over me, and every muscle in my body relaxes. For me, playing the violin is comfortable and exhilarating at the same time, like snuggling in my bed and riding on a rollercoaster. I raise my bow and close my eyes. I don’t need the sheet music to play my favorite piece of music, Bach’s Chaconne from Partita in D minor. At three years old, I opened my mama’s violin case and tucked her instrument under my chin the way I had seen her do a million times. It took her two seconds to know I was gifted. Mama always says, “The biggest sin is to ignore the special gifts God gives you.” She’s a God-fearing woman, and she wasn’t about to let me ignore my gift.

Both of my parents spent every second of their lives fostering my talent after that. They took out second mortgages on our house, worked hours and hours of overtime to pay for lessons, practice rooms and trips out of town to listen to famous orchestras perform, all so that I could go to Juilliard and someday realize my dream of playing in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Savannah is my best friend, and lately, her number one goal in life is to expose me to all of the things I’ll be missing at a
normal
college next year. She assumes Juilliard isn’t going to be normal—and it’s probably not, I guess—but I don’t care. I’ve never been normal either.

Savannah pads across my bedroom until she stops directly in front of me. Excitement radiates from her body when I open my eyes and gasp, lowering my bow until it dangles limply in my hand.

“Oh my God, Savannah, you look like . . . like you’re twenty-five or something.” I stare at my blonde bombshell of a best friend. She’s become a professional makeup artist in her spare time, and quite possibly a hair stylist too. Savannah isn’t Savanna anymore. She’s transformed her cute, fresh-faced, nineteen-year-old self into one of those America’s Next Top Model girls with smoky eyes, sexy, wavy hair down to her ass, skintight jeans, heels—no, make that stilts—and a tank top that is so skimpy I’m almost embarrassed to see her in it.

“You’re going out like
that
?”

She spins around and thrusts her hip out.

“Yep, and so are you. Come on.” She crooks her finger toward herself. Her eyes are full of mischief as she tries to tempt me into joining her.

“I thought you said I could play while you worked on me.” I really don’t want to get made up like a doll. “Mama isn’t going to be satisfied with that little bit of practice, ya know.”

“Little bit? You’ve been playing for like forty-five minutes. You don’t even realize that, do you?”

“Uh no, not really. I get lost in the music sometimes. But forty-five minutes isn’t nearly enough. I usually practice at least two hours every night.”

“Do you record yourself when you’re playing?”

“Yeah, of course.” Oh crap . . .

“No way, Savannah. If she comes up here and finds out that I’ve snuck out the window and left my tracks playing on my computer, she will kill me.”

Savannah pulls me by the arm and plops me onto a barstool in front of the mirror in my bathroom while she grabs a brush.

“Your mama isn’t going to kill you. For one thing, she isn’t going to find out, and for another, even if she does, you’re going away in a couple of months to college. She’ll understand that you had to sow your wild oats before you left.”

“Wild oats?”

“Yes. Oats. Now play while I straighten your hair, woman.” She flicks her finger at the violin in my hands, dismissing the subject.

I pull in a deep breath, fill my cheeks, and blow it out. She’s going to get me into trouble. I know it, but I don’t have a choice. I feel so guilty for leaving her. Savannah isn’t going to college. Her daddy left them two years ago, and her mama has to work three jobs just to make ends meet. After they pay the bills, there’s nothing left for higher education.

I play while she works miracles straightening my thick, black hair. Eventually, she forces me to put down my violin and turn on my practice recording so she can do my makeup.

“I’m going to look like a whore.” My eyes are closed as she brushes what feels like a
lot
of eyeshadow on my lids. She’s so close to my face that I feel her breath disappear in a gasp right before she play-slaps my cheek.

“Now why would you say something like that? Do
I
look like a whore?”

“Well . . .” I giggle and open my eyes to a very insulted Savannah, who is just inches from my face and biting an eyeliner pencil horizontally between her teeth.

“Hey.”

“I’m kidding. You just look so much older.”

“That’s the idea, dummy. Now be still. I’m almost done.” Thank God. I never wear makeup, and my hair is naturally wavy, so I usually just put it in a ponytail when it’s wet. Hair and makeup just take away time that I could be practicing or studying. Savannah says I’m obsessed with the violin and my plans for the future. It probably seems that way to her—to everyone, actually, except Mama. I was born to play. It’s in my bones. It isn’t a hobby or a pastime. It’s who I
am
.

“Ta da. You can look now.” She steps away from the vanity so I can see in the mirror.

“Wow.”

“Yeah . . . wow.” She crosses her arms across her chest and nods her head up and down, clearly satisfied with her work.

“You’re fucking hot, Holland.”

“Watch your mouth. Cursing makes you ugly.”

“I can’t help it. I did a fucking awesome job.”

I stare at the stranger in the mirror over my bathroom vanity.

“You should do a little of this every day. I mean, not all of it, of course—this is an evening look—but you could be model-gorgeous with a little effort.” The compliment hangs in the air between us. I don’t consider myself beautiful—average, maybe—but tonight? Yeah, this is definitely different.

“Okay, hop up and go get dressed. I put your clothes on your bed.”

“I thought you were looking in my closet for something.”

She gives me the famous Savannah eye roll.

“I was being nice. I knew there wasn’t anything sexy in there.” I narrow my eyes and lift one corner of my professionally glossed lips with skepticism.

“It’s not that bad. Man, getting you to loosen up is going to be harder than I thought.”

In my bedroom, I find a pair of jeans lying on my bed. I hold them out in front of me and look up at her.

“What are these, size negative zero? Did you get them in the little girls’ department?”

“Hush.”

I tug, wiggle and hop until they’re over my hips. When I’m stuffed into the teeny tiny jeans, she hands me an even tinier flimsy white tank top with lace around the bottom hem. I sigh and hold the top against me and decide it’s a good thing we’ve been working on our tans already this spring, because this shirt is going to show a lot of skin.

“Just put it on. You’re gonna look awesome.” She flips her hair over her shoulder while she packs away her makeup and hair tools in the duffle bag. I make quick work of stripping off my comfy sweatshirt and tossing it aside, replacing it with the scrap of material Savannah calls a top. Tilting my head, I look in the mirror again, smooth my hands over my bare belly, and try tugging the shirt down a little. It’s useless. The lacy hem brushes just above my navel, and that’s where it’s staying.

“Aren’t you glad you got your belly pierced now? It looks so pretty with that shirt,” she says, standing behind me and looking into the mirror. Another thing on her
itinerary
. . . pierce something other than your ears. Since I was completely opposed to having any private part of my body pierced, my belly button was the only thing left. It hurt like hell, but I did it for her. That was the first time we put our IDs to use, although I don’t think the guys at the tattoo/piercing shop really cared about our age. They were more interested in pulling our shirts up and touching our tummies than anything. Savannah could have gotten hers for free if she had asked. The poor guy was practically drooling.

“All right, I think we’re going to have to carry our shoes until we get off the roof.” She holds up two pairs of ridiculously high-heeled shoes. My stomach drops when she mentions the roof. Sneaking out is such a bad idea. I just know my mama is going to find out, and she is going to be livid.

“Can’t I just wear my cowboy boots?” I hold my hands together, praying she will let me.

“No, this is a fancy dance club. You need heels.”

I heave another deep sigh and agree with her insane plan to climb out of my second story window, onto the overhang of the front porch, and down the trellis. Maybe one of us will fall and we can stay home. I can only hope.

“Yeah, I guess so. Let me check to be sure I have enough time left on my practice recording.”

“And don’t forget to plug in your laptop. You don’t want it dying before you’re supposed to be done.”

“Yeah, right, okay.” I bend down to plug the cord in under my desk. When I stand up and turn around, I see Savannah disappear out my window. I grab the stilettos from the bed and follow her out. On the roof, I carefully turn and slide my window shut. I hate heights. It’s just one more bad idea in what is fast becoming a night full of bad ideas. I inch toward Savannah and hold onto the back of her jeans.