Forward Passes (Seattle Lumberjacks) (7 page)

“You are an ass.” She almost smiled. Despite her reservations about him as a person, she enjoyed their verbal sparring as much as he did.

“Thank you. I work fucking hard at it.” He dropped another buck in the jar. His eyes danced with pleasure. Instead of getting rid of him, she’d done the opposite. He didn’t look like he’d be going anywhere for a while. In fact, he seemed pretty darned complacent.

“You should work on that potty mouth of yours.”

“You think I have a potty mouth?”

“Uh, duh. Show a little class.”

Tyler frowned, and his brows drew together in a tight line, as if she’d offended him.

“I’ll bet you can’t go a week without saying the “F” word.” She threw out the challenge before she’d given it much thought.

“Really? What’s the bet?” He sat up straighter, looking intrigued and wicked.

“A hundred dollars toward the Veteran Hall’s improvement fund.”

He scratched his chin, drawing her attention to his strong, square jaw line. “That’s pretty steep.”

“Pocket change to you.” She stared at the dark stubble on his face and imagined how it’d feel scraping across her nipples. Lavender fanned herself. One of the brothers must have cranked the heat again.

Tyler’s knowing smirk irritated her. He lowered his voice. “What do I win?” The gravel in his voice wet her panties. She tingled in places she didn’t know she could tingle.

“You won’t win.”

“I told you. I’m a competitive man.”

“How about a kiss with tongue and all.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before her brain engaged.

Tyler looked her up and down, as if considering the challenge she’d laid on the table. His patent slow, sexy grin slid across his face. He dropped his voice to a low rumble and arched one eyebrow. “Just a kiss?”

“That’s it. Nothing more.” She walked back to the bar and tossed a sassy grin she didn’t feel over her shoulder. Inside she cringed at her stupid dare. She couldn’t afford to lose for more reasons than money. He followed her, obviously intrigued.

“Trust me. You won’t be able to stop with just one. I’m that good.”

Only a delusional woman would argue with that statement. “So am I.” Her smart mouth needed to go back in a cell where it belonged. She’d just committed herself to a kiss, tongue and all, assuming she lost, then admitted she’d most likely go further.

And damn, she wanted to go further.

“It’s a deal then. We start right now.” Consulting his watch, Tyler Harris grinned at her, his eyes dark with an animal need, which clenched her insides into a knot and set her libido on fire. Her mind slid into a quick fantasy with his hot, sweat-soaked body sliding across hers while his cock got acquainted with her pussy. She suspected his cock matched his giant ego in size and stamina.

Dang, but she loved sex with a man she hated. No worries about pleasing the other, no concerns over what to do in the morning. Just down-dirty, slam-bam, rough-tumble, get-it-done sex. The best kind in her book.

It’d been ages since she’d let a man get her naked and parallel on a bed. She feared it’d only be a matter of time, and the less she liked him the better the sex.

In that case, sex with the insufferable Tyler Harris would be mind-blowing.

Chapter 9

Standing in the Pocket

A few days later, Tyler wrapped his hands around a beer bottle and watched. Lavender single-handedly managed the bar and juggled orders from the various patrons with her usual sassy efficiency.

He shifted on his bar stool, the same bar stool which should have his name on it. No one else in the small island town dared to sit in his space. If some poor clueless soul parked his ass on Tyler’s stool, a regular made sure he vacated it as soon as Ty walked in the door. He liked that about a small town. People got it.

Lavender whooshed by him, balancing a full tray of drinks. He followed her with his eyes, appreciating her many assets. Hell, his fantasies about those particular assets kept him sane. Zipping behind the bar, she whipped up a few martinis with her usual efficiency. Somehow she managed to please all her customers, except him. As long as she wore clothes, he’d be wanting more. A lot more. He licked his lips as her delectable tits bounced with every step she took.

His gaze swept across the room, and zeroed in on a guy watching Lavender as intently as Tyler was. The jerk flirted shamelessly with her, and she flirted right back. A wave of jealousy surged through Tyler, surprising him with its intensity. He tried to shrug it off as a by-product of his alpha-male possessive streak. What’s his was his, and no else better forget that.

His? What the fuck.
She wasn’t his. In fact, they didn’t even like each other. Of course, those two little details didn’t stop Tyler. He locked eyes with the interloper and pinned him to the wall with a threatening glare. No one lusted after the object of Tyler’s current lust. No one. The chickenshit paled and swallowed nervously. Gulping down the last of his beer, the idiot slapped some change on the table, and quickly hustled out the door. Smug with satisfaction, Tyler did another survey of the room. Good, all was as it should be. He settled back and focused his energy on Lavender fantasies.

Tyler’s cell vibrated. He frowned, irritated at being interrupted and checked out the caller id, his cousin and best buddy Derek Ramsey. This better be good. He pressed the answer button. “What’s up, asshole?”

“I could say the same of you.”

“I’m fine. What the fu—fudge are you harassing me for?” Tyler shot a quick glance in Lavender’s direction. She stood too far away to catch his almost slip.

Derek cleared his throat, followed by silence on the line. Not a good sign. Tyler’s instincts went on red alert. He drummed his fingers on the counter. His cousin remained silent.

Tyler hated waiting. “Aw, shit. Put on your big boy pants and spit it out. Or did Rachel burn them all?”

Derek made an odd noise then finally spoke. “I thought you’d rather hear this from me than from the media.”

Tyler sucked in a deep breath and let it out. He shoved his fingers through his unruly hair. He needed to get it cut, but very likely that was the least of his problems. “Oh, crap, what now?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, buddy. Brace yourself.” He heard Derek inhale then exhale.

Tyler’s mind raced through a hundred possibilities. Somehow they did charge him with a DUI. Maybe some woman came forward and insisted he fathered her kid. Or he’d been cut from the team. Or his sisters ran off to South America with what was left of his money. He shouldn’t have ignored his agent’s many calls. “Dang it. Tell me. What is it?”

“The Jacks signed Zach Murphy to a one-year contract.”

Tyler went still inside, rendered completely speechless. He bit the side of his mouth just to make sure he hadn’t died from shock. The taste of his blood mingled with disbelief. “Zach Murphy? Are you frigging kidding me?” Across the counter, Lavender raised a brow. He raised a brow right back at her.

“Yeah. I guess Zach took a big pay cut to play for us. He wants to go out with a bang his last year in the league. The poor bastard’s played with piece of crap teams his entire pro career. He wants a ring.”

Tyler clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together. He wanted to hit something. How could the Lumberjacks do this to him?

He dropped a five in the jar before opening his mouth. He knew this wasn’t going to be good. Even if he couldn’t use the “F” word, he had others. “Damn it. Everyone knows I can’t stand that idiot dickwad, and he feels the same. The asshole is a dirty player. Mother effing dirty. He’s tried to take me out more than once.”

“Yeah, and he’s laid you flat on your back more than any other linebacker in the league. The guy’s good.” His fuckhead cousin almost sounded amused, which didn’t improve Tyler’s temper one bit.

“He’s old, washed up. There isn’t room on the team for both of us.”

“Tell that to the Jacks. If you haven’t noticed, you didn’t get a vote. This is your wakeup call, dumbshit. I’m not the only teammate who noticed your attitude this past season, or should I say lack of?”

Tyler tightened his grip on the cell phone, wanting to crush the life out of this electronic bearer of fucking bad news. He thought he’d been so clever, fooled them all, but his teammates and coaches had seen through his not-so-incredible acting job.

“HughJack loves Murphy’s fire. Says the team could use a little of it these days.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Like he didn’t know? Maybe they’d disrespected him with this obvious vote of no confidence, but he was also guilty as charged.

“They’re doubting your team leadership.”

His cousin’s words cut right to the heart of the matter.

Tyler jabbed the
End
button on the phone, cutting off his cousin. Without even a backward glance, he stomped out of the bar into the dark, rainy evening, which matched his mood just fucking fine.

* * * * *

Lavender grappled with the large roll of welded wire fencing. It took on a mind of its own and wrestled her to the ground. She was losing the battle when her neighbor decided to be neighborly and lifted the recalcitrant roll off her pinned body as if the heavy wire was a roll of toilet paper. Sometimes brute strength did have its advantages.

She ignored his outstretched hand and struggled to her feet. “Good to see you know how to use those muscles.”

“That’s how I make my money, babe.” A cocky grin spread across his strong, square jaw. His Caribbean blue eyes twinkled with pure devilment, even though she sensed an edge to him.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Whatever you say, Vinnie.” He was deliberately attempting to provoke her.

“Don’t call me that either.”

“Lilac? Violet?”

She shook her head violently and tried like hell not to laugh, which would only encourage the insufferably obnoxious man. “How about not. Perhaps, I’ll come up with something equally annoying to call you.”

“Call me anything you want, baby.” He reached up and brushed a smear of dirt from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Her body responded with a revealing shudder. His eyes turned the color of an ocean in a storm, a sexual storm. “Damn, I love it when you get down and dirty.”

Lavender sighed and brushed off her clothes, suddenly aware of her innate scruffiness in comparison to his innate gorgeousness. “Did you come over here to exercise your vast wit or do you need something?”

“No, but you do. I couldn’t stand watching you fight with the fencing. It was about to deliver the knockout punch.” He leaned down, his mouth way too close to her ear. “Besides, if anyone’s going to wrestle you to the ground, it’ll be me.”

“Why don’t you exercise your feet and leave?” Before her body exercised its fantasies.

“Seems someone called the phone company and cancelled my request for service. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” He propped one foot on the bumper of her pickup truck, more amused than pissed off, which irritated her.

She wiped her face of all emotion, but she was pretty damn sure guilt still came through. “No, not a thing.”

“I figured as much. Now I have to wait another few weeks. My ninety days will be up before I get service on this island. Guess what? Maybe I’d just as soon be unreachable.”

“Then you don’t have a problem. Someone—I’m not saying it’s me—did you a favor.”

“Perhaps. Being incommunicado does have its merits. But as attractive as it is, I have business to attend to.”

“If you leave the island now, you can attend to all the business you want.”

He shook his head, not the least bit put off. “Now that’s no way to treat a man with a hammer, especially when he knows how to use it.” Tyler held up a good-sized hammer for her inspection. For once he smiled a genuine smile, a nice-guy smile oddly out of place on his sinfully bad-boy face.

“Are you offering to help me with my fencing?”

“Yup, just to get a little peace. You’re making a fu—, frigging racket.” He smirked at his quick catch. The man wanted his kiss. Of course, he’d most likely pegged her right and knew a kiss would only be foreplay to the foreplay.

“Something has me curious.” Tyler looked at her so long and hard she started to squirm under his dissecting gaze. “You don’t have any animals? What’s up with that? Don’t you like animals?”

“I love animals.” Lavender felt a twinge of jealousy toward her neighbor, not because of his fame or money, but because he was living with the cat, and she had no animals to comfort her or stave off the loneliness. She’d never planned to live in her
grand
parents’ house for this long, but the bad economy and life conspired to keep her under their thumb.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“My landlady, who happens to be my grandmother, is highly allergic to animal fur. She won’t allow any on the property.”

“She doesn’t live here. You do.”

Lavender shrugged. She didn’t want to get into details regarding her controlling grandmother and grandfather and all the dysfunctional reasons why she allowed them to run her life.

“So what’s the fence for?”

“To keep the deer out of the vegetables.”

Tyler gazed pointedly at her woebegone vegetable garden. “I think it’s too late.”

“So do I, but I promised I’d fence off the garden.” Her grandmother expected fresh vegetables, one of the things Lavender of the brown thumb did to earn her keep on this little plot of land.

“Give me the hammer.”

“Pound away, jock boy.”

Tyler slanted her a sideways look.

“Drag your sorry ass out of the gutter. I meant
with a hammer
.” Lavender stood back with anticipation and waited for him to make an ass of himself demonstrating his hammer-pounding talents. Tyler grinned. Perfect white teeth stood out against his dark tan. No one had a tan in the islands this time of year, but Tyler did.

“Go for it. I’d like to see you wield that hammer.” Would she ever.

He opened his mouth to speak then seemed to think better of it. He turned to the task at hand and assessed the damage.

Lavender flipped a bucket upside down and took a seat. They were getting along almost too well, so she scrambled to find a subject to ruin his mood. “What’s the deal with Zach Murphy?”

Immediately, the shutters slammed shut over his eyes, and he regarded her warily. “You were eavesdropping on my conversation last night.”

“I, uh, I just happened to, uh, overhear a bit of it. That’s all.”

“Then you already know what the deal is.”

“Not really, I could only hear one side of it.”

“We hate each other’s fu—frigging guts. That’s the deal.”

“So I hear.”

“You did? I thought you hated football?”

“Just because I hate football doesn’t mean I don’t know stuff about it. Why would the Jacks sign someone who has a very public feud with the heart and soul of their team?”

“Maybe they’re looking for a new heart and soul.” He frowned, as if he hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.

“You’ve done some stupid things lately, like driving drunk.”

He glared down at her with a ferocity she’d never witnessed from him. “Have you ever seen me drink too much to drive home?”

Lavender searched her memory. “No, I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“If that’s what you think.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked at an unseen spot in the distance. His expression hardened with determination. “It’s my team. He’ll learn that soon enough. I can handle the jerk. No big deal.”

But it was a big deal, as illustrated by the restlessness she’d sensed in him earlier. It went deeper than the team signing a player Tyler didn’t like and rumors of pending DUI charges. Beneath his unease lingered a hint of something, almost like insecurity, or fear, even vulnerability. She shook her head, denying the quarterback possessed a heart with real emotions. The second she acknowledged he might be human would be the beginning of the end of her ability to resist him.

“I’m sure it’ll all work out just fine.”

“I’m sure it will.” He didn’t look one damn bit convinced.

Turning his back to her, Tyler picked up a hammer and fence staples. Giving each staple a few solid whacks, he attached one end of the fence to the post. Then he rolled the rest out on the ground.