Play With Me

GENRE:  YA/CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses,
organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

PLAY WITH ME

Copyright © 2012 by Piper Shelly

Cover Design by Piper Shelly with Jennifer
Gibson [email protected]

All cover art copyright © 2012

All Rights Reserved

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-48118-201-0

First Publication: DECEMBER 2012

All rights reserved under the
International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

IF YOU FIND AN EBOOK OR
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ILLEGALLY, PLEASE REPORT
IT TO:
[email protected]

My
heartfelt thanks…

To all the wonderful angels in my life for
their encouragement, their help, and their patience. Especially, to my amazing family
for never stopping to cheer for me. To my son, Kevin, who tells me he misses me
everyday when I disappear into my ‘writing lab’. And to Gran for taking care of
everyone while I can’t because my books keep me in a tight grip.

Love
you
!

To
you, my darling husband.

When
you looked at me for the first time

and
gave me that tempting half smile,

my
heart skipped a beat, and I thought I was dreaming
.

I’m
glad my dream didn’t end.

To
the most supportive friend and critique partner

I
could wish for.

Georgia
Lyn Hunter

Thanks
for watching my back.

All
right, now get that smirk off your face, Hunter.

We
have a job to do—

Try
and take over the world.

CHAPTER

1

HE’D NEVER TRIED
to kiss me, even when we practically shared the same bed half of the summer.
And then he was gone. For five tormenting weeks. I thought I was going to die
after day two.

But today, my
torture was over. Today, Anthony Mitchell returned. My best friend and future
husband.

Not like I had
informed him about that yet, but it wasn’t necessary. Everyone knew it, and I
couldn’t wait to trade my last name, Matthews, for his. Tony and I had been
hanging out since kindergarten. We were inseparable, except for the few hours
every day when he had soccer training and I had—well some time to write how
much I loved him in my diary for the sixteen millionth time.

Liza and Tony,
that went like Bonnie&Clyde. Like Lois&Clark. We were M&M, really.

The door bell
chimed.

My heart banged
against my throat as I tossed my diary to the side, struggling to disentangle the
quilt from around my legs. I finally flopped off the bed together with the
comforter.

“I’m coming!” On
the way down the winding stairs, I raked my fingers through my long, brown hair
to give it the last bit of oomph before I rushed to open the door. A sunbeam
hit me first, then Tony’s long missed prettiness followed. His blond hair,
tousled over his forehead, almost touched his pretty blue eyes. He wore the white
shirt half open, and I always had to fight really hard not to drool over his
naked skin.

Hands shoved
into the pockets of his shorts, he just stood there and looked at me. Then his
mouth curled into his typical sly grin. “What is it, Liz? I know you’re dying
to hug me.”

Gee! I flashed
my teeth, which now were perfectly straight after two years of wearing braces,
in a broad smile and gave him the bear hug he expected. He dragged me outside
and twirled me under the warm sun with my face buried in the crook of his neck.
Ah, he smelled so good, sun-kissed and all Tony. I never got enough of that
special brand.

“How was camp?”
I asked after he set me down.

He mocked me by
wrinkling his nose. “Boring as hell without you, what else?”

“Yeah, right. As
if.”

To fully
understand him, one had to know that apart from the one obsession we shared
about Spielberg-movies, soccer was Tony’s greatest passion in the world. But I
appreciated his lie and stuck my tongue out at him.

Tony tsked at
that. “Manners, girl. If you want to kiss me, just say so.” His face was close
enough that his nose brushed mine. I swallowed the urge to tilt my head and really
do that. But I knew he was teasing me again. So far, we’d never kissed. In
regular intervals, I fell asleep in his bedroom when we did a
Jaws
-marathon,
or he would crash at mine when his parents were out on business trips around
the state. He let me rest my head on his shoulder, even played absently with my
hair. But a kiss? Nah.

I was going to
be seventeen at the end of this summer and started feeling a little weird
because I hadn’t been kissed yet. But no one other than Tony would touch my
lips, and if he needed a few more months to realize he wanted me, too, I could
wait.

“Hey, want to go
down to the beach? I got this pretty new swimsuit and haven’t tried it out yet.”
In anticipation of our reunion, I had put on the neon green bikini in the
morning, and now pulled down the collar of my pink tee to tease him with a
glimpse. Green was his favorite color.

He snarled like
a jaguar, with one corner of his mouth lifted. “I’d love to see you half naked,
Matthews.” Just another tease, but it didn’t matter. Goose bumps shot up on my
skin. “Unfortunately, I have to pass. I’m going to see some friends from the
team down at Charlie’s.”

My shoulders
slumped. “Seriously? You just got back, what, ten minutes ago? Didn’t you see
the guys enough at camp?”

“Hunter wants to
discuss tomorrow’s qualifications.”

I pouted. Ever
since Ryan Hunter had become the new captain of Grover Beach’s high school
soccer team, Tony’s training time had doubled. And more training meant less
time for him to hang out with me. I hated Hunter.

“Cheer up, girl.
Why don’t you come along? You know most of the guys anyway, and I’ll introduce
you to the rest. I’m sure Hunter won’t mind.” He gave me no chance to argue, or
even trade my flip-flops for decent shoes. My hand in a tight grip, he hauled
me down the path through our front yard.

“Wait! I have no
money on me.”

“Don’t need it.
That single soda you’ll sip on for the next two hours won’t ruin me.”

I pulled my hair
back and fastened it with a band I had in my pocket as we ambled along Saratoga
Avenue to Charlie’s café and diner.

A bunch of kids
sat around three tables in the shade of the wooden roof sloping over half of the
outdoor area. I recognized a few of them from Tony’s team. Sasha Torres,
Stephan Jones, Alex Winter. Nick Andrews’ arm was laid in a cast. The training
camp obviously didn’t pass without leaving battle scars.

I was surprised with
the many female faces there, though. “What’s this?” I whispered to Tony when we
still were out of earshot. “Are you into co-ed training now?”

“Cool, isn’t it?
We played a few games together in Santa Monica, and Hunter thought it would be
fun to assemble a mixed team here, too.”

Some of the
girls looked familiar, and I even had Spanish with Susan Miller. But a handful of
them I swore I had never seen before. Like the one who stood as we approached
and kissed Tony on the cheek with her awfully bright red painted lips.

“You’re late,
Anthony. I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”

Anthony? The
only person I ever heard calling him that was his grandma.

“Hi, Cloey,” he
replied in a strange, deep voice I’d never heard before. His hands rested on
her hips. He dipped his head and let her kiss his other cheek.

She winked at
him then gave me the strangest once over I ever got. The spite in her eyes made
me feel as if I fell short in the looks and fashion department in her books.

My glance skated
to Tony’s face. What the hell was that? And seriously, he didn’t have to drool over
her shamelessly long legs when she sat down again and swung one over the other.
Her white mini dress must have shrunk in the wash, because something red
flashed underneath.

Tony shouted our
order to Charlie behind the bar. A Coke and Red Bull. The Red Bull certainly
wasn’t for me. But when did he start drinking that nasty stuff?
Red-lips-and-white-dress had a bottle of that in front of her, too. I started
feeling really awkward all of a sudden.

“Mixed soccer teams,
huh?” I grumbled at Tony while we sat down—he opposite Cloey, and I between him
and Nick with the cast.

“The tryouts are
tomorrow, Matthews. I can put you on the list, if you’re interested,” Ryan
Hunter called out to me, a mocking glint in his deep brown eyes.

The fact he even
knew my name caught me off guard.

“Liz and
soccer?” Tony laughed next to me. It hurt in a weird way. “You might as well
try to get an elephant dance the tango. Right, Liz?”

I directed an
irritated scowl at my supposed best friend. He didn’t even notice when the
entire bunch joined in the laugh.

“The elephant is
a close hit home,” Barbie said to the redhead next to her then flashed me a cruel
smile.

Sorry, what?
I was a perfect size XS. My five feet four might seem a little short
to her Amazonian six foot something, but I was in no way fat. I picked up my dropped
stomach from the ground, deciding to punish Tony later for pretending not to
have heard that. In all the time we had been friends, not once did he let
anyone insult me without breaking their jaw. Okay, messing with Cloey’s face
would be a little drastic, but he could at least have said something to defend
me.

Since he seemed
to have forgotten how, I returned the saccharin sweet smile to the Barbie Clone.
“I tried puking my meals in ninth grade, but then this seems to be more your
thing than mine.”

The laughter
died, and Tony choked on his swig of Red Bull while the rest of the group
pretended to be conversing in lowered voices. The only sound, a chuckle, came
from the place where Ryan Hunter sat.

Cloey frowned at
me as if I’d spoken a foreign language. “Did you just insult me?”

The funny thing
was she really meant it. I cut a glance skyward and sipped on my Coke.

Thankfully, Tony
got a text message from his mother a little later. Mrs. Mitchell was hoping to
see him again before she and her husband had to leave town for two days. Tony
looked at my glass of soda and asked me if I wanted to stay with the others.