Playing By Her Rules (Sydney Smoke Rugby Series)

His game, her rules.

In this grudge match, the first to score…

When style columnist Matilda Kent accidentally lets slip that she was once involved with the captain of the Sydney Smoke rugby team, she suddenly finds herself elevated to the position she’s always wanted—feature writer. The catch? She’s stuck doing a six-part series on her ex. Still, there’s no way she can turn down a promotion…
or
the chance to dish the dirt on the guy who so callously broke her heart.

…could win it all!

Tanner Stone wants to be involved in a feature series about as much as he wants to snap an Achilles. But the thought of seeing Tilly again is a bonus—and has him more worked up than he wants to admit. Only he’s not prepared for how different she is—all cool and professional. His Tilly is still in there, though…and he still wants her, now more than ever. All he has to do is charm her into giving him a rematch. And this time, winner takes all!

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

Copyright © 2016 by Amy Andrews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Brazen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. For more information on our titles, visit
www.brazenbooks.com
.

Edited by Liz Pelletier

Cover design by Bree Archer

Cover art from iStock

ISBN 978-1-63375-707-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition July 2016

To Elizabeth Pelletier, who asked probably the world’s least sports-orientated individual if I wanted to do a rugby series because she knew that appreciation of hot men in tight shorts was universal, and that it wouldn’t be such a terrible way to pass my time.

That woman knows her shit.

Chapter One

If Matilda Kent had to write one more story about the latest nipple-baring bustier or test drive the newest crotchless thongs marketed to the “everyday woman” for the edification of her style column readers, she was going to strangle her boss with them.

Seriously, who paid a hundred bucks for a scrap of satin and lace that didn’t cover all the bits underwear was invented to cover? A tiny string of fake pearls slung across the divide just didn’t make up for the lack of fabric in a certain area. And why would someone wear them anyway? On a date maybe. But for work? Or binge watching Netflix? Or cooking a lamb roast?

Or any of those
everyday woman
things?

No way.

She clicked and unclicked her pen absently as she focused on keeping everything below the boardroom table very,
very
still in the hope those pearls would stay lax and not encroach on areas where it might result in an embarrassing urge to itch. Or possibly orgasm. In the middle of an editorial meeting.

This was not where she’d imagined four years studying English Lit at Stanford would land her.

“
Matilda
. Must you?”

She stopped clicking the pen and tuned in to the half dozen faces peering at her, including Imelda Herron, her hard-as-nails boss, who’d been in the newspaper business since God was a child.

“Sorry,” she muttered, placing her pen on the table as Imelda continued.

But it was seriously difficult to listen to celebrity names being thrown around for a feature series while concentrating on her almost nonexistent underwear. Normally, she could multi-task her ass off, but the threat of imminent invasion of her lady garden by a foreign object was distracting beyond all reason.

If she was going to be violated, she’d rather it be consensual.

“Him,” somebody toward the end of the table pronounced. “That’s who I’d like to know more about.”

Heads swivelled in the direction of the muted wall-mounted television displaying footage of a football team. The camera zeroed in on Tanner Stone—or Slick as the media called him—the captain of the Sydney Smoke rugby team.

Matilda’s pulse spiked. Tanner
freaking
Stone. A close-up of him shirtless, bending and stretching, his perfect, tight ass in the air, almost made her forget there were pearls in places they had no right to be.

And
the fact he was a lying, cheating scumbag who’d stomped on her heart, turned her into a romantic cynic at the tender age of eighteen, and caused her to sabotage every relationship she’d ever had with a man.

He
was the reason her grandmother kept bitching at her about the lack of great-grandbabies.

Matilda would have liked to think she was mature enough now to be over him. Sadly, she wasn’t that evolved. The wound may have healed, but it wasn’t all neat and perfect. It was jagged and messy and if you poked it, it still hurt from time to time.

“I wouldn’t mind being rucked by him,” someone muttered.

Matilda glanced around at the general murmur of agreement and tried not to remember how good the man
rucked.

He had set a very high standard.

A surge of heat and oestrogen flooded her system at the avalanche of memories. Looking around at the lascivious gazes, she doubted she was the only one experiencing a hot flush.

“He doesn’t give interviews,” someone else lamented.

“He might now,” Imelda nodded as the screen split in two.

One side was still
unhelpfully
focused on a pair of glutes that would have made Michelangelo weep. The other showed Bonner Hayden, a recently disgraced rugby player from another team, dashing to his car through a mob of reporters. He’d gotten drunk and disorderly and exposed himself to a waitress in front of an entire restaurant and about forty camera phones.

It had been the latest in a series of embarrassing incidents for the sport.

The attention in the room switched back to Imelda.

“Rugby’s had a bit of an annus horribilis,” she explained. “Their image is pretty crap at the moment. Particularly with women. They might be amenable to a feature series on one of their best and brightest—the ‘man behind the myth’ kind of thing.”

The heat coiled and simmered in Matilda’s gut now. “He’s hardly squeaky clean,” she objected. Best and brightest?
Screw that.
“The man’s had more barely-dressed women on his arm than Hugh bloody Heffner.”

Matilda didn’t watch sport, and she avoided gossip magazines, but she did work on a newspaper—it was impossible to avoid stories and pictures of the one man it seemed everyone wanted a piece of.

“So? The man’s a bit of a playboy. He’s hot, single, and likes pretty girls.” Imelda shrugged. “But there’s never been a whiff of scandal surrounding him, and at the moment, that seems to be a bit of a rarity in the sport. I think the rugby board might be willing to offer up a sacrificial lamb, no matter how reluctant, to restore its image, if we pitched it just right.”

Imelda tapped a finger with a long scarlet nail against her lips for a beat or two before wandering over to the large windows, every eye in the room tracking her path. The offices of the
Standard
were high in the sky with a one-eighty degree view of central Sydney. Imelda stopped as if she was admiring the sparkling harbour and the white sails of the famous opera house, but Matilda had been around long enough to know that Imelda wasn’t seeing any of it. She could hear the cogs in her boss’s brain working overtime.

“Sydney Smoke’s Playboy Saint,” she said, turning to face them abruptly, looking into the distance as if she could see the headline up in lights somewhere.

Matilda snorted before she could stop herself. “You wouldn’t think that if you knew him.”

A saint?
Tanner Stone was the anti-Christ.

The rapt focus of the group switched instantly to Matilda, zeroing in on her as if she were roadkill and they were birds of prey. The atmosphere in the room grew predatory.

Crap
.

“Oh, really?” Imelda purred, pushing away from the windows and prowling toward her with all the grace and menace of a jungle cat about to pounce. “Do tell.”

Matilda swallowed. She hated being put on the spot, and sucked at lying. Her ears were hot and no doubt an attractive shade of red, which her pixie haircut would fail to mask. “We…sort of dated.”

A collective gasp rang around the room. “It was a long time ago,” she hastened to add. “In high school. But I’m here to tell you that Tanner Stone is a world class jerk.”

That seemed to be of little concern to her colleagues, who bombarded her with questions. “What was he like in high school?”

“Was he romantic?”

“How long were you together?”

“Oh my God,” one of the marketing women whispered, “please tell me he’s a good kisser. He
has
to be with that mouth.”

“Oh, screw kissing,” the ruck girl said dismissively. “I want to know if his legendary ball control extends to the bedroom.”

Matilda blinked at the barrage of questions. There was no way in hell she was telling anybody about Tanner’s ball control. She wanted this day to be over already, and it was only ten a.m. She wanted to go home, take off the ridiculous scrap of fabric and pearls masquerading as underwear, put on her favourite hipsters, and drown herself in a vat of wine.

Imelda held up her hand and everyone magically shushed. Matilda wished that would be an end to it, but she knew her boss too well. Her narrowed, speculative gaze felt like it was probing Matilda’s brain with about as much finesse as a cavity search.

“Good.” Imelda nodded and smiled to herself as if she’d come to a decision. “Matilda, you’ve been wanting to move out of fashion and onto features for some time now. Here’s your chance. I want a six-part series on Tanner Stone. The man behind the myth.”

Matilda gaped at her boss. For almost five years now she’d been slogging away at the newspaper. Her impressive academic qualifications hadn’t meant squat once she’d gotten her foot in the door, and she’d worked hard to move up the ladder. Landing the style column two years ago had been a bit of a coup for someone of only twenty-four, but it was just a stepping-stone. Feature writer was where she wanted to be.

The jewel in the crown.

Now, it seemed, it was being handed to her—with a giant freaking string attached. Suddenly, bustiers and crotchless knickers looked pretty damn good.

“No. No. Hell no.” She shook her head vehemently. She wasn’t putting herself in the way of that train wreck again. “You want me to do a feature story? I’ve got plenty ideas. I’ve pitched a dozen to you over the last year alone.”

Her colleagues looked at her askance. Nobody ever said no to Imelda. Matilda’s pulse hammered madly at her own audacity. But everyone had a line in the sand, and Tanner was hers.

Imelda didn’t do or say anything for long moments, her gaze firmly fixed on Matilda. The lifting of one elegantly arched eyebrow broke the screaming tension. “We could, of course, transfer you to obituaries. Hank is always complaining he’s understaffed.”

Fuckity, fuckity fuck.
Matilda didn’t doubt for a moment that Imelda would carry through on the not so subtle warning. She wasn’t someone who made idle threats.

So she was screwed, either way.

At least if she submitted to Imelda’s manipulations and delivered a stunning series, she could leapfrog right into the features team. Use it to her advantage.

If she played her cards right. But…

Tanner
freaking
Stone?

She shifted in the chair, desperately trying to think of an escape route, the damn pearls reminding her how far away she was from where she wanted to be.

“He won’t agree to it,” she said, prepared to grab hold of any lifeline.

“You let me worry about that.”

Matilda’s sigh was loud and mournful as her shoulders sagged. There was no way out of this but to quit or write about dead people for the rest of her natural life. Neither option was viable with a mortgage the size of hers.

Imelda smiled triumphantly, knowing she had Matilda right where she wanted her. “I’ll set it up.”

Fuckity, fuckity fuck.

…

“You know what this poker game needs?”

Tanner Stone looked up from dealing the last card just as Ryder Davis said, “A better dealer?” and threw his hand down in disgust.

“Chicks,” Lincoln Quinn continued as he picked up his hand.

Dexter Blake laughed. “Linc,” he said, “if you had any more chicks, you could start your own egg farm. You need to slow down, man, or you’re going to wear that thing out.”

Linc grinned. “Better worn out then neglected, Dex.”

The good-natured insult rolled off Dex’s shoulders. “It’s called discerning, dickhead. You ought to try it some time.”

Donovan Bane whistled. “Discerning. Look at you go with your big words, Dex.”

“Not all football players are young, dumb, and full of come,” Dex said.

“Just the ones called Linc,” Ryder chimed in, and everyone, including Linc, laughed.

“What exactly do you think these chicks you’re always running off at the mouth about would do if they were here, Linc?” Bodie Webb asked as he scrutinised the cards in his hand.

“I don’t know.” Linc shrugged. “Look good, smell good. Get our beers. Stroke our egos?”

Dex snorted. “Man, you
are
young, dumb, and full of come.”

“As if your ego needs any more stroking,” Ryder added. “If it took form and shape right now in front of us, it’d be a giant hard-on.”

Tanner laughed. He loved poker night. Cold beer, hot pizza, and talking smack. Nothing like relaxing with his fellow team members, far away from the field and the scrutiny of coaches, team officials, the public, and the bloody media. It was usually just the single guys that made it, but it was team building at its best, and as captain, Tanner took team solidarity seriously.

The Sydney Smoke were tight, both on and off the field. It was what made them so damn formidable.

“Poker night’s dudes only,” he said, staring at three aces and two kings. “Now are we going to play or not?”

Tanner’s mobile rang, and the whole table groaned.

“Hey,” Donovan bitched. “You make us switch ours off.”

Tanner grinned as he picked up the phone. “It’s good to be king.” The name display flashed
Griffin
. The other King in his life. “Crap,” he said. “It’s the coach.”

He picked it up instantly. It had to be something reasonably important. Poker nights were sacred, and the coach knew it.

“Griff?” Tanner said, sliding the phone to his ear, rocking back on the chair’s hind legs. “Everything okay?”

“No, everything is
not
okay,” he growled. “Apparently now I’m your publicist as well.”

Griffin King was not known for his tolerance. He was known for being one of the best rugby players the country had ever seen, and then for the being the best damn rugby coach in existence. He was known for being a hard taskmaster. He was known for his singular focus on his team and the game, and he hated anything that distracted or
detracted
from it.

Fripperies
he called them. Griffin King hated the fripperies.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re to make yourself available for a newspaper reporter who’s been granted an all-access pass to training, the locker room, and the games, both here and on the road. It’s a six-part series on you—the man behind the myth bullshit.”

Tanner’s chair
thunked
onto all fours. “The hell I am.”

Looks were exchanged across the table at Tanner’s vehement response. Not many people spoke back to Griff. Not even his captain.

“You think I give one single fuck about any of this crap?” Griff bitched in his ear. “You think it’s my fault that some players go out on the town full of piss and wind and think their shit doesn’t stink? You think I like getting phone calls from a CEO too chickenshit to do his own dirty work and tell you this himself?”

It was also well known that Griff had no tolerance for the
suits
at the top. There’d been a few over the last ten years that would have gleefully thrown him out of union. But no sports team gets rid of its most successful coach.