Qualified: A Sports Romance (14 page)

Allie’s pulse was in her throat and
she could hardly hear herself think as they squeezed their way past the crowd.
The press of bodies was not much deterred by the flashlight Tina wielded to
help guide their way through the club. Tables dotted the edges of the floor,
full of people who lounged as spectators or swayed with the music. A DJ booth
was at the back wall where a wash of abstract images projected on a huge
screen. Allie hadn’t yet had a drink but already her vision swam. She tucked her
arms protectively up against her chest as she stumbled after Kelsey and the
cocktail waitress, shaking her head with an uncomfortable smile when hands
reached towards her and voices offered to buy her a drink.

It was already overwhelming, and then they were led
up out of the sea of bodies to a balcony overlooking it all.

“They made it!” Familiar faces smiled and voices
cheered.

“The party can start now!” Kelsey proclaimed,
throwing her hands up in the air and striking a pose.

Laughter ricocheted around the group which quite
obviously had the loose edges of well-progressed festivities. Candace batted
Troy’s hands away from their possession of her ass so she could prance up and
kiss Kelsey on the cheek.

“You have perfect timing, they just brought another
bottle of champagne!”

“Well fill me up,” Kelsey said eagerly.

Kelsey swept forward to collect the first glass
that their waitress Tina had started to pour out for the group. Candace took
Allie’s hand with a friendly squeeze, taking Kelsey’s place and pulling her
into the circle. “You look like you could use a drink.”

“Maybe a little one,” Allie smiled self-conscious
and held up a pinching measure of her fingers.

There were no little ones. Tina topped off the
flutes with a strawberry slice wedged onto each rim. It was too pretty for
Allie to refuse when it was handed to her.

“To the guys going for gold,” Kelsey proposed once
all the girls had their glasses.

“Going for gold,” they echoed. The rims of their
glasses chimed together in a slosh of bubbles before they took sips that
weren’t exactly dainty.

Allie swiped a dribble off her chin with a discreet
knuckle while she cast a glance around the couches. She saw most of the guys
she knew, as well as a number of girls that had been at Blake’s house party.
Missing was the one towering figure she most hoped to find.

Kelsey interrupted Allie’s searching with a hook of
elbows. “Come see the view with me.”

“This is amazing,” Allie shouted over the music as
they tottered towards the balcony railing. She leaned over while she took more
nervous sips of champagne, hoping it would obliterate her anxiety. Never before
had she witnessed such a spectacle. The sheer number of people and the displays
of fashion and flesh were amazing.

So much to see, but what she was really looking for
was Marc.

Gradually the champagne worked into her system.
Allie was ready to dance when Kelsey started scream-singing over their favorite
song as the DJ began to mix its opening beat into his set. Candace dragged Troy
over so she could join them. They bounced up and down in their ridiculous
heels, colliding together as they crooned along into the cacophony of the club.

“You can take your shoes off and go on the
couches,” Tina the waitress encouraged them as she came by to top off their
champagne.

Allie giggled and shook her head at the
preposterousness of it all.

“Come on, Allie.” Kelsey beckoned her to join them
on the couch.  “Loosen up!”

Blake was sitting on Kelsey’s intended dance floor,
relaxed like a king and watching them while he worked slowly through something
in a highball glass. He got up when they came to claim the cushions. Like a
perfect gentleman, he even offered a hand to help them step up.

“Thank you,” Allie said as she balanced off his
palm.

“My pleasure.”

Allie ran her hand down the shortness of her skirt,
but by the time the next song came on she forgot to be self-conscious. Even
Candace’s perfect hair and makeup was getting smudged from the happy gleam of
their exertions. When Tina came through again to brandish the liquor bottles,
Allie begged off in favor of a glass of water. She eased herself down to sit on
a quieter leg of the couch while she drank it, fanning at her face as Kelsey
and Candace danced on.

Blake had been talking to Troy, but he scooted over
to lay his arm along the cushion behind Allie’s shoulders so he could lean in
and speak to her. “Are you having fun?”

Allie hadn’t been so near to him outside of work
since she ran away from his house. Her skin tingled, feeling too exposed. She
left off sucking down her water from the little black straw to nod politely.
“I’ve never been anywhere like this. Thank you for inviting us.”

Blake shrugged like it was nothing. To him, maybe
it was just another day. “It’s good company that makes the evening.”

Allie wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. She
dropped her gaze down to her knees with an uncertain smile. “It is good
company.” It wasn’t like she hated Blake. He just wasn’t who she had been
excited to see. When she lifted her chin, she sent another scan around the VIP
balcony before looking back to her host. “Did some people leave? I
thought … more people came with you.”

Blake hummed knowingly and scanned his view over
the cluster of tables they’d claimed. “It looks like Simon is back. Have you
met him? He used to be the team captain. Some of the older guys got into it
before you arrived. Digging up ancient history. I thought Natalie was about to
break a bottle to use as a weapon. I haven’t been informed of a police call by
any of the staff, so I suppose it’s all been sorted.” He seemed content to
dismiss it all with another sip of his drink.

Allie felt her stomach sink. Her head was spinning,
fizzy with champagne and thick with the scents of cologne and sweat and the
funny sweetness of the fog machine. If Marc’s ex was mad, then it surely meant
that he was involved. She remembered how it looked when Natalie’s legs wrapped
around him on the beach like he’d held her a thousand times.

She was determined to put it out of her mind. She
should probably try to put Marc out of her mind altogether. Allie sucked her
straw until it dragged air at the bottom of her glass.

“Ready for something else?”

She blinked owlishly at Blake.

“Would you like more champagne?” he clarified.

“Oh.” Allie stared at her set-aside flute. It
rested on the center tray along with the bounty of bottles and dishes of
garnishes. “Maybe a little. Mostly, I’d like strawberries,” she admitted with a
tentative grin.

“Champagne.” Blake beamed at her readily and
scooted forward on the cushion. His repositioning dropped the wrap of his arm
down around her hips. “Extra strawberries.” He used the tongs to practically
fill her glass with the cheery red slivers, splashing champagne over the top.

Allie sat frozen, unsure whether or not she should
ask him to stop touching her. He made it seem so comfortably natural for him to
sit wrapped around her. Like they were a part of some glamorous magazine
advertisement. He offered the flute’s stem into her fingers.

She smiled thankfully but kept her knees pressed
self-consciously together. The strawberries bumped her nose when she took a
sip. Allie started to fish them out with her fingers as daintily as she could.

Blake watched her for a second before picking up
his own drink again. “Do you know yet if you’ll be traveling with us?”

“To the tournament?” Allie asked around a cleaning
suck of her finger.

“The one in April,” Blake confirmed with a nod.
“None of us know yet if we’ll be going to Rio,” he added with a skewed smile.

Allie smiled back and crawled her fingers into her
flute for another sliver of fruit. “I think Everett and Lindsey are still
deciding whether they need me. That, and whether a travel stipend could be
applied from my internship.”

Blake made a noise that sounded a little
distracted. His gaze was bouncing from her lips to her fingers. “Can I have
one?”

Allie paused as she collected a strawberry between
her fingertips.

He must have seen the wariness cloud into her eyes.
The flash of his billion-dollar smile didn’t exactly reassure her. “Do I make
you nervous?” Blake wondered as he released her hip to brush his hand at her
hair. He eased the cascade back from its fall across her neck.

She shook her head. Her deep breath didn’t really
settle the effervescence of her stomach much at all. Allie made herself meet
the impossible blue of his eyes. “I’m not a good luck charm.” She was proud of
how matter of fact she sounded.

Blake blinked. It looked a little like surprise,
but he didn’t seem particularly deterred. He did sit back. The shift let him
flick a quirked look up towards where Kelsey was still dancing, like he could
guess where she’d heard the rumor. “Are you cursed or something?” he asked in
jest.

“Maybe.” Allie grinned out her nerves. “I’m not
lucky like you.” She only had to take another look at the club to be sure of
that fact. For some reason, Blake’s smile seemed to have gone a little funny.
She fought her instinct to apologize by focusing on her most logical of arguments.
“I need this job. I can’t risk it to be part of your game.” She tried not to
think about how hypocritical it felt to say after the night in Marc’s kitchen.

“You worry too much,” Blake said. That reminded her
of Marc, too.

“I worry a lot,” Allie agreed with a laugh.

“Don’t overthink it,” Blake recommended. “Have a
little more champagne, a little dancing. Just focus on having a good time
tonight.”

Allie looked at him skeptically, pretty sure her
idea of a good time stopped short of what he might be thinking. “All right,”
she agreed after a moment’s consideration. “But I think first I’m going to
powder my nose.”

“As long as you’re not running away from me again.”
Blake was already relaxing his hold.

Allie paused. She didn’t want to encourage him, but
it wasn’t like there was anywhere for her to go. “I’ll be back.” Marc might not
be there, but when she glanced at the group she saw the friends she’d made in
the past weeks. “It’s not like I’m going to wander out into Los Angeles on my
own.”

Blake chuckled at her logic and kicked back against
the cushion. Allie stepped over his legs to get out, trying out a friendly tap
of fingers at his knee as she stepped over. She didn’t know what to think of
herself. Was she having fun? Or was she just putting a band-aid over something
that hurt?

Before she could finish putting her shoes on and
make her way to the restroom available on their balcony, Allie saw Candace and
Troy duck in together. She stuttered to a stand-still, looking at the door
indecisively. That’s when Kelsey pounced on her, claiming Allie with a link of
arms that may have been as much about catching her swaying balance as it was an
unthinking gesture of friendship. “There’s another one downstairs.” Her
roommate tugged her towards the end of the balcony where a bouncer was guarding
the entrance.

“We’ll be back in a bit,” Kelsey told the man while
they scampered past in a precariousness of heels.

“Will we be able to get back in?” Allie asked the
bouncer.

“Do you have a wrist band?”

Allie lifted her arm so the light would catch in
silver spangles.

“Show us that and we’ll let you through,” the
bouncer informed her.

Kelsey was already dragging her down the stairs.
“Come on Allie, I want to find some guys who aren’t on the team with my
brother.”

“Thanks,” Allie said with a grin to the bouncer
before she clattered down to the main floor with her roommate.

It may have been faster to wait for
Troy and Candace to come out of the restroom upstairs. There was a line once
Allie got into the ladies’ room with its funky mosaic tile and piped-in music.
Kelsey decided that she just
had to
go out and dance to the next song,
but she promised she would be right outside and left Allie alone to wait.

Allie kept her focus aimed down at her toes and
watched all the stilettos prance by. She felt like she was in the middle of a
music video. A year ago she would never have imagined that she’d be standing in
a Hollywood club worrying more about men whose standard uniforms were speedos
than her MCAT score.

While she was washing her hands, Allie stared at
herself in the mirror through vision-blurring champagne fizz. It was still
early in the year but her days working around the pool had let the sun kiss her
skin. She adjusted the halter straps of her dress so it better fit to the tan lines
shaped by the open collars of her polo shirts. Looking hard she could see the
sleeve lines on her arms, but overall she thought she looked good. She tried
out her smile and liked what she saw.

Allie finger-combed her hair back into something
close to its original Kelsey-designed arrangement. Her amateur fixes probably
wouldn’t last the fight through the crowds to get back to Blake’s balcony. With
a final wiggle at the hemline of her dress, she sidestepped around the waiting
line and dove back out into the tossing sea of bodies and bass to try and find
Kelsey.

With the crowd constantly moving and the confusion
of the strobe lights, it swiftly became apparent that Allie wasn’t going to
have much luck spotting her roommate. Worse, she hadn’t paid close attention to
what the foot of the stair looked like from ground level. Not to mention the
gauntlet to run of impromptu dance partners who asked—
hey baby, how are you
doing tonight?

Dodging around the grinding attentions of random
men gave Allie a greater appreciation for Blake and his balcony with every
step. She was making better progress around the edge of the club when a large
hand closed tightly over her bicep. Her instinct was to pull away, and when
that didn’t work, to use her other hand for prying leverage. A thrill of worry
swarmed from her belly to her throat when her efforts didn’t dislodge the
powerful grip.

The crowd shifted and Allie’s gaze jerked up in the
inconstant light. “Marc.” All resistance went out of her instantly.

She hadn’t seen him dressed up before, not in
person. Allie knew him in his team colors and she knew him in the speedos she’d
grown to be fond of when all those work-chiseled lines were animal bare and
exquisitely in motion. The water and the sun were his elements. Somehow, all that
muscle masked beneath a dress shirt seemed more dangerous.

Allie was a little surprised that he didn’t look
awkward in it. Marc wasn’t polished in the way that Blake was, or Ivan …
something about them had a diamond’s perfection-edged gleam. The stubble on
Marc’s jaw and the confident throw of his shoulders painted a different kind of
portrait. Like raw instinct rather than calculated construction.

She could feel the truth of that ruggedness in the
casual absolute of his paw wrapped about her arm. An ocean of humanity teemed
about them, but all that mattered was the rock she had found. Her fingertips
pressed into the luxurious smooth of his shirt and she clung onto him.

The strong thrum of Marc’s voice cut through the
music. “I thought I saw you.” Maybe Allie was feeling the words through his
chest. Or reading them on his lips. She was riveted to him. The disarray of his
hair was sweat-edged in the club’s heat. She noticed as she looked closer that
his shirt was rumpled, like hers weren’t the first hands on him that night.

It almost caused Allie to let go. “I thought you
left.”

No
, Marc shook his head.

Someone jostled her from behind, trying to get
through. Allie stepped into Marc as her balance teetered. She may have stepped
on his toe, but she couldn’t bring herself to worry about it when the length of
him was pressed against her from knee to breast. Her fingers flexed wrinkles
into his shirt when she shifted her palm against his chest.

“I’m getting a drink,” Marc said. The box of his
shoulders carved out a safe oasis for her to stand in. “Would you like one?”

Allie started to crane a look up, towards Blake’s
balcony, and found that they were standing under it. She followed the line of
the floor overhead towards where she thought she remembered the stairs.

“There’s a bar over here.” Marc began to move
towards it. “I have my own tab.”

She glanced back at Marc. Her lips parted but
remained indecisively silent. She had wanted so badly to see him again, but in
the unfamiliar dark and noise of the club it seemed more perilous. Like she was
on his hunting ground.

“Unless you want to go back to him.”
Him
.

Allie rolled moisture across her lips and leaned
pressure into her fingertips. Over his heart. It was strange to think he could
be jealous when she was so completely sure. “I’ll stay with you,” she murmured
as she stood lost in his gaze.

“What?” Marc’s grip dropped from her arm, curling
to the small of her back. He gathered her up closer and leaned in to listen.

Having him so near caught Allie’s breath into a
stall within her lungs. After a moment’s nerve-strung pause she went up on her
toes, her balance completely dependent on how Marc held her. Her hand slid up
his chest, sweeping the strong curve of his neck to hook so that she could draw
her cheek along his. She indulged in a flutter of her lips against the coarse
bristle of his jaw. “I’ll stay with you,” she promised to the shell of his ear.

She felt the material of her dress bunch as his
hand fisted against her waist and she gasped when the damp of his mouth branded
a kiss at the hook of her jaw.

Marc didn’t say anything more. He just
straightened, looking at Allie for a heartbeat with something that might have
been a smile. His hand caught at hers and he turned to lead the way through the
crowd.

More than her heels made Allie unsteady on her
feet.

Allie clasped onto his hand with the both of hers,
caging her fingers carefully along the still-thickened knuckle she had helped
him tape. When Marc wedged in at the bar she painted herself against the length
of his arm and tucked tight against him in an overlap of feet and knees.
Through the denim of his jeans she could feel his warmth against her thigh. His
fingers pulsed against hers, calling her attention to the fact that he’d asked
her something.

She looked up with widened eyes, oblivious. He
stretched away from his palm planted on the bar, nuzzling against her cheek to
speak into her ear over the music. “What would you like?”

“To drink?” Allie shouted back dumbly.

Marc nodded. The reach of his thumb traced idly along
the top of her thigh.

That
, she almost said. Allie’s breath
shuddered. She melted against him. “Whatever you’re having.”

Allie dared to explore further when Marc leaned
away to finish the transaction with the bartender. With one hand she felt along
the muscled curved of his arm, and then turned her wrist to let her fingers
stroke along the solid ridgelines beneath his shirt.
Latissimus dorsi,
she recited to herself as she filled her palm with the contour of his side.
Abdominals … she started to feel over all those ridges that occupied her
days and nights with how they gleamed wetly in the sunlight.

Marc twisted beneath her touch, reclaiming his hand
from the lace of her fingers so that he could drop a grip possessively over her
outside hip. His elbow anchored him at the bar while he looked down, first at
her fingers and then to the strained bodice of her dress before finally meeting
Allie’s eyes.

She smiled so wide it hurt her cheeks. Was this
what it felt like, to be together? She bit her lip but she didn’t drop her gaze
away. She let Marc see how she looked at him. How she wanted him. Grabbing hold
of his waist, Allie arched against him and shook out her hair, lifting her chin
as her eyes sparkled. “I want to dance,” she proclaimed loud enough to be heard
over the on-and-on bump of the bass line.

“All right, doctor.” Marc curled a smirk.

Allie protested with a playful fisting of her hands
into his shirt. “Don’t remind me about that.”

Marc tipped his head like he was yielding, though
he didn’t look very contrite. His eyes slid away briefly when the bartender
came back with a pair of beers. He dropped a few bills he was palming onto the
under-lit plexiglass bar and picked up both bottles into the hook of his
fingers. “Let’s go.” He kept her ass in his hand, gesturing with the bottles in
a direction opposite from the stairs to Blake’s balcony.

Allie grabbed one of the bottles and turned to lead
the way, daring to arch her backside full into his palm. Her steps had an
exaggerated sway as she teetered on her heels. With her free hand she reached
back to grab a fistful of the loose fabric of his shirttail. She could feel the
dig of his thumb hooking over her hip and the tickle of his fingertips brushing
against her skin where her skirt was riding up. Her modesty screamed that she
should pull the hem down but the race of her heart led her onward.