Fourth Down and Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (3 page)

My eyes rolled so
far I thought I’d never see straight again, but I couldn’t help but smile at my
friend’s giddy excitement.

There was no way
this Landon Bryce would be THAT special.

The sun filtered
through the wooden shutters, casting lines of light on the large and plush bed
at the center of the room. My small snores filled the room. With a loud snort of
my nose, I jerked awake and draped my arm on my forehead, shielding my eyes
from the sunlight.

“Fuck…” I muttered
as I tried to wipe away the sleep from my eyes. Mornings were never easy for
guys like me. Between the girls, drinks, and partying; who has time for sleep?

I yawned and
stretched out before flipping over to lie down on my stomach, two fingers
fidgeting with the corner of my comforter. If it weren’t for the housekeeper my
dad hired, the room and the entire house would have been a complete wreck.

My dad bought the
house as a special gift to the football team, but it was no secret he didn’t
want his son living in the dorms. The only stipulation to donating the house
for the entire team was that I
had to
have a private room, and a master suite at that. Of course nobody objected, not
when a free house was involved. It was a place filled to the brim with
testosterone and a host of many, many drunken parties.

I rolled onto my
back and shut my eyes. I wasn’t asleep, but I was daydreaming, at least until
my phone rang so loud it hurt my head. I groaned and pushed a pillow over my
face. I didn’t want to bother with the call, but I had to at least take a look
at who it was. I reached for the phone without looking, blinked a few times,
and squinted my eyes at the bright screen.

It was my father.
I bolted upright and answered.

“It’s always
something with you!” was the first thing he practically shouted at me. I opened
my mouth to ask what happened now, but I wasn’t able to get a word in edgewise.
“It’s not enough you can’t even manage to keep a 2.0 GPA to clear for football,
now you miss your tutoring session! Your
first
session, at that! What’s your plan? Flunk out of school and not have a shot at
any sort of professional sports career? Do you think you’re going to just live
off my money forever?” He paused long enough to suck in more air that would to
be used to hurl more complaints my way. “You need to get your shit together.
You go to that tutoring center and figure out a way to make this up. I’ll be
damned if I allow you to be kicked out. You’re already on probation. Probation!
For fuck’s sake Landon. One more bad semester and you’re
done
.”
 

I heaved a loud
sigh to make sure my dad heard it. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with this.
Tutoring wasn’t even my idea, yet I was the one dealing with my father chewing
me out for not showing up. I wished I hadn’t answered the phone. I would have
still been peacefully lounging in bed. Instead I had to imagine my father red
in the face as he spewed his fatherly warnings to me over the phone.

“Don’t worry,
dad,” was all I came up with. Given that I didn’t care to calm him down beyond
how it affected me, I didn’t put much effort into the conversation—just like I
was used to doing in pretty much all aspects of my life. I noticed the shift
this year and saw my grades slipping, but I wasn’t ready to admit my usual
charms weren’t going to get me off the hook this time around.

"I don't
understand Landon,” he said in a much calmer tone. One dramatic sigh from me had
been all it took to soften him up, true to form. “We just want what is best for
you and I think even you know college is an important part of the
formula."

I groaned and
threw my head back against my fluffy pillows, staring at the ceiling and
wishing this year could be like all previous years of my college career.
Keeping my minimum 2.0 GPA had never even crossed my mind as a problem. In
fact, I hardly thought of academics at all. My focus was entirely on football
and my sports crazed father did nothing to remedy the situation. All he ever
did since the whole probation debacle started was issue empty threats, blow up
momentarily, and then go right back to sympathizing with me.

“College is an
important part of the formula,” I echoed. It sounded as if I was agreeing with
my father, but it was really just another one of my tricks. In reality, all I
wanted was to smooth things over with him to end the call.

“Right-o! You know
how proud of you we are, especially me, what with your accomplishments in
football. But you’ve got to
–“

“Stay the course,”
I interrupted.

My dad was
practically reciting things now and if I completed his sentences it really
seemed like I was taking his words to heart. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I
didn’t
need to graduate from college
to earn that degree, I just didn’t see why I had to work hard for it… or,
really, work for it at all.

My future was in
football so the degree was more of a formality for me. If I could see that,
everyone should. So I couldn’t understand why my free pass was no longer
working. I brought enough status to Haywood University with my stellar plays on
the field to merit being able to coast through the academic portion of college.

“I’ll talk to the
tutor,” I finally conceded with a smirk. I wasn’t thinking about apologizing or
working out a plan. I was thinking of setting the tutor straight.

“That’s what I
like to hear, son,” my dad muttered. I could hear papers being shuffled on the
other end and I knew I was already losing my dad’s attention. “I’m proud of
you. I’m proud of your stats on the field and now I’m proud of you stepping up
like this. You’re growing to be a fine young man.”

I resisted the
urge to snort. My dad always chose to be so oblivious. “I’ll talk to the tutor
today, in fact.”

There was a pause
and I noticed even the sound of papers shuffling had stopped. I could just
picture my dad looking up at the clock hanging in his home office with pride in
his eyes, looking like he won in an effort to teach his son a valuable lesson.

“That’s a plan
worth following through on,” he finally responded. The paper shuffling picked
back up and I heard the stapler fire off a few times. “I’ve been looking over a
couple proposals and finally settled on one. Getting the paperwork together
now. One of my own juniors came up with the winner, if you can believe it.”

I grinned as I
took certain devious pleasure in responding with, “Of course I can believe it.
The junior learned from
you
.”

“You make me
proud, son,” he mentioned again with a chuckle.

Much as I enjoyed
being showered with praise from my father, I liked not being on the phone with
him a whole hell of a lot more. Under the pretense of getting ready to seek out
the tutor, I ended the call with him and sat up in bed. I’d been smiling but now,
as I looked out the window from where I sat, the smile drained from my face.

I really was going
to seek out the tutor, but it wasn’t to smooth things over. I was going to chew
that son of a bitch out for ratting on me to my father. Sure, I knew my dad
couldn’t stay angry with me for long, but it was the principle of the matter.
Not only did I have to deal with the phone call, now I had to go down to the
tutoring center and let the tutor know who was in charge. I had to get this
person straightened out. If my charm worked on past professors then, surely, it
would be a breeze to placate some student tutor.

I lazily pulled on
a plain white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans before looking over at my
dresser and deciding it was a better idea to wear a T-shirt with Haywood
University’s emblem and its Lions football team logo. I smirked, threw on some
socks and tennis shoes, and strolled downstairs and right to the house’s front
door.

“Where
ya
goin
’?” Cruz called out,
tearing his eyes away from the television after hitting pause on his football
game. My other teammate, Marcus, looked over his shoulder at me questioningly.
Just then two more ambled out of the kitchen with their snacks and water
bottles before nodding toward me and settling on the couches.

“The tutoring
center,” I seethed. My mind was still on the person I had to get to, but was
briefly distracted by the round of laughter my answer had provoked.

“
Gettin
’ some one-on-one time?” One of them joked, nudging
his buddy with an elbow.

“Didn’t know
school was so hard for you,” another teased before shoving a handful of
pretzels in his mouth and guzzling some water.

They continued to
make jokes, some at my expense and some innuendos about a private lady tutor,
so I just rolled my eyes and walked out the front door. The sun felt warm on my
skin. I grew a bit more bitter about having to go deal with this situation
rather than continuing to lounge around in my bedroom. I walked around back to
the driveway and opened the single-car garage where I kept my flashy sports
car.

The other guys had
to fight over the other two spots on the opposite side of the garage. It was
known from the start that the single-car garage was reserved for me at all
times. Even if I was to be gone a couple days or longer, no other teammate
parked their car in it. Not that the tutoring center was all that far from
where I lived, but I didn’t feel like walking and the sports car gave me more
confidence anyway. The thrill of pressing down on the gas pedal, hearing it
rev, and all the extra attention it got me always gave me a high like nothing
else. I had less than a ten-minute drive to think about how I was going to set
the tutor straight.

I slowed to a stop
at an intersection and realized I didn’t even know the tutor’s name. How was I
going to march in there demanding to see him or her without a name? I grimaced,
running one of my hands over my sandy blonde hair, before glancing around.
Then, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and opened up my email, keeping
it down low to the seat of my car. Sure enough, there was a confirmation of my
appointment with my tutor’s name: Ivy Crane.

“This is going to
be
easy
,” I muttered with a smug
smile, thinking a young woman would fall completely powerless before my
irresistible charm and ridiculously good looks. Besides, I was the
star
running back for the university’s
football team.

The way I saw it,
I was practically catnip.

The light turned
green just as I slid my phone back into my pocket. I slammed my foot down on
the gas and zoomed up the hill, making a sharp right until the tutoring center
came into view. Noting there was no parking, which was pretty standard, I
turned the car around to double park next to the car in the spot right in front
of the glass doors of the Tutoring Center.

I was quite
confident that campus police knew my car and would know better than to issue me
a ticket. Even if my newest professors had different ways of dealing with
things, I doubted the campus police would suddenly stop giving me special
attention. I had no business being ticketed for double parking. I tugged at the
hem of my Haywood University Lions T-shirt before marching up the stairs and
storming inside.

I looked around, eyes
landing on a bubbly blonde first. She was staring at her cell phone’s screen
before looking up and letting her jaw drop.
Nice
,
I thought but didn’t allow my poker face to fall. The young woman stood up, but
soon another appeared from behind her. This other girl had a stern and
unpleasant look on her face. She looked at the blonde and then over at me
disapprovingly. She walked over, chestnut brown hair pulled back in a slick
ponytail and plain blouse covering everything up to her neck.

She looked like an
uptight bitch.

I let out a
frustrated sigh.

“Landon Bryce?”
she asked curtly.