His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (12 page)

Grimacing with the effort of focusing his ears over the wind, he heard voices, female and male, not arguing exactly, but definitely emotionally charged. Something was clearly amiss, but he couldn’t tell exactly what or where.

Turning to the sound of footsteps, he watched two men, a tall, lanky bloke and a shorter, huskier fellow, emerge from a side street, an alley, really. They gave him a quick glance, then sauntered off in the opposite direction.

Crying, now he definitely heard crying, more than one voice, and he headed toward the alley to investigate.

“Oh my God! Oh my God, there’s so much blood, so much . . . oh my God, help! Somebody has to help,
Ellie
, what do we do? Oh God, open your eyes, Ian!”

The name “Ellie” and the frantic tone of the voice made Patrick’s breath catch in his throat as he rounded the corner. Ellie and a girl with dark hair knelt in the alley, in a pool of blood, a man’s body laying between them, alive or dead, Patrick couldn’t tell.

Ellie and Patrick locked eyes.

“They stabbed Ian, took everything, help us Patrick, please!!” Ellie was clearly terrified. The fear in her large eyes pleading with him turned something over in his heart.

Patrick looked back down the street at the two men he watched exit the alley, and they had increased their pace, doing their best to put distance between themselves, their victims, and any would-be heroes.

Patrick produced his phone, tossing it to Ellie. “Dial 999! Do it now! Get help!”

She nodded through her blinding tears, watching Patrick take off in pursuit of the thugs who’d mugged the three travelers mere blocks from their hotel.

Ian had resisted them, tried to be brave despite the knife the tall man waved in his face. His alcohol-fueled bravado crumbled, however, when the blade entered his stomach, and the girls could do little but hand over phones and purses while the shorter of the muggers frisked a bleeding Ian, removing his wallet and phone.

Patrick cursed himself for wearing Moreschi loafers rather than trainers, but his loping gait closed the distance between him and the miscreants as easily as he tracked down opposing forwards on the football pitch.

Once they realized they couldn’t outrun their pursuer, they ducked into a parking garage to make their stand.

Patrick reached the garage entrance he’d seen them disappear into, and he slowed his pace, moving cautiously.

“Show yourselves, you cunts! Let’s see if you’ve got the guts! There’s just one of me and two of you!”

The two men rose from their crouched position behind a nearby car, deciding to get the showdown over with before Glasgow’s finest arrived.

“You shouldn’t try to play hero, you wanker. Walk away now and I won’t have to cut you like I did that Mick back there,” the tall man said, waving his knife menacingly.

Getting them face-to-face, Patrick’s fear at discovering Ellie on her knees, splattered with blood, turned to blind rage. The Mad Monk replaced Patrick Sievert as surely as he did during any big game he’d ever played in.

“Let’s have it then,” Patrick replied, eyes were wild, veins on his neck pulsing with fury, fists balled.

Swinging the knife, the man approached, but rather than retreat, Patrick lunged for the weapon, surprising both his opponents. Spending a few off-seasons dabbling in Krav Maga taught Patrick the value of “bursting,” attacking an assailant with a quick jolt to stun and knock him off-balance, especially useful against multiple adversaries. A devastating head butt incapacitated the taller man as Patrick first evaded a stab and got inside the tall man’s guard. Grabbing and twisting his arm enough sent the blade skidding away and under a nearby Saab. The stocky associate got in a punch and kneed Patrick’s midsection, but both blows met hardened muscle and the assault was ineffectual.

With sirens sounding in the distance, Patrick sent a barrage of blows back at the second man, connecting twice to the jaw and sending him sprawling.

Within seconds, both men were subdued, and Patrick, shaking with anger, advised them to remain prone rather than suffer further.

“Ain’t you the Monk? The Mad Monk? I’m a Celtic supporter, mate!” the tall, stabby fellow mumbled, recognizing Patrick as his club’s newest star signing.

“I am the Monk, yeah, that’s right. Keep talking and I’ll kick every last tooth you’ve got right down your fucking throat. All four of them.”

Sirens were close now, both police and ambulance service. Ellie, accompanied by a group of local law enforcement, approached Patrick’s position in the garage, gasping when she saw the outcome of the scuffle.

“Patrick! Thank God, you’re OK. They didn’t hurt you . . . ?” Ellie’s voice trailed off as she surveyed the scene and then turned her attention to her erstwhile lover. She collapsed against him, every emotion hitting her at once as she babbled.

“I don’t know what to say . . . I’m so sor—you’re amazing. I, I’m so sorry . . .”

Without a word, Patrick brought his index finger to Ellie’s lips, quieting her before taking the trembling girl into his arms.

“Don’t worry about me. Are
you
well? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

Ellie nuzzled into his chest, shaking her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m OK. I mean I’m scared to death. He
stabbed
Ian; he just stabbed him like it was nothing.”

“Is he . . . ?”

“I don’t know. The ambulance came and they took him and Helen—the girl Helen, my friend from work—they took them both to the hospital. She’s OK, she wanted to ride with him, to stay with him . . . make sure,” Ellie answered, struggling to put together coherent sentences.

“They’ll take good care of him. Let me take care of you.”

Ellie melted into Patrick’s chest as they watched the police load the pair of assailants into their cars to be taken to jail.

After taking statements and returning Ellie’s personal effects, an officer bade Patrick and Ellie good night.

“We’ve had a string of robberies in this area, hopefully these are the two we’ve been looking for. Good on ya, mate, and that’s coming from a Hearts fan. Now you ought to be getting out of here before the press catches wind of your Batman act.” The officer winked at them as his car drove away.

Patrick flagged down a cab for the short trip back to their hotel, and en route Ellie phoned up Helen at Southern General Hospital, where Ian had been taken. Doctors seemed confident the Irishman would survive his injuries, but they urged caution.

Arriving back at the Grand Central, Patrick and Ellie entered the same elevator that hosted their tryst only hours earlier.

Patrick wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling her close. “Will you stay with me tonight, Ellie? Seeing you in that alley like that . . . we don’t have to do anything, nothing at all. I just want to hold you, to know that you’re safe.”

Ellie burst into tears and held her man close, nodding her head.

The pair slept easily, a combination of food, drink, and emotional exhaustion making their slumber deep and peaceful.

Ellie’s head spent the evening nestled in the crook of Patrick’s arm, her leg draped across his, her arm across his midsection.

Patrick stirred first, sunlight streaming in through a window left open hours earlier when they collapsed on the bed. He stared at her angelic face a good long while, then kissed her forehead and eyelids softly, not wanting to awaken her entirely, but needing her to shift just enough to allow him to address the pressing need in his bladder.

He gradually made his successful escape, and returned to the bedroom of the suite to find Ellie still sleeping.

Patrick looked out the window at a gloriously sunny day, the clouds and gray from the past few days having finally blown through. He decided to begin the day with his stretching regimen, and he went out into the living room and stripped down to just his briefs.

Starting on the floor as he always did, Patrick flexed and slowly stretched first his calves, then hamstrings and groin, quadriceps last for the lower half of his body.

His knees were what would probably end his career before anything else, the cartilage nearly gone and the bones rubbing against one another painfully most of the time. He still felt loose, energetic, and young, but knocks were taking longer to heal and, like an old house, things were getting just a bit creaky.

Ellie awakened with a stretch of her own, a yawn, and a pounding headache. She rolled languidly in the bed, searching the room for Patrick, eyes settling through the open door on his nearly naked form in the next room.

If she’d ever seen a sexier sight, despite the mother of all hangovers, she couldn’t recall it readily.

Patrick wore a light sheen of sweat, rendering his white briefs semitransparent. His muscular form was on full display, enduring a series of contortions and stretches that had to be, she decided, designed for no earthly purpose but to torment and titillate her. She bit her bottom lip and slowly shook her head in wonderment, drawing herself up to a sitting position. He was truly magnificent.

A maneuver in which he stood with his back to her but then slowly twisted his midsection to touch the floor with his left hand behind himself turned him enough to catch a glimpse of his audience, and he broke into a grin, completing the stretch.

“Sleeping beauty! How do you feel?”

“Starving, hungover, embarrassed—I don’t know where to begin.” Ellie laughed. “I’m sorry to stare. I mean, I don’t want to be rude, it’s just, your
body
. I’ve never seen anything like it. And also . . . Patrick, thank you so much for last night. I know I kept saying it, but I could never say it enough.” The memory of the night’s events still sat on her mind.

Patrick resumed his exercises, same as the last, only this time with the right hand. Slow, deliberate movements. He was so in tune with his physique that he could feel each individual muscle group contracting and releasing as he went through the familiar workout.

“It was nothing. I mean, it wasn’t nothing, I just mean it was so easy it felt like nothing. Easy in the sense that I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, taking any other course of action. I saw you in trouble and I went on autopilot.”

Ellie scanned her phone, finding several messages from Helen detailing her night spent at the hospital with Ian.

“Ian, the guy who went in the ambulance, is mending well,” Ellie explained. “He’ll need a few days in the hospital to recuperate, but then he’ll be able to go home with no permanent damage. Just a few nasty scars, but knowing him, he’ll find a way to add them to his flirting repertoire.”

“He’s a lucky bloke. That was quite a lot of blood,” Patrick said, and continued his routine under Ellie’s silent, rapt attention.

When he finished, Patrick grabbed two bottles of mineral water from the fridge and sat down at the foot of the bed, handing one to Ellie before drinking half of his in one shot.

“So . . . I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in any way, but last night in your room, if I did something wrong, please let me know. I don’t want to rush things in any way. I want to do this right. Please give me a chance, we can go as fast or slow as you want to, we can enjoy today and go our separate ways. I’m just telling you that I’m very much into you, would love to get to know you better. I’m yours if you’ll have me. This isn’t about just sex for me. I know that’s strange coming from a man, but I’m not the fling type. And last night I was devastated to think I had done something wrong, or something that would make you get that upset. It about killed me, Ellie.”

Ellie scooted down the bed to where Patrick sat and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close, her tousled hair falling over his shoulders.

“You did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong. I’m so sorry for how I acted. It was amazing.
You’re
amazing. It was all my own weirdness, and I’m so terribly sorry. I got into a weird place in my head and the things you were doing to me were things I had never experienced so intensely before. I still can’t believe any of this. I’m all yours if you’ll still have
me
!”

Patrick gave her a squeeze, pulled away and stared into her sleepy eyes, both of them breaking into smiles. He kissed her twice on the mouth, the second longer and deeper than the first, and pulled away before things got too heated.

“We’ve overslept, love, we have a plane to catch!” Patrick just realized how late it was and that they both needed to shower and dress.

“A plane? Where are we going?” Ellie looked at him quizzically.

“How’s your Welsh?”

“Welsh? Umm . . . a happy Anthony Hopkins and a good Charlotte Church to you?”

“Ha!” Patrick replied, “That’s about the extent of my Welsh as well. But as a fellow bibliophile, there’s something in Wales, an hour and a half north of Cardiff, which I hope you’ll love. Ever heard of Hay-on-Wye?”

“Ham on rye, yes. Hay-on-Wye, I’m afraid not. You’ve stumped me. But I can’t wait!” Ellie replied.

Showers, changes of clothes, and room service breakfast later, Patrick and Ellie resumed their familiar mile high courtship on a Flybe flight from Glasgow to Cardiff.

“So, let me see if I recall correctly—you’ve lived in Ohio and Georgia, used to travel to Kansas City and Birmingham for work, right so far?” Patrick asked, his easy smile breaking the tension created by his naturally intense gaze.

“Four for four, yes,” answered Ellie, still amazed that Patrick remembered her name, much less a conversation they had within ten minutes of meeting each other.

“Where else have you been?”

“I’ve driven from Ohio to Georgia, of course, so Kentucky and Tennessee. Alabama, Missouri and Kansas for work, Florida, both the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois . . .” Ellie trailed off, counting on her fingers, trying to recall if she’d left anything out. “Oh, Virginia and Maryland, we went to Washington, DC, once when I was in middle school, West Virginia . . . that’s probably it.”

“And where would you
like
to go?”

“California sounds like fun. And all my friends who’ve been to Vegas rave about it. Do you know Georgia O’Keefe’s work?”

Patrick nodded.