His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (8 page)

Just then, her phone rang. Meg.

“’Ello, hen,” Ellie answered, putting on her best British accent.

“Hen?” Meg replied. “Whatever. Tell me everything. How am I supposed to live vicariously through you when you don’t call, you don’t text, you don’t Instagram. I mean come on, all work and no play makes Ellie a dull girl! Or a dull hen, or whatever you are. Who cares, just tell me about Scottish boys and Scottish beer. Give me something!”

“There is a cute Irish guy named Ian who I’ve been working with. Or maybe he isn’t that cute, but the accents here are
killing
me. You’d be in heaven. But, Meg . . . Patrick. Remember the guy I met on the plane? I just got off the phone with him. We’ve been texting and talking.”

“SHUT. UP. Stop it! The guy you had me look up? How drunk are you right now?” Meg asked.

“I’m stone sober. I know it doesn’t make any sense, it’s ridiculous, silly, whatever, but he’s calling
me
. He’s texting
me
. I feel like I’m in a movie or a Nora Roberts novel or something. He wants me to stay an extra day here. He invited me to stay an extra day and wants to take me to London or show me around Glasgow or whatever I want to do.”

“I’m hanging up now. I must have dialed the wrong number. Or some doppelganger has replaced my best friend. Did you give him like the best head of his life or something? You slut!”

Ellie laughed.

They both laughed.

“No, it’s not like that at all. I haven’t even seen him since the airport. Meg, he’s
so
handsome! He has, and I counted them, twelve gray hairs on the left side of his head. It’s so sexy. And just this perfect amount of stubble on his face. And I know I told you about his eyes, but it’s just everything, the way he moves, and the way he walks . . .”

“There’s something so sexy about the way she walks. It’s not even a walk, she sashays, and she swings her hips, all slow and sexy.”

The smooth voice of Shelton Guyer laughed into the phone from his balcony overlooking the Gulf of Paria on the west coast of the island of Trinidad. “You like her backside, eh, hoss? The Mad Monk is no more! I knew you had some Trini blood in you!”

“She definitely has a nice bum, Shelt. She has a nice everything. But it’s more than that. I can’t stop thinking about this girl,” Patrick replied.

He’d been asleep just a few minutes when Shelton rang him up, anxious to hear how negotiations had gone with Celtic. Shelton had news of his own, his agent had a promising lead on a club in Portugal, which fit the criteria the striker was seeking—a warmer climate and plenty of Euros.

After comparing notes regarding professional prospects for the upcoming season, Patrick dropped a bombshell on his best mate.

Something Shelton Guyer hadn’t heard Patrick Sievert say since their days together at Furman.

“I’ve met someone.”

Wednesday was a busy day for both Ellie and Patrick.

The extra work Ellie’s team put in on Tuesday was for naught as their workload increased after Irishman Ian took another of their associates, Helen, out to the pub after dinner. Neither showed up for work in the morning, instead dragging themselves into the conference room together nearer to noon, coffee cups in hand.

Patrick suffered through a press conference and individual interviews in the morning, including one he prayed Ellie wouldn’t watch, hosted by a local B-list celebrity, Diana Weir.

Diana had been a reality television “star,” part-time bikini model, occasional singer, and full-time fame whore. She was dragged out whenever sex appeal was deemed a spice necessary to the success of a dish one of the Glasgow networks had in the oven, and Scottish tabloid television had its sights set squarely on Celtic’s newest signing, the city’s newly minted most eligible bachelor.

More than six feet tall in heels, the brunette bombshell sauntered over to Patrick practically spilling out of an obscenely low-cut cocktail dress, and the entire interview was conducted as if Diana had been sent to seduce, rather than converse with, Patrick.

When the lewd leaning in, touching, and breathy tone of voice got to be all too much, Patrick excused himself from the proceedings. “I’m not comfortable with the direction this interview is going. I have a girlfriend, this isn’t appropriate at all.”

Removing the microphone from his collar and rising to leave, the enormity of what he’d said stopped him in his tracks. He turned back to the clearly surprised Diana and opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. He’d said it, it had been captured on film, it was probably already on YouTube, there was no way around it.

Once the press junket concluded, and Patrick “no-commented” his way through a series of questions aimed at gleaning the identity of his mystery girlfriend, he was able to touch base with his agent, Tom, who had good news.

He’d arranged her flight back to be bumped back a day, to Saturday, and upgraded her ticket to first class. He’d also had her accommodations for the final two nights of her stay switched from the Marriott to Patrick’s luxury hotel, the Grand Central. In a separate suite, of course, although Patrick hoped two rooms wouldn’t be needed.

He couldn’t wait to give Ellie the good news, but he was also wrestling with how to explain the whole “girlfriend” comment.

In fact, Tom had closed their conversation with his own snide twist on things. “So, when do I get to meet the future Mrs. Ellie Sievert?”

Mr. Perfect has a girlfriend, El

Ellie read the text from Meg and watched the video from the link her friend forwarded, furrowing her brow at the sight of the tramp interviewing Patrick by thrusting her fake boobs in his face and using every excuse she could to put her hands on him.

When the video ended with Patrick’s “I have a girlfriend” line, Ellie was torn. Part of her saw it Meg’s way, that she’d been played, that some fitness model or duchess was waiting back in London for Patrick, but she still held out some desperate, infantile hope that she, Ellie, was the “girlfriend” Patrick was referring to.

Did you see the way that skank was all over him? He just wanted to get away from her
,
Ellie replied after multiple viewings of the video.

Yeah, guys hate having hot girls in tight dresses rubbing themselves all over them. He looked miserable
,
Meg answered.

You don’t know Patrick

And you do??? After three days? Come on, he just said he had a girlfriend. Do you really think he’s turning THAT girl down for YOU? You have two more nights in Scotland. Hook up with that Ian guy you told me about and forget the soccer stud
, Meg suggested.

Ellie felt the familiar sting of tears, something she’d gotten much more used to than smiles when the subject was men. She was torn, not sure how much emotional capital she should invest in a British pipe dream, whether or not he looked like a
GQ
cover model.

I’ll be careful. Promise. Love ya!
Ellie replied, stuffing her phone down inside her bag and turning her attention back to work.

Dinner was Pakistani takeout with her coworkers as they went over paperwork and compared notes on the day. A group, led by the incorrigible Ian, were bound for the pub, but Ellie demurred, wanting to get home for a head-clearing soak in the tub and a few chapters of Carson McCullers.

“You’re off the hook tonight, lass, but you’ll be coming with us tomorrow. Your last night in Glasgow you’re getting bolloxed with the rest of us, Ellie. If we have to drag you to the pub with us!” Ian shouted down the street behind Ellie, inspiring laughter from the rest of the group following the Irish Pied Piper out for another night of beer and whiskey.

Ian was cute enough, his brashness and brogue bumping him up a few notches in Ellie’s eyes.
If Meg were here, she’d be all over him,
Ellie thought, waving good-bye to her new friends as she rounded the corner toward her hotel.

A short walk and an elevator ride later, Ellie entered her room, only to be stopped in her tracks.

She backed out into the hallway to verify the room number, but the room was hers.

Covering the dresser, the desk, the bathroom counter, virtually every flat surface, were flowers. Vases of all shapes and sizes, petals with colors that spanned the rainbow. Blossoms of every variety. Tulips, daisies, carnations, rhododendrons, daffodils, and roses—oh, the roses!—in shades Ellie didn’t even know existed.

She tossed her bag onto the bed and began to laugh. A silly, blissful laugh . . . pure joy.

She began taking inventory of what appeared to be the shrapnel from an exploding flower shop, but after fourteen vases, she gave up, fell back on the bed, and just inhaled as deeply as she could.

She checked her phone, but aside from a picture of a pouting Ian next to an empty barstool, she had no new messages or missed calls.

She walked the room looking for a card among the floral cornucopia, finally finding a small yellow envelope nestled among some petunias on the desk.

I didn’t know which flowers were your favorite, so I just went ahead and had them all sent over. Cheers, Patrick
.

Ellie was floored. Any seed of doubt Meg planted earlier had withered and died. The smile on her face was that of a child on first viewing the bounty under the tree on Christmas morning. So big and broad her jaw was actually beginning to ache.

She stared at the card, prose more beautiful than anything she’d ever read.

She wanted to speak to Patrick, but more than that she needed to see him. In person. To look into those eyes again, to be swept up in his arms.

She took the best picture she could, filling the frame with as much color as possible, and sent it to Meg, sans caption. The next picture she took, of the card, was all the explanation her best friend could possibly require.

Ellie quickly showered and went through her suitcase, hoping that somehow a brand new, flattering dress and perfect shoes had appeared there, gifts from the Flower Fairy. Alas, just the humdrum wardrobe she knew would be there, leaving her precious few options.

She settled on a sky blue maxi dress with chevron patterns in darker shades of blues and purples, with a white cotton shrug. It was clingy in all the right places, showing off her best assets as well as anything she’d packed, and after a bit of primping she thought she looked as close to her best as she was going to look. She let her hair fall naturally, in dark curls and waves.

Patrick, I just can’t decide which my favorites are. Do you think you might be able to come by and help a damsel in distress?

Ellie hoped her text set the right tone, playful, flirty, and not too forward. A Meg-style booty call wasn’t her intention, although inviting a man to her hotel room could be interpreted as such.

Worse tragedies have occurred,
Ellie reminded herself.

Suddenly, a knock at the door interrupted the beginnings of a wonderful daydream where Patrick misinterpreted her text as a plea for a night of passionate lovemaking on a bed covered in flower petals.

Ellie glided to the door, looking twice through the peephole in disbelief. There, at her door, in the flesh, stood Patrick Sievert. Only scant moments after she’d sent the text inviting him to pay her a visit.

How the fuck did he do that?

After Patrick spoke to his agent, he considered the possible impact his disastrous interview could have had on Ellie. Calling her his girlfriend was absurd. All the time they’d ever spent together could be crammed into fewer than ten hours. He knew quite a bit about her, and she him, but he didn’t have any idea how she truly felt about him, what she expected or hoped of him, and beyond all that, Mad or not, he was the Monk. The last thing he needed, with a new club in a new league in a new city, was the complication of a relationship. But he’d jumped into the deep end, so it was sink or swim.

He called the kit man at the club, Paddy Garvin, and asked if he could recommend a local florist.

Patrick’s experience was that equipment managers were resourceful fellows; that they knew where to eat, who to see about certain things, they all had a bit of concierge in them. Paddy lived up to his profession’s reputation, sending Patrick to see Dolores at Parkhead Blooms.

The shop was packed to the gills with all manner of sweet smelling flora, and rather than choose an arrangement, Patrick simply dashed off a card, handed Dolores his plastic, and told her Ellie’s name and that she was staying at the Marriott.

“As much of this as will fit in her room, yeah? Whatever it’ll cost,” Patrick insisted.

“A special bird, eh?” Dolores replied.

“God willing,” Patrick answered, with a wink.

His next stop was the Marriott, where he checked into a room as near to hers as he could, in the hope he could see the look on her face when she walked into her redecorated accommodations. No such luck, the nearest available room was two floors up, but he figured he could arrive at her door quickly enough if his effort had the desired effect.

Patrick’s nerves robbed him of his appetite, and nothing on TV sufficiently distracted him. Pacing was the order of the day, checking his phone constantly for a message or call from Ellie.

When it came, he was ready, scrambling down the stairwell and reaching her door moments after she’d hit send. Taking a deep breath and running a hand over his closely trimmed hair, he rapped three times on Ellie’s door.

When Ellie pulled open the door to her room, an awkward silence filled the void. Truthfully, she wanted to tear his clothes off and have him, right there on the floor in the open doorway, but, barring that, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

Patrick, for his part, looked down at the floor, suddenly bashful in the presence of the object of his desire. He looked up slowly, taking in both what he could see of the room and his first look at Ellie in anything but her work clothes.

“Wow. So beautiful.”

The three words he spoke were just above a whisper, and Ellie couldn’t be certain she’d heard them correctly.