Playing By Her Rules (Sydney Smoke Rugby Series) (12 page)

What did that mean?

It’s ok @slickstone. Am over the shock of finding you in my underwear.

Tanner threw his head back and laughed at her goading. He loved it when Tilly was shitty
and
witty all at once. It was those little flashes of the old Tilly that kept him going, that gave him hope that there was a future for them.

Twitter exploded. Tanner literally couldn’t keep up with the reaction. And not just from his fans, but from people like Callie Williams and most of the blokey-blokey sports journos he knew. He ignored them all—it was just Tilly he was interested in. He took a few seconds to compose an equally goading reply.

I had to get you out of them somehow
@MatildaK. #mightbelove

He hesitated over using the hashtag and then thought screw it and hit send. Twitter was going to love it, and if it kept her a little off balance where he was concerned, then that was good, too. She thought she had him all figured out? Well…he’d see about that.

He waited for half an hour for a reply but none was forthcoming. And clearly none would be. He switched to text.

Come to the game today. Sit in the box with the WAGS. Valerie will be there. We can do interview #5 after. You want to see the *real* me? Come to a game.

Tanner had no idea if she’d get back to him quickly or not at all. But from a journalistic standpoint, he couldn’t see how she could resist. Her reply was almost instantaneous.

And brief.

Fine.

He grinned at her passive aggressive response as he tapped in the reply.

It’s an afternoon game at Henley. Come to the main entrance at 3. I’ll get Val to meet you.

She didn’t bother to reply, but already Tanner was feeling better. He’d fucked up by making a big deal out of her last feature article, and things had escalated last night. They’d both said things that had hurt. But it was probably the conversation they needed to have. Or at least the opening, anyway.

He had to tell her the truth about what was really behind that stupid, awful kiss. Maybe she’d stop being so pissed off at him, and they could move forward. Until now he’d thought it was better to just leave the past in the past. He hadn’t been sure she’d believe him, anyway. But that clearly wasn’t working. Maybe it was time to put it all out there?

Bring it all to a head?

Hell, yeah.

He scrolled to Twitter again, ignoring the two-hundred-odd notifications.

If I kick three field goals 2nite I think @MatildaK should grant me a kiss. What say you tweeps? #mightbelove

Tanner tweeted it out to his hundred thousand followers. Three field goals was a big ask, but he arguably had the best damn foot in Australian rugby and was totally up for it.

And he was declaring himself. What was the point of a declaration if it wasn’t grand? A thrill of excitement, similar to the one he always felt in those seconds before the starting hooter rang out, tightened his belly.

He’d been waiting for Tilly to come to him.

Not anymore.

…

There were about half a dozen women in the Smoke’s corporate box, all somehow looking glamorous in jeans and the distinctive blue and silver jerseys of the team. Matilda was also wearing jeans and a cute, silky, button-up shirt but felt somewhat dowdy and out of place in the company of the gorgeous WAGS—wives and girlfriends—of the players. She needn’t have. They all made her welcome and even teased her about putting Tanner out of his misery. Apparently not one of them doubted he could kick three field goals if he put his mind to it.

Matilda smiled good-naturedly but underneath it all felt a little sick about the pledge. On every social media platform she looked #fieldgoalwatch was trending, and everyone, including mainstream media, was talking about her and Tanner.

As if Valerie could sense her nervousness, she took Matilda under her wing, chattering away all bubbly and bright as if it was perfectly normal to be in this world.

It probably was to her. No doubt she’d grown up with it.

They’d sat down next to a woman called Eve who was older than everyone in the room. Maybe forty? She wasn’t a WAG, she was Griffin King’s personal assistant slash Girl Friday as Valerie had introduced her, and her fifteen-year-old son Liam, who had Down syndrome, was currently down in the locker room with the guys.

He was apparently footy mad—
how could he not be?
Eve had laughed—and the Smoke’s unofficial water boy at all their home games. Griff took him out to the sidelines with the rest of the team, and he ran on when any of the players needed a water bottle.

Her eyes shone with unshed tears as she told Matilda how proud she was of him and how grateful she was to her boss for indulging him.

“He’s a good man, that father of yours,” Eve had said, smiling at Valerie.

Valerie had smiled back, but it had seemed rather strained to Matilda.

About ten minutes before kick off, the big man himself strode into the box. He was quite the presence. Tall and erect, his shoulders still broad, his stomach still flat, still wearing the hell out of a pair of jeans. Good-looking in a grizzly, broken-nosed, silver-fox kind of way.

He didn’t bother with preliminaries as his gaze went straight to Eve. “I need you to organise a meeting with the medicos for eleven on Tuesday.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “You could have texted me that.”

“Needed to stretch my legs,” he said gruffly.

“Hey, Dad,” Valerie said hesitantly, smiling tentatively at her father.

Matilda blinked at Valerie’s transformation from bright and bubbly to timid and uncertain. There was a strange mix of trepidation and hope on the younger woman’s face.

Griffin looked almost startled by her presence, pausing before nodding awkwardly. “I didn’t know you were coming today.” If possible, his voice was even gruffer.

“I come to
every
home game, Dad.”

“Oh. Right.” He nodded then looked awkwardly around before saying, “Right,” again and departing in the blink of an eye.

Matilda glanced at Valerie as silence descended on the room for a moment. A heavy layer of sympathy blanketed the room, and Eve squeezed Valerie’s arm.

What the hell was that?

Then one of the women—Matilda thought it was Brett Gable’s wife—said, “They’re running on,” and the atmosphere changed again as all the women, including herself and Valerie, complete with her brittle smile, moved closer to the floor to ceiling glass.

She quickly forgot the Valerie/Griffin thing as she spied Tanner’s golden-blond head. Even from this distance, the man looked big, and butterflies wearing jackboots stomped around in her stomach.

Pre-game nerves. Hers. Not his. It took her back.

How many rugby matches had she sat through in those three years she and Tanner had been an item? Too many to count.

Although none of them had been in this kind of luxury.

More like a god-awful hard wooden or freezing metal seat on the first row of the bleachers. But he’d always sought her out as she’d sat on the sidelines, making eye contact before the hooter went. It’d been bad luck if he didn’t—one of those odd superstitions sports men were known for.

As if on cue, he looked toward where the box was located, and she swore she could feel his gaze lock on hers.

Certainly the commentary, which was being piped into the corporate box, made note of it, too. Obviously, as the commentators also waited for the hooter, they had nothing better to talk about than Tanner’s boast about the three field goals. The commentators laughed, thinking it both hysterical and foolish, and Matilda wanted to die knowing that her and Tanner’s
supposed
romance was being discussed on national television.

She’d never been so damn pleased to hear a hooter in her life!

Chapter Twelve

With only five minutes left in the game, the atmosphere in the box was electric. The Smoke were three ahead, and Tanner hadn’t yet scored his third field goal. He’d scored the first two in the first half but so far hadn’t managed the third.

All the women in the box were plugging for him. The first two Tanner had kicked had elicited exaggerated “Ooooo’s” and other such nonsense from the teasing women, and Matilda couldn’t help but laugh.

“He’s running out of time,” Fran Gage murmured, sitting forward in her seat, tearing strips off the label on her beer bottle.

“He’ll make it,” Valerie assured them, conviction ringing in her voice.

Matilda had a gut feeling Valerie was right. Even at fifteen years old, Tanner’s kick had been outstanding. It didn’t stop her from feeling physically ill, though, waiting for it.

As if it hadn’t been bad enough watching every single bone-crunching tackle and ruck. She’d forgotten how physical the game was. How…gladiatorial.

With two minutes to go, Matilda was sure she was going to throw up. All the commentators were talking about now was Tanner and time running out on his wild field goal bet, and the opposing team had the ball and were running it toward their end.

Then suddenly Tanner, running hell for leather, intercepted the ball, and he was off, looking fresh out of the blocks instead of exhausted from the previous eighty gruelling minutes. The excitement from the crowd and the commentators was electric as everyone in the box leaped to their feet and practically pressed their noses against the glass.

“Oh my God,” Fran muttered as Tanner weaved past two opposition players. “He’s going to do it!”

A third opposition player lunged for Tanner’s legs, getting a hand to his calf, and Tanner stumbled for a second before righting himself and stepping out of the grasp, sprinting away. His eyes never left the goalposts, and within seconds he was right in front of them, not missing a beat as he dropped the ball down to his foot mid-run, kicking it right between the posts.

The Smoke players went wild, all leaping on Tanner’s back. The crowd erupted. The commentators went off their nuts. The women in the corporate box all jumped in the air cheering and laughing and dragging Matilda into a big group hug.

“He did it. He did it!” Valerie beamed, her arm slung around Matilda’s neck, her brittle smile long gone. “I knew he could do it. You can’t turn the man down now.”

Matilda looked around at the rest of the group. There seemed to be a consensus, if their faces were anything to go by.

“C’mon. Let’s go down and greet the conquering heroes. You,” she said, grinning as she grabbed Matilda’s hand, “in particular.”

Before she could voice any objection or dig in her heels, Matilda was whisked out of the box and ushered down to the field. Her brain was a jumble. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, and been distracted all day, trying to decipher Tanner’s last furious words to her.

If you’d really known me, you’d have never believed that bullshit.

And she wasn’t any closer to figuring them out. She’d
seen
him sucking Jessica Duffy’s face off with her own two eyes. If it had just been something she’d heard, shitty gossip, some kind of whisper that she’d taken as fact then she’d understand his anger.

But she’d
seen
him.

What the fuck else was she supposed to believe? That he was trying to remove a foreign body from her airway?

With his tongue?

And this morning he was back to being his usual charming, flirty, social-media-darling self. Teasing her about a date. Like they’d never argued. Like he’d never called into question how well she’d known him.

Was she supposed to just forget everything—last night
and
that other night eight years ago?

The finish hooter sounded in her ears as she was led past the locker rooms where this whole thing had restarted six weeks ago and was jollied along out through the central tunnel into the night air filled with the noise of a cheering crowd. She was dragged to the sidelines as the two opposing teams shook hands and several commentators with their cameramen ran onto the field, sticking microphones in front of key players.

Matilda watched as the guy called Chuck Nugent tried to get Tanner to talk but was resoundingly ignored and none too happy about it, either. Tanner didn’t seem to care, searching the sidelines with his hungry blue eyes.

Matilda knew the exact moment he found her, his gaze fixing firmly on her, pinning her to the spot.

“Oh, Lordy,” Fran whispered to her as Tanner headed in her direction. “That man is going to kiss you hard.”

Matilda swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Her breath stuck in her throat. Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest. It was like that night on the dance floor as everything faded to black around them. No excited WAGS, no chanting crowd, no news cameras. Just Tanner striding across the grass with purpose in his step and her in his sights.

Suddenly hands were at her back, propelling her forward, and she was walking toward him as if on autopilot. She could see the wet cling of his jersey to his pecs, the sweat plastering his fringe against his forehead and the ripple of thorns across his biceps as he drew closer.

He loomed big and powerful and had eyes only for her.

Just like the smooth motion of that drop kick, he didn’t break stride when he finally reached her, sliding a hand onto her waist and jerking her against him. She only had a second to register the puffiness of his right eye where he’d copped an elbow, before his lips came down on hers in a crushing kiss that unleashed a mushroom cloud of lust through her system, demanding her absolute surrender.

Which she gave with absolutely no resistance, moaning against his mouth as she clung to his broad shoulders.

She was vaguely aware of the crowd going crazy. Of the chant, “
Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her
,” echoing around the field. Of clicks and flashes and lights from TV cameras.

But nothing mattered more than the hungry dominance of Tanner’s mouth, the hard wall of his chest, and the earthy, sweaty smell of him filling up her head, making her crazy.

“So, can he kiss as well as he kicks?” Chuck Nugent asked, a fluffy microphone thrust in their direction, interrupting their union.

Tanner’s mouth broke from hers as abruptly as it had joined. Matilda was pleased he was still holding her tight, as her legs nearly buckled.

“We’re all hanging out at my place later,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl, ignoring Chuck and the furor around them, eyes only for her. “Join us.”

It wasn’t a request. Somewhere in her muddled brain, Matilda recognised she should say no. She should pull away. She should demand an explanation about what he’d said last night. But she didn’t have the brainpower—no,
will
power—to deny him.

She simply nodded and said, “Okay.”

…

Everything was a bit of a haze after that. Chuck creepily followed her off the field, and Matilda was grateful for the protection of the WAGS who ushered her away to the corporate box to wait out the post-game formalities. They all watched probably rugby’s most entertaining press conference ever on the television screen in the box as Tanner faced more questions about those three field goals and the kiss then the actual game itself.

The officials tried to keep steering it back on track, but the media seemed to be interested in only one story and Tanner bantered with them easily while giving nothing away.

Eventually, some kind of official came along to the box and escorted them all out of the front door of the clubhouse where a chauffeured minibus with a handful of Smoke players, all showered and changed and talking smack, were waiting.

All the women filed in, grabbing seats next to their partners. Valerie disappeared down the aisle, too, which just left Matilda standing there. Tanner patted the seat beside him, smiled at her, and said, “Come sit here.”

Matilda slid in, her heart tripping at how well he wore casual—jeans encasing powerful quads, a grey-blue T-shirt taut across his pecs, his hair darker now it was damp. There were no signs of fatigue. Or injury for that matter, save for just some slight puffiness around his eye now. But he must hurt. She’d lost count of the number of times he’d been stomped on in tackles.

“Hey, here’s our lucky charm,” Linc called out from the back.

“Yeah, Tilly,” Dex said from behind. “Keep the man hanging and challenge him to four field goals next week.”

Everyone laughed, and Tanner performed quick intros as the van started to move. In an effort to ignore how the sway of the van caused their arms and legs to brush together, Matilda tuned into the banter and laughter being thrown around the van with comfort and ease.

Tanner copped the most, but he gave as good as he got. It was obvious they were all close, like a family more than a team.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured in her ear, his breath warm on her neck. “You okay?”

The low timbre of his voice trailed light fingers across her belly, the muscles beneath reacting as if the caress had been real. “Yes.”

He didn’t press her, and Matilda was relieved to be at his place thirty minutes later and able to escape his close proximity. Her resistance to him was crumbling at a rate of knots.

How could she be so conflicted over him yet want him so badly? Was it just muscle memory?

Or more?

It was eight o’clock by the time everyone was walking into Tanner’s gorgeous apartment in Finger Wharf. She knew he lived here. She knew they were expensive and exclusive—hell,
movie stars
owned apartments here—but she wasn’t prepared for its magnificence. Not that the inside was any kind of
Home Beautiful
show pony. It was definitely a man’s pad, but the location, with the wharf extending right out into the harbour, was something else.

It sure as shit put her Potts Point apartment to shame.

Clearly, everyone else had already been here as she was the only one walking around with her mouth open.

“I’ll show you round later,” he murmured, all low again, his hand on her hip just as Valerie bounced over and said, “You have to come check out his awesome view,” and Linc said, “Where are those damn pizzas you bribed us with?”

The view was indeed awesome, with Sydney’s skyline laid out before her, dramatically punctuated by Centrepoint tower rising into the night sky. Closer to the apartment, the lights from the restaurants that ran the length of the wharf reflected in the surface of the harbour. She could hear a low murmur of voices floating up from below and hear the occasional slap of water against wood.

It had always been a fantasy of Matilda’s to live somewhere with a sea view. This wasn’t exactly the beach but hell…it was the next best thing.

The pizza arrived fifteen minutes later and they all sat around, some on chairs, some on the floor, and ate. Matilda had deliberately chosen to sit on the couch between two of the WAGS—she wasn’t sure she could cope with Tanner being too near again.

He sat in an armchair a few feet away, the smile on his face telling her he knew exactly what she was up to.

The casual meal was fun. There were five couples—
not
including her and Tanner because they
weren’t
a couple—plus four single guys—Linc, Dex, Bodie, and Ryder—and Valerie. They sat around talking and laughing about a variety of subjects, not just the game. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company even if that meant taking turns at being the brunt of merciless razzing.

One thing was clear, she had plenty of fodder for her next feature and an angle—how much he was loved and respected. Because it was clear here tonight that everyone
loved
Tanner. Sure, there was trash talk, but she could see right through it to the respect and affection that underpinned it. And it wasn’t just because he was their captain, either. It was because of his generosity of spirit. He’d praised all the guys for their part in the win today, and every one of them had sat a little taller in their seats.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise. Tanner had always been well liked because, quite simply, he’d always been one of the nicest guys around. Apart from the
incident
with Jessica Duffy, he’d never put a foot wrong.

His mother had brought him up to be kind, respectful, and decent, and students, teachers, his fellow players, coaches, and even his opponents had liked him. He’d been polite, well-manner and always ready to lend a hand if someone needed it.

What
wasn’t
to love?

Matilda dragged her thoughts away from that dangerous question, switching her attention to Valerie teasing Linc about being a glutton as he wolfed down the last slice of his
second
pizza. If she wasn’t very much mistaken, it may have even bordered on flirting. Linc razzed her back about his manly appetite in a very
brotherly
fashion.

Hmm.
Interesting.
She leaned toward John Trimble’s wife, Kathy, who sat beside her. “Is Linc blind?” she whispered. “Valerie’s gorgeous and flirting?”

Kathy smiled and whispered back, “No messing with the coach’s daughter.”

“That’s an order from the coach?” Griffin King had barely acknowledged his daughter. Why would he care?

Kathy shook her head. “Not in so many words. It’s kind of an unspoken law. But Griff is too much of an enigma for anyone to push that envelope even a little.”

Matilda glanced at Valerie. Poor girl. Growing up around all this beefcake and not able to nibble at some of the hamburgers.

After the pizza had been eaten and the boxes thrown out, a more in depth dissection of the game started and Matilda wandered out with her glass of wine to the deck to admire the view again. Watching the New Year’s Eve fireworks from here must be breathtaking.

“Not too shabby, huh?”

She turned to find Kathy joining her. John Trimble was the oldest member of the team and his wife was about thirty. “I think I could hack it,” Matilda smiled.

“Play your cards right and that might be a possibility,” she teased. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen our Tanner quite this smitten.”