Reckless: A Bad Boy Sport Romance (58 page)

“Good. You can stop trying to impress us now. You've got your prize.” Carrie gazed up at me with a small, playful smile. “Kidding.”

“I'm glad you're finally comfortable enough to get corny with me.”

“Me? Corny? Why, I –” Carrie stuffed her hand back into her dinging purse. She took one look at it and put it away bitterly. “Sorry. I know I bitched at you about being on your phone. I put it on silent.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it's just Wattana de Vil. She's rejected every single one of my article proposals the last 2 weeks, and it's stressing me out like no other. It's gotten so bad she's passed off the last 3 articles to goddamn ghostwriters. I don't know why she hasn't booted me off the project yet at this point, but I'm not asking.”

“Ah. Makes sense. I was wondering what the deal was with the sudden influx of click-bait articles – first, Turner's drunken dance at Burning Man 2007... Oh, and that one about Halstrom's racist tirade against Native Americans in '62. None of that sounded like you.”

“Believe me, this was never what I'd signed up for. I had to cancel my interview with Val and tell him my boss wasn't interested in doing a piece on him. He was so disappointed.” Carrie shook her head sadly, but I was pretty chipper about their meeting falling through. “I'm just worried the team's not going to want me around anymore; I've still got about a month left on the project.”

“Don't worry about the boys. Bad publicity for them is still publicity – they've been talking about getting thousands of new Twitter followers after those articles went up. So I guess, Wattana may have a point. The woman knows what sells out here. From what I can tell, Coach doesn't give a shit, but Abigail's on the fence. Wattana should be expecting a call from her any day now.”

“I guess that does make me a feel just a teeny bit better, but...” Carrie paused, taking note of the vibrating in my pocket. “Go ahead. I hope you know I wasn't being serious about that phone thing earlier. It could be important. I'm gonna go check on Jackson.”

As soon as Carrie shuffled off to find Jackson, I dove for my phone. It was under 70 degrees in here, but my palms were damp with sweat. I glanced at the screen and felt my chest squeeze. It was the one message I'd been dreading all week.

“
I need you here now. Don't make me wait much longer. – I
”

I stared at my phone for a few minutes, lost in thought until I heard Carrie and Jackson coming up behind me.

“Everything okay?”

I pocketed my phone, turning around to face her.

“It's Coach. He's calling a meeting – nothing serious, but I have to be there.”

“Oh, okay. That's fine. You go ahead.” Carrie jerked her head towards the doors. “We'll look around for another 20 minutes or so and we'll be on our way, too.”

“I'll call you later. Sorry guys, I wish I didn't have to leave. I'll catch ya later.”

And I meant it.

Chapter Eighteen:
Carrie

I hummed along to the song blasting from my earphones as I took out the last of the wet clothes from the dryer. The clothes were still crisp and warm, and vanilla wafted out of the basket of clothes, courtesy of the dryer sheets. I began extracting each article one at a time, separating them into 3 piles on top of the washing machine and dryer. As I went on with the mindless task, I found my thoughts drifting to Kingsley, an irritatingly common occurrence these days.

Apart from the drama with the project, or more appropriately, lack thereof, and the resulting stagnancy in progress because of it, things couldn't have been better. Kingsley and I were taking it slow, but we saw each other frequently in between his practices. To keep up pretenses, we stayed out of each other's way and made sure to snap at each other at the clubhouse at the presence of the rest of his teammates. It made our secret quickies in the locker room and kitchen storage room after hours all the more risky and exciting.

Kingsley also stopped showing up unannounced at The Daily Dirt office. The last thing I wanted was for Wattana to get wind of us and throttle me harder than she was already doing about her sacred exposé – the final piece of the project. But we did happen upon Lisa Wiener at The Saffron Hut with her uppity Wall Street trophy husband. The night had already been amazing, but it was the look of incredulous envy exuding from Lisa's grimace that really sealed the deal for me.

“What are you looking so happy about?”

Jamie walked down the creaking battered steps, joining me in the basement. She had just come home from work, still dressed in her atrocious red-and-white striped uniform and a disposable paper hat bearing the fast food restaurant's logo. I slid to the right, giving her some room and catching a whiff of the grease and fried chicken on her clothes. She leaned over the basket and began to help me with the folding.

“Nothing.” I withdrew my dreamy smile, changing the subject. It was immediately clear that Jamie had had a bad day at work and was now on another one of her fishing trips for sympathy. I'd much rather let her exaggerated sighs and woe-is-me expression be, but if I didn't nibble, she'd be sulking for the rest of the day. “What's wrong, Jamie? Long day at work?”

“Yeah. Carson sent me home early today. This other girl, Binky, too. It hasn't been as busy lately, and Carson's been cutting my hours, the dick.”

I was tempted to tell Jamie exactly what I thought, but I bit my tongue, deciding against poking the testy crab.

“That's rough. Maybe you can try going in a little earlier, do a little extra work, show you've got some initiative. At least, that's what I do when Wattana's giving me a hard time at the office.”

“Whatever, like that's gonna do me any good,” Jamie replied crossly. “Guess I don't need you to pick Jackson up from his play date anymore now that I'm here.”

“Really? That'd be great.” I laid all 3 columns of the folded clothes back into the basket and hugged it to my chest. “I can actually freshen up a little before I go out then –”

“What's that, like, the third time this week now? So what is this? Are you guys, like, an item?”

“I don't know what we are,” I answered her truthfully, but Jamie was seriously testing me. “What I do know is that I'm going out, end of story.”

“This isn't just about you, Carrie. You've been exposing Jackson to Kingsley, some random dude we know nothing about –”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we watch the vocabulary here?” I screwed up my face in disgust. “What are you trying to twist this into now? First of all, I would never leave Jackson alone with at least 2 trusted adults present. And you had no problems accepting Kingsley's money –”

“I don't want Kingsley spending any more time with my son. I forbid it,” Jamie cut me off coldly. I swore there was a flicker of an evil smile on her lips, but it could have just been the imagined result of me demonizing her at that very moment.

“You know that's not fair, Jamie. You've seen how Jackson is around Kingsley. Why would you try to take that –”

“Yes, I've seen it, and again, it's called protecting my son. I don't even have to explain myself to you. I'm Jackson's mother, and I'm the one calling the shots around here. Not you, not Jackson, not Kingsley – me.”

“Whatever, Jamie. You go ahead with your little power trip. Talk to me when you've realized how unreasonable you're being.”

I was halfway up the stairs before Jamie decided she had more of her brilliant 2 cents to shed.

“And as your sister, I'm going to say this again. You're falling real hard, real fast for Kingsley Kelly, and don't tell me otherwise because I see that dopey look on your face when you're thinking about him. You're just his flavor of the week, and he's gonna get tired of vanilla real soon. Not trying to sound harsh, just stating facts.”

Jamie was saying everything she possibly could to hurt or get a rise out of me, but what I couldn't ignore was the inkling of doubt sprouting inside of me because of it.

As I stared back at Jamie's sullen expression, her downturned lips bitterly screwed shut under that stupid paper hat, I exhaled meditatively. I've never needed anyone's help with character judgment, and I didn't need the help now, much less from someone who got herself knocked up at 16. Besides, a monkey could see that Jamie was just feeling jealous that the source of her son's happiness no longer exclusively revolved around his mother.

“Great stuff. Thanks for the advice.” I continued up the steps.

“Fine, don't listen to me, but don't come crawling back to me when you prove me right!”

“I won't be back for dinner,” I called over my shoulder, ignoring her. “There's some leftover butternut squash and coconut curry for you and Jackson in the fridge.”

Jamie was still talking, but I kicked the basement door shut behind me, stifling the rest of her exhausting negativity.

Chapter Nineteen:
Kingsley

“And that's a wrap!”

As the boa around my neck lifted its head, hissing, the 3 models posing around my throne yelped and promptly scattered. The snake handler hushed them, shooing them away as he carefully eased the boa over my neck. I rose from my throne, which was fitted with a badass but uncomfortable collection of chrome swords, skulls, and footballs. Rubbing my ass, I thanked the blushing intern for bringing me a glass of water and indulged my thirst.

Jerry Rhinestone hopped off the director's chair and made his way towards me.

“We took some great shots today, King! Thanks for coming out again. Sales have been dipping lately, but we're hoping that all changes with our new Kingsley Kelly limited edition line. Hopefully that brings in the 18-34 year old males we're looking to rope in.” The chubby man took the black cologne bottle from my hands eagerly. “We'll shoot you a tweet when they're published.”

The colognes were literally bottled with extracts of my sweat along with a concoction of other junk. It smelled like minty cat piss, but apparently the idea alone spawned over 14,000 pre-orders from fans I'm sure I never want to meet. It might have seemed like an absurd idea if I didn't just hear about that vaginal beer they were trying to make out of that Czech supermodel. But when Jerry called me personally, informing me I'd be making over $12 million after taxes and another $150K for each tweet, I wasn't turning that shit down for a second.

“Sounds good, Jerry. I gotta run. Some place I gotta be.”

“No problem. You take care, King.”

“You too, Jerry. Have a good one.”

I headed for the exit, reaching into my pocket to check my phone. There were 8 unread messages from Ivanka, sent from over 3 hours ago. When I clicked into the messaging app, I scrolled through the succession of dirty pictures.

To say these were suggestive would have been putting it lightly. Ivanka hadn't actually typed anything, but she conveyed her message loud and clear with pictures of colorful dildos rammed in every orifice in her body at one time. I looked through the pictures of Ivanka's pink cunt and asshole stretched out by the purple silicone dicks. The last picture showed a close-up of her with her tongue out, licking the glistening shaft of the dildo. Just a couple of weeks back, I'd be weaving in and out of traffic just to get to the Gunther residence. Now, all that was left was a draining sense of obligation and guilt.

I swiped out of the message gallery and tapped the “New Message” window.

“At Lexington Blvd. Too far away from your place. Meet me at mine in 20.
”

Ivanka's reply came 3 seconds after that, almost as if she'd been waiting right by her phone.

“Good boy. See you soon.
”

I tucked my phone back into my pocket and exited the studio, walking to my car, which I'd parked in the shade.

I got into my car, tossing my phone into the passenger's seat. After adjusting my mirrors and the sun visor to get the glare of the setting sun out of my eyes, I backed out of my spot and steered towards the exit. But just as I prepared to make a right before the yellow light turned red, a shithead on a Harley roadster ripped past me, cutting me off.

“Ah, fuck me.” I watched the light turn red, gripping my steering wheel. As traffic poured in, I slammed the back of my head against the headrest.

Once, I went through 8 different chicks a day in 3 sessions. With that logic, juggling 2 women shouldn't have been this fucking stressful. But real talk, who would have thought Farrah would have been the least of my problems?

Despite my “playboy” reputation in the media, no woman has ever come out and accused me of abuse or violence of any sort, simply because there was none that ever took place. I wasn't pretending to be a model citizen, here, but I'd never laid a hand on or forced a woman to do anything they weren't comfortable with, and I aimed to keep it that way. The worst shit-talk ever done about me was some chick who said I never called her back, but that quickly became accepted as the norm. But any claims of sexual abuse from anyone, more so from one of the most reputable fashion designers in the industry – even if they were just insane, baseless allegations – was a point-blank shot in the head to your career.

Victims are almost always believed, as they should be. After all, no one in their right mind or any shred of conscience would ever make this shit up. I always knew Ivanka could stand to get a refresher course on what manners meant, but I was completely blindsided by how downright psycho the bitch actually was.