Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Women love free shit.
Elias loves women.
Can’t sustain a relationship to save his soul, but he’s a good dude with a big heart and plenty of romantic ideas—good and bad.
He’s the one who’d coached me through some of the rough patches with Penelope. He’s the one who helped me pick out gifts for her and Skipper. He’s the one that found a real estate agent who found the house we moved into back in December.
Yeah—in the middle of fucking December.
It was great having Christmas there, though. The view of the mountains is spectacular through the panoramic windows at the back of the house, and you can’t put a price tag on that.
I mean, you can. That view cost seven point four million dollars but is worth every last cent.
Especially the last few times Penelope has taken a bath in that gigantic tub, filled it with bubbles, her perky tits were visible above the water. I’m convinced she does that shit on purpose to torture me, and you won’t convince me otherwise.
As soon as she saw that tub during our house hunting search, the house was as good as ours.
Elias offers her a glass of champagne.
He’s the one hosting this modest shindig in one of the stadium suites, surrounded by my teammates who are his clients—plenty of players who play for other teams—managers, assistants, wives, and significant others.
The place is packed, and the liquor is flowing.
“All settled in to the new house?” Elias is asking Penelope, who’d been chatting with Lana Macenroy, who has become one of her closest friends and confidants. Lana has been showing her the ropes and introducing her around—not to mention, the kids all get along, which has been great.
They’ve been over at our new house a lot, and us to theirs.
“So far, so good. We didn’t have a ton of stuff to unpack since Jack was coming from a condo, and all my things are back in the Midwest and technically don’t belong to me.”
They belong to her brother, who offered up the contents if we needed them—which we didn’t. But it was gracious of him anyway.
Good dude.
We’ve gotten close in the past few months, and it’s almost as if he were my brother now, too. But not in a weird way.
Ha!
My agent looks me up and down with a laugh. Of course, he’s been drinking so everything is funny to him right now.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“You. You’re so domestic now.”
“I wasn’t before?”
“No, before you were a hermit. I wouldn’t call that domestic.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being home all the time. I find nothing interesting about going out and partying and meeting random women.”
He puts his hands in the air in a surrender motion. “I get it. I get it. All I’m saying is, you’ll never see me tied down.”
“You know what we call boasting like that? Famous. Last. Words.”
“Ha,” he says, drinking from the amber bottle in his hands and stealing a shrimp kabob from the server passing by. “Can you see me with a dog, a white picket fence, and a kid?”
Not really, if I’m being honest.
“Do you know what they call men like you in romance novels?” Penelope pipes in.
“What?”
“A rake. You’ll make the best boyfriend when you’re reformed.” She takes a dainty nibble of the cake pop she’s holding. “Reformed rake.”
“You can’t compare me to anyone in your romance novels. It’s not the right time for me to be dating.”
“It’s never the right time,” Penn says wisely. “If everyone waited for the right time, we’d be waiting around forever.”
“So wise.” I kiss her on the temple, pulling her close. “But he’s right, babe. Elias, here, would make a shitty boyfriend.”
“Hey!” he sputters. “I never said I would make a shitty boyfriend. I said I couldn’t be tied down.”
I glance around the room. “Who’s trying to tie you down? I don’t see a line forming.”
“Screw you.” He laughs, looking down at Penelope. “How do you put up with him?”
“Easy. He’s my best friend.” She twists the giant emerald ring on her finger. It’s the one I got her for Christmas, an exact replica of the cheap plastic one I won for her eight years ago at the fair doing the High Striker.
Except this one is real.
It glitters and sparkles like nothing I’ve ever seen, especially beneath the overhead lights in this room.
My agent feigns a gag. “Don’t say he’s your best friend so loud. You’ll make everyone jealous.”
“But not you?”
“No. Never me.”
Penelope isn’t convinced. “The perfect girl will sweep you off your feet, Elias, and you won’t even know what hit you.”
“Sweep me off my feet? That’s not how that works.” He sounds so disgusted it makes me laugh. “If I was going to meet someone, I would have met her already.”
It’s true; he’s surrounded by women everywhere. Every game, every party, every city he’s visits to sign new players. He gets hit on constantly by mothers, sisters, and team owners’ daughters. Publicists and reporters.