AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Shit.” Rowan seethed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the hell are you going to do about this?”
“Me?” I cackled, my eyes wide. “You are the one with a woman at your door. I had absolutely nothing to do with this except help Aubrey feed your cat because she and Ethan are out of town. Cute cat, by the way.”
Ignoring me, and with a scowl, he tapped the screen of his phone. Tired and angry Rowan was actually sort of nice to look at, but maybe I was more amused with the whole situation happening to him.
“It was some idiots on my team,” he snarled through clenched teeth. His blue eyes met mine, dark and narrowed. “For my birthday.”
“Some friends you have,” I mocked. “Your cat is alive, and I didn’t kill any plants. Welcome home.”
“Wait, Meredith.” Rowan grabbed my arm as I turned away. “You’re in marketing. You can fix this.”
My eyebrows reached my hairline. “Your teammates sent you a woman for your birthday, Rowan. That sounds a lot like your mess to manage, and not mine.” I was on the first step down from his front door when a swirling cloud of his cologne stopped me as Rowan flew by me, stopping me with his hands on my shoulders.
“I’ll pay you,” he begged. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want your money.” Needing it was a different issue, but I could not accept a cent from him. “I really need to get home.”
“Meredith!” Rowan shouted, displaying a hilariously desperate side of him I never saw, and realized I enjoyed egging on. “I can’t have this be in the news. It’ll ruin my image. I’ll do anything if you’ll help me.”
“Why do you think I’m the only one who can help you? You’re hitting four hundred and twenty-five of every thousand balls coming your way. Surely there’s someone on your team’s payroll who can fix this.”
“You know my batting average?” He blinked, stupefied. It wasn’t a good look on him. It humanized him. Shoving my way past Rowan, I clicked my key fab and unlocked my car.
Don’t look back at him. Get in the car and go home. Call Aubrey and tell her she’s a horrible friend for going out of town and giving me the alarm code for Rowan’s house and neglecting her responsibilities. Just don’t look back at Rowan and his v-neck shirt and sweatpants that are just… dangling from his hips…
He knocked on my window, and I jumped, rolling down the glass. “What?”
Rowan looked to the sky, as if only God could give him strength to continue being a whiny, desperate baby. He reached into the back pocket of his sweatpants, and I hated how my chest tightened when the waistband moved down his hips. Kneeling at the side of my car, Rowan’s fingers folded over the lowered window.
“Here,” he used his other hand to wave something in my face. “It’s blank. Put down whatever amount you want.”
“Hmm,” I taunted, biting my lip while pretending I was seriously considering his offer. I took a pen from the console that housed my crusty coffee mug from this morning and placed the blank check on my steering wheel. “Not that I don’t appreciate you thinking I’m a stranger you can literally pay off, but let me think how much I want to hold over your head forever. One hundred thousand dollars,” I mocked, filling out the check.
“You’re worth far more than that, but fine.” Rowan stepped back, pressing his palms into a prayer, his fingertips touching his chin as he nodded to me. “Can you come over in the morning?”
“No,” I snickered. “We don’t work together and,” I paused as he crossed his arms, his massive chest and biceps threatening the threads of his shirt, “your charms don’t work on me, Ellis,” I warned. Rolling up my window, I tossed his joke of a check on the passenger seat and pulled out of his driveway.
Do not look back.
You looked back, you idiot.
Rowan’s fingers intertwined, his palms pressing into the top of his head, his grin too wide for my comfort as he watched me drive away.
SEVEN
Aubrey called me in the middle of the night on Friday to tell me Ethan’s grandmother passed away. They wouldn’t be coming back for at least another two weeks, but she begged me to come to the funeral the following weekend. Seattle was only a three-hour drive, but I had to get through my week of work first. I signed up to take some high school students to the Nike headquarters and tour Providence Park. It’d be the first time in a long time Aubrey wasn’t in town to swoon over soccer players with me. She always found a way to be coincidentally near the park if she knew I had a backstage pass with work.
It wasn’t worth going back to the office on Thursday afternoon once my high schoolers finished touring the soccer stadium, but there was still a lot of work left to do so I headed closer toward home and landed at one of my favorite coffee shops between downtown and Willamette Stadium. Without an Emeralds game that night, the crowds weren’t as big as usual.
I hadn’t told Aubrey about what happened at Rowan’s last week. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure that even happened. Maybe I was too sleep-deprived, or had I inhaled too much exhaust fumes while sitting in traffic on the freeway? I remember he smelled nice, and the cat was cute… And the rest is fuzzy. Either way, I brushed that disaster under the rug and, while sipping a black coffee in the corner, I scrolled through my inbox.
The small bell above the door rang every few minutes, but after a while, I hardly noticed. I’d been replying to an email from Monica and Dane, asking if I wanted to join them at a job fair next week, when the table jerked a little.
“You didn’t cash my check.” Rowan crashed into the chair across from me. I hated how small Portland was sometimes. Of all the coffee shops in this land of abundant coffee shops, why did he need to find me?
“Because it was a ridiculous joke,” I replied, hitting send on my email. “And actually, the more I think of it, it’s pretty insulting of you to think you can pay me off like one of your groupies.”
Rowan’s blue eyes widened as he leaned forward. “I don’t have groupies, Meredith!”
