Colt Butler sat back in the limo, thankful for the double tinted windows and dark sunglasses that protected his bloodshot eyes from South Florida’s potent summer sun. Getting balls drunk with the defensive line after being cleared for play was a Miami Thunder team tradition. So he’d gone, totally forgetting to account for the fact that even though he was a big guy at six feet, three inches with 270 pounds of hard muscle, his body wasn’t used to downing beers or doing shot after shot. Now he was paying the very steep price.
Colt hadn’t hurt so bad since Clarence “Boom Boom” MacNeal had hit him from behind in a cheap shot that resulted in a season-ending broken ankle for Colt and the best season on record for his backup, LeRoi Harper.
The deep, two-tone sound of a cruise ship horn reverberated in the limo as the driver slowed at the port’s entry gate.
“Tell me again why I’m doing this?” He fished a bottle of aspirin from his duffel’s side compartment, popped it open and dry swallowed two tablets then chased it with two pills for motion sickness.
“Because you have a fabulous agent,” Manny Rodriguez said, not even bothering to look up from his phone.
“And that’s why I’m going on some Miami Thunder-sponsored, broke-down player booze cruise for three days? Doc cleared me for play. I should be in training.”
“Like you ever stopped your regularly scheduled workouts.” Manny pocketed the phone and looked up from his perch on the opposite side of the stretch limo. “Look, you got some shit luck last season. Not only did you go out on a stretcher, your backup posted better numbers than you’ve gotten in the past two seasons. You’ve got one year left on your contract and you’re going to spend the offseason and training camp fighting for your job on the field. It’s pretty safe to assume you’re not going to be taking it easy anytime soon.”
“Damn straight.” Football wasn’t just a game for Colt. It was who he was, and had been since the first pass his dad had tossed to him across the prickly, thorn-bush-plagued patch of yard behind their doublewide. Nothing was going to take that away from him.
“So start fighting off the field too. You’re thirty. You’re on the tail end of a damn good career. It’s not just about working harder than anyone else on the team anymore, it’s about working smarter.”
As if anyone worked harder than he did: Two-a-days even with the cast around his ankle; memorizing the playbook; kissing off everything and everyone that didn’t influence the action on the field. The plastic pill bottle popped in his grip. He’d squeezed it so tight he’d dented it and sent the childproof lid flying across the limo’s cream leather seats. The movement registered on his periphery, just like the actions of an opposing team’s players when the only thing Colt cared about was the ball arcing through the air on its way to the eligible receiver he was about to crush. However, in this case, his attention centered on his agent instead of the pigskin.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve if you think—”
Manny held up his hand, stopping Colt mid-snarl. “That’s not me being an asshole, it’s the truth.”
“Fuck you.” He shoved the pill bottle back into his duffel, not giving a shit that the little tablets would scatter in its depths.
“You don’t pay me to shoot sunshine up your ass, Colt.” Manny winked. “I charge another five percent for that.”
They both laughed. And that’s why he’d been with Manny since the beginning of his career—neither of them thought bullshitting should be part of the game.
“Everyone knows what Colt “45” Butler stands for on the field,” Manny said. “You take off like a shot and when you hit, the other guy goes down like he’d been hit by a bullet. But the Thunder front office is worried about whether you can bring that intensity back and be the kind of player today’s game requires—on and off the field.”
He’d spent his career avoiding team community outreach events and the bug-under-the-spotlight feeling that went with it. He wore a helmet to work, not a suit and tie. “Mr. Garcia knows—”
“He knows he needs a franchise player,” Manny interrupted. “Someone who’s not only good, but is good for the team. This Miami Thunder fan cruise is your chance to show you can be the Thunder’s public face, and that makes you about more than your stats.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s public face.” Or the center of attention without the protection of his pads.
Manny threw his hands up in the air. “Then you’ll be doing that for another team in a few seasons. When will you get it through your stubborn Alabama-born-and-bred head that being good on the field isn’t always enough? You need to work all the angles. You know sure as shit that LeRoi Harper is.”
Bold as brass, LeRoi worked his mouth as much as his legs. “So why isn’t he going on this three-day cruise to the Bahamas, instead of leaving me to be the only current roster player among a bunch of retired old farts who haven’t hit the turf in years?”
“Because LeRoi doesn’t have the world’s best agent. You do.”
The limo rolled to a stop in front of the cruise ship’s VIP ticket entrance. Manny pointed out the window at a short woman with thick shoulder-length brown hair and a fantastic rack that even her Miami-Thunder-issued blazer couldn’t hide.
“Okay, that’s your handler for the cruise. Her name is Angie Keller, her direct supervisor is Dylan Rhodes, who is dating Olivia Garcia, who always has her big brother’s ear—and we all know that what Ian Garcia wants, he gets.”
And as unbelievable as it seemed, this trip just took a turn for the better. “I know exactly who Angie is.”
“Oh shit. I know that look. Please tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you did not do your normal fuck-and-flee routine with a woman who has the power to screw you over six ways to Sunday.”
Colt’s hand stilled on the door handle. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Until Ian Garcia approves your next contract, you better keep it that way. The last thing you need is to piss off Angie or anyone else in the front office.” Manny sighed and glanced out the limo’s window. “No matter how much hot Cuban-American goodness is wrapped up in one ill-fitting business suit.”
“Whatever you say, Manny.” Colt opened the door and stepped out.
Emerging from the limo was like getting body slammed by a gazillion-percent humidity. His sunglasses, cool from the limo’s air conditioning, fogged up and the Atlantic’s briny smell roiled his stomach. Maybe this was the day to break his rules and grab a greasy cheeseburger. Maybe then his aching head would give him a break.
“Mr. Butler, I’m Angie Keller. I’m going to be your VIP escort for the cruise.” She held out her delicate hand.
He towered over her even at a slouch, but she didn’t look the least bit intimidated. She never did. “I know what you sound like when you come—what was it? Three times in one night? Plus a few more in the morning, if I remember correctly. Don’t you think the reintroductions are a little much?”
Looking down, he couldn’t help but enjoy the view as the heated flush crawled up her light-brown skin. She was all round curves and pouty lips, accentuated with enough fuck-with-me-and-I-will-break-you-in-half attitude to make the entire defensive line quake in their cleats.
Angie narrowed her big brown eyes at him and he swore he could hear her mentally cursing him out in Spanish. “Look, no one with the Thunder knows about Vegas and I’d rather keep it that way, so let’s pretend we’ve just met.” She stuck out her hand again. “I have a promotion riding on the next three days going well. Do not fuck this up for me.”
“Whatever you want, honey.” He took her hand, but instead of shaking it, he flipped it palm side up and kissed the soft skin on her wrist, where her pulse beat erratically.
She jerked her hand free. “Come on. Let’s get you boarded.”
“I like that idea.” The words just popped out. He didn’t mean to say it any more than he meant to recall in vivid high definition how she’d looked with all that thick brown hair spilling over her heavy tits as she rode him on that oversized hotel bed until his eyes rolled back in his head.
But Angie didn’t seem to have the same happy memory. Instead, the look she gave him would have melted steel. “Aboard,” she said between gritted teeth. “Let’s get you aboard the ship.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Keller.” He tipped an imaginary hat then followed her through the private VIP entrance, realizing as he watched her signature swaying strut that it wasn’t his big head demanding his attention anymore.
#
Angie Keller’s mother was trying to kill her. Slowly. One pointed question about her love life at a time. She loved her family but some days, she wished she’d taken the job offer for the Tampa Breakers instead of staying close to home and working her ass off for a chance to prove her worth with the Miami Thunder. But she’d made her choice and had finally gotten her opportunity with this fan cruise. All she had to do was make sure everything went off without a hitch and she’d be a lock for the Thunder’s new special events coordinator.
The cruise ship’s horn blared, nearly knocking her out of her skin and her new suit from Bloomingdale’s clearance rack. Right on time, the last player’s limo pulled through the port’s gate and headed straight toward her spot at the entry to the VIP ticketing area. “Mom, I gotta go,” she said into her phone.
“Why?” her mother asked. “I thought the ship didn’t sail for another three hours.”
“Colt Butler’s limo just got here.” She watched its slow approach as the driver swerved around swaths of people in head-to-toe Thunder gear hauling their luggage to the main ticket holders’ entrance.
“A limo, huh?” Her mom had that hopeful tone in her voice—the one that wondered if this was the moment when Maria Keller’s youngest and only unmarried child would finally see the error of her ways and sink her talons into an unsuspecting future husband. “Is he cute?”
Only if she found tall, muscled, square-jawed Southern boys with slow accents who had a talent for giving multiple orgasms attractive. “No, Mom, he looks like a troll with a slobbering problem.”
“Listen to how you talk to your mother.” Her mom’s Cuban accent had gone from second generation to just off the boat in a heartbeat. Guilt, it seemed, required a thick and slightly fake accent. “All I want is for you to be happy and— Dios mío!” She gasped. “You shouldn’t lie to your mother.”
“Did you just Google Colt Butler?” She should have known showing her mom how to Google image search was a bad idea.
“He is very handsome.” Maria made a low mmmm-hhhmmmm sound that no daughter should ever hear her mother make. “And so tall.”
“And a Miami Thunder player who I have to babysit for the next three days.” As an active player with impressive numbers before he’d been injured, Colt was the cruise’s main draw. Fans would be clamoring for the attention he was famous for withholding. It was her job to make sure that everyone walked away happy, not to go back for some twist-the-sheets seconds. “Anyway, I don’t date football players and you know it.”
Except for the one time with Colt in Vegas, and that didn’t exactly count as a date. Twelve hours of orgasmic insanity? Oh yeah. A date? Not even close. That’s what made it acceptable, if not repeatable.
“It’s not like your bosses don’t mix it up in the office,” her mom groused.
“Mom, shhhhh. I told you that in confidence. And the Garcia own the team, they can do whatever they want. The rest of us are strongly discouraged from dating players.”
“You take all the fun out of things.” She could practically hear the eye roll in her mom’s tone.
“No, I’m the one who has to hear the sob story from every Thunder front office assistant when she realizes the guy she thought was different was just another player.” Those were ugly times made better only by copious amounts of wine and chocolate. “No way am I going down that road.”
“Why can’t you see this as an opportunity?” her mom asked.
“It is an opportunity for my career.” One she wasn’t about to let go to waste. The limo pulled to a stop in front of her and she rose to her full height of five feet two inches, straightened her shoulders and inhaled a deep breath.
“You’re not getting any younger and I want grandchildren.”
All the air whooshed out of Angie in one big rush. “I’m twenty-eight, mom, my ovaries aren’t going to shrivel up anytime soon, and there’s more to me than a pretty face.”
Colt got out of the limo with a duffel bag big enough to stow a boy band member, hefted it as if it weighed nothing and headed toward her. Her nipples woke up and said hello with enthusiasm, making her grateful she’d insisted on wearing the suit jacket even in the Miami heat.
“I gotta go, Mom.”
“Fine. Go,” her mom said, adding in a healthy dash of long-suffering parent with every single syllable. “I’ll work on your Miami Cuban Singles profile while you’re gone.”
Answering would only prolong the misery of this conversation, so Angie told her mom she loved her and hit the End button as fast as humanly possible.
Colt “45” Butler looked big on her thirty-two-inch TV, but in person he was humongous. Sun-streaked blond hair, a day-old beard and shades, he ate up the distance between them in two long-legged strides. The damage she could do to him if he’d been any other man… Look but don’t touch, Angie girl. The cruise was going to be chaotic enough without adding personal drama to the mix. She was never going to talk to her mother before a big work event again. It gave her bad ideas.
Colt stopped in front of her and slipped of his sunglasses, revealing blue eyes that were tinged with red. Her pulse picked up speed. Showtime.
“Mr. Butler, I’m Angie Keller. I’m going to be your VIP escort for the cruise.” She held out her hand, amazed it didn’t turn to ash under the heated intensity of his gaze.
#
The automatic doors parted, letting out the bone-chilling air conditioning commonplace in all indoor public spaces south of Orlando. The VIP entrance lay straight ahead. Whispers of “Look, it’s Colt 45” started as soon as they crossed the threshold. He tensed up, his shoulders practically touching his ears, but didn’t make a break for it. Because he could have cleared the lobby in about six seconds if he’d wanted, the fact that he adjusted his strides with her much shorter ones surprised her.
“You have your passport?” she asked as they approached the cordoned-off VIP area.
He nodded and winced.
“Perfect.” She sent up a silent plea that the obviously hungover Colt wouldn’t throw up all over a fan as soon as they set sail. Someone—probably several someones—would Tweet the hell out of that. Definitely not the type of publicity she hoped to get for the team. “We just need to go through here.”
The boarding area was arranged much like an airport security line, with a red rope separating general ticket holders from the VIP ticket holders, mainly the former Thunder players and their families. Only one person stood ahead of them in the VIP line and there was no way she was a former player. Tall, blonde, tan and wearing a bright-blue, low-cut tank top and skin-tight capris, the woman had Miami diva written all over her.
The blonde turned with practiced precision. “Oh my God!” Dogs in Tampa had to have heard the woman’s high-pitched squeal. “You’re Colt 45!”
Colt stood his ground but moved his ginormous duffel bag from his side to hanging directly in front of him, a semi-effective barrier if the woman launched herself at him. “Hi there.”
“Mystie, with a Y and an IE. I am your biggest fan!” The woman smoothed her long, straight blonde hair that even Miami’s humidity didn’t frizz back behind her ears before clapping her hands together. The woman could have been a supermodel and it was kind of hard not to stare. “When my dad said he had a VIP ticket to the cruise, you know I swiped it out of his hand before he could blink. And now I am talking to the Colt 45! Oh! My! God! I could get pregnant just from being this close to you!”
Angie’s brain couldn’t keep up. It was like watching her mom’s excitable Jack Russell in human form. Hopefully, Mystie was just as harmless, but she’d probably need to notify security just in case.
She scanned Colt’s face, looking for clues that he needed rescuing. The vein in his temple danced the conga and he might chip a tooth if he didn’t unclamp his jaw soon, but he didn’t look any more weirded out than her Uncle Jorge had been when a transplant New Yorker had served him a Cuban sandwich slathered with mayonnaise. If he needed rescuing from his biggest fan, he’d better learn to give off better signals.
They handed their passports and tickets to the attendant, who ushered them through the turnstile and onto the VIP gangway leading up to the ship.
“I am so excited for this cruise.” The blonde’s long legs matched Colt’s expansive stride. “Aren’t you just totally excited?” The woman turned and grinned at Angie. “Are you a fan too?”
Afraid the woman was going to wrap her in a bear hug, Angie held out her hand to the tall blonde. “Angie Keller, I’m with the team.”
“You are? How exciting to always be around all these strong men.” The woman took her hand in a firm grip and pumped up and down several times. “Mystie Ferrara.”
“As in Miguel Ferrara?” Now this was a coup. She glanced over at Colt to see if he was following the conversation. “The city councilman leading the way for a vote on providing tax breaks for the Thunder’s new practice facility?” She said it slowly, hoping Colt would pick up the signal.
Even he had to get the message to amp up the friendly factor toward his biggest fan. Real estate in Miami was a blood sport and Mystie’s dad could make or break the deal for the practice facility.
“One in the same.” Mystie nodded and led the way onto the elevator. She pushed the number fourteen. “What floor?”
Angie pushed the sixteen. “We’re so glad to have you on board.” She pulled a business card out of her purse and handed it to the other woman. “If there’s anything I can do to improve your cruise, please just let me know.”
“I will.” The blonde’s smile was genuine and friendly, if a little overenthusiastic. “I’m sooooooo excited to get to hang out with you for the next three days, Colt!”
The elevator doors opened on the fourteenth deck, home to suites with balconies, comped room service and in-room Jacuzzis. Mystie stepped into the hallway and turned to face the elevator, waving goodbye as the doors closed.
Slack-jawed, she turned to Colt. “Wow.”
“That’s one word for it.” He kept staring at the doors as if his superpower was making elevators move faster.
“Well…that’s awkward.” Angie looked for inspiration for something else to say in the garish purple, gold and green weave of the elevator’s wallpaper and came up with nada. “Is it always like th—”
The elevator’s ding as the doors slid open stopped her question. Well, that and the fact that Colt took off down the hall as fast as his namesake. Angie had to do a half skip, half jog just to keep up. He stopped at his door and she slammed right into him—either that or she ran into a brick wall camouflaged to look like Colt. Both would be about equally as big and hard, but only one smelled like sandalwood, soap and six feet, three inches worth of cannot have.
She reeled back, clutching her folder of paperwork tight when she should have been throwing her arms out for balance. Yet again, her poor choices did her in and she lost her sea legs and fell back, but jerked to a stop inches before her ass hit the floor.
Colt’s arm wrapped around her waist, holding her soft body close to every big, hard part of his. “You alright?”
“Fine,” she whispered over her pounding heart.
Her vivid imagination painting the picture they made, with her arched back and him curled around her as if they were performing the deepest dip in a tango. Her skin sizzled under his touch and warm desire washed over her as palpable as the folder clamped to her heaving chest.
His gaze dropped to her mouth and his pupils dilated. Everything went still—the ship, the people, her mother’s voice yelling in her head to kiss him already, all disappeared. He dipped his head lower. Her eyes fluttered shut and she parted her lips, more than ready for whatever happened now.
In the next heartbeat, her feet were both firmly planted on the carpet and the warmth of his arm around her waist evaporated. She blinked her eyes open in time to see him swipe his keycard across his room lock and open his door. Embarrassment burned her cheeks. So much for her decision not to play with the players.
He paused halfway inside his door. “Look, my head’s killing me, I’m going to be trapped on a boat for the next three days, and I’d rather be just about anywhere than here.” He rubbed his temples. “How about you give me a list of things I have to be at and leave me alone the rest of the time?”
“Okay…” She fumbled in her folder for his itinerary and the contact sheet.
He mumbled a thank you and shut the door in her face.
Angie stared at the gold-plated room number, amazed at his rudeness.
And this is why some hot guys shouldn’t talk—once they did, they ruined the whole sexy-as-sin thing they’d had going on before.
What a total shithead.
Good thing she didn’t have to like him to do her job and get the Thunder front office to realize what she could bring to the team. Brain already spinning with ideas to limit her contact with Colt, she spun on her heel and marched back to the elevator for the long ride down several decks to her small interior cabin.
