The Baller: A Down and Dirty Football Novel - Vi Keeland Page 0,16
curl in my sensible shoes.
A part of me suddenly wished I hadn’t dressed up like a schoolmarm.
We settled into our table at the beautiful Silver Ivy restaurant, and a waitress came over to take our drink order. She batted her long eyelashes at Brody and gave me the once-over, no doubt jealous of my outfit. “What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Easton?”
Really? Yuck.
“Hey, Siselee.” He looked at me. “Do you like red wine?”
“I consider it one of the five major food groups.”
He ordered a bottle of wine I’d never heard of. The waitress opened it tableside, poured me a glass and set the bottle in the bucket beside the table.
“Aren’t you having any?” The question was directed at Brody, but Siselee answered before he could.
“He only drinks on Tuesday nights.” She lifted her chin, proud of herself for knowing the answer.
“Training,” Brody offered as means of explanation.
We relaxed into easy conversation, our natural flow leading to sports. Arguing over the greats of all time, we sampled each other’s dinners without a lull in our banter. The topic of conversation eventually moved to Brody’s new wide receiver.
“I throw, he catches. We don’t need to be buddies.”
“You need to have trust in each other. My dad always said his receiver was like his wife—he needed a partner he could trust to make the right decisions.”
“I have to trust his abilities. Not his morality.”
“So is that what the issue is? His morals?”
Brody leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. “Is this an interview? This shit going to be on the air tomorrow?”
“No. Sorry. Habit. I grew up arguing about football. I actually sort of like doing it, if I’m being honest.”
“Guess I do, too. What else do you like doing?”
“I don’t have much spare time these days, really. Between the traveling and all the research and stats I have to keep up with, there’s not much time for anything but work and sleep lately. I haven’t had a day off in two months.”
“What would you be doing if you were off for a day?”
“Hmm. I love museums and bike riding. But if I had a full day off, I’d probably spend it in bed, watching movies.”
“What kind of movies?”
“B horror flicks. The gorier, the better.”
“Really?”
“Really.” I tipped my glass of wine toward him before bringing it to my lips. “What about you? What would you do with a day of no practice or games?” I knew from growing up with a quarterback dad that a day like that was a rarity during football season. Even on “recovery” days after a game, quarterbacks had films to watch from the last game to prepare for the next one.
“I’d be in bed, too.”
“What would you be watching?”
“Your face while I sink inside of you.”
I was in the middle of a long sip of my wine and choked. At least the sputtering and coughing gave me an excuse for my face turning beet red.
“You okay?”
It took me a minute, and my voice was a little hoarse when I spoke, but I finally regained my composure. “Why do you say things like that?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s true. If I could do anything I wanted on a day off, I’d do . . . you.”
“You have a dirty mouth.”
“This dirty mouth wants to do dirty things to you.”
I had that feeling of teetering on the top of a roller coaster, about to go down a steep hill . . . only that anxious and excited feeling wasn’t in my stomach, it was in my panties. And they were growing damp.
Brody lifted the wine bottle from the bucket and refilled my glass. “Tell me something embarrassing about you.”
“Embarrassing?”
“Yeah. Maybe it will help me stop thinking about doing dirty things to you.”
“Hmm…let me think.”
He leaned in. “Hurry. You’re sorta hot when you think.”
Shaking my head, I shared the first embarrassing story I could think of, even though it was an old one. “When I was sixteen, I told my parents I was going to sleep at my friend’s house, but I really went camping with a big group of people. We bought beer and sat around a campfire all night drinking. At some point, after we’d all had too much to drink, we decided to roast marshmallows. I was about as experienced with camping as I was drinking, which is to say I was drunk and didn’t belong near a fire. We collected sticks and popped marshmallows on the end. My stick was only about six