Once Upon A Half-Time: A Sports Romance - Sosie Frost Page 0,17

pluck off my balls, grate them into dust, and spoon feed the remains to me.

I didn’t have to knock on her door. Elle waited for me. Luckily, she didn’t answer armed…just dangerous.

I smiled anyway. “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

The door slammed shut.

So an afternoon at practice wasn’t enough time to start laughing about this. Good to know.

I knocked again. “Don’t put me in the doghouse already. We’re still newlyweds.”

She shouted through the door. “And we’re about to have our first domestic disturbance call.”

“As long as it gets me make-up sex…or am I supposed to sleep on the couch?”

Nothing. Not even a profanity.

I sighed. “Come on, Red. Lighten up.”

“Lighten up?”

The door opened, nearly torn off its hinges. Elle let me inside, but I couldn’t see if she hid a baseball bat anywhere.

“Lighten-up?” Elle’s growl was pretty convincing. “We’re married, Lachlan!”

“And I still owe you a ring.”

“You owe me an annulment!”

I pointed to the entryway. “At least let me carry you through the threshold first.”

“How ‘bout I just shove the bridal bouquet up your—”

“Whoa!” I wagged a finger at her pouted lip and that sassy hand on her hip. “Let’s save the rough stuff for the bedroom.”

She groaned. “When are you going to take this seriously?”

“As soon as you realize that this is pretty funny.”

Elle failed to see the humor.

To be fair, she’d had a rough day, but not all of it was bad. Sure, she got puked on. And, yes, everyone had seen her naked. But that only meant she was significantly more popular with the team now than she had ever been. And, as I was now associated with the most perfect set of tits on the team, I gained a shit-ton of respect with the guys.

Elle paced her apartment, stopping to fold and unfold a blanket over her couch. I followed, keeping my back to a wall in case she launched any or all of her hundreds of knick-knacks at my head.

Did she live in an apartment, a museum, or a tourist trap?

Her home was like a pack-rat with meticulous OCD set-up camp in an artist’s loft. She had about fifty percent windows, but every available space on the wall was lined with framed photographs—forests and beaches, cities and parks, stadiums and particularly photogenic Ironfield plays from the last championship game. The photos bordered the room, but the shelves took up most of the space.

This girl had a collection of everything tacky and bizarre from cities around the country. One curio stashed city-sponsored snow globes, most purchased from places with a football team. Another cabinet housed music boxes. A third cabinet kept more delicate knick-knacks of carved figurines and pretty pottery.

She had…everything. All organized, dusted, and spread throughout her apartment. No copies of Catcher in the Rye. That was a relief. And Elle didn’t seem the crazy cat lady. Her only pets were contained within a salt-water tank. A handful of brightly colored fish swept across a beautiful hundred-gallon aquarium.

Well…the cute girls were always a little weird. At least Elle hadn’t hosted a TLC special from her living room yet.

Elle swept her hair into a pony tail, but a lock of red-streaked curls caressed her dark cheek. I got lucky. Not many men could say they had such a beautiful wife.

And angry.

She was very angry.

“Until this very moment, I thought I had already attended the worst wedding of my life,” Elle said. “My sister, Edda, got married six months ago, and I went home for the first time in years.”

She pointed me to the couch before I could poke through a china cabinet.

“I only agreed to go because my sister, Emily, begged me.”

“You didn’t want to go to your sister’s wedding?” I asked.

“My family isn’t like most families. No dancing. No alcohol. No dresses that reveal too much shoulder. No lesbians.”

“What?”

Elle sighed. “My father disapproved of the woman Edda wanted to marry—”

“Oh.”

“And so he picked a man he thought would be a smart match for her.”

“Can he…do that?”

“That wasn’t the worst part of the wedding. The salad dressing went rancid, and half of the wedding guests got violently sick. My sisters, Estée and Evie, had to keep Edda’s girlfriend from crashing the party. My sister, Erica, snuck in alcohol, accidentally got drunk, and nearly set fire to the bridal table with a prayer candle. And then my sister, Erin, my father’s favorite, announced her pregnancy during her toast as maid of honor.”

“God damn. How many sisters do you have?”

“That is not something a husband should ask his wife.”

“I didn’t ask