RISKY PLAY (RED CARD #1) BY RACHEL VAN DYKEN Page 0,15

two more months before I want you back here tasting. I’ll need you during Spring Barrel, and you’re the best we have. It’s not just about having my daughter around me.” His eyes filled with tears. “But you’re so damn good at what you do, and you love it, I know you do. I just hate that it’s been tainted by—”

“Mack?” Alton stopped at our table with a fresh bottle. “How are you?” He leaned down until we were at eye level. It made me feel like a child. Had he always talked to me like that? Like I was the kid and he was the adult?

“I’m . . . just leaving.” I forced a smile and glanced at his perfectly tailored suit. It fit his arms like a glove, but something was missing.

Biceps?

Actual muscle?

Had he always been that lean? Where had all those football muscles gone?

I mean he’d always been a runner, but . . .

I jerked my gaze away from his lean arms when my dad cleared his throat and stood. “I love you, Mack, be safe.”

“I live in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Sound, with a bellman and full security,” I reminded him with a wink. “I think I’ll be okay.”

I sidestepped Alton, still smiling so hard it hurt my face, and then walked away from everything yet again.

I kept my head high until I got into my Lexus SUV and started the engine.

The AC pumped through the vents as my eyes watered with unshed tears, and in a complete moment of weakness, I reached into the console, pulled out a linen shirt, and inhaled.

Chapter Twelve

SLADE

I had holed up in my house on Lake Washington for a good two days after the video from the flight went viral. I’d been known as the golden boy of soccer.

Now?

Now I was the bad-boy European football star who’d lost his shit on an airplane and was just waiting to infect the American population with my dirty ways. It didn’t help that every damn article featured a picture of my father and speculation that I was losing my shit because of his death.

There were rumors of drug use. False.

Public drunkenness. Also false.

Oh, and a personal favorite? An ex had come forward and said that I used to mentally abuse her. She asked for a million dollars in restitution.

I told her to go to hell.

That, also, made the news.

So to say I was in a bad place since my father died? That was an understatement.

It didn’t help that my house was a mess, and I was due at practice the next day. I hadn’t done laundry in I don’t even know how long. I hadn’t even gone out to buy dog food in two weeks out of fear that someone would take a picture and I’d lash out again.

Amazon delivery was my new best friend.

And every fucking time my mom called, it was to say she was worried.

I rubbed my eyes with my palms and grabbed another bottle of beer from the table before seeing my phone buzz, the vibration causing it to fall from the couch onto the floor.

With a curse I picked it up. “What?”

“Well, you’re an absolute joy today, aren’t you?” My agent laughed on the other end while I gave him a mental middle finger. “Let me guess, you’re watching TV by yourself and having one last beer before practice in the morning?”

I growled. “You know me too well.”

“We’ve been friends since we were sixteen, I know you better than you know yourself.”

“Oh yeah? What am I thinking?”

“Easy, you think you’re finished, you’re depressed as hell, and you think moving was a mistake.”

I didn’t say anything, and my throat closed up as I looked away from the TV to the lake in front of my property. “Maybe it was.”

He sighed. “Signing with the Sounders was the right thing to do. They’re going to honor the rest of your fifty-two-million-dollar contract—”

“Which I only had eight left to pay out from Chelsea, maybe I should have just . . . retired.”

“Bullshit, you’re thirty, you don’t just retire at thirty. Plus you’re one of my favorite people.”

“Fifty-two million US dollars, I can’t imagine why.” Matt and I had met during one of the summers I spent with my mom in Seattle, and we had been inseparable ever since. We even went to college together. The guy was as smooth as they came. The bastard made money like a silver-tongued devil.

“I keep you around for more than the money.” He chuckled. “You’re