Kickin' It (Red Card) - Rachel Van Dyken Page 0,2

onto my couch, taking up double the space needed to sit like a normal person. “What’s the plan?”

I had opened my mouth to reply when the doorbell rang again.

The door opened before it stopped ringing.

Slade Rodriguez, best striker in the world, yawned and made his way toward Jagger.

“Why ring the doorbell if you never give me a chance to answer it?” I said louder than necessary.

Slade grinned. “Saw Jagger’s car, figured he already made sure you weren’t in your kitchen naked again.”

I glared. “One time. And when a man lives by himself—”

“He tends to dance naked to John Legend?” Slade said while Jagger choked out a laugh.

I greedily started searching for my painkillers. With my luck, these two were going to give me a stomach ulcer at age thirty.

“Think he’s already searching for ibuprofen?” Jagger whispered.

“It’s all a front. We don’t really bother him that much,” Slade offered in a hushed tone. “Besides, he’d be bored without us.”

“Actually . . .” I found a glass of water and threw back the pills in a big gulp. “The headache started when Willow called and wore me down to the point of complete exhaustion. She should have been a lawyer.”

At my sister’s name Jagger’s eyes lit up. “Is this the hot one?”

“He only has one sister, dumbass.” Slade laughed. “And she’s really pretty, don’t you think, Matt?”

I shook my head in dismay. Damn it, Slade had thrown me under the bus. I couldn’t not compliment my own sister, but commenting on her just drew more attention to the fact that the woman could be a supermodel if she wanted. She wasn’t even here and already I was breaking out in a cold sweat thinking about all the testosterone she’d be around on a daily basis. I had two female clients, the rest were men.

Slade I didn’t worry about, he was in love. He was married.

Jagger, however, was single.

And ever since Slade had cleaned up his act, Jagger had just gotten worse, fighting with other players, sleeping around with girls who had big mouths and dollar signs in their eyes. His actions were either a cry for help or this was just who he was.

“She’s . . . beautiful.” I settled on beautiful because pretty sounded too interesting, hot sounded weird, and sexy, well, no, just no. “And completely off-limits—Jagger.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, it’s not my fault women come at me with their mouths open and shirts off—I call it the Jag effect.”

“Something’s wrong with you”—I narrowed my eyes at him—“besides the obvious character flaws the media seems to be gnawing on like a fucking bone.” I loved the guy. I did. I’d been friends with him for years, but putting out his fires was getting exhausting.

“Oh, that’s why I’m here.” Slade raised his hand. “I figured we could do another charity game or something and put Jagger back in the spotlight in a positive way that helps the community.” He grinned like he’d just gotten an A for awesome.

“Riiiight, let’s just put the Jag effect out there for all to see and record and upload to YouTube . . .” I scowled. Even though that plan had worked before, we needed a different angle this time, and nothing screamed “good guy” more than family, and I knew just the woman to keep him in line. “You’re taking your grandma to dinner.”

Jagger paled, and Slade almost fell off the couch laughing.

“Anything but that,” Jagger pleaded. “Look, I’ll go paint houses, I’ll build a fucking school!”

“It’s just dinner.” I smiled knowingly—I’d been on the opposite end of that woman’s lectures more times than I could count.

“That’s like saying it was just the Cold War.” He glared. “She’s very, very Russian, and she’s loud, and last time she used a racial slur that almost got us kicked out of the restaurant.”

“But she looks adorable, and if she starts getting loud be a big boy and stop her.” I shot him an evil grin. “And people loved it when you held her hand in the parking lot. Those shots went viral.”

“Right, about that: She asked me to hold her hand because she thought the police were following us because she used to date a Russian spy. Then she turned to me and asked, ‘Or am I the spy?’” Jagger shuddered. “Matt, she talked into her wrist every few minutes like she was the KGB!”

“Take her out. Make it public. I don’t care if she is a fucking spy, you strap her in