Page 43 of I Need You Tonight
The loud, crisp chime of the antique clock intruded on the meeting, as if to voice its opinion. I had a feeling its vote wasn’t in my favor.
For a second I considered reminding them that she was my friend’s little sister, but while Zack might have believed I wouldn’t do something as low as fuck her, the guys clearly thought otherwise.
“Fine.” But since she wasn’t our employee yet, technically I could have sex with her one more time before we hit the road. I kept that to myself. It was bad enough they’d already guessed what she and I had been up to. I just hoped they didn’t hold it against her.
The women were still chatting when we joined them outside. Hailey and Callie wrapped their arms around their guys’ waists, making the most of the time with them before our tour bus would pull away tomorrow.
My fingers itched to touch Nicole, but I suspected this would also be a violation of the upcoming contract. And although it wasn’t an issue until the contract actually arrived, there was no point flaunting the fact that I planned to ignore the no-sex rule for tonight.
“Hey, Logan,” I said, needing to find a way to distract my thoughts from what I intended to do to Nicole tonight. “You want to play soccer?” I signed “soccer.”
“Yay!” was his answer. Like at Jared’s wedding, we divided into teams, although this time we didn’t have as many players.
“I’ll play,” Nicole said when we realized Logan’s team had one less player than mine.
We got into position, Nicole barefoot. Callie, who was officiating the game, threw the ball in. It landed on the grass closer to Logan, and he kicked the ball down the pint-sized field as Callie and Beckie cheered him on. He giggled as he kicked it into the goal past Hailey, who used to play on a women’s collegiate team. She pretended to block him but didn’t put any effort into it.
Hailey kicked the ball to Nicole. She easily gained control of it and dribbled it toward my goal, which was nothing more than two deck chairs set two yards apart. And damn, was that girl good, especially considering she wasn’t wearing shoes.
I saw it on Aaron’s face the moment it hit him that Nicole knew exactly what she was doing. Nolan and Hailey weren’t the only talented players in the group.
Also realizing this, Jared made a play to stop her, but he failed to block her in time. She kicked the ball and sent it sailing toward the kid-sized goal. Aaron dove at the ball, but he wasn’t fast enough. It traveled under his outstretched hands.
“You never mentioned she could play,” Nolan said.
“I didn’t know. But with her on our team, the roadies don’t have a chance of beating us.” Like with our last tour, for this tour we’d found roadies who loved playing soccer whenever we all had a chance. And most of them had grown up playing the sport, which left us outmatched.
But not this time.
The guys couldn’t fault my decision to hire Nicole now.
“Where did you learn to play like that?” I asked her.
“Zack. As you know, he played soccer in high school and taught me a thing or two.”
“I’d say more than a thing or two,” Hailey said.
“And there’s a chance I might’ve played it in high school and college,” Nicole said, laughing.
“That would do it,” Hailey replied with a huge grin.
At one point the teams were tied as Nicole dribbled toward Aaron, who was guarding my team’s goal. No way was I letting her score again…completely on principle, mind you. I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her against me.
Laughing, she kicked the ball to Hailey, seemingly unaffected by our closeness—unlike me. Desire shot through me at the feel of her warm, soft body against mine.
Hailey passed the ball to Nolan and scored. Callie blew the whistle, signaling the end of the game. We shook hands with the opposition, even though what I really wanted to do was kiss Nicole long and hard. As it was, after tonight I wouldn’t get to do that anymore.
The evening wound down around nine o’clock, with Jared and Callie needing to take a very tired Logan home to bed. He could barely keep his eyes open.
“Remember,” Jared said to me, “we need to meet at the mall parking lot at seven tomorrow morning. If you’re late, we’ll have to leave without you.”
I snorted. “Right, as if you would do that.”
Kirk slapped me on the back. “Just like you’d never tell the bus driver I was napping when I’d told you I was going for a run?”
“Hey, I couldn’t help that he misunderstood me.” Or that he understood me perfectly and no one had questioned why Kirk wasn’t on the bus when we pulled away from the parking lot.
Kirk rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything else, having long since gotten over what happened.
