Now Or Never by Stella Rhys

5

IAIN

The afternoon startedwith my two favorite words: Client emergency.

Prior to that, it had been a punishingly slow morning. Staff meetings and video calls that I conducted on auto-pilot because they were gratingly routine. They presented few problems that required more than a minute of thinking to resolve, which was less than ideal for me today, because today, more than any day, I needed a challenge.

A distraction.

I needed something to occupy the space in my head for more than sixty fucking seconds so I could think of something other than the images that had jolted me up early this morning.

Despite an alarm set for 5AM, I’d found myself flinching awake at a quarter to four. And barely a second into consciousness, I’d found myself glaring at the ceiling, silently cursing my brain for the images it had forced on me in my sleep.

Images of her.

Some innocent. Some less so.

Either way, they had no fucking business in my subconscious let alone the active thoughts I had while going about my day, so when my assistant interrupted a staff meeting to inform me that Drew Maddox had “an urgent issue to discuss,” I gladly cleared the next two hours of my schedule and hopped in a car to Empire Stadium in Brooklyn.

ME: Care to tell me what this is about?

I sent the text to Drew just as my car turned onto the Queensboro Bridge, and within seconds, got his characteristically prickish reply.

DREW: Nah I’m in the training room deal with me when you get here

Asshole, I thought, though I couldn’t help but smirk as I put my phone away, because I wouldn’t expect anything less from him.

Of all my clients, there was no one person with more cocky asshole tendencies than Drew Maddox.

Before we met, he had been a hotheaded trainwreck who brawled with teammates, partied till 6AM on game days and got himself blacklisted from the league after a major run-in with the law. It wasn’t till after I signed him that he transitioned into the role of reborn superstar—a fan favorite whose new team and agent helped him hide the fact that he was still a walking disaster whose career remained at the mercy of his violent temper.

Beyond the surface, there was no real change in Drew until I put Evie in his life a few years ago—until she worked whatever miracle she did and turned him into the man he was now: the most sought-after pitcher in the league, the reigning World Series MVP, and a thoroughly rehabilitated man who still managed to require the most of my time, energy and patience.

Because wifed or not, Drew was the truest asshole I knew.

That said he was also the one client I considered a close personal friend, and today I was grateful for his never-ending ability to derail my day—even when that meant, in today’s particular episode of Complete Bullshit with Drew Maddox, that he intended to break a million-dollar contractual obligation on Tuesday.

“Maddox, you have got to be shitting me,” I said, standing beside him at the pull-up bar in the New York Empires gleaming new weight room. At 1PM, there was a small handful of players locked into game day training, lifting and squatting and forcing me to tune out the deafening sounds of their slamming weights and throaty grunts.

Drew laughed as he added another forty-five pound plate to his belt.

“I’m not shitting anyone. I’ll go to the All-Star game since I’m starting, but all the bullshit festivities after that, count me out. I get one off day a month. If I have a break, I’m spending it with my family,” he said, giving me his tough shit shrug that was once reserved for telling me that he wouldn’t quit the post-game raging till dawn if it didn’t affect his performance on the mound.

I watched as he jumped up to grab the bar, allowing him do a few pull-ups before I gave him shit.

“Look, I find it ironic and… pretty fucking adorable that you’re now begging me to let you not go to a party,” I said, pausing to smirk at the kiss my ass look he shot me through the mirror. “But you agreed in ink to show up at this one, so the best I can do is arrange your appearance down to just the meet-and-greet.”

I had to wait out his set before I got his response.

“How long?” he panted as he let himself down from the bar.

“An hour.”

“Thirty minutes.”

“What? Hate your fans?”

“Love my fans,” he corrected vehemently. “Dickhead. I just love my wife and kid more because, you know, they’re everything I fuckin’ live for. But I get how that concept might be foreign to a very single man like yourself.”

“Oof. Low blow, Maddox.” I put a hand to my chest. “I should remind you the breakup was barely a month ago.”

“Yeah, and I should remind you that you don’t have to do that shit with me.”

“What shit?”

Drew rolled his eyes. “The act,” he scoffed. “I’m not one of those uptight suits you have to fake normal for. You’re not heartbroken over Keira. You guys weren’t even a real couple.”

I raised my eyebrows at his assertion. “I was with her for five years.”

“Yeah, well, I got Emmett pretty drunk like, six months back, and he might’ve let the cat out of the bag about the little arrangement you had with her.”

I blinked, surprised and vaguely annoyed that my friend and business partner, Emmett, would be so loose-lipped around Drew of all assholes. But I gave no indication of it and I was over it shortly because it was a matter of the past at this point.

And it was true.

I’d been with Keira for specific reasons, and Drew wasn’t among the people I needed to “fake it” for.

I just hated that incredibly satisfied look he got anytime he managed to catch me off guard.

“Hour meet-and-greet plus thirty minutes mingling at the party,” I finally said. “Call it an asshole tax.”

Drew groaned as he considered it.

“Fine,” he said, laughing as he peered past my shoulder while undoing his weight belt. “What’s going on, by the way? How you liking that heat?” he asked. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Watt’s stupid face burning holes in the back of your head,” he said, looking past my shoulder again and shooting a quizzical look at presumably Watt.

My jaw tightened. Perfect.

I’d known there was a good chance of running into Watt when I came here, but it didn’t make me any more thrilled to see him, so I turned my attention to the new emails pinging into my phone as Drew gave an upward nod behind me.

“Watt,” I greeted him once he lumbered into my eye line with his trainer.

“Boss,” he grinned, holding eye contact with me as Drew greeted the trainer.

But he looked away when Drew said something or another, and for a little while, they talked about the All-Star game on Tuesday. Watt’s no-necked trainer asked where the after party was and Drew replied that it would be at The Atrium, a massive venue overlooking the water on the East Side.

Meanwhile, I multitasked, fielding whatever questions were directed at me while responding to a few of my more pertinent emails.

Outwardly, everything seemed perfectly routine.

Of course, I knew it wasn’t because I could see Watt’s repeated glances in my direction, and I knew it was because he was seconds from fucking up my progress and specifically asking about the one thing I was trying to forget.

And I was right, because moments later, he went for it.

“So, boss. Was she any good?”

An instant heat rose to my skin as I finished the last sentence of my email, firing it off before I forced myself to look up at Watt and that dirty grin on his idiot face.

I controlled the need to deck him as I asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“What the hell am I—what the hell do you think?” he laughed big. “I’m talking about the sweet little blonde we met the other night. Pretty face. Body like a fuckin’ college cheerleader. You know what I’m talking about, considering you goddamned snapped at me to call dibs on her.”

“Iain?” Drew laughed. “Yeah right,” he snorted, rolling his eyes as he looked over at me. But from the corner of my vision, I saw his smile falter, and his brow lightly furrow as I stood there and said nothing to refute Watt’s story. All I had the patience to do was stare back at him as he kept on grinning at me.

“What? Ain’t no shame. I know you’re used to being the one who lectures us for fucking jailbait, but no one’s gonna judge you for finally getting the urge,” he chuckled, licking his lips. “Especially not when she was as fuckin’ stacked as that cute thing was.”

“Yeah?”

A one-word question from his trainer and I was ready to kill them both, especially since it had Watt launching gleefully into detail, gesturing with both hands over his chest as he described her.

Holland.

Little Holland Maxwell who clearly wasn’t so little anymore.

That much had been made abundantly clear to me last night at the bar. Because not only had the girl filled out—beyond filled out—she had a mouth on her now too. Pouting pink lips and a sharp tongue that should’ve made me proud considering how I’d always implored her to stick up for herself as a kid. But proud didn’t exactly describe what she’d made me feel last night when she went told me off.

When she teased me.

And flaunted those big tits for me.

Fucking Christ.

I dragged my hand across my jaw, once again fighting the urge to replay that memory of how she got all cute with me last night, hitting me with that tender, wide-eyed look she used to get when she asked me questions about what it was like living alone, or when she needed me to help explain something on her homework. It would’ve been sweet—would’ve taken me back if it weren’t for the fact that she’d worn that look last night while arching her back taut for me, and daring me to look at her breasts.

Yeah…

Pride was far from my mind last night, because what Holland made me feel instead was twisted, fucked up and deviant. Whatever she had made me feel was everything I’d been trying hard to forget this morning.

And as far as I was concerned, I’d been well on my way till this idiot came along.

“Well, hey.” Watt had a sleazy smile on his face as he turned to me again. “If you’re not trying to fuck that girl, then you don’t mind if I go and see her tonight, right?” he asked, sticking his tongue out as he wiggled his eyebrows. “‘Cause, uh, wifey’s out to town and I think I need to find out what our lil’ blonde friend looks like ass naked on my kitchen counter.”

Fire blazed in my veins, but I offered a smirk and hid my disgust with ease.

“Go for it,” I said.

But only because I knew he wasn’t going to see Holland tonight.

I’d gone out of my way to make sure that he couldn’t.

And though I’d told myself it had entirely to do with work—with the fact that I didn’t want her distracting me or my clients while I was trying to have meetings—I could admit to myself now that I wasn’t being business-minded when I had Holland fired, or even brotherly and protective.

I was being territorial. Possessive.

I didn’t want a single thing to do with her myself, but I didn’t want anyone else looking at her either. Client or not, the idea of other men eye-fucking Holland as she bent over in her that microscopic goddamned skirt made me want to punch a hole in the wall. I hated the idea of it, and the idea of her being predictably in the same spot every weekend, wearing that skintight dress and obliviously attracting any and every psycho stalker in the city, because twenty-two or not, she was young for her age. She had a late start in life thanks to her piece of work mother, and that much was a fact.

Which was why I didn’t regret pulling the move that I did.

Calling her employer. Getting her fired.

I knew how much my business was valued where she worked, and my pull there had it so that a mere call from my assistant was enough to cost Holland her job.

The one she said she needed for the bed I had delivered to her apartment this evening.

Technically a gift, but I knew it made me an asshole. A bit of a cold-blooded prick. But I was already both of those things on a day-to-day basis, and at least now I was a prick who wouldn’t have to think about Holland for much longer, because for Christ's sake, I couldn’t afford to.

Aside from the fact that work was my number one priority in this world, she was too young for me. Too sweet and naive, and I wasn’t making assumptions—I knew it, because I knew her. Her life. Her family.

I knew Holland Maxwell, and no matter how old she was, she’d always be that sweet girl who’d looked up to me. Who had relied on me, and put her trust in me. That was my memory of her.

And whatever memory she had of me, it was going to stay that way too.

“You out?” Drew asked once he saw me grab my jacket off the squat rack I’d hung it on.

I nodded, draping the jacket over my arm and eyeing my watch. “Gotta make a few calls to take care of the bullshit you just sprang on me, and hopefully that’s done before my meeting at four.”

Drew simply nodded as he looked at me, unsettling me with the quiet that ensued.

Because normally, he’d be cracking a joke right now about how I had to work on my time management skills, since that was generally his favorite thing to do when he unexpectedly fucked up my schedule with one of his surprise diva episodes. But for once, he was keeping his mouth shut, sparing me of his additional bullshit.

And I knew it was because he’d noticed.

Unlike Watt, Drew knew me, and he knew that something was entirely off right now. Enough so that he was actually confused, opting to just observe me. Give himself time to draw conclusions about what the hell was going on.

The silence was most definitely a first from him and in some ways, I should’ve been grateful for it. But instead it bothered me all the way back to the office, because it was one thing to lose focus, but it was a whole other to do it visibly.

And apparently, I had.

I dealt with entitled millionaire jocks on a daily basis and yet I’d let a little girl get under my skin.

If I had to be honest with myself, I’d paused on what felt like fifty different occasions by now, just to concentrate on getting an image of her out of my head. Variations of “she’s Adam’s sister” and “she’s just a kid” played in my mind whenever I remembered that body, and they worked with less and less impact each time. It was fucking maddening.

But thank Christ, it was also over.

At least it would be soon.

Because the bright side was that she didn’t have my cell and luckily, her brother was as staunch as I was about sharing that kind of information. Our time as agents was precious, in-demand, and we had full systems in place to keep just anybody from being able to reach us. Which meant if Holland ever called my office, she’d never make it past reception let alone my secretary.

And if she ever asked her brother to help get my attention, I doubt he’d be of much help.

We were both busy people, and considering how Adam was the bare minimum of involved in his sister’s life growing up, he’d likely be the last to be offended if I went ahead and ignored her indefinitely. So pissed as I was right now, I could at least take comfort in knowing that I was set. I’d dealt in full with this problem.

And in all likelihood, I was never going to have to see Holland Maxwell again.