I bring my hands to my face and slump down against the counter. “Now that you put it like that…” I let Wingate’s tongue-lashing sink in. He’s very good at correcting my idiotic ideas. This might be the most idiotic idea I’ve ever had—getting Renata back when I’ve got one deal with my brother and Ren’s dad, and another deal with a sociopathic country singer and the bullying owner of my team. Kinley’s been texting me every five minutes of every day, telling me she loves me, that she’s looking forward to her first time with me. And just about everyone on the team knows she’s sleeping with everyone but me. She’s got one steady one she goes home with on a regular basis, and it seems she’s got the wool completely pulled over his eyes.
“You have one more event with Kinley Edwards this week, and then you have a break from her. You can get everything sorted with Renata and make whatever plan you want, but please don’t fuck it up before then, cuz.”
Wingate hops down and walks up to me, pausing to pat me on the shoulder before he heads back out to his own estate. The estate he could lose because of me. “Wingate…” I start, but nothing appropriate comes to mind.
“You’ll get it together, man. You always do.”
I watch my cousin as he walks out.
He’s right. I do get my shit together, most of the time.
But this seems like one tangled mess that doesn’t have the kind of simple solution I’m hoping for.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The headlines we keep seeing have to be from Kinley, each one worse than the last.
Linebacker Bad Boy Cheating on his Country Princess?
“Big Mack” at It Again—Will He Ever Stop and Think of His Team?
Kinley Edwards Forgives Him Again, Saying True Love Always Wins…
Accusations of cheating and canoodling behind the young country star’s back run rampant. But like Mack, I know there’s no real relationship. They’ve never slept together, and they’ve only been in the same room a handful of times. Kinley made it more than clear she wants Mack, body and soul, but that wasn’t part of the agreement. Love and affection weren’t written into the legal agreement, and somehow, that seems to enrage her even more. She wants her claws in Mack. When he didn’t let her into his bed, she decided she would retaliate—first by picking out select team members to sleep with. And then, when that didn’t work, she started to accuse Mack of cheating.
If they had a real relationship, I guess she’d be right. But the contract we drew up excludes fidelity as a stipulation of the engagement. The way Kinley sees it, though, she controls what happens and what doesn’t. And if Mack’s not sleeping with her, he’s not submitting to what she wants.
With each phone conversation, she sounds more and more insane. And now, she’s roped Eddie Davidson into her web of lies and deceit. Again, Mack is the bad guy. They’re using our own ideas against us, and with each passing day, we sink deeper and deeper into it until it appears there’s no way out. Kinley Edwards has us by the proverbial balls, and she’s not relenting. If Mack doesn’t carry out the engagement, there’s no telling what she’s capable of. And with Eddie in her pocket, she’s got a lot more power than she should have.
The engagement party comes and goes without incident, but the news stories about Mack stay constant. He and Wingate are over at the guest house at all hours for the next week, arguing and pacing and grinding their teeth. Apparently there’s some conflict that’s gone on behind the scenes that I know nothing about—something to do with family and cousins and all the secrets that Mack’s family has hidden over the years.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know. But it can wait. There is one task at hand -- preventing Kinley from losing it completely -- and that comes before anything else, especially Pride family drama. I know it all has something to do with me, but they’re not budging. We tentatively called her and offered to cancel the engagement, but the very idea seemed to make her livid. There was so much anger in her voice over the phone that my pulse started to quicken, thinking of the things I’ve done with Mack behind closed doors. If she found out her suspicions were real, that there was a real issue instead of one she made up for the press—I’m not sure what she would do. Or what she’s fully capable of. I wouldn’t put anything past her.
And now, she’s pulling on her connection to the team owner, saying that she’ll make sure Mack never works again, that she’ll make sure he’s done for good in the entire sports world if he doesn’t follow through with the contract. In some of the conversations I’ve had with her, she’s ranted and raved, driving the point deeper and deeper until I feared she might explode over the phone. She even mentioned that she was planning to get him to marry her at any cost. When I told her it wasn’t part of the contract, that marriage was now out of the question, she said she’d find a way. And then she hung up with a finality that felt terrifying.