Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(254)

I don’t want it to end in less than a day.

You could run.

Right. Besides the ramifications of losing my job and probably going to federal prison, I couldn't not talk to my sisters about this. I owe them that, even if they're going to hate me for it. I'm not even sure how I'd begin to tell them that I'm falling- fuck - that I'm...tangled up in confusing ways with the one man on Earth I should hate the most. How do I tell them that the devil that almost destroyed our family has somehow saved me in more ways than I can count?

Javier clears his throat, startling me from my thoughts; “Daydreaming?”

“Something like that,” I smile, sipping the lukewarm coffee in my cup.

“You know, you can just say the word, princess, and I'll drag you upstairs and tie you back up again if you don't think you've gotten enough.”

He winks at me, the dimples of his grin curving up and making me warm in all sorts of places beside the blush on my face.

Uh, yes please.

I'm about to open my mouth and tell him to throw me over his shoulder, take me upstairs, and fuck me like he just did before; where I could barely remember my own name afterwards. But he stands from his chair before I can say a word.

“Let’s go for a drive. I want to show you something.” I'm frowning at him quizzically, but he grabs me by the hand and leads me out of the hotel garden, through the lobby, and out to the battered pickup from yesterday.

The one I assumed is his. Or maybe stolen. I realize I don't know anymore and I that I also don't really care, because I'm too busy caring about - well - something else. I'm tied up and twisted around with this man who is the single last person I need to have any of these feeling for. This whirlwind of whatever this is has me looking at things differently; has me seeing myself differently.

Yikes, three days in paradise and I’m falling for a criminal. What is fucking wrong with me?



We leave the bigger town around the hotel and the beach scene behind as we drive up the coast and into the trees. Javier hasn't said a word since we left the hotel, but I'm too preoccupied with staring out the window at the villages, the towns, the fields, and the incredible vistas that pass by as he he switches us off paved roads to less paved ones to a deeply rutted dirt one.

Thirty bumpy minutes later, we pull into the main square of a village that time and people seems to have forgotten. Javier shuts off the engine and jerks open the creaky, rusted door of the truck, stepping out on the hot-baked earthen ground of the village square. I climb out, standing there in the deserted town, silent but for the wind rustling through the empty windows and the ocean waves in the distance. The whole place is empty, but it's almost beautiful in it’s silence and it's emptiness.

“Where-” I look around, finally turning back to meet Javier's eyes; “Where are we?”

“We're home,” He says quietly, a sad smile on his face as he looks across the crumbling town, the houses with the caved-in roofs and the forest slowly reclaiming them, and the sprigs of weeds growing through the stone of the square; “My home.”

My eyes go wide as I stare at him.

“I grew up here, a long long lifetime ago. My mother, she- well, she couldn’t take care of my anymore, back in Spain. So I came here to my abuelo and abuela’s house; my dad’s parents.”

Wow. I guess whatever “this” is, it's intimate enough that he's taken me here.

It's intimate enough that I'm so glad he did.

He turns and smiles at me, before stepping around the truck and taking my hand; “Want the grand tour?” he says with a wink.

“Definitely.”



We finally make our way to the old, steepled Spanish-style church perched on the edge of a cliff at the far end of the main square; its crumbling glory looking out over the rocking waves of the ocean.

“What happened here?”

He shrugs; “Governments change, people change; people move on.” He nods somberly as we stand on the church steps, looking out over the ancient ruins of his youth; “I moved on long before the rest of them did, but you sort of always think someone will be there with the lights on when you come back someday.”

“Why'd you show me this?”

He chuckles; “I thought you needed a change of scenery from just the ceiling above the bed back at the hotel.”

I stick my tongue out at him and punch him playfully in the arm; “Dick.”

“Oh, tired of that already?”

Uh, no.

All this charm and this sarcasm is just a covering though; I know that. I can see that it's the armor he wears to protect himself, to always stay aloof and one step ahead of whatever fate he thinks he's shackled to, or whatever demons from his past are still chasing him.