Game For Love_The Beautiful Game

  Text copyright ©2014 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Nyree Belleville, Oak Press, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements of Game For Love remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Nyree Belleville, Oak Press, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.

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  SEAL’s Goal

  Sharon Hamilton

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  The SEAL Brotherhood Series

  Other Books by Sharon Hamilton

  Author’s Note

  I always dedicate my SEAL Brotherhood books to the brave men and women who defend our shores and keep us safe. Without their sacrifice, and that of their families—because a warrior’s fight always includes his or her family—I wouldn’t have the freedom and opportunity to make a living writing these stories. They sometimes pay the ultimate price so we can debate, argue, go have coffee with friends, raise our children and see them have children of their own.

  One of my favorite homages to warriors resides on many memorials, including one I saw honoring the fallen of WWII on an island in the Pacific:

  “When you go home

  Tell them of us, and say

  For your tomorrow,

  We gave our today.”

  These are my stories created out of my own imagination. Anything that is inaccurately portrayed is either my mistake, or done intentionally to disguise something I might have overheard over a beer or in the corner of one of the hangouts along the Coronado Strand.

  Wounded Warriors is the one charity I give to on a regular basis. I encourage you to get involved and tell them thank you:

  https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org.

  Chapter 1

  Patrick Harrington was looking out the bus window at the bevy of pretty ladies who always congregated at the player entrance. The Seattle facility wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in Europe where women frequently were in and out of the locker room. In the States, only female sports reporters were allowed in.

  Several of the guys on his team were looking forward to a session with the local female newscaster, who liked to interview them naked. Her sultry voice gave them commando hard-ons. Patrick always figured she had a serious kinky streak, but she really wasn’t his style.

  The girls who hung around the bus today looked a bit haggard. He liked his women athletic, but not too skinny. He liked wholesome girls who enjoyed sex and were quiet about it. Well, they didn’t have to be quiet in bed, just quiet as far as not blabbing to the press.

  The Tottenham squad strutted their stuff, ambling through the gauntlet of women, carrying their more important personal gear while the team handlers carried all the heavy equipment. Patrick always carried his gloves, and his backup gloves, and the ones that could be back up to the backup ones. And he was never without the red, white, and blue American flag duct tape he used to hold up his kneepads and tape his gloves in place. His Brit coach didn’t like it, and, because he’d been so vocal in the rebukes aimed at Patrick, the rest of the team, consisting of mostly African and Eastern European players, adopted the duct tape too, just for spite. Patrick was not the team captain, but he was the team leader, especially when it came to minding stupid rules.

  Duct tape was essential because Velcro could be ripped with a set of cleats…but duct tape? Duct tape was the bomb. Not only was it good for the game, it was good for other antics, and since he bought it by the case and had it shipped from the United States, he always had lots of it on hand.

  Phone numbers were being exchanged between the players and fangirls behind him while the rest of Tottenham first team descended the ramp, way down into the bowels of the Seattle Sounders stadium. A few VIP fans had been allowed to wait for them outside the changing room, to applaud the team’s arrival. The British Ambassador and his wife had flown up from San Francisco to watch the game, and they and several other dignitaries and friends of the Sounders’ ownership, as well as major investors in the Tottenham franchise, were there to shake hands and wish them well.

  From the small crowd of VIPs emerged the sexy, lithe body of Gayle Bingaman, the babe from Fox who liked to conduct naked interviews. She was dressed in a very proper navy blue suit with an impossibly tight, thigh-hugging skirt that stopped five inches above her knees. She had the right kind of body to pour herself into that suit, with the little bit of ruffle showing along the low-cut frilly blouse looking like it was on the verge of a major clothing malfunction. He didn’t understand quite why he was on her radar today, but there was no mistaking he was. He’d seen it happen before, and so he decided to play along. He heard whistles behind him as a way of warning.

  Which he hadn’t needed.

  Her athletic body summoned him almost as if he’d been ensorcelled by some dark angel inside her. His Veeger, the childhood nickname he and Ryan had invented for his pecker, was liking the play and stood to attention right on cue. He didn’t have a problem with that, either.

  “Hello, Patrick.” She examined his face for a trace of embarrassment, which he would not give her. If he wanted to be harassed for the next ten days while on the team “Friendlies” road trip, he better be stronger than the poor Tottenham Hotspur last year who got his spurs tangled with his tongue and started stuttering. She’d moved on to a bank executive, they were told.

  “Hello, Gayle.” He cocked his head to see if he could figure her out, searching for any hesitation.

  She stared back at him without flinching and then slowly perused the length of his upper torso, as well as the length of the tent in his pants. That’s when she finally smiled. To Veeger she said, “Some days I just love my job.”

  Yeah, some days I do, too. I have a fuckin’ soccer game to win. Although he suspected her timing was perfect, right now it was going to give him a few problems.

  He glanced at his coach, who was having a heart attack, eyes wide and worried his keeper would end up spending the day in the locker room shower or a bathroom stall. Patrick did consider it, but shook himself mentally, and reminded himself they paid him nearly a million dollars a year to chase a little ball around in a box and make sure it didn’t score.

  But he sure was going to score, just not right now.

  The rest of the squad wandered past him. The VIPs got autographs and mothers sheltered their children and teenage daughters while Patrick invited Gayle into the locker room.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she whispered with all the buttered rum she could manage. Her perfume made him sneeze, but her voice made him want to put something inside her mouth. Veeger agreed.

  Ronnie, Patrick’s roommate on road trips and team best friend, opened the door while whistling a casual tune. This allowed Gayle to sashay her hips into Patrick’s thigh. It was a neat trick and got the effect she was obviously looking for.

  They stood in the main opposing team locker room, so he nodded in the direction of the training room door.

  “Why not?” She threw her head back, glanced at everyone who was staring, and at the manager, who was scowling and shaking his head, and then headed toward the labeled door.

  “Five minutes,” his coach said, holding up his paw with the fingers
splayed. “Then I send in Soto and you’ve got yerself a thousand-dollar fine, Paddy.”

  “I think this can be wrapped up in five minutes,” he said without looking back.

  Patrick brought his equipment bag into the little training room. He had to change his shorts from his warmups, so he set his bag on the table and began to get out his gear. She stood about ten inches away while he removed his shirt. Her nostrils flared while she looked him over pretty thoroughly. “I have to get ready while we talk. You don’t mind, do you?” He leaned into her, upping the ante, halfway hoping she’d back down. Any second now he expected her to fold, or give some kind of nervous laugh, or turn bright red, avoiding eye contact.

  She didn’t do any of that.

  “I don’t mind at all. I rather enjoy the view. All of it.”

  “Really?” Impulsively, he slipped down his warmups and stood in front of her commando-style, veeger straining forward to touch her. The height difference had him calculating things, angles and hip movements, just like he calculated goal kicks and body language on the field. He started to get more interested in the challenge of this little game.

  She thrust the microphone in his face while he attempted to put on his cup and sliding pants. She held the microphone like a sex toy. He liked the looks of her fingers wrapped around the silver unit attached to something in her shouldered briefcase.

  “Tell me what your thoughts are about the game today.”

  He squinted at her. “You want it straight, or—”

  “I like it straight. I don’t like to share. There’s a time and place to be funny and this isn’t it.”

  Okay, so she’s a ballbuster of the first order. All the rumors about her were totally on target. Veeger was complaining about the cup, the constriction of the sliding pants.

  Shut up, Veeger.

  “Okay, Miss Gayle. I’m going to fuckin’ amaze you.” He paused to ask, “Is that thing on?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t smiling. She was paying rapt attention to his every word.

  “I’m going to jump all around the box like a monkey. My arms will be long, my legs and body in full extension to make some incredible saves you’re not going to believe.”

  “Really? I do have quite an active imagination,” she whispered.

  “I’ll bet. We are talking about soccer now, aren’t we?”

  He thought for sure she’d flinch eventually and he’d be let off the hook. Instead, she closed the gap between their upper torsos, brushing her thighs against his, threw the microphone on the table next to his bag and put a lip lock on him with her tongue so deep down his throat he thought she was going to crawl inside. When they parted, she nibbled on his lower lip and rubbed her breasts against his bare chest. “How about we get together after the game so you can show me some of those moves?”

  She had a point.

  “Done deal,” he heard himself say.

  It was one of the most difficult games he’d ever played, and of course he did none of the things he’d promised, and their team lost nil to four. The coach briefly reminded them that, just because Paddy hadn’t saved them the way he normally did, the lack of scoring on the part of the forwards also contributed to the loss. But Patrick saw the coach was disgusted with him, and he was a little sorry for that.

  That’s when it hit him. He’d been looking for distraction because the game didn’t call to him anymore. And now he was beginning to tire of the extracurricular activities, too. Was this all he had to look forward to, and was it enough? He’d loved the game growing up, but now it was just a job without a higher calling.

  He wasn’t up to a night of calisthenics with Gayle, but his male ego required that if, by some miracle, he was saved from screwing her, he better make the team think otherwise.

  Since it was a “Friendly” game, and there would be another the next day, the fact that they’d lost wouldn’t affect their standings. But he’d started to get on the coach’s bad side, and that was never a good sign. He realized his attitude sucked big time. The poor guy’s job was on the line, since coaches didn’t have the same contractual protection the players did. All his coach wanted to do was win. And Patrick had just taken away a bargaining chip for the man.

  Against his better judgment, he’d arranged for Gayle to meet him at their hotel. His roommate Ronnie had already hooked up with a dark-haired beauty who was taller than he was by a good two inches.

  Patrick leaned over and whispered to Ronnie’s ear as they entered the hotel lobby, “You’d best ask some questions before you get too far. I think she is a he.”

  “Oh, shut up, Patrick. She’s a bird.”

  “Just a friendly word of caution.”

  “She bringing the whole film crew?” Ronnie said as he saw Gayle approach with a cameraman in tow.

  “Holy crap.” Patrick muttered.

  “Bah, you’re in for it tonight with that one. Kinda wish I hadn’t set all this up. I wanted to get to bed early. You should too.”

  “Trust me, I will be. So then, you want the room?”

  “Yes. You’re the one with the seven-figure income. I say you get your own room, Paddy.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Gayle was keen to make another attempt to embarrass him on camera, but he stayed cool and aloof. She probably thought he was playing hard to get, but the truth was he was tired and needed a good night’s sleep.

  She asked him questions about his performance on the field today, which was painful. He was losing interest in her in proportion to how much she probed and came onto him. Normally this kind of play was fun, but tonight, he was just tired. Tired of it all.

  “What do you think got you so flustered today?” she asked as she smoothed over his chest. The cameraman had started to follow her hand but then abruptly kept the focus on their faces.

  Patrick really didn’t like her lack of discretion.

  “Sometimes you have good days and sometimes you have bad days. Today was just a bad day,” he said with a shrug. “Unlike European players we have in the Premier League, I’ve played with some of these guys on Seattle’s team before, here in the states, and they know my method of play well. I’m guessing the element of surprise was gone.”

  It was a truthful, or what he hoped would be a truthful, answer. The interview was quickly over.

  She nodded at the cameraman, dismissing him.

  “Time for a little fun?” She jiggled the contents of her bag, and he heard a lot of metal clanking.

  Okay, so much for an early night.

  “Gayle, not sure what you had in mind, but I do have to get some rest.”

  “I promise to let you do that.”

  “In that case, let me just do one thing first.”

  He took out his cell while he slipped the key card into the door, letting her into the darkened room.

  He sent a text to Ronnie,

  If I’m not down at breakfast, get an extra key and come untie me. Room 10214.

  Satisfied he’d covered all the bases, he entered the room, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 2

  As the only American on the squad, Patrick always got a lot of attention when he played in the United States. He hoped Gayle’s short interview with him would get lots of exposure, since some of his friends and family watched the games from their homes as often as they could.

  The next morning, Patrick sent Gayle off abruptly, and she bristled over being rushed. He’d reached the threshold where he wasn’t so sure he’d be doing anonymous hookups any longer. Was it his imagination or were women suddenly going crazy all around him? Where were the normal women? Or, was it just that in this arena the normal types were not part of the entourage.

  He felt like a big kid, really. Felt like he’d never grown up from high school. It was always the same; coaches wanting to win. School officials, and now franchise owners, wanted to win at all costs, and the players wanted to do well without being injured. It was good money if you didn’t get injured. With no health insurance or be
nefits to speak of, if you took a career-ending injury, it was back to coaching grade-schoolers or summer soccer camps at universities. He could be watching football, but from the sidelines. He was always one bad injury away from unemployment.

  Patrick had been hired before he even finished college, playing in the development group for a couple of years until he was moved up as a first-team player five years ago. It was the achievement of his life’s goal to play The Beautiful Game, as the Brazilians called it. But something had changed. He wasn’t quite sure what it was. He still loved to play, but the expected extracurricular activities were beginning to bore him. Was he becoming something he was no longer proud of? He never imagined he’d ever feel this way. It had nothing to do with soccer, either.

  Many of the team players had wives and families. Patrick had never been interested in anything permanent…but he also wasn’t interested in anything he had to regret the next morning. Easy in, easy out had always been his motto. It had served him well while he and Ryan worked their way through the lovelies in high school, and it was no different now.

  He thought about Ryan, jumping out of airplanes or helos at night, doing all that crazy shit for less than five percent of the money Patrick made. But Ryan, a Navy SEAL, didn’t do it for the money. He was the true patriot, a hero through and through. Patrick was in it for the money—and for the love of the game.

  Right out of high school, Ryan had enlisted in the Navy, wanted to be a SEAL even though there’d been no guarantee he could go for the BUD/S training. The day after his eighteenth birthday he was shipped off to the Great Lakes Training Facility, the same week Patrick picked up that full-ride to college. They’d been inseparable since grammar school, they’d played together on every sports team time would allow. But then, while Patrick became the first American goalkeeper on the English squad, Ryan had become a decorated Navy SEAL.

  And Ryan had one other thing Patrick had always envied. He had Stephanie.

  The two of them used to make fun of her in grammar school, even though the three of them went everywhere together. In middle school and high school they began to compete for her attention. Sometimes the three of them would go to the movies, on those rare occasions when Patrick actually had free time.