Double Team Read online

  "What the hell was I thinking?”

  I don't believe I heard my idiot roommate correctly. I have to remind myself that Aiden is also my idiot best friend and that he's been my idiot best friend since we were in high school, because if I didn't remind myself of that fact, I'd be punching him right now.

  I'm unnaturally pissed off about the fact that Grace Sullivan is my neighbor. More specifically, I'm pissed off that Grace Sullivan is the girl that Aiden has been lusting after – and acting like a complete moron over.

  "You agreed to go to the ranch with her and a bunch of kids?" Aiden asks. "You can barely stomach being around me, let alone a bunch of other people – especially children. Seriously, do you even know how to talk to a kid?”

  "There's a reason I can barely stomach being around you," I growl. “It was a passing conversation with the President. I barely agreed to anything."

  A conversation where I implied that I’d get personally involved with the camp, just because the First Lady seemed to be hell-bent on communicating that I shouldn’t be looking at Grace the way I was.

  I'd really enjoy taking a hands-on approach to helping.

  That's what I said, or something like that. The mere thought of taking a hands-on approach to Grace Sullivan makes all the blood in my body rush straight to my dick.

  "The President, huh?" Aiden asks. "Well la-di-dah."

  "Oh, fuck off."

  "The girl is clearly more attracted to me than she is to you," Aiden says casually, bypassing me as he walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator where he immediately begins rummaging through my groceries.

  "Why the hell am I letting you stay here for the summer again?" I ask, watching as he opens a container of my leftover spaghetti and grabs a fork from the nearby cabinet drawer. "She's hardly more attracted to you than she is to me. The idea is laughable."

  Except that I'm not laughing. In fact, the prospect of that girl being attracted to Aiden at all grates on my last fucking nerve. It shouldn't. After all, I don't know the first thing about her and I have no claim over her.

  Hell, I only even met her the one time at the charity event. She's not mine, and logically I know that. Except that from the second I put my hands on her, every part of me wanted to claim her as mine. It's not a logical response, that much I'm aware of. It's some kind of weird, abnormal reaction, and I should absolutely not entertain the faintest notion of touching Grace Sullivan again. Except that she’s the only thing I want.

  "How exactly is that laughable?" Aiden asks, shoveling a giant forkful of spaghetti into his mouth. Watching him eat my leftover food makes me irrationally angry. "When's the last time you got with someone?"

  I grab the container from his hand and toss it into the trash, just because he’s pissing me off. "I'm sure someone like her is totally interested in a guy who's screwed half of the cheerleaders in Denver. And with that little stunt you pulled, you're lucky if she doesn't get a restraining order against you."

  Aiden leans back against the counter, crossing his arms and eyeballing me silently. "You're jealous."

  "Are you insane? You’d have to be certifiable to think that I’m jealous of you.”

  Aiden grins. "Dude, I know you. You're jealous because you have the hots for her and you think she's got a thing for me."

  I choke out a laugh, except it rings hollow. "Keep saying dumb shit like that, Aiden. If you think a woman like that is going to hook up with you, you're crazier than I thought."

  "And you think she's going to hook up with you?"

  "It's more likely than her getting with you."

  "All right. You want to bet on it?"

  "I'm not betting on whether or not the daughter of the President of the United States is going to hook up with one of us."

  Aiden makes a squawking sound.

  "Don't be a child. I'm not a chicken."

  "Then you wouldn't mind a friendly wager."

  "We're not betting over a girl. Especially that girl."

  "So you're not going to compete for her, then?”

  "We are not competing for her," I reply. "And if we were, I'd be leagues ahead of you anyway."

  "Because you're going to go hang out with her at your ranch."

  "Because I don't have some kind of weird need to seduce her with blow-up dolls," I say. "And yeah, because I'm going to go hang out with her at my ranch. Alone.”

  “You mean with a million kids running around? At the ranch you just told her you donated because you were doing her a favor? The same ranch she just told you that you could stick up your ass?”

  "Yeah, the ranch that - oh, screw you, Aiden," I grumble. "We're professional football players. There are plenty of girls throwing themselves at us on a daily basis. We don't need to go after the same damn woman."

  I turn to storm out of the kitchen, every part of me on edge. Fuck this and fuck him. I don't need to compete with him when it comes to a woman. What I need to do is worry about negotiating a contract and staying out of trouble. Laying low is my priority. Chasing after the President's daughter is the opposite of laying low – and it's profoundly stupid. It's the last thing on earth I need to do if I take my career seriously. And I take my football career very seriously.

  "So that means you're definitely not interested in her, then?" Aiden calls after me.

  "Not talking about this anymore, Aiden."

  "That's what I thought," he says, laughing. "All right, then. May the best man win."

  I storm upstairs. There's no way on Earth that Aiden Jackson is the best man for a woman like Grace Sullivan.

  And you think you are?

  I try to shove the thought out of my head, even as I hit a session at the gym. But Aiden's words still linger, replaying over and over on a loop. “May the best man win.”

  This isn’t a competition. That girl is mine.

  "Do I need to search you?" the Secret Service agent asks the question, her expression cold.

  "Do you usually search people who have meetings with Ms. Sullivan?" I ask. I actually don't know the answer to that question. Maybe the agents do search everyone Grace Sullivan comes into contact with at the foundation. I feel a sudden pang of sympathy for her. That would be a hell of an awkward way to go through your life, with everyone around you being patted down before they even get close to you. But I guess she’d probably be used to it by now.

  The agent raises her eyebrows, the rest of her face unmoving. "She doesn't usually meet with people who have been involved in public incidents with her."

  Heavy emphasis on the words “public incidents”. As if I was going to forget what happened at the charity event – or in front of my house, although that really was Aiden's fault, not mine.

  I don't point out the fact that I don't exactly have an appointment with Grace.

  It's too late, because her secretary notices that for me. "I'm sorry, Mr. Ashby. I just don't have you in her appointment books. But I'd be happy to pencil you in for –"

  The office door swings open before the secretary finishes speaking and Grace Sullivan stands in the middle of the door. She's wearing a conservative suit – a plain black jacket and skirt with a white Oxford shirt – with her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. On anyone else, it would look businesslike – professional and unflattering, even. But the suit seems to be made for Grace Sullivan, cut to cling to her hourglass figure, the stark color of the suit somehow managing to set off the green in her eyes.

  When she sees me, those green eyes go wide for half a second and her lips fall open slightly. I think I hear her inhale sharply, but those are the only reactions of surprise she exhibits before her jaw clenches and a veil of disinterest falls over her face.

  "Noah Ashby." Her tone is frosty. "I'm surprised to see you here. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than do me any favors by dropping by the foundation."

  Okay, so she definitely hasn't forgotten about what I said. I clear my throat, suddenly self-conscious in front of her secretary and the Secr