Changing His Game (Gamers #1) Read Free Page A

million retail copies and made me a very rich man.”
    A pause. “God, I love when you spout statistics. Gets me hard.”
    Austin barked out a laugh—a sound he rarely made but one Grant seemed to pry out of him. They’d started Gamers magazine together right out of college. Grant was the public CEO, the name everyone knew, while Austin used a pseudonym on most of the paperwork. Only Grant knew that Austin had a secret partnership in Gamers , just like he was the only one who knew about Aric’s Revenge . Austin didn’t trust anyone other than Grant to know about him, what he did, how much money he had. He’d been let down too many times, lied to, stolen from. He’d learned his lessons from painful experience.
    Grant laughed. “Okay, so I know this is short notice, but I’ve got this dinner meeting with one of Gamer’s advertisers and Syd needs a ride. She’s meeting her friends, but I’m not comfortable with her riding with a kid who just got her license. So, can you drive her there, watch the movie while she watches it with her friends, and then bring her home?”
    Sydney was Grant’s fourteen-year-old daughter. He’d had a one-night stand freshman year of college and nine months later, Sydney was born. Her mother had planned to put her up for adoption, but Grant said he’d support the child. So with the help of his parents, Grant secured custody and worked his ass off to support her. It was one of the reasons he and Austin started Gamers together. Grant was a great businessman and put a lot of effort into the idea of Gamers . But as a recent college graduate ten years ago, he needed some capital to get the magazine off the ground. Austin, whose bank account had been padded with funds when he’d begun working with a software company on Aric’s Revenge , invested in the magazine. It was important to him to help Grant, since Sydney was like a niece to Austin. “Of course I’ll take her.”
    A muffled sound, then Grant yelling in the distance, “Baby, he’ll take you!” Then an excited squeal, which he assumed came from Sydney. “Thanks a lot, man,” Grant said into the phone.
    “No problem.”
    “Don’t forget about checking—”
    “—the ingredients on the boxes of candy because of her peanut allergy.”
    A pause, then, “You’re the best.” Austin could hear the smile in his friend’s voice.
    “I’m almost home. What time do you need me tomorrow?”
    “Seven?”
    “See you then.”
    Five minutes later, Austin parked in his garage and pushed the button on the remote on his dash to lower the doors.
    Then he leaned his head against the steering wheel.
    Taking Sydney to see a movie tomorrow night would be good for him. An action-packed movie should hold his attention. Even if the damn thing made him think of Marley, picturing her sitting at her desk, working on a layout of an article about the movie that was his creative vision.
    He had to do something to forget about her.
    Because even though she didn’t know it, even though his ownership in Gamers was silent, she was still his employee.
    So despite how he ached for her, despite that fucking GIF that taunted him, he needed to keep her in his fantasies. And out of real life.
    He was great at maintaining control, but a churning in his gut made him wonder if this would be the one time he’d let it slip.
    …
    Marley lay with her head and back on the floor, her feet propped up on the seat of her couch. She wore a sports bra, oversized sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder, and a pair of underwear. She had been doing sit-ups. Then her cat needed petting, then she got distracted by a watermark on the ceiling of her apartment that looked like a penis, and then she zoned out.
    She idly scratched Sadie’s ears and closed her eyes. Her mind wandered to that GIF of the woman and man, her go-to fantasy, but it was quickly replaced by a pair of sea-green eyes.
    She had to stop thinking about yesterday. About him. Austin . He was a coworker—sort