Forward Passes (Seattle Lumberjacks) Read Free

thought he was pissed now, just wait until the reading of the will this afternoon.
    She’d be replacing Cat as number one on his hit list.

Chapter 3
    Animal Attraction
    Over the years, Tyler worked hard to cultivate his reputation as an asshole. One hundred percent asshole, from his gorgeous mug to his well-exercised cock, from his fast moves to his irreverent attitude, he practiced the art of being an asshole. In fact, he considered himself a master.
    Screw nice. Tyler didn’t do nice. Nice guys were pussies, boring pussies. Well, except for his cousin and best friend, Derek. Yeah, Derek could be a pussy at times, especially with his fiancée, but he also had steel in him. He was the guy Tyler would want to have his back.
    On the rare occasions when Tyler was caught doing a good, selfless deed, he drowned it in a smoke-screen of self-serving bullshit. The press ate it up. Everyone loved to hate an asshole. So he gave them what they wanted and made money doing it. More importantly, the asshole role kept people at a distance and discouraged them from looking any deeper because Tyler never exposed his soft underbelly to anyone. Never let them see the guy who didn’t watch sad movies, had a soft spot for animals and old people, and anonymously donated shitloads of money to childhood cancer.
    Which was exactly why no one knew about his relationship with Uncle Art. Not even his mother or sisters.
    Jim Miller, his uncle’s attorney, rifled through the stacks of papers teetering precariously on his desk, leaving Tyler to wonder if the old coot had lost the will. Tyler shifted his butt in a chair made for a guy half his size. He stretched his cramped legs out in front of him and crossed his arms over his chest.
    His gaze flicked over the hot little chick with the weird name radiating some serious attitude in the chair next to him. He made a mental note to take a rain check on a more thorough body assessment of the sassy redhead .
    Just not now.
    Uncle Art’s unexpected death had sucker-punched him in the gut. No more secret weekly visits to the VA nursing home to play poker with his uncle and his cronies. No more arguing over who was the greatest baseball player of all time. No more stories about ancestors Tyler never knew. Even worse, he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to an uncle he’d only gotten to know in the past six months.
    Just one week ago Tyler had stood on the podium after winning his second Super Bowl and hadn’t felt a damn thing but emptiness. He sure as hell didn’t have that problem now. He swore a grizzly bear had torn open his chest and ripped out his heart, leaving a gaping cavity and a load of intense, agonizing pain.
    But he’d played through pain before, and he’d do it again. He put on his game face and slipped into his favorite role when things got tough, that of a selfish asshole.
    The old attorney with bad taste in clothes finally held the will in his pudgy hands. Tyler bit back a few choice words. He just wanted to get on with it and get the hell out of here and back to civilization. He couldn’t even get cell-service on this godforsaken island.
    Jim glared at him through his coke-bottle glasses, as if Tyler had pissed him off somehow. Hell, Tyler was the one who’d been summoned from his city condo, dunked in the freezing-ass cold waters of Outlaw Bay, and forced to stay on this isolated rock two hours longer than necessary. And for what? To be an unwelcome guest at his uncle’s funeral and make a total ass out of himself? To listen to the reading of a will which didn’t apply to him? Tyler preferred to do his grieving in private, not in front of several hundred hostile islanders in the middle of a fucking hurricane.
    Tyler leaned forward, elbows on Jim’s desk, and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, which contributed to his crappier than usual attitude.
    The old goat pushed his glasses up his nose and started reading. Tyler tuned him out until he heard his