Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) Read Free Page A

overreacting to the mild flirtation. But by the time I get to the men’s changing room I can’t ignore the dampness in my thong or the way my heart is still beating furiously.
    Apparently I’m not the only one who was moved by the encounter, because the door flies open and my best friend, Audrey, is standing there with her hands on her slim hips and her big brown eyes blinking at me furiously. “That guy you were talking to is sex personified.”
    I smile. “Tell me about it.”
    “I heard him talking to someone earlier, and he’s French, which is sexy as fuck. He’s got that whole smoldering thing going on with those intense blue eyes—which, by the way, have been glued to your fine ass all night. And I do mean your ass. Your actual butt. He’s checking you out, in case you were wondering. And don’t even get me started on—”
    I raise my hand to silence her. “I didn’t mean you should actually tell me about it. Trust me, I know,” I tell her as I glance into the showers to make sure they’re pristine, and that no one is in there eavesdropping. Trey will be giving informal tours of the facilities as the evening progresses, and I want everything perfect. “Between you and me, he was hitting buttons inside me I didn’t even know existed.”
    “Who the hell is he, anyway?” Audrey asks, walking over to the mirror and fluffing her long perfectly coiffed dirty blond hair. “I saw him talking with a bunch of other suits before the bar encounter, but I didn’t recognize any of them. Except they’re all hot.”
    “Trey was inviting the local businesses in the area, which include law firms, an accounting firm and a couple investment bankers and the staff at the fancy restaurant in the building next door. He must be one of them,” I say absently and try not to think of that jolt of electricity that I felt when his fingers slid over mine as I passed him his drink. “If he’s a lawyer I needed to get myself in legal trouble ASAP.”
    “Yeah, you do.” Audrey winks at me. “Shayne, you have to go back out there and talk to him.”
    “Easy now, slugger.” I laugh but…I’m shocked at how much I actually want to. It was embarrassing, really. I’d never had such an instant and overwhelming reaction to a guy before.
    My friend Audrey had. More than once. When we were in college she could go from zero to hot-and-heavy make-out session with a guy she had met fifteen minutes earlier. Shortly after we moved to Seattle, Audrey met her current boyfriend, Josh, and her wild days were over.
    Josh is a great guy and I’ve never seen Audrey happier, but now she is hellbent on living vicariously through me. My unfortunate sex drought seems to upset her way more than it does me. Every time we go out for a girl’s night she tries to convince me to flirt with some random guy. It is hysterical and annoying. One-night stands are so not my thing. But then again I don’t exactly want celibacy to be my thing either.
    Audrey said I liked to keep one foot on firm ground and that I’d never taken risks or leaps. Audrey’s middle name was leap. From the moment we met in the dorm bathrooms in freshman year at Syracuse University, I both envied her and judged her. I’d never met anyone with a messier life. Not even my brother, Trey, who has battled addiction issues, had as crazy a life as Audrey. Of course, if she wasn’t impulsive, she wouldn’t be here in Seattle with me. When I graduated college we’d gotten an apartment together in Syracuse and both started working. A year later I decided to move back here to help my brother start his business, and she agreed to come with me. It was nowhere near her home or family—they were in New Hampshire—and it was nowhere near anywhere she’d ever lived before, but she didn’t even blink. She just loaded her shit into my Kia Soul and hopped into the passenger seat with a smile.
    “I bet your vagina has cobwebs,” Audrey announces with a sad expression, and I roll my eyes.