Fourth Down and Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (2 page)

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Bonus Novel- Hayden, I Hate You

I snuck a gaze
over at the large clock hanging on the back wall of the tutoring center. It was
about a minute until 2 o’clock. I tapped the eraser of my pencil on the blank
notebook page while Micah, my student, finished up a problem with a proud smile
on his face.

 
“Got it!” he beamed, grinning as he pushed his
paper toward me so I could check his work. I quickly skimmed over it and
nodded.

“And right on
time,” I muttered, stuffing the worksheet in his file after making a check mark
next to the problem he just completed. He reached out and shook my hand,
something that threw me for a loop since it was only our first session
together. Then he quickly gathered his things before walking out the front
door.
 
I stared off after him and spaced
out for a couple minutes before coming to and looking down at my schedule.
There was a new name in my 3 o’clock spot.

It was a student
named Landon Bryce. He was in his junior year of college, which meant he’d
either be very motivated or incredibly difficult to work with. In my
experience, the juniors rarely fell in the gray area between the two. I sighed
and sat back to wait, but the minute hand on the clock seemed to move slower
and slower. I hated sitting and waiting. Time always felt like it crawled at a
snail’s pace. It was an eternity of boringness. The least I could do was talk
to my co-worker and friend.

“Stella,” I said
in loud whisper, head poking off the corner of the desk she sat at.

Stella looked up
from her cell phone she was lazily reading and gave a nod to ask what I needed.
She must have been bumming around until her next tutoring session also. It
couldn’t hurt to ask the bubbly and boy crazy Stella knew who my newest student
was.

“Do you know who
my next student is?” I asked, pointing at my schedule. She clutched her phone
and walked over to take a seat where Micah was and looked across at my
schedule.

“You have a 3
o’clock? That’s new.”

“Yep.” I picked up
the paper and double checked the name. “His name is Landon Bryce?”

Stella’s jaw
dropped to the floor. She placed her phone down and leaned forward to snatch
the paper right out of my hand, eyes honing in on Landon’s name before she
looked back at me in complete disbelief.

“I. Can’t.
Believe. It,” she said, slowly and with emphasis on each word.

“What?” I took the
paper back and looked at his name as if I would suddenly be able to see the
reason she reacted with such shock. Maybe he’d have some asterisk next to his
name saying he was the nerdy-billionaire-prince of England or something equally
as exciting.

Nope. Nothing.

Just—Landon Bryce.

 
I ran my thumb over the Bryce name before
setting the paper back on the desk, upside down, and looking back up at Stella.
I was beyond puzzled and my face looked the part.

“Well, for
starters, I can’t believe you don’t know who Landon Bryce is,” she told me
dryly.

“I take it I’m
supposed to?”

“
Obviously
,” Stella muttered. She leaned
forward and clasped her hands together on the desk, eyes darting around to make
sure nobody was eavesdropping on our conversation. “He’s only the star running
back of our football team!” Stella quickly placed a hand over her mouth and
looked around again because, in her excitement, she’d spoken a bit too loudly.

I was unimpressed.
I didn’t really care if this guy was anybody on the football team. All I cared
about was him not being a pain in the ass to work with. But now knowing he was
a jock, my hopes for that were quickly diminishing.

“I also can’t
believe he’s actually coming in for tutoring.” She puckered her lips and tapped
them with the tip of her index finger, eyes looking up at the ceiling. “You
know, he has a reputation for coasting on his charm and ridiculous good looks
so it’s weird he’ll be coming in to get help.”

I let out a heavy
sigh. I would have much rather it be the nerdy-billionaire-prince of England. I
already heard everything I needed to know—it wouldn’t be fun to have Landon
Bryce as a tutee.

“Oh well,” I
muttered, clearly disappointed.

“Oh well?” Stella
giggled, eyes brightening. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll coast through
tutoring instead,” Stella whispered, winking and biting her lower lip. It was
pretty obvious she was under his spell, like I imagined many other young women
at university were. It certainly didn’t help Stella was boy crazy to begin
with.

I shrugged. “Not
with me.”

I pulled my laptop
closer and opened up the school directory, curiosity getting the best of me. I
wanted to look him up. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a football
player getting huffy because I didn’t recognize him. I wasn’t one to play into
people’s ego trips, so I knew I was doing something unusual. But it was for my
own peace of mind. It didn’t take long for his name to pop up, but his records
were kept pretty private.

No real
information that wasn’t football related was up on the school directory. What
he did have was a link to his press and media page, hosted by the school’s
website. I thought I was odd, most students didn’t have a personal press page.
I grimaced. I was in for it. I could practically feel the bad news coursing
through my veins. I clicked around a bit more, looking at some photos of him
and skimming some articles. Finally, I opened up the contact info page on the
tutoring center’s website. It was restricted but I had access.

“Worth a shot,” I
said with a shrug as Stella egged me on. As the page loaded, I noticed the
time. I gasped. “He’s going to be a no show, isn’t he?”

Stella’s eyebrows
arched, “Guess he thinks it doesn’t matter. Guy always gets a free pass so why
would he think this is any different?”

I could sense the
words, “cut him a break,” on the tip of Stella’s tongue but she knew better
than to actually utter them. They would really set me off. I was always a
stickler for the rules.

“Maybe I should
call him,” I said, pointing at the phone number on the screen. Stella agreed
enthusiastically, but did so for all the wrong reasons. I picked up my phone
and called. I was taken aback when the voice of an older man answered the
phone, rather shortly, so it took me a few seconds to speak up.

“My name is Ivy
and I’m with the tutoring center. This is the number I have on file to contact
Landon Bryce, is he available?”

“What did he do
now?” the man asked gruffly, clearly irritated.

“He hasn’t shown
up to his tutoring appointment and the hour is nearly up. I was trying to get
ahold of him. Being a no show would reflect poorly on him given his, uh,
current academic standing.”

“Probation,” the
man chuckled as if it were all a big joke. It was beyond obvious that he was
pretty much done with anything related to Landon. The man’s attitude had
already given away who he was. But if there was any doubt in my mind he cleared
it up, “Graham Bryce here, his father.” There was a brief pause before I heard
a loud metal slap that sounded a lot like someone smacking the roof of a car.
It was so loud I flinched over the phone.

“I’ll take care of
it.” He huffed.

The line went
silent. He had been curt and I was pretty sure some of the man’s attitude
rubbed off on his son. The more I learned about my new client the more of a
nightmare situation it appeared to be. I pulled the phone away from my ear and
stared at the screen in disbelief. Him being so rude to me was bad enough, but
the fact that he was so involved in Landon’s life was unthinkable to me. Just
how much did my newest student, the school’s football star, still rely on his
daddy even as a grown man in college?

“Seems like your
celebrity crush, Landon, is going to get in big trouble with daddy,” I quipped.

Stella gave me a
blank stare before asking, “You spoke to Graham Bryce?”
 

I couldn’t resist
the strong urge to roll my eyes. “You’re either stalking the guy or
–“

“Ivy,” Stella
interrupted, shaking her head, “Graham Bryce is one of the school’s biggest
donors.” There was a long pause where the two of us stared at each other. “Are
you really telling me you haven’t even noticed the name of the stadium?”

I opened my mouth,
but said nothing. The truth was I had never been to the stadium. There had
never been a reason for me to stop by and I couldn’t see that changing any time
soon. Sports might as well have been on a different planet to me. I lowered the
screen of my laptop. I pursed my lips and looked back up at the clock. Landon
Bryce was officially a no show. To make matters worse, it was our very first
meeting.

“I’ve never been
to the stadium,” I finally told Stella nonchalantly. Stella sighed in
exasperation and stalked off to her desk, making a remark about me being
clueless and hopeless. I didn’t care one bit. My mother was absolutely
right—universities were shifting their focus from academics to sports. It was
awful. I didn’t understand why a university would place such an emphasis on
sports and give special treatment to athletes when the university was supposed
to be in charge of molding the next generation’s intelligent, young minds. It
was completely unfair, to say the least.

Some called me
snobby for not appreciating the athletic culture, but I preferred to think of
it as having my priorities in place. I was told I had no school spirit, but I
was always quick to reply, “I have plenty of
school
spirit in the area of
academics
.”

That was yet
another reason people sometimes thought I was a bit of a nose-high-in-the-air
kind of girl, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was quite humble.
I just didn’t appreciate the shifting focus for the party scene rife with young
women fawning over men for their athletic abilities rather than their
intelligence.

 
I preferred to form bonds from study groups or
dedicate my free time to making extra money, not that I had much free time to
begin with. Between going to school part time, working, and taking care of my
ill mother, my plate was kept full. Someone once claimed it was my mom who had
brainwashed me into having disdain for the shift away from academics, but I
begged to differ. Sure, my mom had pointed it out, but I was smart enough to
form my own opinions on the matter.

The little
incident with Graham and Landon did absolutely nothing to change my point of
view.

I was pulled out
of my thoughts when Stella tapped me on the shoulder. “My 3:30pm client just
cancelled,” she chirped, showing me her cell phone screen.

What would have
caused me stress was cause for celebration to Stella. She dropped down in the
chair next to me and pulled the laptop toward her, opening it up fully and
typing Landon’s name into a web search. She clicked on a photo that looked like
a headshot, but had Haywood University’s emblem on the bottom right-hand
corner.
 

“You can’t say he
isn’t good looking,” she mused, leaning forward to rest her chin on her hand as
she continued to stare at the photo. I didn’t want to engage in the
conversation. Stella looked over at me and rolled her eyes, “You really
are
hopeless.” She clicked out of the
photo and looked around before leaning in and whispering, “Just imagine
tutoring Landon Bryce.
Landon Bryce
!”
She bit her lower lip and giggled, cheeks turning pink. “Truth be told, I’d
much rather him tutor me. I’m sure there are a few things I want that man to
teach me.” She giggled again and covered her mouth.