Ineligible Bachelor
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Kathryn Quick
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612186863
ISBN-10: 1612186866
For Mom, always
PROLOGUE
Freddy McAllister lined up at noseguard on defense and peered across the line of scrimmage. Fourth and goal with ten seconds left in the regional championship game. A touchdown meant a come-from-behind win for the Lake Swannanoa Cherokees. Freddy dug in and vowed not to be the Morristown Cougar who allowed the score.
The Cherokees broke the huddle and lined up in the I-formation. The crowd stood to get a better look. It seemed like everyone in the stands knew who was going to get the ball on the snap.
And so did everyone on the field.
Logan Gabriel.
A tough, compact fourteen-year-old, Logan’s teammates called him the Logman because he had a tendency to shout “timber” as he ran. Once he got the ball, he routinely cut down anyone in his way like a tree. The team’s leading rusher, and good enough at what he did to have a nickname even at the Pop Warner level of football, Logan oozed confidence in every situation.
But today it would be Freddy’s job to make sure he didn’t get into the end zone.
The Cherokees’ quarterback looked over the Cougar defense. His stare lingered on Freddy before he turned and nodded to Logan, confirmation the play was going right through Freddy for the victory. An unearthly silence preceded his barking out the count and the center snapping the ball cleanly into his hands. In one fluid motion, the quarterback turned and pitched the ball to Logan. Effortlessly, Logan caught the shovel pass and headed right for Freddy.
With a deep breath, Freddy ran at him. Logan tried his patented stutter step, but Freddy had seen it too many times: fake to the left, fake to the right, and then run right. Freddy anticipated Logan’s move and lunged at him, grabbing on to his legs with both arms, holding on for dear life.
Then, like a tree, Logan fell forward, hitting the ground with a force that knocked the football out of his hands. A red-jerseyed Cougar pounced on the loose ball just as the clocked ticked off the last second and sealed the victory for the visitors.
As the players on the ground unwound themselves from each other, the celebration began. The moans of the losers and the shouts and high fives of the winners merged into a white-noise roar as someone pulled Freddy up by the back of the jersey.
Logan took out his mouthpiece and nodded. “Nice stop, Fred.”
Freddy could see disappointment lying vivid in his eyes. “Sorry, Logan, I couldn’t let you in.”
“I know, but do me a favor, don’t take off your helmet until you get into the locker room.”
Too late. Freddy had already unhooked the chin strap and started taking the helmet off by the face mask before Logan had even finished the sentence. The skullcap underneath dislodged, and a cascade of blonde hair fell down Freddy’s back to her uniform numbers.
Before she could get it back on, some of her teammates hoisted her up onto their shoulders.
“I hope the papers got a picture of your tackle for the front page!” one shouted.
“Fred-dy! Fred-dy!” The chant began on the field and reached into the stands as her teammates carried her around the perimeter.
Helpless on her perch, Frederika McAllister watched the boy of her dreams kick the ground and walk slump shouldered to the locker room.
So much for him asking her to the eighth grade social.
Rikka McAllister hung up the phone and closed her eyes.
She never read the fine print.
“Wake up, wake up. Please, wake up,” she pleaded.
She took a breath and held it as she opened one eye. Living room. Darn. She had hoped she would wake up in bed, the call just a dream.
No such luck. Logan Gabriel won. He had been chosen
Elan Magazine
’s Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year. A camera crew was on its way right now to Ambient Marketing, where he worked, to break the news and whisk him away for a six-week adventure as a result of the contest.
Only he had no idea he’d even entered it.
What had she done? Her plan to get Logan to notice her just sprouted legs and was running right at her. This must have been how Logan felt when she tackled him in the championship game when they were kids. No wonder she had been permanently reduced to friend status.
A stab of pain hit her between the eyes, and she pressed the heel of her hand against it. She wanted Logan to think of her differently, to see her as more than his friend. She looked at her watch. In about thirty minutes, she would get her wish. And not in a good way.
She grabbed her purse and keys and practically dove into the front seat of her car. As she backed out of her driveway, she
activated the Bluetooth and called the one person she could count on to help her break the news to Logan, if only they could get to Ambient before the camera crew came.
“Patt, I’m a dead woman if you can’t get to Logan in the next twenty minutes and get him out of his office,” she screamed when the call connected.
“Slow down, girl,” Patt said from the other end of the line. “That all sounded like one big word. Calm down, and tell me what you need.”
Rikka inhaled and blew out a long breath of air to try to calm her nerves. “You have to meet me at Logan’s office right now.”
“Why?”
“Remember the picture I sent to
Elan
?”
“Uh-huh, do I ever. The man looked hotter than the Sahara Desert.”
“Too hot apparently, because I won. I mean, he won.” Silence preceded an uproar of laughter on the other end of the line, making Rikka turn down the volume on the car radio through which the call played. “Stop laughing, and help me,” she pleaded.
The laughter weakened to snickers. “You know I will. I just can’t help imaging the look on Logan’s face when the next issue comes out. The picture you sent in made him look like he didn’t have anything on but a big ole fern leaf.”
“Camera angle,” Rikka said through clenched teeth. “You know very well he had on a bathing suit.”
“I know that, and you know that. But when that picture winds up in the center of the magazine, millions of ladies won’t care when they’re staring at the staple in his navel.”
Rikka groaned. “The picture is the least of my problems. I didn’t read the small print on the entry form.” She slowed the car to a stop as the light ahead turned red.
“And it said?”
“He’s about to be taken right from work to an estate in Morris County.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It’s worse than bad. The contest was actually a photo audition for a reality TV show. There are six women also going to the estate. One gets kicked out once a week until he finds Ms. Right for a ten-day dream vacation to Maui.”
“You entered him in a reality TV show?” Patt spaced the words evenly, as though contemplating each one.
“It appears so.”
“Oooh, bummer for you. Logan’s been your dream date since grade school, and now you have some handpicked competition.”
“My dream date is turning into a Stephen King nightmare.”
“Girl, I told you not to do this. A six-foot, dark-haired, blue-eyed, body-like-a-god hunk alone for six weeks with six women, huh? A lot can happen in a month and a half.”
“Not if I can help it because, actually, I’m going, too.”
“You’re one of the six women?”
Rikka heaved a sigh. “No, I’m the one who has to help him pick one of the six women.”
“Shut—
up
.” Patt’s tone was full of disbelief.
“Shutting up won’t solve the problem.”
Patt snickered. “Maybe you shouldn’t have signed his name on the entry form.”
Rikka eased her car onto the interstate. “Maybe I shouldn’t have signed mine.”
Logan Gabriel ditched his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt to his elbows. He still had a lot of work to do on the PowerPoint presentation for the three o’clock meeting with the new client. Hopefully, the marketing campaign would mean a multimillion-dollar contract for the ad agency and a
hefty commission for him. He did have his eye on a new Beamer. Convertible. 325i. One sweet ride.
Since he’d gotten his master’s degree in marketing after a stint at a party college in New Hampshire, he’d settled in and been steadily climbing the corporate ladder. Despite his father’s insistence he make it a priority to excel in football in college, he’d been only marginally interested in sports since discovering business tactics as a freshman. Now at thirty, he worked hard and could be named a junior partner in the firm.
And he could all but cement that promotion by landing the Bio-Shoes account.
The door to his office opened, and Bob Kiernan, a sixty-something full partner with a shrewd but creative mind, stepped in. “How’s the footwear ad coming?”
Logan swung the laptop he’d been working on toward Kiernan and started the presentation. “Take a look.”