ROMANCE: BAD BOY ROMANCE: Mister Perfect: (Alpha Male Billionaire Football Star and BBW Pregnancy Romance)(A Best Friend's Brother Contemporary New Adult Sports Romantic Secret Baby Romance)

Evanna Stone

©2016 Evanna Stone

Chapter One: The Kickoff

Chapter Two: Christmas Dinner, Two Hours In

Chapter Three: January Embers

Chapter Four: Spring

Chapter Five: The Morning After The Night Before

Chapter Six: The Truth

Chapter Seven: The End Zone

More (Erotica/Romance) From Evanna Stone

"Thanks for inviting me for Christmas dinner," Amber said, giving her friend a squeeze. "You're the best. But I won't be coming."

              "Not you too," Freda said, sitting hard on the bench and dropping her bags in disappointment.
"That's my best friend and my only brother standing me up for Christmas. If I didn't know what a shut-in you were, I'd say that you two were off doing something behind my back."

              Amber loved her friend, but as a girl she had once said that she would have done anything for a date with
her older brother, Taylor, and Freda had never let her forget it. Taylor was a football-playing superstar now and if he'd ever known that Amber had existed, he'd forgotten all about her by now.

              She'd been girlish then. She hadn't been straight up and down, but she'd had no curves to
speak of and didn't stand out in her crowd. She'd only just started having periods and Taylor didn't acknowledge her at all. While he'd been away studying and then getting his first offers to play football
professionally, Amber had filled out. That lonely little girl had developed a voluptuous figure and now when she walked into a room - or sat with one shapely leg crossed over the other, waiting with her best friend for a train
- she turned heads.

              There were always men coveting her and she dated from time to time, but none of them matched up to her
perfect image of Taylor Bolton - tall, dark-haired, eloquent and getting more and more handsome with every year.

              It didn't help that there were pictures of him all over the city.              

              "It's kind of you," Amber told Freda, "but I can't accept sympathy invites."

              "Sorry for you? Oh, please," Freda said. "There are plenty of people I feel sorry for and
who deserve it. My son's schoolteacher. The guy who does my mum's feet. And that poor guy over there."

              Freda was pointing at a billboard on the far side of the train platform, beyond the dusty tracks. The
poster was dominated by a good-looking football player in an expensive suit that looked so good it must have been made for his athletic body. The image was frozen as he was getting out of a black sports car. His steely gaze
suggested that he had important things on his mind, which was probably true enough, and he certainly wasn't looking where he was going and might have been about to step out into oncoming traffic. Most eyes were drawn to
the chunky silver watch with dials all over its face, blown up extra large at the edge of the poster, but Amber just gazed at his face, this real person with whom she'd shared an imaginary love.

              Freda had described it as a childhood crush, but it was really much more than that. As the men on the
platform were observing, she was a woman now, and if anything she felt more for him now than she had years ago.

              There was something wonderfully unattainable about him. Even if he weren't busy being a megastar,
he was Freda's brother and really dating him would have been taboo. He was on the other side of the US and, since he wasn't coming back for Christmas, he obviously liked it out there. He may as well have been on another
planet, in so many ways, an inhospitable planet surrounded by flashing cameras and contract extensions.

              "It's a ridiculous but beautiful poster," Amber said, "but why feel sorry for him?"

              "Because he's lost," Freda said. "He doesn't need a watch. He needs a compass.
His face is all over the city, because it's his hometown, but he doesn't seem to remember that. He can't find his way home. He's obviously got everything he needs out there."

              "Is he seeing anyone?" Amber asked.

              "I wouldn't know anymore," Freda said.

              Amber felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of another woman flirting with him, touching him, telling
him how much she loved him.

              That should have been me, she thought, as if it were happening right now, as she stared forlornly at the
2D representation of him.

              At the bottom of the poster was the advertising copy, which started, in big letters: "Taylor Bolton
knows the difference a second can make ..."

              She thought that she'd love to see him again, just to see if he recognized her now that she was all
woman. It really was a shame that he wouldn't be coming for Christmas. Perhaps they would have hit it off.

              As well as being on the wall in the train station, he was on a wall not far from her apartment in just
his underwear. On that billboard he was the size of a giant, the muscles of his thighs and abs bulging. And, admittedly, that was not all that was bulging. She could see the poster whenever she left the house to get to the
mall. She often saw it on her way home from a job. Without fail, she saw it when she closed her eyes in bed at night and it was just her between the crisp white sheets; just her and her thoughts of him and what might happen
if they got together one night.

              They might save conversation for the morning after.

              "He's not coming home for Christmas," Freda said. "Nor for New Year. He's not sure
if he can make it for my birthday. I'll be lucky to get an email at this rate. It's all about him and the team now."

              "He's got contracts," Amber said, feeling natural defending him. "Big commitments."

              "I know you're in love with him," Freda teased, "but can't you pretend you're
on my side? He's a big boy and he spent all our childhood doing whatever the hell he liked and he's still getting away with it, so, you know, a little support."

              "Er, 'he doesn't know what he's missing?'" Amber replied.

              "Good," said Freda. "And he's an idiot."

              "He's the 6 Billion Dollar Idiot," Amber added.

              "Literally. Okay, I feel better. But what would make me feel even better is if you came for Christmas
Dinner. Family's the most important ..." Freda started, but then she remembered the accident. "I'm sorry," she said.

              It was hard losing your family in a freak accident. Amber knew the difference a second could make.

              "Please come," Freda said. "I can't bear to think of you alone this Christmas after
everything you've been through."

              "It happens," Amber said, stone serious.

              "All that you've been through," Freda said, "and here I am whining about my idiot head
brother."

              "I like talking about your idiot brother," Amber said. "I can tell how much you love him."
She hoped that Freda couldn't detect the feelings that she had for him too as that would have been embarrassing and, well, just sort of icky.

              They sat staring at Taylor's gorgeous, serious profile in silence.

              "Creepy, isn't it?" Freda said.

              "No," said Amber thoughtfully, lost for a moment. "Not really."

              Freda looked at her curiously.

              "It's not creepy," Amber said. "He's an ordinary guy, like all celebrities."

              "Like any other ordinary billionaire celebrity?"

              "They're still human."

              Freda didn't look convinced.

              "He used to be a family man," she said. "When he first went away, we'd talk everyday
on the phone and he'd tell me all about training, no matter how tired he was. And he'd come back whenever he had a free weekend or sometimes just for a few hours on a week night to catch up with me and, you know, the
others. Now we talk less than once a month and he's not even coming home for Christmas."

              Amber put her arm around her friend to comfort her. It was a relief to Freda when the train came rattling
into the station and obliterated their view of the Taylor Bolton poster, but Amber felt its removal from her gaze like someone had let go of her hand and suddenly she was afraid, lonely, unsure whether it might have been better
if she'd died in the accident that had wiped out her family, not sure why she'd insisted on spending Christmas alone, thinking about old times, haunting herself with photos.

              "I'll come," Amber said.

              "Seriously? That's fantastic." Freda threw her arms around Amber's neck and squeezed
and Amber commented that Freda was surprisingly strong for a skinny girl.

              "I'll tell the others you're coming," Freda said.

              "What can I bring? Your parents drink wine, right?"

              "Non-drinkers can't choose wine," Freda said. "Just bring yourself." Then she
slipped in: "There'll be twelve of us."

              "Twelve!" That was one more than a football team. Amber would much have preferred something
intimate, like a one on one with Freda's errant brother. Or something impossible, like having her mother and father back, alive and well. "I'm starting to regret saying yes," she joked, secretly fighting
back tears.

              "You're not allowed to regret it until two hours in," Freda said. "It's a family
tradition."

              Freda hadn't been kidding. There were twelve at the dinner table.

              "You're not superstitious, are you?" asked Freda's grandmother.

              "No," Amber said. "Why?"

              "Maybe you didn't bring a boyfriend, because you were worried about having thirteen around the
table."

              "No," Amber said. "That wasn't the reason."

              "No boyfriend?" said Freda's grandmother.

              "No."

              "Beautiful woman like you?"

              "Thank you," Amber said. "Not that you can tell in this get up." She was wearing a
red skirt - hardly a mini-skirt, but short enough that she adjusted it every time she stood up or sat down so as not to give one of the older people at the table a heart attack - and she was wearing a red, long-sleeved, V-neck
top that was a near match. Not a scarlet woman but a nod to Mrs Claus. She had tinsel around her shoulders like a feather boa, accentuating her cleavage and she'd grabbed a festive Santa hat from her closet. Finished with
black heels, it was fun and sexy and almost appropriate.

              "Good hips," Freda's grandmother went on, openly appraising her. "Not a bad rack."

              Amber flushed, knowing deep down that she would have preferred to have worn jeans and a T-shirt. She was
most comfortable on her knees with her hands in dirt - watering, nurturing, watching - not tottering around on heels and smiling at everyone even though her own heart was breaking.

              Christmas was a day Amber would have preferred to ignore, but she made the effort for her friend.

              "Quite a face on you too," Freda's grandmother said.

              "Thanks?"

              "Gran!" Freda said sternly.

              "Thanks for letting me join you," Amber said, speaking clearly. "I'm honored to be
a guest at your table."

              "There are no guests here," said Freda's grandmother. "Only family."

              That was sweet.

              "I heard you lost your family in a bus crash," she went on.

              "Gran!"