Chapter 1: Rebel By Name
I stormed out of the locker room, letting out a growl of annoyance. My heavy footsteps bounced off the stone walls, echoing around me, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of his voice in my mind. The clicking of my heels aggravated my throbbing temples until I thought my head would explode.
‘Come on Leah, admit it. You want another chance.’
As if.
I walked up the stairs to the lavish training ground restaurant where the wait staff greeted me with a smile I was too angry to return. I craved vodka but alcohol wasn’t permitted, not even after hours. I ordered an orange juice and promised myself a proper drink later. Dealing with such a sleaze every day, I was astounded I didn’t have a fully-fledged drinking problem.
Radleigh ‘Rebel’ McCoy thought that being the star of the Westberg Warriors made him a Big Deal. Maybe to the fans, but to me, he was a royal pain in the arse. If I’d known that signing a contract with the Warriors would lead to this level of stress I would definitely have had second thoughts about scrawling my name on the dotted line.
The restaurant was always full at the end of the day, and the noise of chattering men did nothing to ease my aching head. Instead of going home after five hours of intense soccer training, the players preferred to eat on site. I could only assume the harder they trained, the more energy they needed before getting into their fancy sports cars and driving back to their mansions where their supermodel wives and girlfriends waited to boink their aches away.
Easy on the snark, lady. Your small town mentality is starting to show.
Chuckling in spite of my rage, I propped myself against the sleek black bar. If the room hadn’t been so full I would have rested my flaming cheeks against the cool marble to extinguish my fury.
“Miss Walker.”
Oh boy.
I closed my eyes for a second, hoping I’d imagined the sound of his deep, over-confident voice but I could sense him behind me. Eau de Self-Importance swirled in the air around me.
“Mr McCoy.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
There are only two types of people who would offer to buy a drink for a woman they’d just finished arguing with. Idiots and egomaniacs.
Radleigh McCoy was no idiot.
“No. Thank you. I’ve already ordered.”
A shiver rippled across my skin. Instead of being repelled by the brush-off, he moved closer, his breath tickling my perfectly straightened hair. My impulse was to drive my elbow into his ribs but I’d already given him more than enough of what he wanted by flipping out at him in the locker room earlier.
Once the bartender handed me my drink, I turned to face McCoy. I use the term loosely though. At six feet four he towered way above me - a mere five feet two inches.
“Are you still here?” I asked, as if I couldn’t feel the imprint of his rock hard abs on my back.
“I was hoping you’d keep me company,” he answered, his ice blue eyes dancing with amusement.
“Radleigh, I only put up with you because I have to. Am I not making myself clear?”
His lips curved into a grin. “I love how you say my name with that cute British accent.”
Since I moved to America over a year ago, I’d heard that line a lot. It didn’t irk me nearly as much coming from other men though. I stepped around him, making a mental note never to use his first name again.
“Excuse me.”
I breezed across the restaurant as coolly as possible with anger surging through me. To him, it was all a bit of a laugh. Witty banter to unsettle the new girl. For me, it was a challenge to get through the day without knocking his head off his shoulders.
“Easy tiger,” Will Carter said, spotting the murderous look in my eye as I threw myself down into the chair beside him.
“Why?” I fumed. “Of all the soccer stars in the world, why did I get stuck with McCoy?”
Freya Phillips gave me a knowing smile. “There’s a reason your job was always available, Leah. He is the reason.”
Freya sat opposite Will at the table. They were both soccer coaches, and the first people I’d met on the team aside from the manager, Richard Bailey. Freya was pretty much the only reason I’d been able to accept my job. The Warriors had needed me to start immediately but when I applied for the position in Los Angeles, I lived in Boston. Sleeping on sofas until I found my own place didn’t appeal at all, so Richard introduced me to Freya. She needed someone to share the rent on her apartment, and I needed somewhere to live. We connected instantly, chatting like old friends, and we hadn’t stopped talking since.
“What did he do?” Will asked.
“On my first night here, he tried to chat me up. You know how the story goes. ‘You have the most beautiful eyes, I’m very rich, want to see my bedroom?’ Blah, blah, blah.”
“And because you turned him down, he’s more determined than ever,” Will guessed, with amazing accuracy. “You did turn him down, right?”
“Of course I did,” I told him, insulted by the insinuation that I would drop my knickers for a glass of wine. “Do you think I’d risk my job for a quick tumble in the sheets with him?”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand. Thousands of women would kill to sleep with him, so why bother with me when I’m obviously not interested?”
“He likes a challenge,” Freya answered. “It’s a game to him.”
“Well, I don’t want to play.”
My eyes flicked towards the bar where McCoy chatted to some of his teammates. Like me, he’d changed out of his training gear. Even if he hadn’t, he would still have stood out among the sea of royal blue and black in the room. He had that elusive presence many men thought they had, but few truly possessed. The biggest problem was, he knew it.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Maybe I’ll tell him he needs hydrotherapy, then drown him in the pool,” I mused. “But really, I just want him to back off.”
“You need to be careful. Many women have quit their jobs here because of the way he treated them.”
“Please! I may be struggling at the moment, but I won’t be forced out of a job by an over-sexed, over-confident-”
“I’m serious,” Will interrupted, halting me before I started sw
earing in an unladylike manner. “Richard didn’t want a woman taking the physiotherapist job because of how McCoy is but you impressed him so much, he couldn’t pass you up.”
“He called you ‘feisty,’ which you are,” Freya said with a grin.
“What I’m saying is,” Will went on, “you’re tough, but so is he. Nobody has ever fought against McCoy and won. The best thing you can do is keep your head down and wait for him to get bored.”
****
Saturdays without a match were my favourite days. Training didn’t start until ten, but as early as nine-thirty, a few staff members milled around the training ground, grabbing a quick bite to eat or getting bottles of water to take on to the field.