His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (3 page)

The tabloids, of course, had a field day with the “American Monk” who seemed to go from home to the training ground and back home alone again, despite his devastating good looks. As he moved up the ladder professionally, joining larger clubs and signing more lucrative contracts, he began popping up on “Most Eligible Bachelor” lists, and from there to finding himself the subject of nasty “closeted footballer” lists.

The truth was, yes, the life he lived was lonely, and he often reconsidered his intentional bachelorhood, but he also wanted to do nothing to jinx the career he enjoyed, a career beyond his wildest dreams growing up in rural South Carolina.

He’d been tempted before, of course, as no shortage of beautiful women threw themselves at players spotted on team buses or out in public—whether at Tesco, the green grocer’s, or down the pub.

At thirty-four, he’d been careful enough with his money that he could stop playing whenever he wanted to, but the passion hadn’t left him, and he expected to have two or three more seasons at the top level of the game. Legendary Scottish side Celtic F.C. reached out to his agent, Tom Borchers, with an attractive offer. They were stocked with young, talented defenders, but adding a player with the résumé of a Patrick Sievert could give the crew something of a mentor, a hard man who’d seen it all and could lead the club to ever greater glory.

Somehow, the whole Celtic conversation had stayed out of the papers, although there was no doubt his visit to Glasgow would make its way into social media. And it wouldn’t take much for the rags to pick up on his plans.

Plans that seemed solid until he laid eyes on Ellie Peavey.

Amanda Eleanor Peavey was always “Mandy” or “Coach P’s little girl” while hanging around the football practices and games her father held sway over in the shadow of the gridiron juggernaut at Ohio State University. The youngest of four, and the only girl, Mandy was relegated to cheerleader, when all she really wanted to do was escape into books. In the world her imagination created, there was no football, boys didn’t care that she wasn’t blonde or skinny, and her dad and brothers included her in everything, rather than making her feel left out or “dumb” for liking the things girls were supposed to like.

It was probably why she’d had such a difficult time with men. She typically just couldn’t relate to them, and she was always so defensively watching out for meanness that she didn’t give herself a chance to experience niceness. She still couldn’t decide why Patrick was different, but she thought she could probably convince a jury that his overwhelming masculinity caused her defenses to crumble. There was just such a presence to him, his eyes, his shoulders, and his jaw . . . just everything. Flawless masculinity. Who could blame her for dropping her guard completely?

Even the way his deep voice said her name was different. She’d been a Mandy growing up, then an Amanda, but in the sixth grade when Amanda Brinck put a banana on her chair in the cafeteria—a banana that wound up smeared over an ass she’d spent years trying desperately to conceal, an ass that was now the laughingstock of the entire middle school—she never wanted to hear the name of that horrible bitch again.

The obvious choice was her middle name, Eleanor, but no eleven-year-old wants a name that belongs to grandmothers and first ladies, so she settled on Ellie. It always sounded like a little girl’s name to her, but it was a million times better than Amanda.

That is, it always sounded like a little girl’s name to her until it was spoken by Patrick Sievert. When he spoke it, fireworks went off inside Ellie’s body. In places no mere voice should be able to ignite them. Staring into Patrick’s eyes as he said her name was almost more than she could stand. She threatened to melt.

The whole thing was ridiculous, of course. As she finished up in the restroom, she thought,
I’m always going to call it “the loo” from now on, to the point that it becomes a terrible annoyance to everyone
. She stood before the mirror now, trying to devise a plan to MacGyver herself into something reasonably attractive before she next ran into the glorious Patrick Sievert. He seemed to enjoy their conversation enough; it had been absolutely “smashing,”—to borrow something else she’d heard him say—but he couldn’t possibly have been attracted to her. Ellie was sure of that. Her black pantsuit concealed at least a few of her extra pounds, but nothing could be done at this juncture to fix the face and uncooperative hair she’d hated for twenty-six years. Would it be too desperately slutty to rip open the top of her shirt and at least distract him with what were unquestionably, at least in her mind, her best assets?

Truth was, more than one of Ellie’s friends had expressed envy of her looks and insisted that she was beautiful, but it was hard to get the awkward years out of a girl’s head. She would never quite see herself for what she had become, but always as something she hadn’t been since high school. What she saw as frizzy hair, others saw as luscious and enviable curls. When she felt like she was “thick” others were admiring the curves of her body, not so different from a guitar, all smooth and sensual. It hadn’t gotten past Patrick Sievert. But Ellie would never allow herself to see herself as anything but ordinary.

She decided against changing anything about her appearance for the moment, and to face Patrick as she had when first they met. As Ellie Peavey. No use changing anything now. Against all odds, he actually seemed like he might possibly be convinced to maybe, sort of, be interested in her. Which was more than enough for her to cling to.

She was famished, having not dared to eat in front of Patrick on the plane, and she headed back out onto the concourse hoping she could squeeze in something before running into him again.

Comptoir Libanais caught her eye; the Lebanese restaurant offered several dishes featuring lamb, a meat she loved but rarely had the opportunity to eat back in the States. While enjoying a delicious lamb kofta, Ellie checked in with her parents and niece, assuring them that she’d survived the trip so far and making certain Maisie was wasn’t too distraught over her absence.

A few pages of Cheryl Strayed on her Kindle and a full stomach later, Ellie made her way back to her gate, after checking her appearance one final time in the loo. Patrick was close, she could absolutely sense it, and her giddy butterflies returned.

Patrick wolfed down a meat pie in the private lounge, having barely eaten on the plane. The offered fare wasn’t nearly as appetizing as that maddening spot on Ellie’s neck, or her full lips, he’d decided, and his cravings had swayed from the expected culinary to the unexpected libidinous.

As soon as he’d gotten a spare moment, Patrick had phoned up his agent to beg off the planned dinner that evening, blaming jet lag and rescheduling for an early breakfast before going to meet the Celtic chairman and manager at the team’s ground in Parkhead.

In truth, he
was
tired. Since Chelsea’s season ended in late May and he wrapped up his obligations to the club, awards dinners and such, he’d been traveling; first in the States to visit friends and family, then on holiday in Trinidad with his best friend and former college teammate Shelton Guyer.

It was Shelton’s name that lit up his phone as he finished eating.

“Hey, Shelt, how goes it, mate?”

“Ey, waz di scene, hoss?” Shelton replied in the Trini dialect Patrick had come to know so well.

“I’m sitting at Heathrow, I’ll be at Parkhead in the morning, looks like we’ll sign if my knees can get past the Celtic physical. Any news on your end?”

Shelton cackled his familiar laugh, “I’m still thawing out from Sweden, padna! I’ve never been that cold in me life!”

“Yeah, must have been terrible. You only managed, what, ten or eleven goals all season?”

“Ha! A baker’s dozen, you wanker! But the chairman there’s so cheap he wouldn’t buy a glass of water for free, you feel me? I’m off to Greece or Portugal next year. One last European paycheck, then I’m done being a nowherian. W Connection or that new Miami side in the States will keep me warm during me declining years,” Shelton replied.

“Nowherian? I need to add a ‘Sheltonese-to-English’ translation app to my mobile.”

“A nomad, hoss, somebody without a home. Like you!”

“Touché, Shelton. Touché.” Patrick laughed.

The two old friends concluded their conversation with a promise to touch base in a few days regarding the success of their negotiations with new teams. Patrick stared out the window at a steady rain pelting the planes scattered around the Heathrow tarmac and reflected on how fate had placed Ellie next to him on the flight over.

The whole Celtic business had been a surprise; he hadn’t even considered the Scottish giant on his long list of potential employers, much less the short list. It had all happened quickly, Tom just calling him with the news yesterday and finding him the last seat on the flight from Atlanta to London. And Ellie being on that flight only due to a recent promotion. The flight attendant dropping Ellie in his lap. So many more ways they might never have met than the random pairing that actually occurred.

Hell
, he thought to himself,
had I not declined the proffered first class ticket, I’d have missed her altogether, even if we’d shared a flight.

So many people Patrick had encountered in the game and accompanying lifestyle of professional football were entitled divas, something contrary to how he’d been raised. He thought back to The Game, the one that changed everything.

It took place on the basketball court at Berkeley County High School when Patrick was a mere seventh-grader. In South Carolina, an athlete doesn’t have to enroll in high school to play a varsity sport. If you’re in the school system, no matter how young, if you’re good enough, you can suit up with the varsity. Patrick Sievert began his seventh-grade season playing on the freshman team, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to get any better dominating clumsy ninth-graders. He was bumped up to the junior varsity team and, eventually, the varsity. Late in the season, in a game against rival Goose Creek High, the skinny thirteen-year-old Patrick hit four three-pointers in the fourth quarter alone to help his team to an upset victory. The final long-range bomb was the game-winner, and as it dropped through the net, the youngster shimmied and danced before being mobbed by teammates and carried off the floor.

After a wild locker room celebration, Patrick was excited to jump into the arms of his parents and receive their love and praise, but he emerged onto the court to find no sign of his father, and his mother waiting quietly by the side door to the gymnasium.

“Daddy’s waiting in the truck, Pat,” said his mother, quietly, leading him outside. Dumbfounded, but not wanting to raise the ire of his notoriously short-tempered dad, the budding star nodded and followed his mother to the truck, where the ride home was completely silent.

Once inside the house, the explosion occurred.

As Patrick walked in and set his backpack and gym bag on the kitchen table, his father grabbed him by the arm, spun him around, and backed him against the wall, nose to nose with him.

“What the hell was the little dance at the end, Mr. Big Time? Huh?” Benjamin Sievert slapped the wall next to Patrick’s head violently to emphasize his rage. “Dancin’, hootin’, and hollerin’, eh? Big man! Big time! Fucking big time.”

Patrick was terrified, tears welling up in his eyes.

“I don’t care if you hit a three every time you touch the ball, do you hear me? You don’t
ever
big-time the other team like that. That dancing is bullshit, that celebrating is bullshit, your game is bullshit, you’re lucky one of those big Goose Creek boys didn’t coldcock you for that horseshit. Mr. Big Time. We’ll see how fucking big-time you are tomorrow morning. Forget sleeping in. I’m taking you over to the farm before the chickens are up. You’re gonna bust your ass all weekend. See how big-time you are after that.” Ben Sievert walked away shaking his head, leaving Patrick slumped on the floor, destroyed.

He’d done his best, won the game, announced himself as somebody for college coaches to monitor, but all of that was erased by a single moment of what his dad called “big-timing” the opponent.

This would become a common refrain through Patrick’s high school career, no matter the sport. Modesty was fairly beaten into him. Anytime Patrick received special treatment, deserved or no, his father was there to express his disgust. “Big time, big time, big time.” By the time he left for Furman, he’d heard his father utter those two words more than any other pair he could think of.

The last time he heard them from Benjamin Sievert was on a blustery evening in Chicago.

Patrick’s early success playing in England earned him the opportunity to dress for the United States National Team in a World Cup qualifier against Trinidad and Tobago, his college buddy Shelton’s team. Shelton was dressed for the match as well, although neither of them figured to see any time on the field.

Late in the match, with the US team clinging to a 1–0 lead, an American defender came up limping after a challenge, and word was sent down the bench: “Tell Sievert to get up and get loose.”

With only scant moments remaining, Patrick entered the game, helping to preserve the win, despite never touching the ball.

After the game, chatting with Shelton as the players milled around the field, Patrick heard his name being called and turned to see a sight that made his heart fall through his chest right to the field. His mother, pushing his cancer-ravaged father, a ghost of the burly marine he’d been in Vietnam, in a wheelchair across the track surrounding the field.

Ben Sievert had been advised by his doctor that any travel more strenuous than to the hospital or church was out of the question at such a late stage of his illness. He told his doctor that missing his son playing for the
national team
was even more out of the question. He’d make it to the game, or die trying. Eighteen hours in the passenger seat, stretched over two and half days in the family’s old van almost did him in, but he willed his way to the match.