Free His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) by Alison Ryan Page B

the desk.
    I didn’t know which flowers were your favorite, so I just went ahead and had them all sent over. Cheers, Patrick .
    Ellie was floored. Any seed of doubt Meg planted earlier had withered and died. The smile on her face was that of a child on first viewing the bounty under the tree on Christmas morning. So big and broad her jaw was actually beginning to ache.
    She stared at the card, prose more beautiful than anything she’d ever read.
    She wanted to speak to Patrick, but more than that she needed to see him. In person. To look into those eyes again, to be swept up in his arms.
    She took the best picture she could, filling the frame with as much color as possible, and sent it to Meg, sans caption. The next picture she took, of the card, was all the explanation her best friend could possibly require.
    Ellie quickly showered and went through her suitcase, hoping that somehow a brand new, flattering dress and perfect shoes had appeared there, gifts from the Flower Fairy. Alas, just the humdrum wardrobe she knew would be there, leaving her precious few options.
    She settled on a sky blue maxi dress with chevron patterns in darker shades of blues and purples, with a white cotton shrug. It was clingy in all the right places, showing off her best assets as well as anything she’d packed, and after a bit of primping she thought she looked as close to her best as she was going to look. She let her hair fall naturally, in dark curls and waves.
    Patrick, I just can’t decide which my favorites are. Do you think you might be able to come by and help a damsel in distress?
    Ellie hoped her text set the right tone, playful, flirty, and not too forward. A Meg-style booty call wasn’t her intention, although inviting a man to her hotel room could be interpreted as such.
    Worse tragedies have occurred, Ellie reminded herself.
    Suddenly, a knock at the door interrupted the beginnings of a wonderful daydream where Patrick misinterpreted her text as a plea for a night of passionate lovemaking on a bed covered in flower petals.
    Ellie glided to the door, looking twice through the peephole in disbelief. There, at her door, in the flesh, stood Patrick Sievert. Only scant moments after she’d sent the text inviting him to pay her a visit.
    How the fuck did he do that?

********
    After Patrick spoke to his agent, he considered the possible impact his disastrous interview could have had on Ellie. Calling her his girlfriend was absurd. All the time they’d ever spent together could be crammed into fewer than ten hours. He knew quite a bit about her, and she him, but he didn’t have any idea how she truly felt about him, what she expected or hoped of him, and beyond all that, Mad or not, he was the Monk. The last thing he needed, with a new club in a new league in a new city, was the complication of a relationship. But he’d jumped into the deep end, so it was sink or swim.
    He called the kit man at the club, Paddy Garvin, and asked if he could recommend a local florist.
    Patrick’s experience was that equipment managers were resourceful fellows; that they knew where to eat, who to see about certain things, they all had a bit of concierge in them. Paddy lived up to his profession’s reputation, sending Patrick to see Dolores at Parkhead Blooms.
    The shop was packed to the gills with all manner of sweet smelling flora, and rather than choose an arrangement, Patrick simply dashed off a card, handed Dolores his plastic, and told her Ellie’s name and that she was staying at the Marriott.
    “As much of this as will fit in her room, yeah? Whatever it’ll cost,” Patrick insisted.
    “A special bird, eh?” Dolores replied.
    “God willing,” Patrick answered, with a wink.
    His next stop was the Marriott, where he checked into a room as near to hers as he could, in the hope he could see the look on her face when she walked into her redecorated accommodations. No such luck, the nearest available room was two floors up, but he figured he