Free Bad Boy Brit (A British Bad Boy Romance) by Caitlin Daire, Avery Wilde Page A

little I wanted that to happen. Perhaps now was the time to turn my famous charm back on, to reinstate the confidence and sexually charged bi-play that had served me so well with so many other conquests.
    Then again, if memory served, none of that had worked too well the night before. True, Allison had wound up in my bed, but I’d been on the sofa, and she wouldn’t have been in my bed at all if she hadn’t been too drunk to make it back to her hotel and put herself to bed. I suppose I could’ve slept next to her, seeing as my bed had more than enough room for the two of us, but there was no way I would’ve actually done that. She’d been drunk out of her mind, and it wouldn’t have been right for me to sleep beside her, even if nothing sexual happened.
    See? I wasn’t that much of an asshole. I didn’t take advantage of wasted chicks; no way.
    Thoughts whirled like a blizzard through my head. “When are you heading back stateside?” I asked.
    “Tomorrow,” Allison said, sending my world into a spiraling nosedive of desperation.
    “You don’t want to stay and see the sights for a few weeks? It’s London, baby!”
    Allison laughed. “I’d love to, but I’m on the company dime, so—no go. Now that the interview is sorted, they’ll want me back within the next couple of days.” She held up her notepad, filled with a hastily jotted account of the interview. “Thanks for this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that I was the one to get it.”
    “No problem.”
    I watched in horror as she stood and began to gather up her coat and bag. Jesus, she was leaving right this second?
    “I…” Allison started to say something and then stopped.
    “What?” I asked. I was genuinely interested in what she had to say, but anything that kept her here was also a good thing.
    “You’re nothing like I expected,” Allison finally said. “And, believe me, that’s a compliment, considering some of the things I’ve seen in the gossip columns.”
    “Thanks,” I said with a grin. “I’m not sure it sounds like one, but I get it. I like partying. I like attention. I’m lucky to have this lifestyle and I’d be a fool not to enjoy it. But I love football. And other stuff too, but somehow that’s all been left out of the Liam Croft brand. Brian likes the media to only see me that one way—the playboy player. They seem to love it, and the public also seem to love it, so what can you do?”
    “Try the truth?” suggested Allison. She tapped her notebook. “When this interview comes out, people are going to start to see the real you, and I think they’ll like it. I certainly do, and I’d love to see more of this Liam Croft in the post-match press conferences.”
    “Would you like to see more of him anywhere else?”
    I hadn’t been planning to say it but the words seemed to fit perfectly.
    Allison stared back, as frustratingly hard to read as ever. “What?” she asked, though the rising blush in her cheeks gave her away.
    “Have dinner with me.” There was no harm in a little confidence; that was part of who I was as well. “Stay here another day, and have dinner with me tonight.”
    This time, I was sure she’d say yes.

 
    Chapter 7
    Allison
    “Stay here another day and have dinner with me tonight.”
    The words seemed to hang in the air between us; they were out there, there was no unsaying them, and they had to be addressed.
    If Liam Croft had asked me out to dinner a mere twenty-four hours ago, I would’ve asked if it was a business dinner, and assuming the reply was in the negative, I would’ve laughed in his face—or perhaps just said ‘no’ in a nice way, since I’d been brought up to be polite. If he’d asked me first thing this morning then I might have thought ‘what the hell, I just woke up in his bed and it might be nice to refresh my memory of what happened’, but in the end, I was reasonably sure that I would still have said ‘no’.
    But now…it was amazing how much could