Free Bad Boy's Cinderella: A Sports Romance by Alexa Wilder, Raleigh Blake Page A

at me. “What were you doing?” His gaze travelled the length of me, and I saw something bordering on irritation. My heart sank down to my stomach, settling heavy. “Why did you go out there?Jesus Christ.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “Yeah, well, now they all have pictures of you stumbling out of my house looking like that—” His voice was cold and annoyed and I had the feeling of being dunked very swiftly in ice-cold water. My mind was spinning, my gut churning, and when I opened my mouth to retort, he held a hand up to cut me off as his phone rang again.
    “Jeff, talk to me. Where’s Milligan?”
    I’d never been so soundly dismissed by a man before, and it left me reeling, blinking at him in numb shock. Was this really the same man who’d taken me apart so beautifully just last night?
    “Kylie,” he said, when his call ended moments later. “I’m sorry.” He approached me, hands raised, and I stepped back. “I’m sorry, okay? This is all just… This shit happening—”
    “Don’t patronize me, Reade.”
    He drew in a deep breath, visibly retreating and realizing he’d been too short with me. “I’m sorry,” he said again, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. His attention was too focused on whatever disaster he was facing, and I was an afterthought, a distraction he didn’t need. Which he confirmed immediately by saying, “I arranged for an Uber to pick you up from the back entrance. He’s there now,” and then returning to his phone.
    I watched him for a few seconds, his agitated talking, the sharp gestures of his hand as he snapped at whatever poor employee was on the other end of the line. He was a handsome man, almost devastatingly gorgeous, but right now there wasn’t anything about him that made me want to stay and take this bullshit cold attitude.
    “Good luck,” I muttered, before heading back to the bedroom to get changed. He didn’t respond.
    The drive home was long and lonely, the majority of it spent stuck in the morning rush for close to an hour. A few short hours ago I’d been warm and content in his arms, feeling cherished and worshipped and everything I’d ever wanted a man to make me feel. I’d felt like this could be it for me, that maybe I’d found someone whose arms I would want to sleep in every night for a long time to come.
    Now, I wasn’t so sure.
    I didn’t blame him for his mood. He was facing a crisis with his team, and I knew I wouldn’t have been Little Miss Sunshine in similar circumstances, either. But that was the problem—my crises would be relatively private, contained. His were so public that he had a gaggle of reporters camped out on his driveway, his phone ringing nonstop, no doubt a dozen PR people working in overdrive to bring the world’s sports media under control.
    If Reade Lennox fucked up, any human being in the entire city could learn about it, if they wanted to. And by association, they would know about me, too.
    I’d come to terms with it, in an abstract kind of way. Back when it wasn’t really real . Now I’d slept with him, and I felt something for him, and I’d been snapped wearing his shirt and nothing else…and I was a part of this now. I didn’t know if I wanted to be.
    What I definitely didn’t want to be a part of was a confrontation with Reade’s mother and sister, but as I got out of the car outside my home, another car pulled in beside me, as if it had been waiting for my arrival. And out stepped Georgia Lennox, with a woman who was surely her mother. They looked like the before and after shots of a lifetime of wealth and cosmetic surgery.
    “Mrs. Lennox,” I said as they approached me. “Georgia.” I was acutely aware of how scruffy I was, wearing last night’s dress and makeup—and no shoes! I couldn’t get the second shoe from his car so I just left the other shoe at his place—something Mrs. Lennox picked up on immediately, if her scathing look from my feet to my head was anything to go