Playing to Win

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Playing to Win

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Preview another book by this author

  Note from Sami

  eBooks by Sami Lee

  Sami recommends … Shelli Stevens

  Excerpt

  Fifteen minutes after the press event had officially ended, Sam was still in the hospital ward, talking to the girl in the corner. Abbi leaned on the wall nearby to watch them. Something ached inside her at the casual ease with which Sam spoke to the young girl. If he felt awkward at all, it didn’t show.

  In fact, he hadn’t appeared uncomfortable once all day. He was great with kids, a natural. He’d make a terrific dad someday.

  The thought of some other woman being pregnant with Sam’s baby intensified the ache inside her. To distract herself, Abbi tried to keep her mind on the job she was being paid to do. She knew she ought to get a shot of Sam with the girl. A big healthy footballer taking a genuine interest in a clearly ill child—it would have made a great PR shot. The social media crowd would love it.

  She reached inside her handbag and then stopped. Larry Prince would probably read her the riot act if he found out she’d ignored such an opportunity, but Abbi couldn’t bring herself to intrude on the private moment Sam was sharing with this girl. It would be wrong. If he’d meant to make a public spectacle of a perfectly innocuous conversation about muggles, he would have had it while the cameras were rolling. The fact that he hadn’t made Abbi respect the hell out of Sam. He had a deep sense of integrity that was as attractive as his sexy smile and his perfect athletic body.

  Abbi sighed. So much for her career. First she has sex with her client, and then she deliberately ignores a great publicity opportunity because she was mooning over him. She enjoyed her job, but maybe she didn’t have the killer instincts required to be as highly successful at it as someone like Larry Prince. Perhaps she should have been a ballerina after all, like her seven-year-old self had dreamed of being.

  She hadn’t realized she was smiling until Sam said, “What’s so amusing, Abbi?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just rethinking all my life choices, that’s all.”

  Sam raised a brow at that. Did he think she was referring to her decision to engage in sweaty sex with him last night? Like they’d both agreed, that had definitely been a mistake. Yet despite her second-guesses and her sleepless night, Abbi couldn’t bring herself to wish it away. If she was going to make that kind of mistake, she was glad it had been with Sam and not some shallow jerk that would make her wince at her stupidity every time she thought of it.

  Fortunately, Sam didn’t pursue the topic. Instead, he gestured to the girl in the bed. “Abbi Lehman, this is Holly Johnson. Abbi tells me what to do and rips me a new one when I stuff up, that sort of thing.”

  “Wow,” Holly said. “That must blow.”

  Being told by someone in Holly’s situation that her life sucked was a new low. But Abbi tilted her lips, assuming the girl was joking. Or hoping she was. “I have a great dental plan though.”

  “Should come in handy when you need braces.”

  Abbi found herself running her tongue over her teeth. Were they crooked?

  “I guess it’s time to go,” Sam said to Holly. “My minder’s been keeping time.”

  “I haven’t…” Abbi tried to protest, but Holly and Sam ignored her as they clarified the detail about how the first Harry Potter book ended.

  “So next time you’ll tell me about book two, yeah?”

  Holly eyed Sam dubiously. “You realize you could just go on Wikipedia and read the series summary.”

  “Nah. I like your humorous embellishments.”

  “In that case,” Holly put on a lousy Groucho Marx voice, “I’ll be here all week.”

  “See?” Sam laughed as he stood. “I’ll catch you later, Holly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Holly,” Abbi said as she turned to leave with Sam. The girl gave her a jaded stare and said nothing.

  Playing to Win

  Sami Lee

  Published 2018 by Book Boutiques.

  ISBN: 978-1-946363-92-3

  Copyright © 2018, Sami Lee.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA.

  Email support@bookboutiques.com with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.

  Blurb

  Publicist Abbi Lehman likes her job—until she finds herself working as a glorified babysitter for cocky-as-the-devil NFL star Sam Cormack. Sam is unpredictable, unruly, impossible—and impossibly sexy. When her boss insists she accompany Sam to a black-tie restaurant opening, things really start to heat up. Soon she’s indulging in a hot tryst that threatens her career—and her heart.

  Sam has wanted Abbi for a long time, but his bad boy reputation isn’t doing him any favors. She thinks he’s only interested in a fling, when with her he’s starting to see something more is within his grasp. He wants it all with Abbi, if he can only convince her he’s left his playboy days behind him.

  That’s going to mean putting his heart on the line in the toughest game he’s ever played—one he can’t afford not to win.

  Previously Published

  (2015) Kindle Worlds | Original Title: Twice as Daring

  Acknowledgements

  Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design

  Chapter 1

  Abbi Lehman knocked on the door to her boss’s office as soundly as she could, given that her hands were shaking.

  “Come in.”

  She pushed open the door and walked into the inner sanctum of Larry Prince of Prince PR. The business’s namesake was sitting behind his desk, the phone to his ear as he wrapped up a call. “I’m putting my faith in you here, Davis. You screw this up, I’ll have your nuts removed and bronzed. They’ll make a fine paperweight for my office.”

  Abbi tried to swallow the ball of nerves lodged in her throat, but it wouldn’t budge. Larry Prince had not built his hugely successful public relations company by tolerating failure. She considered faking a sudden stomach ache and sprinting from the office, but she determinedly closed the door behind her, cutting off that option. She was here now, she had to say what she’d come to say and hope that her boss would understand.

  After all, she wasn’t a failure. She’d simply been given an utterly impossible task. An utterly impossible man. Sam Cormack. The punter for the Miami Alligators football team—known affectionately to most as the Gators—had been the bane of her existence for three months, and she’d had it with him.

  Larry finally ended his phone call and turned his attention fully towards her. He smiled. “Abbi Lehman. Abracadabra Abbi. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Abracadabra Abbi. Oh, she wished he’d stop calling her that. It was a pet name he’d coined last month when Sam Cormack had gotten embroiled in a bar brawl in south Florida and had somehow come out of it looking like a hero instead of the hot-headed pain in the ass he was. Larry seemed to think she’d weaved some media magic to spin Sam’s unruly antics into a positive. But the fact was Sam had been defending some local girl from an abusive ex-boyfriend and
everyone in the bar had confirmed the story.

  And instead of pressing charges against Sam for assaulting a Florida native, the police who’d been called to the scene had asked for autographs. Their selfies with the NFL star had made it onto all the top sports blogs and the story had been played on the evening news. The fact that Sam refused to talk about the event only made legend of his heroism grow. It made him look humble.

  Something the cocky Australian most definitely was not.

  “I was hoping to talk to you about something,” Abbi told her boss. “It’s a little difficult.”

  “If it’s difficult, you can have five minutes instead of three. Take a load off.”

  Abbi sat on the black leather chair opposite Larry’s desk, perching on the edge of it. Fifty percent of her still felt like bolting, but then she remembered Sam Cormack’s brash, smug face and she just wanted to—

  “I can’t do it anymore,” she burst out.

  “Can’t do what?”

  “Sam Cormack.”

  Oh, that hadn’t come out right. She didn’t want to think the words do and Sam Cormack in the same sentence. It conjured all kinds of mental pictures that she couldn’t handle anymore. The kind of mental images that had been driving her insane since the second she’d laid eyes on him. The man was insufferable, but he was also insufferably hot. With those broad shoulders and twinkling blue eyes, that raspy, sexy Australian accent…

  Focus Abbi. Focus.

  “What I mean is…I think our working relationship has become untenable, and I’d like you to assign Sam to another publicist.”

  Her satisfaction at having gotten the words out exactly as she’d rehearsed them was tempered by Larry’s raucous laugh. “Good one, Abbi.”

  Abbi clenched her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t joking, Mr. Prince.”

  “You must have been. How long have you worked here now, Abbi. Four years?”

  “It’s coming up to seven,” Abbi corrected. “You hired me for an internship straight out of college.”

  “It’s really been that long?” Larry shook his head. “Time flies when you’re building an empire, I guess. So after seven years, you don’t know me well enough to figure out I’d never break up a winning team. I thought you were a smart cookie, Abracadabra.”

  “I am smart, sir. Smart enough to know when I should bow out. I’ve never asked you for anything like this before. I’ve always done everything expected of me.”

  “And you’ve done it well. That’s why I put you on such a vital assignment. Ted Maddox is one of our most important clients.”

  “I know that.”

  Ted Maddox owned the Gators. Last year, he’d contracted Prince PR to run an advertising campaign. Abbi had been lucky enough to work on that campaign and she’d been impressed with how professionally the organization was run.

  It had been a good experience and a great addition to her resume. So when Larry had put her in charge of another assignment involving the Gators, she’d been thrilled.

  Then she’d met Sam Cormack and everything had turned to crap.

  “As far as I can tell, you’ve been doing a great job,” her boss went on. “Cormack’s punting skills are among the best in the league, but the reputation Sam made for himself playing football in Australia was not great. If the man wants to be the team’s regular punter, he needs to keep his nose clean.”

  “I’m very familiar with his reputation.” A reputation for partying as hard off the field as he played on it. A history of affairs, fast cars and house parties to which the police had been called could be found with a quick internet search. There was even an ex-wife, to whom he’d only been married six months, who’d claimed emotional abuse.

  The woman, a model by the name of Tiffani, had eventually dropped her case against her ex when two of her own friends had backed up Sam’s side of the story. They’d claimed that he was a decent guy and Tiffani had targeted Sam with the express intention of raising her Instagram profile. But some of the mud had stuck, regardless, something that happened when enough people only read headlines. Sam was generally viewed as a hot head with dicey scruples who courted trouble as often as he courted women.

  “The Gators were impressed with his work last season, but not as won over by his off-field reputation,” Larry continued, mirroring Abbi’s own thoughts. “They’re paying him big bucks because he averages forty-four yards a punt, but the last thing the team wants is a scandal. If it looks like there might be one—”

  “I know, that’s where I come in,” Abbi finished before Larry could. She could feel her hopes of being rid of Sam Cormack slipping away, but she clung to them as long as she could, arguing her case like a lawyer fighting for a hard luck client. “But, Mr. Prince, he’s so…obnoxious. He doesn’t pay any attention to what I say. I ask him not to put himself in situations that have newsworthy potential, but he ignores me. He has a boyish fascination with ridiculously fast sports cars. He’s been cited for speeding three times in three months. And the women.”

  Abbi tried for a derisive scoff, but she feared it sounded more like a piggish snort. “The women throw themselves at him. They send him panties and ask him to sign their cleavage. And he does it. He does it because he’s a shallow, womanizing jerk who loves the attention. He’s a child, and a…a…”

  “An immature, overpaid, overrated dickhead?”

  With a gasp, Abbi swung her gaze to the doorway. Speak of the devil. Who should be standing there but the man himself. Heat filled her face at having been caught deriding him to her boss, but from the amused grin on Sam’s face, it would seem he wasn’t bothered by what he’d overheard. To the contrary, he was offering suggestions.

  Insufferable.

  “I wouldn’t say overrated,” Abbi conceded, knowing that on the field at least the man was damn good at what he did.

  “Well, that’s something.” Sam sauntered into the room and plonked his big body down in the chair next to Abbi’s, dragging a hand through his dark brown hair until it stood on end. The dark shadow of his beard told her he hadn’t shaved that morning and the idea engendered a frustrating temptation to touch his strong jawline.

  As he made himself comfortable resting one foot on the opposite knee, he sent Abbi a wink. “No offense taken, by the way.”

  “I’m so relieved to hear it,” Abbi drawled, glad her voice didn’t betray her sudden breathlessness. “But Mr. Prince and I were having a private conversation. You can’t just barge in.”

  “Your secretary wasn’t at her desk.” Sam ignored Abbi’s remonstrance and addressed his explanation to Larry. “You wanted to see me about something?”

  “I wanted to meet with both of you,” Larry said. “Your request to see me came at the right time, Abbi.”

  Larry had let her go on about Sam, all the while knowing he was expected any minute? She struggled to tamp down her annoyance. “What is this about?”

  “Like I was saying a few moments ago, I think you and Sam here are working well together—your personal opinions aside.”

  Larry’s lips twitched and Sam chuckled. Abbi fumed. They were treating her perfectly legitimate complaints as though they were the hormonal ravings of a hysterical woman. They probably thought she had her period or something.

  “That being said, I wanted to touch base with you about the opening of Allure tonight. You’re still intending to go, Sam?”

  “Too right, it’s a goer.”

  “Whatever that means,” Abbi muttered. Really, Sam’s collection of Australian colloquialisms wasn’t as charming as he thought it was.

  “That’s what I figured you’d say. So, Abbi, how are you planning to handle it?”

  Are not were. What was left of her hopeful heart sank. “Are you sure there’s no chance…”

  Her voice trailed off. From the look on her boss’s face, Abbi concluded he had no intention of removing her from the watching-every-step-Sam-took assignment that had taken over her life, no matter how difficult the man was to work with. And she had no m
ore arguments to present, at least none that she was going to use.

  Because she obviously couldn’t tell Larry Prince the real reason she was finding this job so taxing. She’d had difficult clients before and she’d handled them. It was all part of being a publicist as far as she was concerned. What wasn’t part of the job was having to fight off a mind-addling attraction to her client. Neither was waking up night after night with a sheen of sweat, hot and horny because she’d had a vivid erotic dream about someone she was supposed to view with professional distance.

  It shouldn’t be happening, but it was. Even now, sitting next to him, Abbi could feel his magnetism reaching out to her, muddling her thoughts and turning her body to high heat. The attraction was nonsensical—she didn’t even like him—but it was undeniable. For three months, she’d been in equal parts lusting after and wanting to murder the man she was supposed to be representing.

  She could hardly confess to her employer that she wanted to screw her client and it was distracting her from her work.

  “Abbi?”

  Abbi scrambled to remember the thread of conversation. “My plans. Right. I have a few options for damage control. I thought I’d start by preparing a few press releases—”

  “Wait a second,” Sam interrupted. “What do you mean by damage control? I’m going out for a drink, that’s all.”

  “And all you were going to do last month was go for a drive. You ended up assaulting a man in South Florida.”

  “He had it coming. Besides, it wasn’t like I planned it.”

  “You don’t have to plan for disaster, Sam. It just seems to follow you around.”

  Abbi glanced at him briefly—very briefly, like she always did, because she was afraid of what would happen if she stared too long. She’d be caught up in some lust-fogged vortex no doubt. The man looked like Hugh Jackman, post-Wolverine-workout program. Sounded like him too.

  It simply wasn’t fair.

  “I still don’t see the issue,” Sam argued. “What could be the problem with me having one drink with a mate?”