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3

Adriano

"What's that?" Nathaniel trudges down the stairs, his footsteps heavy. Standing at six-foot-four and weighing in at two hundred and thirty pounds, he sticks out like a sore thumb in this old house. Truth be told, both of us feel like we don't quite belong here, but Nathaniel is surprisingly knowledgeable about real estate – and pretty much everything else related to finance, politics, and all things nerdy. It's not what you'd expect from a football player. He bought this place as an investment because he thought it was a steal, and he was tired of living in the neighborhood where most of the other pro players in town reside.

He said there was too much drama there.

Nathaniel's brilliant idea was for both of us to move out of his huge mansion near the training center and into this place. He even tried to persuade me to do the same, saying it would help "clean up our images." Nathaniel is in the midst of a contract holdout, and I just signed a one-year deal with our team here in Denver, provided I keep my nose clean in public. It's not the greatest deal, but I never really aimed for a massive contract anyway. I'm just a poor kid from West Bend, Colorado. What on earth would I do with twelve million dollars a year? Nathaniel is holding out for something better, mainly because he and our team's head coach don't see eye to eye.

Anyway, I'm not a grandma, so there's no way short of Hell freezing over that I'd actually move to this kind of neighborhood. Even if my ball-buster of an agent, the one with a mouth filthier than a sailor and a smoker's voice that comes from a pack-a-day habit, agreed with Nathaniel: "Put a lid on all that frat shit, Adriano, and keep your dick in your pants."

Nathaniel and I have both been playing professional football in Colorado for the past few years. Nathaniel landed a four-year contract here straight out of college in Florida, and I got traded back out here from Texas a year after that. Our head coach hates both of us, calls us hotheads, asshats, and whatever other expletive he can think of, but the General Manager loves us – me way better than Nathaniel because, let's face it, I'm pretty damn good in front of a camera. Nathaniel hates the interviews and photographs and autographs and dealing with fans. In fact, if he didn’t love the game so much, I’m pretty sure he’d be holed up out on his ranch totally shut away from the human race.

Nathaniel takes this stuff a lot more seriously than I do. I'm a work-hard-play-hard kind of guy. Football has always been my first love, but hell, if I can't blow off steam in my off time, what's the point?

Nathaniel loosens up every so often – mostly when moonshine or muddin' is involved – but otherwise he's nose-to-the-grindstone obsessed with the game. Most people think he's an asshole, but we've been best friends since grade school. His parents took in my sister and I during my senior year in high school after basically everything in my family fell apart.

Last week after I signed the contract, Nathaniel's mother – real name Bess, but my sister and I call her Mama Ashby – called and laid a big ol' guilt trip on me about setting an example for my younger sister and cleaning up my image so I don't waste the opportunity to stay here in Colorado. I can't really do shit to argue with that because I know it's true.

So that’s why I wound up deciding to move into Nathaniel's new place for the next couple of months while renovations are being done on my house. Apparently I need to lay low and act like an adult.

Except I'm standing here not wearing drawers and holding a box of blow up dolls. So, all in all, I guess Nathaniel is more of an adult than I am.

"It's a box of blow-up dolls." I set the box on the living room floor.

"The great Adriano Jackson is that hard up that he has to resort to inflatable women?" Nathaniel gives me side-eye as he passes through the living room and heads toward the kitchen.

"Of course not. I've got plenty of real live women throwing themselves at me. It was Moose screwing around. He sent it to Dick Donovan." The name makes me chuckle. Maybe I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, but that shit's funny. Even if the very hot, infinitely fuckable girl next door thought I was some kind of blow-up-doll-screwing pervert.

Nathaniel has his head in the refrigerator pulling out vegetables and a family-sized package of ground beef. I can't see his face, but I know for sure his eyes are rolling hard because he thinks Moose's antics are stupid as hell.

Moose, obviously nicknamed for his size, always sends prank shit to the team at the end of the season. It's a tradition, the same way I play the bongos naked before big games - and also randomly when the mood strikes, like this morning. The naked bongo playing started as a joke before my first game in Texas. I had too many beers and bought bongo drums and then thought it'd be funny to pull a Martino McConaughey, since I was in Texas and all. Then we won, and clearly I could never stop playing them or we’d lose. That's how superstitions work. So the bongos have followed me around since then.

Nathaniel turns around and gives me a disgusted look. "Damn it, dude. Why are you coming into the kitchen with your junk all hanging out? I want to eat, not vomit." He pauses. "Wait. Were you in the front yard like that?"

"I was playing out on the deck upstairs and the doorbell rang."

"Some people put fucking clothes on to get the mail," he grumbles. "Get the hell out of my kitchen."

"You could have answered the door, man. You heard me playing."

Nathaniel shrugs. "I was in the shower."

"Anyway, it wasn't the mail guy. Ask me who it was."

Nathaniel sighs heavily. "Do I care who it was?"

"You would if you got a look at your hot as hell next door neighbor. She came by because the blow-up dolls got delivered to her."

Nathaniel groans. "You went outside buck naked to get a package of blow-up dolls from the next door neighbor when I just moved into this neighborhood last week?"

He emphasizes the words “this neighborhood,” which is a quiet, old money kind of place – not the kind where you see naked football players running around. In other words, it’s stuffy as hell.

I shrug. "I don't give a shit about the neighbors. Some old lady was probably across the road looking at my ass through her binoculars and thanking her lucky stars that I moved in here."

Nathaniel snorts. "I'm sure the neighbors appreciate it."

"The chick next door did."

He groans. "Come on, man. Don't shit where you eat. I told you that you could stay here for the summer only if there were no shenanigans."

“I swear to God, Adriano. When did you become an eighty-five-year-old woman? ‘Shenanigans’?”

“Since I’m negotiating contracts,” Nathaniel reminds me. “And yeah, shenanigans. The kind I get in trouble for and then wind up with a shitty team and a shitty contract because I'm a liability. The kind you get in trouble for and then lose your contract with the team.”

“None of our shit has gotten us into any real trouble,” I protest, rolling my eyes. “We only got arrested one time, and that was when we were back home in West Bend.”

"That was last year," Nathaniel argues

"We were only even in jail for a few hours. Racing a couple of tractors down Main Street ain't exactly the crime of the century."

"You ran into Old Man Johnson's fence and the cows got out."

"A couple of cows."

"His whole herd. One walked into the church the next morning during the preacher's sermon."

"One cow out of the whole herd. And that was awesome. Barbara Jo Andrews was in the middle of singing her solo piece."

“Uh-huh. How about the chick who was all over the tabloids because she said you knocked her up?”

“And I didn’t knock her up, did I? I didn’t even sleep with her. And I wrap my junk, thank you very much. The last thing I need are a bunch of little Adrianos running around."

"That's the last thing this world needs," Nathaniel replies. "What about the time you streaked Coach Hardy’s front lawn?”

“That was a dare,” I insist. “And fuck you! You were the one filming it. How were we supposed to know his wife would be home? Or that he'd pick that moment to walk outside? You’ve gotten into just as much trouble as I have, Mr. I-Screwed-The-High-School-Football-Coach's-Wife."

Nathaniel holds up a hand. "I did not screw Coach Tanner's wife and you know it."

"Hey, I don't know what might have happened behind closed doors," I joke. Nathaniel didn't screw our high school coach's wife, although she did practically hunt him down the day of our high school graduation. But neither of us are the kind of guys who'd bed another man's wife, so the cougar moved on to greener pastures. That didn't stop Coach Tanner from believing Nathaniel screwed her, though, and coming after him with a shotgun – or me from giving him shit about it. "So don’t hassle me about shitting where I eat. I didn’t say I was going to bed your neighbor."

Nathaniel rolls his eyes. "I can see it in your eyes."

"She's definitely hot," I remind him. In fact, the thought of her pretending I wasn't standing there naked, glancing away but then looking back at me because she couldn't help herself, makes my dick twinge. The girl is tightly-wound; that much was written all over her. And I could be the one to loosen her right up.

“Get your naked ass out of my kitchen. And stop parading it around the front yard.”

Upstairs, I glance out of my bedroom window toward Stuck-Up Chick's house. I told Nathaniel she was hot, but hot is an understatement. The chick is the sexiest thing I've ever seen in a long time - not trampy and overdone the way most of the groupies who hang around the players are. And she didn't have a damn clue who I was.

When the hell is the last time that happened? Nathaniel and I are two of the most famous faces in the state, at least to people who follow football – Colorado's golden boys, born and raised in a little town in the middle of nowhere: West Bend. It's the reason we get cut a lot of slack for the crap we pull, like when we got arrested in West Bend.

The whole prim-and-proper vibe the neighbor has going on is even hotter. I've never much been into chicks who look like schoolteachers, but I'd definitely let that one rap my knuckles with a ruler.

I step inside the shower intending to shake off the image of the hot little next door neighbor, but instead I just wind up picturing her more vividly. The way she pulled her lush lower lip between her teeth when she looked at me. The way she sucked in a breath as her eyes lingered on my chest. The way she focused on the bongos like she wished they'd suddenly become transparent. The way she looked at me, her jaw set like she was offended by the whole naked with bongos thing, except she couldn't take her eyes off them.

My cock twitches as I picture her standing mere inches away from me.

"I shouldn't be doing this," she says, her voice breathy.

"You practically begged for it."

Her eyebrows go up. "I do not beg."

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