Fool for You Read online

  FOOL FOR YOU

  Crush on You Series, Book One

  Rina Gray

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Copyright © 2016 by Rina Gray.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  Crimson Romance™

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

  www.crimsonromance.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-9949-1

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9949-1

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9950-5

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9950-7

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © gosphotodesign/Shutterstock.

  Thank you for purchasing a Crimson Romance novel. Please sign up for our weekly newsletter for information on new releases, contests, discounts and more.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A Sneak Peek from Crimson Romance

  Also Available

  To Jason, who is better than any hero I could ever write.

  Chapter One

  If Wile E. Coyote ever successfully trapped the Road Runner, he’d have the same just-won-the-lotto grin as Melanie Foster.

  She texted her best friend, Damien, the thumbs-up, prayer hands, and dancing hippo emojis—he’d get that she had good news to share. He always got her. Striding up to the receptionist counter at her brand-spanking-new job, she glanced at the woman’s nameplate. Meena. No last name. Just Meena.

  “Meena, you are now looking at the new associate editor for SportsFanatic.com. I got the job!” Melanie sang and moonwalked backward in her stilettos. Well, she tried and tripped. Not smart considering she wasn’t much of a high-heel enthusiast. Luckily, she managed to grab the counter for balance before the hardwood floor became the most action she’d had in eighteen months.

  “Good for you.” The receptionist rolled her brown, Betty Boop eyes and resumed her clicking and clacking on the keyboard.

  Melanie gave her a strained smile. Seriously? This chick didn’t get how awesome this was. Not only had Melanie scored the associate editor position at SportsFanatic.com, but she was also the first African-American female editor for the online magazine. And, to make her dream job even more amazing—like triple-fudge-brownie-with-hazelnuts-and-caramel amazing—she would be the exclusive writer for the Yankees. The freakin’ New. York. Yankees.

  The receptionist leaned away from the desk and folded her slender arms. “You haven’t started the job yet so … bye?”

  “Let’s do lunch when I start. My treat. See you soon!” Melanie pivoted toward the elevator, all smiles on the outside but mentally flipping the finger with both hands on the inside. Meena would not kill her vibe.

  Pressing the down button, Melanie slid her wire-framed glasses back on her nose, tapped her toes, and waited. Under her breath, she hummed a celebratory got-the-job song. This needed to be celebrated. Nearly all her goals had been achieved. Bomb.com job: Check. Next item: Convince her best friend to be the father of her two-point-five kids and live in a brownstone in Chelsea. Is there such a thing as half a check? A ding from the arriving elevator answered her.

  But she wasn’t worried. If she could beat out eighty-seven candidates for her dream job, she could win the heart of her dream man. The elevator doors slid shut, and she let loose.

  “I just got the jooob. I just got the joooob! Happy job dance, happy job dance!” She diva-fied her dancing with a hip swirl that would make the founders of Zumba proud.

  The elevator dinged, groaned, and stopped on the ground floor. She walked out of the ancient elevator and, with each step, closer to her best friend.

  Damien. Damien. Damien. Just thinking of his Georgia-pecan eyes and quiet storm voice made her palms slick and her heart beat strong and funky like an old Motown bass line.

  Writing kick-ass articles about kick-ass athletes? That she could do. The tall task of convincing her BFF to fall in love with her and do the tangled tango? That loomed over her like the Empire State Building.

  A needle of fear popped her optimistic bubble. Sifting through the deep grooves of her memories, she desperately sought where she could’ve gotten the wrong impression. Had she imagined their connection—the hungry stares, the almost kisses, the soul-tingling touches?

  Their soul-mate bond was the reason why she couldn’t move on. So she’d bided her time, kept it casual with other men, until she couldn’t bear the thought of another woman in his arms.

  There was a hole at the bottom of her heart, and no other man’s kiss, or touch, or words could fill it. It was only and always Damien. The boy who’d defended her from neighborhood bullies, taught her how to field a ground ball, and took her to senior prom when her date had bailed at the last minute.

  The boy who eventually grew into a man who cooked her favorite meals when she came into town, gave her autographed memorabilia from her favorite athletes, and flew her up to New York when her favorite boy bands, one of her guilty pleasures, were in concert.

  His deep voice whispered in her head. “Babe, you don’t know what you’re asking. You’re upset about breaking up with your boyfriend, and you want me because I’m familiar.”

  Pausing before the door of the building, she opened her large purse and rubbed her thumbs over the familiar frayed seams of the baseball cap Damien had placed onto her head before she hit her first home run. Her lucky hat instantly unraveled the double fisherman knots of doubt that had settled in the bottom of her stomach.

  Damien loves me. He’s just scared.

  Pulling out her phone, she opened the notes app to review the list she’d created for Operation: I’m Gonna Make You Love Me. She tapped the screen to mark off the first step: get the job in New York. Now, she needed to find a place near his condo and figure out a way to spend time with him.

  Easy. She grinned down at her phone. There was always a game on television, and if their favorite team wasn’t playing, there were action flicks or the obscure kung fu movies they’d both collected over the sixteen years they’d known each other. And if she was lucky, she could convince him to watch an occasional rom-com. Her eyes froze at the next item on her list: Vanessa. Not so easy.

  Damien was currently dating his boss’s daughter. But from the few conversations Melanie had had with her best friend about the woman, it didn’t seem serious.

  You’ve got
this. Feeling confident about her next steps, she shoved her phone into her purse and smiled.

  Melanie pushed open the front door and walked into a cacophony of car horns, skipping over a slush puddle and sidestepping a Chinese deliveryman. Everyone looked rushed and hurried like contestants on The Amazing Race. And she absolutely loved it. She’d miss her friends in Atlanta, but New York would be her new home. Her pulse skyrocketed at the thought of finally living within minutes of her best friend. Taking a cue from her new city, she picked up the pace to share her good news with Damien. Operation: I’m Gonna Make You Love Me was now in action.

  • • •

  Damien Richards, public relations director extraordinaire, drummed his fingers on his large oak desk. He stared at a video of his client, a basketball center recently nominated for defensive player of the year. White fur jacket, fedora hat with a zebra-print band, and diamond-encrusted cane. Stumbling around his Bentley. Drunk.

  Damien grabbed his phone and pressed the voice-to-text button. “Research methods to break Aaron’s cane, then schedule meeting with idiot client. Avoid beating aforementioned idiot with remaining pieces as this is generally frowned upon by HR.”

  Reaching into his desk, he pulled out his stash of gummy bears and scooped a handful into his mouth. Nice. An extra bag was tucked in the drawer corner. God bless his assistant, Charlotte, who anticipated his sugar cravings when clients did TMZ-worthy screw-ups.

  “Damien,” Charlotte buzzed from the intercom. “Ms. Leslie Taylor on line one for you.”

  “All right.” Leslie was the founder and executive director of Refurbished Dreams, the organization that had steered him away from a troubled path when he was younger and where he currently volunteered his time as a mentor. “And thanks for the gummies. I needed the extra bag.”

  Her light and airy laugh softened his aggravation with Aaron. “No problem, boss.”

  Damien clicked off the line and pressed the blinking red button. “Hey, Les. Thought I already told you I’d swing by to volunteer today?”

  “Damien I … I have some bad news.”

  Leslie’s voice, soft and foreboding, revved his heartbeat.

  “What happened?”

  “Th-they … The bank. They’re closing us down. Oh, God. After fifteen years, hundreds of kids, thousands of hours, all the good Refurbished Dreams has done, and all the kids we’ve saved … What are my kids gonna do now?”

  Leslie’s “kids” were high school to college aged, but she loved them as if they were her own.

  Damien massaged the bass-drum throb at his temple. Cursing softly, he tried to find the right words for the woman who had saved his life. “You know how much I owe you. Hell, if it wasn’t for you and Refurbished Dreams, I’d be wearing orange jumpsuits instead of business suits.” His voice lowered, infusing the conversation with cool and calm. “I’ll do anything within my power to help.”

  “That’s why I called you.” Leslie’s high-pitched voice teetered on the edge of desperation. “The bank is foreclosing the loan for the mortgage.”

  He’d never heard her so panicked, so anxious, so alarmed. Her infamous optimism had been wrung dry.

  “How much time do we have, and how much do we owe?” He tried to quash his accusatory tone. Leslie hadn’t been the best at keeping the nonprofit in the black.

  “We have until the first of April to pay. Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

  A month? That was no time at all to convince someone to cut a check. And a quarter of a million dollars would only temporarily plug the ever-growing hole at the bottom of the barrel.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll set up a meeting and ask for more time. I already applied for the grant at my agency.” It was only for fifty thousand, so it wouldn’t cover everything, but it would help. “Did you have any luck with grants on your end?”

  “No. The company awarded the money to a nonprofit that serves terminally ill children and an organization that supports literacy.”

  He couldn’t see Leslie but could guess from the steady squeak that she was rocking back and forth in her rickety leather office chair. And, if he were a gambling man, he’d place a bet that right about now she was chewing on a pen.

  “Let’s face it, those companies don’t see us as saving lives. If it weren’t for us, our kids would be back on the streets or worse.” Her tone turned as bitter as a January morning in New York.

  Damien nodded, thinking back on his checkered past. Idle hands were the devil’s playground, and when a poor kid with real talent dreams of becoming a sports star were no longer a reality due to an injury, he was a sitting duck for getting pulled into the streets.

  If the injury could be managed, Refurbished Dreams helped the young athletes rehab and get back on track. If the injury was too extensive, like Damien’s had been, they’d help find another dream in sports through mentorship.

  Leslie had yanked him from his depression, pulled him away from the lure of selling drugs, and placed him with a mentor, now his boss, in sports marketing. Leslie had saved him, and he’d become a champion for their cause. But he wasn’t always victorious, and he’d recently lost a mentee to a gang war.

  “We can’t fail them … like Roger.” Heavy and heartsick, Damien’s voice became weighed down by 180 pounds of guilt for a life he hadn’t been able to save. A snake unfurled in the pit of his stomach then slithered and rattled in his chest when he thought of his mentee. Talented. Funny. So full of life. Until he wasn’t.

  “What should we do?” Leslie asked.

  “I’ll check with my boss to see if he can speed up my grant proposal. Why don’t you look up past donors and sponsors? Then we’ll hit the phones, shake some hands, and send out a few email blasts.”

  “That might just work.” A spark of hope ignited Leslie’s tone.

  “All right, Les. I gotta go make some calls. Talk to you soon.”

  “Okay, bye. And Damien? Thanks. I’m sorry I lost it for a few, but I’m back now. I’m good.”

  Damien took off the phone headset, clicked into his boss’s online calendar, and found an opening in thirty minutes. He sent a meeting request to Leonard James’s secretary. Leonard wasn’t only his boss—he’d been Damien’s own mentor at Refurbished Dreams when Damien was in college. Leslie had saved him and given him options, but Leonard had inspired him, groomed him, taken him to client meetings that most men his age wouldn’t attend—and not until they had a senior in front of their title. The man had seen something in Damien. Maybe the son he never had? Damien’s father, dead for several years now, had never taken the time to nurture their relationship. Melvin Richards had only had time for work and broken promises.

  Because Refurbished Dreams meant something to Leonard too, Damien was hopeful he’d help them out with the grant money.

  Leaning back in his chair, he swiveled to face his office door. The white bookcase holding a dozen trophies and awards caught his attention, but the homing beacon was the game ball given to him at the College World Series. He walked over to grab the prize and rolled it around his fingers.

  Memories rushed in—his full athletic scholarship, being drafted by the Dodgers, the injury that killed his shoulder. The injury that killed his dreams.

  Tossing the ball up, he quickly caught it. A soft ding sounded from the computer, and he dropped the ball on the floor and jammed his finger on the keyboard to view the screen.

  “Yes!” Electricity zapped his heart into overdrive. Leonard had accepted the impromptu meeting. Now, Damien just needed to convince his boss and mentor to fork over the big bucks.

  Chapter Two

  Damien picked up his charcoal blazer and strode to Leonard’s office. He stopped in front of his boss’s secretary, Dianne. “Thanks for squeezing me in.”

  She offered a rare smile. The red, retro-style glasses connected to a thin, gold chain slid down her nose. She looked like a librarian whose highlight of the day involved disapproving nods and shushing. “Go on in, hon. He’s ready fo
r you,” she greeted him in a thick Jersey accent. Her sharp, hazel eyes then focused back on the screen, and she resumed typing.

  “And a good day to you, too, Ms. Dianne.”

  She waved a hand. “Save those sweet words and silver tongue for Mr. James.”

  Damien took her advice and walked into the office. Surveying the room, he nearly missed the new photo of himself and Vanessa—Leonard’s daughter and Damien’s girlfriend.

  Damien had known Vanessa since she was a teenager, when Leonard had taken him under his wing. Back then, she’d been a wild child—skipping curfew, maxing out Leonard’s credit cards, and sneaking into clubs.

  Damien had kept his distance until they’d reconnected nearly a year ago at the company’s volunteer project. As they sorted food donations for a local charity, Vanessa had drew him in with her witty personality and sharp intelligence.

  Leonard had pulled him into his office the next day and, to Damien’s surprise, encouraged him to date his daughter.

  “Take a seat,” Leonard greeted him from the couch.

  Damien unbuttoned his blazer and sat across from his boss. A frosted, hand-blown bottle of scotch stood in the middle of the gleaming mahogany coffee table perfectly dividing the office, with black leather sofas on either side.

  Damien cleared his throat, gearing up for the pitch he’d practiced only ten minutes ago.

  “Son. I know why you’re here, and I know you’re passionate about Refurbished Dreams. I remember when Leslie paired us up for the mentor program. You were pissed at the world and moody as all hell about your injury, but look at you now.” He waved his hands toward Damien.

  Damien shook his head. He had been such a whiny little asshole after his injury. Thank God Leslie and Leonard had been there to help him pull his head out of his ass.

  Damien’s eyes darted from his boss to the bottle. Scotch in the middle of the day meant a celebration or bad news.

  “How are things with you and my baby girl?” Leonard crossed his navy-blue, pinstriped slacks at the knee. His smile looked as if an arthritic ventriloquist controlled it. New wrinkles zigged and zagged around his mouth. Bags, dark and deep and heavy, weighed down his eyes.