Page 22 of Sportsball is for Lovers

Yoni emerges from the bathroom, dressed now in a pair of dark jeans and crisp button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His curly hair is neatly styled, and as he crosses the room to the nightstand where his watch and wedding ring are waiting, I notice the resemblance between him and his brother even more.

There’s another knock on the door, and this time I open it to Lu, wearing a purple velvet jumpsuit with sparkly silver Doc Martens. Her long, blonde hair is pulled back from her face and falls in gentle waves down to her waist.

“Hey, babe,” I tell her, propping the door open. “Let me just grab my blazer.”

Yoni is already at the closet, handing it to me. “Hi, Lu,” he says, as he grabs his leather jacket off the hanger.

“Yoni.” She nods, peering behind him. “That’s the spouse?”

Jared chokes.

“Nah, that’s my brother,” Yoni says. "Jared, come meet LuAnn Pierce.”

Her eyes flick to me as he joins us at the door, a question in her eyes. I shake my head.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, checking him over, then immediately dismissing him. She turns to me. “Your bestie messaged me.”

“Which one?” I ask as we head toward the elevator.

“The cute one with the cuter girlfriend.”

I roll my eyes. “What did Sullivan want?”

He met Lu at a convention we were all at last year in Reno. We had a great time together. At least, I think we did. The memories are hazy, thanks to enough shots to leave me hungover for three days.

“He thought I’d like to sell one of his sketches with the NSFW graphics on my website,” LuAnn says. “He’s really good.”

The elevator dings, and Yoni and Jared let us board first, the brothers both silent.

“He is.” I’ve tried a few times to get him to draw something for my characters, since I write about hockey and baseball and he’s a major sports fan, but he hasn’t agreed yet.

“He mentioned his girlfriend is a graphic designer…”

“She’s the one who did my new cover,” I mention. “The rebrand with the doves?”

“Oh, that was her?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to set her up to do it for me on a permanent basis. She doesn’t have to do it full-time, but I want her on my team.”

Lu nods. “I’d hire her, no doubt.”

“When we’re in Nantucket, hopefully she can come to the convention and you can convince her,” I suggest. “She needs to be—well, not wined and dined, but plied with orange soda and pasta.”

“I can do that,” Lu grins.

As the elevator opens on the mezzanine where the happy hour is being held, we head to the bar. The group of women there are antsy for the bartender to finish setting up.

“Sylvie! Lu!”

Friends smile and wave, and a few ladies draw us into a hug. We say hello to the people we know and meet the people we don’t.

“What exactly is going to happen?” I hear Jared murmur to his brother.

Yoni grins. “Dude, you’re a commodity here. A straight, single man with a full-time job? They’re going to love you.”

A smile on my lips, I look over at him again. Yoni isn’t wrong; Jared has already attracted a fair amount of attention from the group of forty-something women in their thirties and forties.

Since my assistant has been to a few of these before, he’s a known quantity. They know he’s off limits, even if the shiny band on his left hand didn’t proclaim it.

Jared? He’s⁠—

A sense of unease rolls up my spine. I don’t like the idea of him messing around with one of my friends. I have no claim to him; I just don’t like it. I’d feel the same way with⁠—

Well, Sullivan is happily dating Johanna.

Asher’s engaged to Arielle.

Elliott is married to Yoni.

Okay, evidently I need to meet more single men.

I don’t think it’s going to happen at a romance book convention, though.