Blindsided Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1—Avoiding the Rush

  Chapter 2—Flushed out of the Pocket

  Chapter 3—Trick Play

  Chapter 4—Scrambling out of the Pocket

  Chapter 5—Screen Pass

  Chapter 6—Home Field

  Chapter 7—On the Island

  Chapter 8—I Do but I Don’t

  Chapter 9—The Deep Ball

  Chapter 10—Running Down the Field

  Chapter 11—Sacked

  Chapter 12—Encroachment

  Chapter 13—Out of Bounds

  Chapter 14—Dropping Back

  Chapter 15—Driving for the Score

  Chapter 16—Changing the Game

  Chapter 17—Losing and Winning

  Chapter 18--Dropping Back

  Chapter 19—End Around

  Chapter 20—Sudden Death

  Chapter 21—Working in the Trenches

  Chapter 22—Slinging the Ball

  Chapter 23—End Run

  Chapter 24—Running Play

  Chapter 25—Final Seconds

  COMPLETE BOOKLIST

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BLINDSIDED (SEATTLE STEELHEADS FOOTBALL)

  GAME ON IN SEATTLE SERIES #6

  By Jami Davenport

  Copyright © 2015 by Cedrona Enterprises

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Jami Davenport. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This Ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This Ebook may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

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  This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  Email: [email protected]

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  The daughter of one-time rock legends, Emma Maxwell is the good girl of the family, the dutiful sister, the doting aunt, and a dedicated employee in the family party-crashing business. Every Wednesday night at Karaoke, she indulges in her secret fantasy of being a singer. Yet the thrill of being on stage doesn't rival the thrill of a spontaneous liaison with the delectable, yet downtrodden, quarterback of the Seattle Steelheads, Tanner Wolfe, Emma’s long-time crush.

  Tanner didn't see it coming--not any of it. He was blindsided--by his dysfunctional family, his plummeting career, and the one thing he least expected--by love. After photos with Emma go viral, Tanner is caught in a lie and tells a bigger one to get out of it. Now he’s shoulder-pads deep in a temporary marriage while struggling to resurrect his disastrous career and reunite his broken family. As time passes, Tanner begins to wonder if temporary is good enough, but he’s made a promise to Emma, one which has nothing to do with marriage vows and everything to do with her Nashville singing career and the end of their relationship.

  Will Tanner and Emma take the ball and drive for the win, or will they be permanently relegated to the sidelines as the clock runs out on their temporary marriage?

  DEDICATION

  A huge thanks to Yvonne and RJ for dropping everything and being there when I needed you.

  Prologue

  Emma Maxwell was the first to admit to being a hopeless romantic. She believed in love at first sight, and she believed when she saw “The One,” she’d know it. Birds would sing. Harps would play. Her heart would recognize its soul mate. And Emma suspected she’d found him.

  For that very reason, she fought off several Greeks to get a front row seat in the student section right behind the players’ bench. Pleased at her rare display of aggressiveness, she settled into the plastic bleacher seats at Husky Stadium, ignoring the glares of the Sigma Pi whatevers. Next to Emma sat her twin sister, Avery, who’d been rendered speechless after witnessing Emma’s triumph over the frat boys. Even in their drunken state, they dared not mess with a woman on a mission.

  The sun glinted off the boats bobbing in the small bay off Lake Washington. A slight breeze kept the late summer day from being too hot, but Emma wasn’t here for boats or a water view.

  She was here for him.

  She raised her binoculars as the team ran onto the football field for their home opener and spotted him immediately. Tanner Wolfe, quarterback, was last year’s freshman sensation. He’d led the University of Washington Huskies aka Dawgs to a Bowl game and third place in the conference. Everyone expected big things this year of the boy who was barely a man. He carried a lot of weight on those broad shoulders of his, and he did it with a confident smile and easygoing attitude.

  Emma had always been intuitive. While she’d never claim to be psychic or clairvoyant, she knew things. After what she’d been through with her first love, she’d thought a harmless crush on a campus celebrity might be the best thing to happen to her. Yet when her infatuation on the quarterback continued through his freshman year—her senior year in high school—she began to wonder.

  What she was feeling didn’t feel like a crush, if felt like—

  Love.

  Emma followed Tanner’s every move through his warm-ups. When he came to the sidelines for the kickoff and removed his helmet, he turned to squint up into the crowd. Their eyes met briefly, and Emma knew.

  Yes, she knew.

  From that moment forward, Tanner Wolfe held her heart in his big hands.

  Even if he didn’t know it and never would.

  Chapter 1—Avoiding the Rush

  Five Years Later

  Tanner Wolfe lived in fear every single day, a fear no one saw, a fear that haunted his dreams, and crushed the life out of his happiness.

  Tanner was a fraud. A big, fat fucking fraud. Not that he was really fat. Instead he was six-foot-four of pure muscle and crazy-good athletic talent. And sometimes—most of the times—he hated himself for it.

  People thought he was amusing and charming and completely unflappable. He wasn’t—not deep down where it actually counted. Instead he was the total opposite, hoping like hell the word never got out that his devil-may-care attitude was as fake as his come-on lines and broad smile. Women didn’t seem to mind the fake part, and most of the time Tanner told himself he didn’t give a shit either.

  Most of the time.

  But what about the other times? What if he was exposed for the fake he was and his protective outer layer was skinned down to the raw, black ugliness that dwelled inside him?

  His teammates and fans would hate him, and his on-going campaign to make everyone love him would crash and burn just like the rest of his life had lately. He’d survived a lot of stuff in his twenty-four years, but he didn’t think
he could survive being exposed. His charm was all he had, that and an overabundance of fake arrogance and contrived confidence most people couldn’t see through. It’s no surprise in the age of texting and tweeting, that no one cared enough to look beyond the surface. Everyone was wrapped up in their separate lives—just like Tanner.

  Or at least like he once was.

  Then things changed. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know exactly when, but if he had to pinpoint the why and the when, he suspected his world shifted the day he’d heard his hockey-playing brother had been traded to the Seattle Sockeyes, the same town where Tanner played professional football. Even worse, he’d found out about Isaac the same day he’d thrown an interception with ten seconds left on the clock to lose the last game of the Steelheads’ umpteenth losing season. Possibly Tanner’s last game as a starting quarterback. He’d had two years to prove himself, and he’d done a piss-poor job of it.

  On that day, the scales fell off his eyes, and he saw the light. His carefully constructed life was all a façade. His goals, his dreams, his future, once taken for granted, were getting more and more out of reach, like one of those nightmares where the harder a guy runs to escape the monster, the deeper the quicksand gets, and the slower he goes. It didn’t help that team management drafted a hotshot rookie quarterback in the first round on the same day big brother signed a huge, long-term contract with the Seattle Sockeyes. Tanner had just been served notice by his team and by his life.

  Thank you, throwing arm, and thank you, asshole big brother. In their screwed up, uber-competitive sibling rivalry, Isaac had beaten him to the punch once again.

  Tanner was an involuntary member of the Wolfe Pack—the nickname the press used when referring to the three brothers who played professional baseball, football, and hockey. Damaged souls every last one of them, rooted in their proverbial dysfunctional family in which what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. They were all strong on the surface, and weak as newborn babies underneath.

  But Tanner never exposed his belly, not since his mom died, not since he’d learned that weakness angered his father and got him either the belt or running laps until he threw up and/or passed out from exhaustion.

  Isaac’s move to Seattle had been months ago, and things hadn’t gotten better as winter gave way to spring. Early June in Seattle proved to be a warm, sunny one, but Tanner couldn’t shake the ominous feeling his life was about to change, and not necessarily in a good way. As his buddy Hunter liked to say, adversity and change force a guy to grow and become a better man.

  Whatever.

  When his agent Mark Beedle called to report the breaking news, Tanner put on his game face even as his insides churned, while those two bacon burgers he ate for dinner plotted their escape from his stomach.

  “Are you sitting down?” the bastard said. His agent had a well-deserved rep as a ruthless jerk, though his wife and business partner was even scarier.

  “I am now,” Tanner said as he sank his butt onto a plush couch in his Seattle high-rise. He stared out the wall of windows, but the beauty of an early Seattle summer escaped his notice. Not even the orange and purple sunset over the Olympic Mountains reflecting on Puget Sound caught his attention.

  “The Steelheads have been sold.”

  Tanner stopped breathing as he attempted to process what this meant for him and his team. Everyone knew the slimy owner and his fat-assed, lazy sons had bled the team dry then attempted to move them out of town. The league had been not-so-secretly trying to oust them from ownership for the past five years. When the Steelheads drafted Tanner in the first round two years ago, he’d cringed even though he put on a good public face. Playing football for the Steelheads was like being sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  The city not-so-affectionately dubbed the team the “Headcases” in honor of the drama and dysfunctional surrounding the perpetual losers. Tanner hadn’t helped matters any with his partying and outrageous antics which had nothing to do with football and everything to do with selfish attention-whoring. He’d been the starting quarterback since the fourth game of his rookie season, and he’d be the first to admit he hadn’t been much of a leader.

  “What’s the word on the street? Is this sale good news or bad news?” Tanner asked, wondering if he was leaving the rain for sunny California. Years ago, the thought would’ve thrilled him, but not so much now. He’d played his college ball at the University of Washington, and he’d grown fond of the Northwest. Being an outdoorsy guy, he loved the fishing and hiking opportunities and the laid-back, informal lifestyle. Hell, the people of Seattle wore their best jeans to five-star restaurants, understood good coffee, and drank microbrews by the gallon. Yeah, his kind of city, even if his play sucked as much as the team did.

  “Both.”

  “Who bought them?”

  “A group of wealthy Seattle businessmen known as the Seattle Gridiron Group, led by the Reynolds family.”

  “So what’s the bad in that, Beed?” Tanner knew all about the Reynolds family. They’d been in Seattle before it was called Seattle. Starting out as timber barons, they’d moved onto dabbling in just about everything. The real estate crash caught them with their pants down, but they’d recovered, and he understood savvy investments in various real estate ventures and IT companies were building their fortune once again.

  “They’ve already cleaned house. All of the former owner’s people are gone right down to the coaching staff. Make sure you don’t get yourself swept out with the trash.”

  “Are you calling me trash, Beed?” Like he hadn’t been called worse in his twenty-four years, especially by his father.

  “Nah, but I’m cautioning you not to act like trash.” Beed laughed. “The Reynolds family prides themselves on family, community service, and a stellar reputation for honesty. They’re going to expect the same from you.”

  “I can deal with all of it but the family crap.”

  “Yeah, well, unless you want to be playing third-string in the arena league, you’d better play ball with them and make nice with that hockey-playing brother of yours. After all, Brad Reynolds is VP of the Sockeyes, and rumor has it, Carson Reynolds will be president of the Steelheads.”

  “Not that tight-ass.”

  “Yup, that tightass.”

  “Shit.” Tanner leaned his head back and closed his eyes, but nothing stopped the pounding in his temple.

  “There’s more.”

  Tanner groaned.

  “Carson himself wants to meet with you tomorrow morning at 6:30 A.M. at the Bridge.”

  Everyone called the combination training facility/team headquarters the Bridge because it had this weird bridge connecting the two sections to circumvent a salmon stream which flowed into Lake Washington.

  “Are you f—uh, nuts?”

  Beed laughed. “Call me and let me know how it goes.”

  Tanner growled and hung up the phone. Shooting to his feet, he paced the floor, full of nervous energy and concern for his future. Carson Reynolds was a hard-assed, straight-shooter of a businessman with the Midas touch. He’d make the team into a contender or die trying, while taking no prisoners.

  If Tanner didn’t clean up his act, he’d be out on his ass, and at the least relegated to an obscure third-string position elsewhere; at the worst, he’d be out of the league altogether.

  Tanner wasn’t ready to give up on his pro football career. Not ready to prove his father right—that he’d never amount to anything but one predictable failure after another.

  Tanner couldn’t think of anything worse in his life than giving the old man that satisfaction.

  * * * *

  Emma Maxwell’s sisters and friends were having a raucous girls’ night out.

  Emma, not so much.

  Nothing unusual there. Emma dreaded this kind of stuff because she was like a fish out of water. The other women at the table knew it wasn’t Emma’s thing, but unfortunately, they’d all imbibed beyond the point of no return and ceased
to be cognizant of their own mouths, let alone notice Emma’s growing discomfort.

  Since Emma didn’t drink, middle sister Bella, the family wild child, coerced her into going out with them so they’d have a designated driver. Emma was no match for Bella’s persuasive and manipulative talents. Faster than she could concoct a reason to stay home, they’d piled into Izzy’s huge SUV and headed for the local sports bar.

  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, Emma lectured herself. She’d find a way to enjoy the evening hanging out with her sisters and a few friends, even though she wasn’t drinking. Only enjoy didn’t quite cover it. As the night wore on, she felt like she always did, as if the others were part of some secret club for which Emma didn’t have a key. They talked about everything from who was the hottest guy, who had the biggest dick, and who had the most orgasms in one night—Bella, of course, won that one.

  Meanwhile Emma stood on the outside looking in. Being the sober one in a bunch of outrageous, wasted females was like being the only person going the right way on I-5 and doing your best to avoid a head-on collision while making sure the others didn’t crash and burn.

  “Good thing we brought Emma,” Avery, Emma’s twin, pointed out as she took another swig of wine and giggled. She tapped something out on her phone and giggled some more. Bella leaned over and peered at her phone, which Avery immediately covered.

  “You’re sexting with Isaac. Way to go, Ave. I taught you well.” Bella patted Avery on the back and belched. Manners didn’t mean crap to Bella.

  Avery grinned, not denying what she’d been doing. She’d just gotten engaged a few weeks ago to Isaac Wolfe, a defenseman on the Seattle Sockeyes hockey team, and they were madly in love.

  Oldest sister Izzy glanced up from her own phone and slipped it into her purse, most likely fearing being caught doing the same thing with Cooper, her fiancé and the captain of the hockey team.