Love Game: a sports romance novella Read online

  2019 Emma Scott Books, LLC

  All rights reserved

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Love Game

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  More from Emma Scott

  for Gayle Williams

  co-appreciator of temperamental, sexy, tortured tennis players,

  co-founder of the unofficial Nick Kyrgios Fan Club

  Love you, lady

  Xo

  Love game (n)(tennis): a game in which the defeated player has scored no points

  Tennis Scoring

  Zero: Love

  1 pt: 15

  2 pts: 30

  3 pts: 40

  4 pts: Game

  All: Tied score except when Deuce (The game was tied, 30-all)

  Deuce: A score of 40-40

  Set: Six games. In men’s tennis, each match is made up of three or five sets, depending on the tournament. To win a set, a player must win at least six games.

  Kai

  Darrin Cahill: Welcome back to the final match of the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament where Sikai Solomon, our hot-headed, show-boating Australian, is battling against his number one rival, Bradley Finn, of the United States.

  John McEnroe: You’re right about that rivalry. Brad typically gets under Kai’s skin more than any other player. But right now, Kai has the crowd in the palm of his hand, doing trick shots, and joking with the spectators.

  Cahill: Indeed. Kai’s unusual style of play has been on full display throughout this tournament. But no smashed rackets. Yet.

  McEnroe: As a former racket-smasher myself, I understand the frustration and pressure, but I’d like to see Kai take his career seriously. He’s got talent beyond measure, but he doesn’t bother training, doesn’t have a coach…

  Cahill: And his short fuse comes with a price tag.

  McEnroe: Most Fined Player on Tour doesn’t have the same ring to it as Grand Slam Winner.

  Cahill: Right you are, John. But on the other hand, no one puts on a more entertaining show in tennis, as evidenced by this sold-out crowd here in Brisbane. And now the break is over, and we return to the action where Kai is up one set to none in this best-of-three match. Let’s see if he can keep his cool and pull out a win here. If he does, it’ll be a great portent of things to come, two weeks from now at the Australian Open.

  One set down, one to go, I thought and flashed a winning smile at a bunch of kids—tennis hopefuls—in the stands. The commentators like to paint me as a volatile arse who didn’t give a shit about anything. But I loved the kids. I loved how purely they loved the game. Maybe it’s because I had been like that. Once.

  The kids waved enthusiastically, all smiles and excited faces, and my chest swelled.

  Do it for them. Do it for the crowd.

  I’d been giving the crowd—my crowd—a good show. We had a love-hate relationship, my fans and I. They loved my no-look shots and ’tweeners. My so-called meltdowns…?

  Not so much.

  But today was a good day. Brad Finn might’ve had the world fooled into thinking he was a gentleman of tennis, but I knew his true colors. He was a racist prick with a fake smile and a weak backhand. Beating his arse for the championship at Brisbane was going to be the perfect end to this tournament. Because meltdowns aside, when I wanted to win, I won.

  And today I wanted to win.

  As Brad and I passed each other on the changeover, he put on his winning smile and uttered between his teeth, “Not bad for a half-breed.”

  My mum was Australian; my father, Samoan. That made me the only Samoan-Australian on the Tour, a fact Brad liked to remind me of, often. Except Dad wasn’t Samoan anymore. Dad wasn’t anything anymore. Only ash in an urn on Mum’s mantlepiece. Nothing left of him but his Samoan blood in my veins, his dark skin on my bones, and his love of tennis ingrained in my DNA.

  Brad’s words unleashed the old pain. It gripped my heart, erasing the warmth, the good feelings, the kids’ smiles… All of it. Too much. It threatened to undo me, and I couldn’t let that happen. Ever. Like some sort of internal combustion, I lit the grief on fire and ignited my blood. I gripped my racket until my knuckles turned white in an effort not to whack Brad in his face.

  “Are you hearing this shit?” I demanded of the chair umpire, perched high in his seat that overlooked the court.

  “I beg your pardon?” the ump asked. He was a stiff-looking, older man with a white mustache, wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons.

  “Aye, blind and deaf, ya daft old prick,” I muttered and flounced onto my bench.

  The ump leaned into his mic and told the sold-out crowd, “Code violation, Mr. Solomon. Verbal abuse of umpire.”

  The crowd booed, and I felt their energy tense up, ready to flip from the love part of our love/hate relationship to the hate.

  “Oh, that you heard?” I sneered at the ump. “Bloody fucking ridiculous.”

  The ump leaned placidly into the mic. “Second code violation: audible obscenity. Point penalty, Mr. Solomon. The score is now 15-love.”

  The crowd was muttering now, the low rumble peppered with a few boos. The cameras were up in my face while Brad Finn was back on the court, aiming a smug smile at the hardtop and readying to serve a game he was winning before it even had begun. Every spectator’s face seemed to suddenly wear Dad’s disapproving frown.

  No, I can do this. Keep my shit together. For him.

  I grasped my racket handle tighter, sweat dripping between my shoulder blades; Brisbane was a furnace in January. Brad took his damn time to serve, bouncing the ball again and again, almost running out the serve clock because he knew it irritated me. I didn’t need time to prepare a serve. I walked to the baseline, tossed the ball, slammed it home. I’d logged ten aces to Finn’s none in the first match alone.

  Because I was better than Brad Finn and he knew it.

  I read his body language. I knew where the serve was coming before he did. When he finally tossed the ball and slammed it to my right, I was already there. I blasted it back, then charged the net.

  Finn whacked a forehand.

  I returned to the back corner.

  There was no chance for him to get there in time; the ball hit right where I wanted it. I pumped my fist.

  “Out!” one of the line judges called.

  I stopped; my arm dropped. “What? My arse, that was out.”

  The chair ump gave me a stiff look. “Are you challenging the call?”

  “What do you think? Yes, I’m challenging the bloody call. That line judge has been a mess all match.”

  He went back to the mic. “Mr. Solomon is challenging. The ball was called out.”

  As per tradition, the crowd began to clap in unison—clap clap clap—while the replay monitor tracked my shot on the big screen and then zoomed in on the spot where th
e ball touched down. A hair’s breadth separated the shadow of the ball’s landing from the white line. Had it only touched the line, it would have been in.

  “The ball is out,” the umpire said. “30-love. Mr. Solomon has two challenges remaining.”

  The mostly Australian crowd—my crowd, remember—cheered the call. They’d abandoned me already. Fuck them. I knew what they said about me—I was on Twitter, after all.

  A constant disappointment.

  Never lives up to his talent.

  Too hot-headed and unconventional for tennis.

  They could piss off. What was the point? To make some money, sure, but so what? Despite being fined every other minute by the stuffy pricks at the ATP, I’d made plenty of money. That didn’t change the fact that my father wasn’t here to see me. To be proud of me. Life had taken him early and taken nearly all of my love of tennis—our game—with him, leaving me only the scraps.

  “Anger only defeats one person, and it’s never your opponent,” his advice whispered in my mind.

  Sorry, Dad. I tried. But it was too late. Anger was better than pain. Always.

  Here’s some Twitter fodder, ya bloody plebs.

  “Fuck. This. Bullshit,” I said, plenty loud enough for the ump to hear.

  “Third code violation, Mr. Solomon. Audible obscenity and game penalty. The win goes to Mr. Finn.”

  Fuck Mr. Finn. Fuck this ump and fuck this stupid game.

  My serve.

  Stick-up-their-arses tennis-pros thought serving wimpy underhand shots was poor sportsmanship. As if I cared what anyone else thought. It was a legal maneuver, so I used it. I bounced the ball once, faked the toss up, and then served underhand.

  Finn raced up for it and barely got a racket on the ball as it limped over the net. His return landed on my side, and I watched it bounce without making the slightest move for it.

  “Love-15,” the ump said over another chorus of boos.

  Finn shot me a dirty look, but he didn’t have to worry. I had no intention of wasting any more energy giving his racist arse a good game.

  I lobbed an easy serve over the net and Finn sliced it to my backhand. I watched it go past, my racket never leaving my side.

  “Love-30.”

  The boos grew louder. I grinned sourly, bounced the ball and knocked another soft serve over the net. An easy shot. Finn raised his racket to deal me a winner. I turned my back on him and bent over to show him exactly where he could put his return. He slammed the ball to the rear corner of the court, and I slowly sauntered back to the baseline under a torrent of boos.

  “Love-40.”

  The ball girl—or ball woman, as she looked to be in her early twenties—offered me my towel, keeping her eyes politely down, as per protocol. As I took it and wiped the sweat from my face, she ventured a peek and a small smile. The crowds might’ve had a love/hate relationship with me, but women straight loved me: on the court, on last month’s cover of Sports Illustrated, and most definitely in the sack.

  I shot the ball girl a wink, tossed her the towel, and meandered to the baseline to serve. Just to change things up and fuck with Finn, I pretended to underhand, then tossed the ball high and slammed a proper overhead.

  Startled, Finn barely got his racket up to keep the ball from whacking him in the balls. His shot hit the tape, teetered for a second, and then fell over on my side.

  “Game,” the ump said, barely heard over the boos that were raining down on me. “The set is now 2-0, in favor of Mr. Finn.”

  I held up my hands and turned a small circle to address the sold-out crowd. Goading their boos.

  If that’s what you give me, that’s what you’ll get.

  Again, Dad’s disappointed face swam before me.

  “Play because you love it, Kai. Play because you want to.”

  The whisper of his advice was drowned by the boos and hisses of the crowd; drowned under Brad’s ‘half-breed’ comment that was an echo of those I’d heard at school growing up. But what did it matter? Dad was dead, and this crowd could kiss my arse. The entire sport of tennis could piss off. I played how and when I wanted to play.

  And even after defeating three other players to get to the finals, and only one set away from victory…I didn’t want to play anymore.

  McEnroe: I’m starting to feel your Aussie frustration with your home player. That ball that was called out set Kai off and he never recovered. He’s tanking the match.

  Cahill: Such a shame. Kai has the potential to be one of the greatest tennis stars of a generation. He can’t seem to stay out of his own way. We want to love him, as talented as he is, but whatever demons he’s harboring make it difficult to root for him.

  McEnroe: What does this mean for his chances at the Australian Open in a few weeks?

  Cahill: Your guess is as good as mine. Trying to figure out what Kai Solomon is thinking is above my pay grade. He’s earned enough points to qualify for the Open but after today, he’ll be fined for his behavior and risks being banned from professional tennis altogether.

  Kai

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Jason Lemieux fumed while pacing a small circle. My agent was waiting for me in the changing room after the match, hands on his hips, frothing at the mouth. I’d put his mild Canadian demeanor to the test.

  “It was the finals, Kai,” Jason said, waving his arms. “The last match. You were poised to take home the win. What the hell happened out there?”

  I shrugged. “My elbow was acting up. Didn’t want to aggravate it for the Open.”

  My wicked ace had a downside—tendonitis in my right elbow. But it hadn’t bothered me in weeks.

  Not that Jason needed to know that.

  Not that he believed me anyway.

  “Bullshit.” He ran a hand through his graying blond hair. Prematurely graying, he liked to remind me. “You melted down. Again. And why? The line judge was right. You saw the replay. Your shot went out and that was enough to throw the entire match?”

  “It wasn’t just the call. The crowd was rooting against me. And that prick, Finn, was up to his old tricks.”

  Jason rolled his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you to ignore him?”

  “Ignore his racist comments?” I asked snidely. “Spoken like a true white man.”

  But the anger that had flared so hot—and had seemed so important during the game—was gone now, leaving only the ashes of guilt and more than a little shame for letting my dad down.

  “I know Finn’s a bastard but you’re letting him derail your career.”

  I shrugged. “Didn’t want to play anymore.”

  My agent sighed and fixed me with a pitying look I hated. “If I were a coach, I might have some technique to help you, but I don’t. You can’t keep doing this. Take it seriously, Kai, or quit, but it’s killing me to see you squander your talent. You could be right up there with—”

  “With Nadal or Federer,” I finished. “I know. I could be better than those guys. Number one if I wanted.”

  “And? So?”

  “It’s just a game, Jase. Just knocking a ball back and forth across a net. It’s not curing cancer.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “You’re a prodigy, Kai. You know how many kids would give their left arm to be as good as you?”

  “I never asked to be a role model,” I said sharply. “And I never will be.”

  “No, because that would require taking responsibility for your talent.”

  Brad Finn entered the changing room after talking to reporters and signing autographs. His genial, friendly smile instantly morphed into a snide sneer neither the cameras nor his adoring fans would ever see.

  “Thanks for the prize money, Solomon. It’s always a pleasure doing business with you. Is the ATP going to have you sign my check directly? Because that would be a real time-saver.”

  “At least you acknowledge you can only win when I give it to you,” I said, rising to my feet. I wasn’t the tallest bloke on the Tour by a long shot, but F
inn was “short” by tennis standards. I towered over him.

  Finn held up his hands. “My rank and bank account thank you.”

  I smiled tightly. “As they should. You’d be rubbish without me.”

  Brad’s snarl deepened but Jason grabbed me and pushed me out of the room before things got ugly. In the hallways, press and Tour officials wanted to wrangle me for an interview on my “meltdown” and “tanking the match.” But we pushed past the crowd out to the rear parking lot of the stadium. The black asphalt was so hot I could feel it beneath my shoes.

  “Finn is right,” my agent said. “You’re handing him wins. Money. Points. A better ranking. And for what?”

  “I play how I want to play. Points, rank, and money don’t mean shit.”

  “The cash doesn’t? You probably had more fines this year than prize money. You want to take care of your mother, don’t you?”

  I whirled on him, the afternoon sun blaring down on us. “Mum is taken care of. Always. But if you’re worried about your own paycheck…?”

  Jason glowered. He wasn’t a typical cut-throat agent but a good guy. It was probably why I kept him around.

  He reminded me of my dad.

  “You’re going to get another fine after today if you don’t get banned from tennis altogether,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Why? Don’t stress, mate.”

  I stowed my gear in the back of my Land Rover while Jason heaved a steadying breath.

  “Look. We have two weeks in Hawaii to rest for the Open,” he said. “I have the place all rented. A nice place. Huge. Guest house, pool, courts. You can take it easy, rehab the elbow if it’s truly bothering you. And, not that you’d listen to my advice, but no girls. No partying. Just try to chill out, as the Americans say.”

  I slammed the back door of the car shut and chucked Jason on the shoulder. “Whatever you want, Jase.”