Page 18 of Well Aware

She couldn’t have any part in any business decisions. She couldn’t show up at the field. She couldn’t even call me.

The most contact I wanted with her was at family dinner on Christmas.

She had to stay so far out of my field of view that I didn’t have to think about her.

Mom and Dad had somehow managed to make her stay away.

For seven and a half months, I’d been running the Cowgirls professional soccer team.

But my sister had really done a number on the team.

She’d embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, fired anyone who was worth a damn, gotten rid of quality players, and destroyed the team dynamic so thoroughly that the players that we’d managed to keep on had hated each other.

I still had too much work to do, though.

Not even the two star soccer players, Magnolia Baker and Nettie Windsor, could perform miracles and pull us out of our hole.

I’d even managed to score Eddie Grant as the head coach.

Things had truly been looking up.

But my wait time was over.

My sister was allowed to come back in two weeks, and she would likely destroy all of the progress we’d made.

I hated that my father had conditions when I took this particular job.

He’d said he would give me eight months—one whole soccer season—before he let Serphina come back in in the vice president capacity.

If I managed to win the NWSL—National Women’s Soccer League—championship, Dad would finally sell.

But we’d taken too long to find our mojo.

In the beginning, we were battling uphill, trying to piece our team back together.

When we finally did—a lot of thanks to Magnolia for her effort—it was just too late.

Which meant my sister was about to be back in my life, unless we performed some miracle in the next few games.

Though that likely wouldn’t happen. We would need the first-place team to lose both of its last two games. We’d need to win our last two with shutouts. Something so highly unlikely that I wasn’t holding out hope.

The only good thing about all of this was that I got to spend time with Magnolia on a daily basis.

Though we’d mutually agreed that we couldn’t have anything more together than what we’d shared, that didn’t stop me from wanting her. From craving her touch.

It was plain torture to see her out on the field every day. It was even worse to see her in the training room, soaking wet from an ice bath. Or lying flat on the massage table while a masseuse worked kinks out of her tired muscles.

“Are you even listening to me?”

I snapped back to attention, only now realizing that I’d been staring so hard at Magnolia in the ice bath across the room from me that people were starting to notice.

I looked over at Eddie and grinned. “Sort of.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re just as bad as Weaver.”

Weaver, her husband, and a fellow member of the Dixie Wardens MC, was one of my good friends. Eddie had her husband wrapped around her little finger, and without a doubt always would.

“I’m being a sad sack,” I admitted. “I’m pissed as hell that we didn’t win. By a stupid ref mistake, which likely pulled us out of the running to get to the playoffs. I’m also pissed that in two weeks, my sister will be back, and she’ll drag this place into hell again. I’m also mad that I put all this work into this facility, and all she’s going to do is come back and fuck it up.”