Hot Billionaire Player: So Hot Billionaires, #11

By Melody Love

It started as an act of compassion and a public display of affection.

 

Lacey Teague, blogger and public relations expert, saw a tall, hot man being pursued through the ballpark by the media, reporters desperate for a quote. When she recognized him as the Omaha Chargers new owner who had just lost his father and inherited a ball team, she decided to help out. 

 

Sticking her hat on his head to provide some disguise, she wrapped herself around him and kissed him until the reporters went away. 

 

Then she kissed him a little bit longer.  

 

Jay Monroe isn't looking for a relationship. He's looking for some way to deal with the press, the only part of his new gig as billionaire owner of a ball team that he hates. When he gets kissed by the girl with the short black hair and the big green eyes who offers to help him overcome his fear of public speaking, he'd have to be insane to say no.  

 

But as spring training progresses, their boot camp style relationship heats up fast and when an ugly problem surfaces between them, they don't have the resources yet to deal with it. 

 

Is it the end of any hope for a winning season? Or can they turn the relationship around before the last inning?  

• Language: English
• Publisher: DM
• Release date: May 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393106197

Book preview

Hot Billionaire Player

So Hot Billionaires, Volume 11

Melody Love

Published by DM, 2020.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

HOT BILLIONAIRE PLAYER

First edition. May 25, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 Melody Love.

Written by Melody Love.

Also by Melody Love

So Hot Billionaires

Hot Billionaire's Cinderella

Hot Billionaire Faking It

Hot Billionaire's Baby

Hot Billionaire Mile High

Hot Billionaire Professor

Hot Billionaire's Escort

Hot Billionaire Cowboy

Hot Billionaire Night

Hot Billionaire Rescued

Hot Billionaire's Story

Hot Billionaire Player

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Also By Melody Love

HOT BILLIONAIRE PLAYER | By Melody Love | This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. | Copyright © 2020 Melody Love | Click here to get a FREE book for a limited time

Further Reading: Hot Billionaire On A Train

Also By Melody Love

HOT BILLIONAIRE PLAYER

By Melody Love

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 Melody Love

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Click here to get a FREE book for a limited time

Chapter 1 – Jay – Saturday

The tombstone doesn't answer back. If I needed any further confirmation that Dad's dead, that's it. My old man never liked to let anyone else have the last word.

The fact that he wasn't responding made it easier to talk to him. Not because when he was alive that James Jay Monroe, Senior, was hard to talk to. He was pretty much the opposite, actually.  He was jovial, friendly, he liked everyone he met until they did something to cross him, let him down, hurt his family or his team, or anything that smacked of not being loyal, because he himself was fiercely loyal. None of that is what made it hard for me to talk to him.

It was hard to talk to him because we were damn near polar opposites. Dad could talk to anyone. Anywhere. Any time. He could strike up a conversation in line at the grocery store, or as he breezed through security at airports, to the point where even TSA agents relaxed their shoulders and laughed. Everyone loved him, even those people whose reaction to being engaged in conversation by compete strangers in public is a sort of mild alarm or annoyance.

Like me. I don't talk to strangers, I don't talk to the media, I don't instantly engage everybody I meet. I like being out, I like being in public. I like people. Just, I like to keep all that to myself.  I'm a textbook introvert.

A textbook introvert now planning to take on ownership of my father's Omaha Chargers, his one passion in the world beyond his family.

So, Dad, you had to go?  Because seriously, you could have warned everybody. Given us time to sit down and figure out a plan for succession.  Your exit strategy.

My voice caught in my throat at that one. A little too raw yet, at only two weeks since the thunderclap heart attack took him.

It was snowing on me as I stood there.  Of course it was, Omaha in January, snow is expected. Fat white flakes fell out of a concrete gray sky.  There was no horizon because it was Omaha and there was no break in the gray – gray cemetery, gray tombstone, gray sky. It reduced the world to two dimensions, flat and finite, and that too made it easier to talk to him.

I crouched down like a catcher might behind a batter. It felt natural. I'd been playing and watching the game and consuming baseball all my life. I'd gone with Dad to the Omaha Chargers' field a million times, I'd gone with him for spring training, my Dad cavalierly taking me out of school because he could. I'd spent so much time in the Omaha Chargers' building across the street from the stadium it felt like my office, not his. I'd gone to college and taken courses in management and business, and done graduate work in the same, because all along it was intended that I'd eventually own the team.

Just – not yet.  I wasn't supposed to have to do this at twenty-nine. Shit, Dad was only fifty-seven.

I want to make you proud of me.

My voice caught again and I gave it a minute, focusing on the tombstone. There wasn't a lot inscribed there.  Everybody knew my Dad.  They already knew how much he gave to the community, anonymously if he had to. He didn't want a series of homeless shelters and at-risk youth baseball camps named after him; he just wanted them to exist. 

His tombstone read James Jay Leo Monroe, followed by the dates of his life, like bookends or parenthesis, making sure nothing spilled out from between the lines. And then below it, the one line of text: With great responsibility comes great reward.

My Dad lived his live according to that credo and I was going to live mine that way too. I'd take the team he'd left me and I'd damn well see it to the World Series. In all the years Jay Senior had the team and all the years his father before him had it, the Chargers had never made it to the World Series.

I swore this would be the year.  We'd do it in his name.  For his legacy.

Despite the terror that lived inside me at the thought and sped my pulse even now, January, not even spring training yet.

See, Dad, I don't think you ever understood just how hard anything public is for me. Pause, and a glance up at the never ending snow.  Or maybe you did.  It felt like he'd just given me one of his side-eye glances, the Seriously, are you kidding or what? Looks.  Maybe you knew.

Maybe he did.  Dad was always there for me, pushing me out of the nest a little at a time but paving the way for me. I'd gone to college and gone to grad school, Ivy League all the way, as was expected for a billionaire's son, a billionaire's grandson.  I got through college because it was a small world to itself, and grad school the same way.

But I sometimes thought that the money stood in the way of having to go out and prove myself.  I worked in the family business because the family business was baseball and I loved the game, I loved the team, I loved everything about it.

Except the limelight.  The spotlight.

And that was going to start shining on me very, very soon. Already it was late January. Spring training started in February, exhibition games in March. I'd have to announce the transition of ownership of the team by end of this month and that was going to bring the media running. For now there was only scuttlebutt.  Most people thought the team would pass to Troy Garrison, my honorary uncle, my Dad's best friend, right hand man to Jay Senior in all things Chargers.

The team had been in my family since my grandfather's time and it wasn't going to end with me. It was no slight to Troy the team had come to me instead of to him. He loved it and it loved him, but the team belonged to the Monroe men.

I wish you were here to walk me through this. But if you were, I wouldn't need that, would I? I put one hand down on the mound of Earth under which his casket lay. My fingers tingled in the snow. Crouching there like a catcher, I brought my frosty fingers up between my knees and held down four fingers, signaling a change up.

Gonna be a whole new ballgame after this.

I'm sorry I have to go. Next week I'm going to have to go to Phoenix. You know that. Any advice you want to give me, maybe you need to do it now.

The silence of the grave was a little too complete.  I already missed him.

When I stood and brushed off my coat, and turned, I saw my Mother had stepped out of the town car and was waiting for me under the trees at the edge of the cemetery. Snow eclipsed her, turning her into a startling red beacon, her wool coat calling attention to life within the gray day. I was grateful to see her waiting for me.

I made my way over to her and she folded me into a hug, managing to make my six-five seem less than her five-six. When she released me she slipped her arm through mine, using me as much for balance in the snow as being companionable. The snow was accumulating, the ground becoming as treacherous as my future felt.

When we got to the car she ordered the driver to take us to her house. I didn't argue. I didn't feel like being alone anyway.

You don't have to take the team, you know.  She was bustling around her kitchen, as much as a woman who looks like Morgan Fairchild can be said to bustle, but my mother loved to cook and she mostly kept house by herself, relying on maids to do the vacuuming, dusting and any kind of big events. He'd understand. I'm surprised he didn't leave the team to Troy as it is.

That hurt a little, that she didn't see me as taking on the mantle of Dad's first love, but then there was that – my Mother hated baseball and part of the reason was because my Dad loved it so much.  It had become his other woman, his mistress.  I couldn't blame her.

Anymore than she would blame me for not taking it on.

She thunked down a mug of cocoa, sloshing with a mountain of whipped cream threatening to roll over the edge. It smelled heavenly, of mint. That was my Mother. She'd whip fresh cream, then use a package to make instant cocoa. I held it up in front of my face as a shield, ostentatiously sipping.

She wasn't put off.  She'd earned her graduate degree in the Monroe men.

You're never going to settle down and get married and have a family and all the things you should have in life if you take on the ownership role.  Her dark eyes were intense.

You did, I said, and clarified before she could point out she hadn't owned the team. Or Dad did. He married you and had a family. Never mind that I was an only child.

She rolled her eyes.  They were bloodshot, I saw then. She'd been crying, in private, which was how she was.  If you think I ever came first, think again.

Before I could protest, she said, I never doubted that he loved me. But he'd get out of bed to respond to an emergency with a player. He gave his life for that team and that left me on the sidelines. She seemed pleased with that almost sports analogy. You didn't go through that because you chose the game too.

Not over you.

She smiled at that.  No. Not over me.  I never felt that with you.  The hand that was patting mine stopped patting and tightened.  But I'll tell you this.  I loved your father.

Not news.

"But I loathe baseball."

Not news either.

She gave me a hard look, like she knew I was thinking that none of this was new information and was considering whether or not to tell me not to be a smartass.

"So if you're going to do this, you had just damned well find a wonderful woman who is not a baseball fanatic and marry her so I have someone to talk to."

That was all new and I felt my eyebrows go up.  Am I getting married? My tone was light.

Hers wasn't.  Damned well better.  I want grandchildren and if you haven't noticed, you're an only child.

Which made my lighthearted feel recede.  I was an only child. Heir to the throne. The next in line on the list of Monroe's owning the Omaha Chargers Major League Baseball Team and in case I wanted to put some days and weeks between me and my new responsibilities, spring training was starting in February and I was running out of January fast.

I opened my mouth to tell her she could produce another heir, something, anything to lighten the darkening mood, but she beat me to the next conversational gambit.

Your mouth gets just as set with stubborn as your father's did.  She sighed, gave my hand an even tighter squeeze and released it, sinking back in her chair and shaking back hair that was still naturally blond at fifty-five.  You're going to be the youngest owner of a major league team in history of the game. She considered me, her head tilted to one side.  There's going to be massive media attention on you.  The media absolutely loves superlatives. Have you thought of that?

Thought of it? I was having nightmares about it.  Yeah. But you're not helping.

She gave me a wicked smile. Not trying to help. But here's an idea. Why don't you hire a coach?

My brain cross-referenced coach and came up with the obvious.  We already have coaches.

She rolled her eyes again.  "Not a coach for the team.  A coach for you.  A business coach.  A public speaking coach.  A coach for shy new baseball team owners. Because apparently nothing in this life is about anything other than baseball."

I blinked at her, and drank cocoa without thinking, shuddering as it burned all the way down, the heat insulated by the mountain of whipped cream.  That's a great idea, I said.

Knowing I'd never do it.  A coach was practically as scary as the media itself.

Okay, then, she said, and ran her hands through her hair and started talking about the changes she wanted to make to the house now that Dad and his baseball decorating theme wasn't there to deny her the slightest intellectual or feminine touches.

I knew she was still thinking of what she'd suggested, that I hire a coach.

I knew too she knew I was never going to do it.  And loved me anyway.

Chapter 2 – Lacey – Saturday

The problem with constantly trying to think outside the box is that sometimes the box is empty and so is everything around the box.

That's a metaphor. Not a good one.

I was preaching to – well, kind of preaching to the choir when it came to a couple of the people in the tiny studio office and kind of preaching to the lost and disconnected.

On the door to the studio it read Lacey Teague and under that Blogger when what it was supposed to read was Everything New Under the Sun which I kept trying to rename and coming up blank.

Everything New Under the Sun was what I called my blog when I started out, before I realized it was going to morph into a real live business with real live employees (and one real live intern). I kept trying to rebrand as Sun or Everything New though that made it sound like an ongoing sale, and Sun made it sound like a newspaper.

It also read Marvin King, Esq., Attorney at Law, in ghostly letters, because the landlord's chosen handyman wasn't very handy and hadn't managed to quite scratch off all the last tenant's faux gold lettering. I had no idea what had happened to Marvin King, Esquire, but his ghostly name haunted the office door.

Everything was located in Phoenix, Arizona, in a modern business building with skylights that would cause us to roast come summer in Phoenix. Stuffed into the artsy but not big enough studio loft office was my staff: Mindy, my best friend and confidant, who I had been hesitant to hire because at twenty-six, she already had a terrible work history and at twenty-seven I already had my own business and didn't want to lose it.

But Mindy turned out to be a lifesaver. We loved working together and she stepped up so well she was more responsible than the boss (me). Mindy kept me on track and always firing and when the occasional creative doldrums hit, she asked me if I was insane or if I could understand how awesome everything in front of us was (or maybe how awesome Everything in front of us was).  Mindy's a tiny blond elf, often described by people who have just met her as feisty. If she hears them say that, they only get away with it once.

There was also Olivia, who was tall and broad and didn't cost a cent because she was an intern, which meant I liked to give her tips since I'd been an unpaid intern and it's hard to eat experience. Olivia and Mindy were definitely two of my staff who got it, understood the fact that we had to keep ahead of the trends and not blog on whatever everyone else was blogging about.

There was also Haley, who was a writer and worked part time. She'd escaped the faltering world of newspapers and was a really good writer, but solidly in her forties and not always thinking new and trendy.

There was Theo, who was a journalism school graduate and either had a trust fund or existed on next to no food because I couldn't pay him much and he still kept working for me, but he was skinny as a rail. He was African American, good looking and a bean pole.

And last there was Cindie Gee, who I regretted hiring but she'd come recommended. A former bat biologist – who knew there were such things?  What did they do? – and now wanted to be an indie publisher or a blogger or – well, something.  She was also in her forties, fanatically hanging on to being cutting edge, and had a streak of blue in her chestnut bangs that always made me jolt because it looked like a head wound of the wrong color.

That was us, the happy little staff, all of whom were having a blogger's block at the same time and all of whom were trying to pretend they knew what the Next Big Thing was that we were going to blog about.

Including me. I was determinedly not letting anyone know I had no freaking clue. On the surface it seems like keeping a blog awake and alive would mean writing about the latest everything but the problem with writing about what's trending is that by the time it is trending, it's being written about on every single blog out there and well on its way to becoming yesterday's news.  Short of making my own news – Desperate blogger robs bank, worried about making rent, watch it on her connected YouTube channel  – I always felt like I was behind the curve.

And okay, it wasn't that bad.  I just wanted to get ahead of the curve for a change. Or maybe be the one defining the curve.  I wanted the next big idea. Would it be a new fitness craze? New diet or eating system? New cars? New sports?

New sports sensations? That almost sounded like an idea but the February dreariness had hold of me. 

Throw things out, I said. I'll start.  February. Valentine's day. I hadn't expected to be booed. I giggled.  Okay, anti Valentine's Day.

That's not a thing, Mindy said. You do realize it's January, right?

I'm being optimistic. And January is almost over.

She's thinking beyond the curve, Haley said.

"That's not a thing either," Mindy said archly and everybody laughed. 

At that point it was a free for all. Not a helpful one but still.  Ideas were thrown out from doughnuts – eating or trending? Either – to baseball to fashion which I tried to veto but Mindy reminded me I had an appointment with a fashion designer garnering a great rep and I groaned. Fashion's fine, but we needed something new.

Hang gliding. Parasailing. Celebrity lawsuits. Whether or not celebrity lawsuits should be held to different standards because they were such obvious targets. The demise of print media (Haley offered this every time. We never bit.) Stress baking.  Stress baking weight gain. Weight lifting. Stress weight lifting. That's not a thing either!

By that point everyone was calling out ideas without waiting for the others to stop. It was a chaotic, noisy affair, and I was scribbling notes and calling out my own ideas when I heard someone say, Series.

Without looking up from my notepad where I was writing series so I wouldn't forget it ten seconds later, I pointed with my free hand.  That.  Expand on that.

Which caused instant silence because nobody knew who I meant.

I looked up at them. Who said series?

Olivia raised her hand. Like Theo she was a journalism major and not quite out of school yet. I ignored the raised hand. Talk to me.  What've you got?

Nothing, yet, she said. I just thought there are so many different influencers out there and they sometimes do series.

Mindy was perched on the end of a desk chair, her toes up on the rollers and her knees jutting out.  She looked like an elf.  Like who and series of what?

Olivia bobbed her head like she was afraid of taking too long but at the same time she had more confidence than usual. I suddenly started hoping for this idea.

A lot of them are vloggers, but that's part of what might make it different. Like on Medium there was a series of posts about a girl who grew up with a Munchausen's by Proxy parent, and another by a serious Medium blogger who talked about how she got started and lifted herself and her three-year-old daughter out of poverty by blogging.

Nothing yet, but I had the feeling there was something we just weren't seeing quite yet.  I nodded at her to keep going.

Instagram, she said, waving a I know we're text blog hand and said, Influencing by text instead of Instagram. We can come out as fast as they do. Almost.

A wave of soft laughter went around the room at almost. None of us was happy having a blog post go out without a copyedit. There could be something there about writing if there weren't already so many hungry writers blogging about how to blog and how to write.

She's got something, Theo said, snapping his fingers. "About influencers, I mean.