Blind Date (A Why Choose Romance)

Corporate loved it. They anticipated loads of great publicity and millions of social media hits out of the event.

Sexy appeals.

They thought they’d sell more tickets to ball games and diversify the crowd with more feminine voices screaming for our victory. Plus, we’d be seen doing a charity event at the same time—double win. Just like for the bar. Sure, the raffle was for charity, but it had bums on seats and buying drinks that night and generated loads of publicity.

We weren’t thrilled with the Dating Game idea, to say the least. We did all we could to get out of this public appearance. But Coach Sinclair insisted. Putting ourselves out there for charity and publicity events was a part of our contracts.

Contracts were such bullshit sometimes.

Why us? They wanted the four of us since the other heartthrobs of the team were married. We, four eligible bachelors, were single. Hank wasn’t married either, but that was another story. If he was picked to go on a romantic date with a girl, that could turn into a media disaster.

So the four of us had to go up there. Play along. One of us would go on a date. We weren’t required to do anything but be friendly, buy the girl a drink, all easy enough.

However, after laying eyes on some girl in an apron, as Hank put it, going into a dating game show was the last thing I wanted to do.

Maybe I’d luck out, and the girl in the apron would turn up on stage; nah. I couldn’t be that lucky. The star of the show wouldn’t start the night serving onion rings.

Whatever played out, no matter who turned up in that tacky retro armchair asking us questions, I was damn sure that kitchen girl was the star of my show.

CHAPTER THREE

KAYLA MARTIN

If you could eat any dish at all, what would you choose?

Why should I suddenly become the focus for these men when they were competing for a girl like Jenny? She looked a lot better than I did. Especially with her in a fancy dress and me wearing, well, incredibly plain clothing.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, rang in my ears.

They said it as if their mega-fat celebrity sports-star salary depended on it. When I took out their food order, they turned out to be such sweet and polite guys and not at all intimidating. They didn’t look like the sort who’d go overboard on thank yous, but they did, and I appreciated it.

The way they looked at me, left me giddy.

It wasn’t something I’d forget easily.

It couldn’t have meant what I thought it did, like I was the thing they’d really like to eat. Wishful thinking, but I wouldn’t say no if one of them offered to eat me.

While I had my head in the clouds, my feet stayed firmly on the ground.

Guys like that don’t look twice at girls like me. They certainly don’t take us home for passion or anything else.

They must have been staring at something like a hunk of broccoli in my teeth, which would have been impressive since I hadn’t eaten any broccoli in, like, two weeks.

I had doubts about hot guys fawning over me, but as a cook, I was the lady and master of the kitchen, and no one would top me there.

Pushing the questions out of my head, I returned my attention to work and got the food out before all the fanfare for the evening’s fun was over.

So with everything done and the hungry masses given food to chomp on, for the time being, I decided to take a quick break and leave Becky in charge. She’d call me if needed.

I grabbed a glass of cola, as I was still at work, and stood at the back of the crowd to watch the show.

The girl in the big chair looked perfectly at home in her long, shiny dress. It wasn’t modern, so like the rest of the show, it was cheesy and just wrong. I felt a little sorry for her, but it was her choice to do this rather than hide in the background.

When she was seated and hidden at her end of the stage, the four men came on from the other side so she couldn’t see them, although of course, she knew they were the four football players from the Arlington Argonauts. They had big billing for the event and drew the crowd.

And I saw them.

The four gods from the booth.

They hadn’t just stumbled into the bar by accident, after all. They were the celebrity pro football players that the crowd had turned out to see.

Of course, they were famous sportsmen, but I hadn’t recognized them sitting at the table—the four who were overly happy to receive food. The four with chiseled features and shoulders to die for.