Page 6 of Tempting the Player
He bobs his head like he’s waiting for me to say more. I hate name dropping.
“Penelope Hart. She was on the show before her career blew up.”
Sing Your Heart Outran for four seasons and almost six years of my life. The premise was a bit cheesy. It followed three sisters who were in a pop group together, traveling the world during the summers to perform, but maintaining “normal” lives the rest of the year. It was fun pretending to go to middle school and deal with teenage drama while in real life I had tutors and barely enough time to hang out with my friends.
But for whatever reason, the show resonated with people, and for a while I couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized.
“She’s so hot,” he says automatically, then smiles sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“No. She is. And she’s nice too. Or she was. I haven’t talked to her in years.”
He stops fidgeting and leans forward, elbows on the table. “Why’d you stop?”
“I wanted to enjoy my teenage years and then go to college.” That isn’t the complete truth, but I don’t like to think of my career as over, even if it’s been years since I did anything noteworthy.
“I’m glad you’re here, but I can’t imagine giving all that up for this. If I hadn’t injured my arm last year, I would have dropped out to go pro.”
“Really? You had a chance to play baseball professionally?” Valley U has a lot of athletes across different sports that have gone on to play in the MLB, NBA, NFL, and more, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about Cam as being one of the guys on that track.
He dodges my question. “Eh, this isn’t so bad though. College is cool.”
I smile and take another icy sip of my drink. The door opens again, and a full-body shiver wracks my body.
“Ah, there they are.” Cam stands and brings my attention to the group of guys that just walked in.
I recognize some of his teammates from parties, but I haven’t spent a lot of time around the baseball guys. Puzzled, I smile as Cam introduces me around. It’s only when they pull up chairs to sit with us that I fully understand what’s happening. The flicker of annoyance I feel at our date turning into something else completely is short-lived when Cam sits beside me and drapes an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him and revel in the warmth.
“You’re the famous chick,” one of the guys says. I’ve already forgotten his name.
I offer a weak smile.
“Ivy Greene,” Cam says. “Look her up. She knows Penelope Hart.”
The guy grabs his phone from the table and, much to my horror, looks me up on the spot. The guys hover around his phone as they swipe through my Instagram account and then do a Google search.
“Why don’t you go by Ivy now?” Cam asks. “It’s a great name.”
“It’s not my real name,” I say with a shrug. The truth is my agent at the time came up with Ivy Greene based on some test cases of names that had star potential. I liked it well enough, but it’d never felt like my name. It was a job, a character. Maybe I’d feel differently if I were still acting or singing professionally.
Cam just laughs along, keeping a tight hold on me as his friends continue to perform a deep dive on my life according to the internet. It’s the weirdest experience I’ve had at Valley. Sure, lots of people have been curious, but they’re acting like I’m not here while gawking at old pictures of me. It’s giving me major ick, but I try to brush it off and keep a smile on my face. I don’t want this to ruin my date with Cam. We’re finally out together and things were going great. Well, maybe not great, but I was having fun.
I’m relieved when the conversation eventually veers off onto something else. I’m not usually so quiet, but I find myself fading into the background as they talk about practice, parties, and people I don’t know.
Cam squeezes my shoulder and I glance up into his eyes. He really is so handsome.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and he leans closer. I stop breathing while I wait to see if he’s going to kiss me. It seems like a bold move an hour into our first date, but I can’t say I’m not interested in finding out if he’s as good a kisser as the Valley U female population has made him out to be.
“Let’s take a pic,” he says.
“A picture?”
“Yeah.” He holds up his phone in front of us and then leans his face closer to mine.
After we’ve smiled through a few photos, he removes his arm from around me. “My buddies back home are never going to believe I’m out with Ivy Greene.”
My face flushes and I tense.
“Oh, I want a pic with her.” The guy who was looking me up on his phone earlier glances between me and Cam, silently asking for approval.
