Want it, p.1
Want It, page 1
She didn’t do nice guys.
Nice guys wanted to get married and move to the suburbs to a picket-fenced house. Her lifestyle and goals didn’t align with that. What was the point of going out with them? And she definitely wasn’t going to date a lawyer, like her dad.
This man had bad written all over him.
He didn’t look like anyone she’d ever met. He had the sort of milk chocolaty skin you wanted to lap at, with a sharp chiseled face and lips that looked very talented. His braids were gathered high behind his head, cascading in a spray to his shoulders.
They were very broad shoulders.
He wore only a sweater, despite the weather out, and the kind of designer jeans that she could tell cost a fortune.
She had the insane urge to curl her hands into his sweater and pull him to her. She could almost feel the way his skin would feel if she pushed his top and kissed up his chest.
She lifted her gaze and looked into his blue-gray eyes, startling against the mocha of his skin. She felt her face flush, with desire and all manner of emotions she wasn’t acquainted with, and she said the one thing that popped into her head. “Oh shit.”
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Also by Kathia
WINNERS INC.
ALL IN
WANT IT
GAME ON
THE SUMMERHILLS NEXT GENERATION
THE WORDS YOU SAY
THIS COULD BE THE NIGHT
WRITTEN IN THE SKY SO BLUE
THE SUMMERHILLS
SAY YOU WILL
LOST IN LOVE
LET’S MISBEHAVE
STAY THE NIGHT
ONCE UPON A DREAM
HOW SWEET IT IS
GIVE A LITTLE
* * *
MAKE MY WISH COME TRUE
THE IRISH HOPE SERIES
PAINTER OF SOULS
DANCER OF TRUTHS
SINGER OF VISIONS
LAUREL HEIGHTS
PERFECT FOR YOU
CLOSE TO YOU
RETURN TO YOU
LOOKING FOR YOU
DREAM OF YOU
SWEET ON YOU
BEDFORD FALLS
UNDER THE KISSING TREE
DANCING ON A MOONBEAM
SILVER MOON SPARKLING
STARS SHINING BRIGHT ABOVE
PILLOW TALK NOVELS
PLAYING TO WIN
PLAYING DOCTOR
PLAYING FOR KEEPS
THE GUARDIANS
MARKED
CHOSEN
TEMPTED
WHIMSICAL NOVELS OF YOUNG LOVE
SWEET ENDEAVORS
UNRAVELED
PROJECT DADDY
* * *
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Want It
Winners Inc. ☆ Book Two
Kathia
© 2022 Kathia Zolfaghari
Cover Image © AleksandarGeorgiev
* * *
ISBN: 978-1-944560-66-9
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
* * *
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.
* * *
www.kathiaherself.com
Contents
Special thanks to…
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
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Want It
To Provence,
with its welcoming sun
that kept me warm
as I wrote this book.
Special thanks to…
My bestest friend Ava Miles, for so many things. Bronze! (That’s an inside joke.)
In this specific instance, I’d like to thank her for letting me borrow her characters Louisa and Connor. If you want to read about how they fall in love, check out their story in Ava’s SUNFLOWER ALLEY. It’s a great one.
“We want to win.
We want to win big.
We want to win the whole thing.”
Shaquille O’Neal
One
If someone had told him he’d end up in Chicago, asking his nemesis for help, he’d have told them they needed to stop smoking crack.
But here he was—Daniel Osei Gilbert, one of football’s toughest defensive players—on Jamie MacNiven’s doorstep, about to swallow his pride and lay himself prostrate at the newly retired footballer’s feet.
It wasn’t a good moment for him. If anyone found out he was here…
Anyone? He shook his head. The media and fans were bad, yeah, but who was he kidding? There was one “anyone” who was the worst—his dad. His traditional Ghanaian dad would call him okotobonku and then give him The Look as he said, “I’m disappointed in you, Daniel.”
He didn’t fancy being called a pussy, but it was The Look that cut him to the core.
Danny had only gotten it once—the summer he was seventeen, when he’d met his dad for the first time. He hadn’t known offering to help the women clean up after dinner, the way his mom had taught him, was not how a man in Ghana acted. His dad had given him The Look and called him a Nancy boy before ignoring him the rest of the night.
Danny had vowed right then and there never to earn that expression again. So far, he’d managed to avoid it.
So far.
He stared at the shrouded office’s sign. He had to lower the dark sunglasses he wore to read it.
Winners Inc.
It was discreet, a simple sign to contrast the large double doors at the end of the ritzy hallway. Nothing at all like what he’d have expected Jamie MacNiven to use. Not that he knew MacNiven well.
Hell—off the field, he didn’t know the guy at all. The only thing he knew about MacNiven was that he had wicked aim and a singleness of purpose that Danny had been hard-pressed to rock despite his best efforts. It’d really been the media that had turned their natural opposition into a rivalry of epic proportions.
The media was always into his shit. Had been from the moment he’d started playing football professionally, when he was eighteen.
Danny made a face. If he were honest, he’d admit that he might have helped rumors of their rivalry through his actions during their matches. He couldn’t help that sometimes things got heated on the field. MacNiven pushed him the way no one else ever had.
Truth was, Danny respected MacNiven. Despite being born with a silver spoon up his ass, the guy was a workhorse. You didn’t get to their level of play by being a slacker. He knew that firsthand. And while MacNiven was on the field, he’d been excellent.
Which was exactly why Danny was here. If anyone could coach him to come out on top from this situation he’d gotten himself into, it was MacNiven. If he had to swallow some pride to do it, so be it. He’d worked hard to earn everything he had—he wasn’t about to let it all go up in a puff of smoke. He’d seen it happen to other players. They started dabbling in women and drugs and every bad thing that went with them, and soon they lost their starting jobs and then their families and their self-respect.
He didn’t do any of that shit. He didn’t think his dad or younger half brother Kofi, who were both living with him, did either. But the guys his dad had met in London did—all of it—and they did it in his home, where they’d started to camp out.
And Danny couldn’t get them to leave.
Which was why he was here: to ask MacNiven to help him figure out how to move them out—quietly, without alerting the media or ruining his relationship with his family.
He shook his head in disgust. Him—Chelsea’s biggest, baddest, scariest enforcer—couldn’t get a few people to vacate his house.
He’d brought it up to his dad once, a few weeks ago, and his dad had been affronted. “They are my brothers, Daniel,” his dad said to him. “They are from my country, and therefore family, and it’s a man’s responsibility to support his family.”
He’d been of two minds about that—he still was. Danny had grown up in an old apartment in Encino, California, with his single mom. Encino had a lot of wealth—what area of Los Angeles didn’t?—but his mom, who’d been working toward becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon back then, had lived frugally. Their apartment had worn linoleum and puke-green appliances. He could still smell the funk of the carpets from whatever smoker had lived there before they’d moved in.
Having come from a humble background, he understood the difference between a hand up and a handout. He was the first to help out a person in need—it’d been why he and his best friend growing up, Immanuel Ortiz, had started The Aurora Project, their nonprofit for kids. They’d wanted to do something to help kids who’d been like them: without two parents, on their own, and struggling to make it. Based in Los Angeles, Ortiz ran the day-to-day. Danny handled the finances on the down-low. He hadn’t wanted everyone to know the extent of his financial involvement there.
“Everyone” in this case was his dad. His dad wouldn’t understand why Danny would give money to people he didn’t know. A man took care of his family, period. “Other people won’t care about you the way blood will,” his dad said.
Well, his “blood” was currently in his penthouse in London, snorting away the money that was supposed to go toward improving their lives.
It had to stop. He knew it was his fault—he’d let the situation slide for too long. If he’d taken care of it sooner… If he’d listened to Ortiz when his friend had cautioned him about his dad… If he hadn’t thought he could help Kofi have a better life…
If he didn’t rectify things, he was going to find himself in a world of hurt.
His hands fisted as he thought about two nights ago, going home after his last game before their winter break. He’d played yet another shitty game—his focus left something to be desired these days—and then he’d gone home to find his house full of people he didn’t know. Gangstas and skank hos galore.
As he’d stood in his doorway, gaping at the scene, his dad had come up behind him, put an arm around his shoulders, and said, “Pick a woman. They have good hips for having strong sons. It’s time. A man needs sons, Daniel. Take two of them.”
But that wasn’t the final straw that had caused him to flee his home for Chicago. It was the piles of drugs on his coffee table and Kofi sitting across from it, laughing with one of the other punks.
Loafing was one thing, but bringing drugs into his house was a hard line.
If the media caught wind of it, his career could probably weather it. On some level, people expected footballers to be thugs. Besides, football had never been a forever thing in his mind—it’d been a way to connect with his dad. He’d already stayed in the game longer than he’d expected.
But his work with the foundation would be ruined. As Ortiz pointed out when Danny had called to tell him what had happened, if the media knew about the drugs, they’d wonder if Danny was using the foundation to launder drug money—or worse, that Danny was stealing from the kids to fund a drug habit. They didn’t know that Danny was a whiz at day-trading. Only Ortiz knew that. It’d ruin the good work they were doing there.
He wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
But he also couldn’t bring himself to cut Kofi out. What would happen to him? Eleven years younger, Kofi had looked up to him since they’d met eighteen years before. He loved that kid. He couldn’t abandon him.
Danny stared at the door handle. All the players were talking about how MacNiven retired at his prime to start Winners Inc., a life coaching business aimed at teaching people to win at all aspects of life. Two nights ago, when Danny walked out of his own home, he’d booked himself into a hotel and looked up Winners Inc. The article he found stated that it didn’t matter what you were having trouble with, MacNiven claimed he could guide you to success.
He bought a ticket to Chicago right then and there.
If anyone was qualified to help you win, it was MacNiven. All his former teammates talked about how MacNiven did more for them than their coaches, psychiatrists, and managers combined. Moreover, the dude always landed on top.
Now MacNiven was making a name for himself helping high-class clients develop a “complete” winning attitude.
And damn, Danny needed that. Instead of the pressing feeling of impending doom, he wanted to feel like he had the world by the tail too, like he used to.
Coming all the way here to Chicago to see MacNiven was a calculated risk. Quite frankly, he’d be shocked if MacNiven didn’t have him bodily carted out of the building, seeing as how the last time they’d seen each other Danny had slammed his head into the man’s chest to prevent a goal and almost cracked the guy’s ribs.
Uncurling his hand, he resettled his sunglasses, grabbed the door handle, and pushed himself into the Winners Inc. office.
The inside was as hushed as the hallway. It was luxurious, like the posh address suggested. Most of all, it was blessedly clean—pristine and orderly. No strangers lounging, playing video games. No skank hos. No rap blaring disrespectfully from his expensive speakers. No mattresses covering the floor with random people he didn’t know sleeping all over the place.
MacNiven was known for his posh tastes, and he certainly hadn’t skimped at all here. Of course, the man had grown up ensconced in the lap of luxury, what with his family owning a whiskey distillery. It didn’t hurt that his dad was Ian MacNiven, the greatest footballer of all time, and his mom was apparently a famous photographer.
When you were a footballer in London, you heard stories about the MacNivens. They were legend.
He did a slow circle in the middle of the room, feeling like he’d stepped inside someone’s living room instead of a business. It was warm and inviting in a way he’d never been able to make his living room, with a plush rug and muted colors and comfortable-looking furniture. There were tasteful paintings on the walls—originals. He was by no means an art expert, but he knew quality.
