Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

then?”
    “No, we were to move in together last month.” Fergus shifted on the snug’s cushion. Sometimes it seemed he could feel in his pocket the weight of the extra key on his fob. When he’d found a replacement flatmate, he’d had a third key made for her so that he could continue carrying what he thought of as Evan’s key. “Both our names were on the lease, so I had to have him removed.”
    “He couldn’t do that himself?”
    “No, because he just…left. Not a word to my face or even a phone call.” He struggled to keep his face from twisting. “Just a note.”
    “What a cowardly wee cunt! He deserves Belgium.” John raised his glass. “Fuck them both. And their waffles.”
    Fergus’s laugh was half cough, clumsy from lack of practice. “Right. Fuck all the waffles.” He tapped his tumbler against John’s, then together they drained the rest of their bourbons. As Fergus set down the empty glass, the glow of camaraderie illuminated his insides like a torch in a haunted house.
    Their dinner arrived then, an array of small plates to be shared tapas-style. As the noise in the bar swelled with hipster banter, Fergus and John inched closer to their common corner, reaching across each other for food and condiments. Whenever their hands brushed, Fergus felt a hot shiver more delicious than anything he was putting in his mouth.
    Perhaps he was finally ready to “get back in the saddle,” as his friends had been urging him for weeks. Perhaps he was ready to forget Evan and move on. At least for one night.
    “So you know my sordid backstory,” Fergus said once they’d taken the edge off their appetites, “yet I know nothing about you other than you wear a tie to a football practice session.”
    “Och, I don’t normally dress like that. But I’d gone to a—a thing Monday afternoon and didn’t have time to pop home and change.”
    “And where’s home?”
    “Ibrox,” John said, wiping his mouth.
    Fergus had suspected from John’s accent that he was a native Glaswegian. After seven years, his own Highlander’s ear still couldn’t distinguish among the city’s dialects. But he knew enough about Glasgow to state the obvious:
    “Ibrox, eh? Home of the Rangers.” He managed to utter the football club’s name without a snarl, an accomplishment given that they were arch-rivals to his own beloved Celtic.
    “Aye, we live stone’s throw from the stadium. My brother used to work there, in fact, before he—” John stopped, then started to hack, as though he’d inhaled a bit of food.
    “Here.” Since John’s water glass was empty, Fergus shifted his own across the polished wooden table, deciding not to pry about John’s brother. Unemployment was a sensitive issue in the current economy. “What are you studying at Glasgow Uni?”
    John took a gulp of water, then gave back the glass. “Economic and Social History, combined with philosophy.”
    “Ah.” Fergus had never understood why anyone would enter a program with no clear career path. But perhaps John was considering law. “Then what?”
    John beamed at him. “Then I take over the world, of course.”
    “Emperor of the universe at twenty-one. Ambitious.”
    “Twenty-four. I’m already twenty-one. Took a few gap years to save for fees and books and all, and to give my family a wee financial cushion.”
    “Wise.” Fergus was relieved that John was only three years younger than himself—not that this was a date or anything. “What sort of work did you do?”
    “Construction labor for the company my father’s a manager at. Mostly paving, piping, concrete work.”
    So that’s where he got those muscles. As an architect, Fergus had visited dozens of construction sites over the last few years. Perhaps he’d seen John at one of them, unaware they’d one day be drinking bourbon and sharing goat-cheese pizza at a restaurant too hip for signage. “You live with your parents, then?”
    “Just my dad. Mum left last year, moved back to