A Pact With A Player

Chapter 2 - Meet Keegan

Keegan’s POV

The little girl wriggled as her Grams tried to hold her in place against the doorway. She wanted to help her mommy at the table, making her birthday dress. She had little patience for having her height measured on the door frame like her grandmother did every birthday. She was seven now. She was too big for this. Once her Grams was done, she raced over to her mother, who had a sewing machine set up at the table right next to her Gram’s, mountains of purple material on the table in front of them. She watched the both of them in awe as they worked all afternoon, turning the pile of material into the perfect princess dress. They made her dress every year, and when she asked her mother why they made her birthday dress instead of buying it, her mother told her that there was nothing as unique and special as a dress made for you with love.

On her birthday three years later, she sat on the floor in the bedroom she now lived in with nine years worth of birthday dresses spread around her, tears streaming from her eyes as she realised there would be no dress to add to the collection this year. Her Grams had offered to make her one, but without her mother here to help, it wasn’t the same. Her dad had checked out as a parent the day the police came to tell them that a drunk driver had run her mother off the road and killed her, so she stayed with her Grams now.

On her twenty-first birthday, she got a surprise that she wished she had never been given. She was less than a year away from graduating when she found out her grandmother had been lying to her for years. She thought she was using a college fund that had been set up for her from her mother’s life insurance policy to fund her schooling, but in reality, she had been using a loan her Grams had taken out against the family home to replace the money that her father had gambled away over the years. What was worse was that the bank had required her father to go on the title of the house and be a joint borrower to get a loan as he had a high paying job, which meant in their mind that he could service the loan better than a woman making money doing clothing repairs and alterations out of her house. He had assured my grandmother that he had learnt his lesson and would get help for his problem, but instead, he had borrowed more money against the house without her knowledge and if p*****t wasn’t made soon. The bank would foreclose. The young woman did the only thing she could think of and used the funds she had aside for her last year of college to appease the bank, withdrew from school and got a job to keep up with future payments. Her grandmother had sacrificed a lot for her over the years. She wasn’t going to let her lose her home.

Present day

“Keegan.” A voice whispered in my ear, but I simply groaned and ignored it.

“Keeeeeeeeegggaaannn.” It started a little louder and firmer, but I was not opening my eyes for anything.

“KEEGAN!!!” The voice bellowed, causing me to lurch up, my eyes opening wide.

“What…..who….” I stammered as my eyes adjusted, and I realised that I had fallen asleep in the breakroom at work.

My friend Mackenna was frowning at me, her brown eyes staring at me with judgement, “You worked at the club last night, didn’t you?”

I rolled my eyes at her, “Given it a rest Ken.”

“You know I’m only looking out for you.” She replied, “you are going to work yourself into an early grave if you keep working like this.”

I met Mackenna the day I interviewed for this job. She was the one interviewing me to take over her position as she was getting a promotion. I don’t know why she took a chance on me that day. There were plenty of other candidates there that day that were far more qualified than me. When I asked her later on why she chose me, she said that she saw a lot of herself in me, which is how she knew, regardless of every other candidates' qualifications, that I was going to give this job everything I had. We may have been similar in personality, but that was as far as it went. Whilst she had long black hair, I had medium length strawberry blonde hair, her dark brown eyes were a far cry from my bright green eyes, she was 5’11 in height with a model figure whilst I was only 5’9 with a curvy body.

I knew she was worried about me. I worked at the bank as a teller Monday through Friday, a maid at a local motel on a Saturday and Sunday day, and picked up shifts as a bartender at a club at night whenever I could on a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. I had been doing this for the past few years. It wasn’t ideal, but the debt my dad had racked up against my Grams’ house was significant, and this was the only way that I could keep our heads above water.

My father’s gambling problem had come out of the left field. He had even hidden it from his own mother until it came time for me to go to college, and he had no choice but to confess. His promise to get help was a lie, and when we found out he put another mortgage against the house, that was the last straw. We both cut him out of our lives at that point, not that he had been much of a father to me since my mother died. My Grams had been my primary caregiver. She helped me with my homework, tucked me into bed at night, made sure I had food in my stomach and clothes on my back and even taught me how to sew like her and my mother. I owed her a lot. Making sure she didn’t have to sell her family home was the least I could do.

Once the bank closed, I said goodbye to Mackenna, ignoring her pleas to come out with them tonight instead of working and headed home to get some dinner and change before I went on to the club for my shift. I sat in peak hour traffic in my grandmother’s beat-up station wagon with nothing but the radio to keep me company for over an hour before pulling into our driveway. I had continued to live with my grandmother throughout college as it made no sense to pay for a dorm when I lived so close to campus, and now with our money troubles, I couldn’t afford my own place even if I wanted to.

But then again, I lived in the heart of Venice Beach, close to the ocean and great nightlife, not that I had the energy or time for it at the moment, I couldn’t think of a better place to live. My great-great grandfather purchased the property before the area became popular and before million-dollar houses sprung up. I can’t count the number of times someone came here with an offer to buy the place from my grandmother. But she had made a promise to her father on his death bed. This home would stay in the family. There was so much history here that she couldn’t bear to part with it. It was a simple home, a three-bedroom, two-story dwelling that looked completely out of place amongst its newer neighbours, but it was all that we needed. I opened the wire gate, its ear-piercing squeak reminding me that I needed to go to the hardware store on the weekend to buy some WD-40 to fix the problem, making my way up the path surrounded by every flower you could imagine. The one thing my Grams cared more about than her sewing was this garden.

Opening the door, I was greeted with the smell of garlic and tomatoes, which meant it was lasagna night in the Marshall household.

“Is that you bunny?” My Grams called out, causing me to roll my eyes as I walked through the lounge area towards the kitchen.

“Who else would it be, Grams?” I greeted, ignoring the nickname she gave me as a little girl. She called me bunny because of how active I was as a kid. She always said I would put the energizer bunny to shame.

I strolled into the kitchen as she was cutting up the vegetables to make a salad, going over and kissing her on the cheek as I nicked off when a piece of carrot and popped it into my mouth.

This earned me a disapproving look from her, “Dinner will be ready shortly. Go wash up.”

I knew better than to argue with her and headed upstairs to my room. It wasn’t much to write home about and contained a twin bed, side table and a desk that held my mother’s old sewing machine and my sketches neck to a dress mannequin that held my latest creation. Learning to sew with my mother and grandmother when I was younger had given me a passion for design. When I was in college, I was also taking a night seminar design class to further my skills, but all of those dreams were put on the back burner. So for now, I settled for making evening dresses in my little spare time that I donated to a local community centre that my Grams and I both volunteered at for young girls who didn’t have large amounts of money to buy a prom dress. I searched second-hand shops for dresses that I got for a steal, mainly because they were ten or twenty years out of style, and used their materials and other material I brought to turn them into something modern. Last year I managed to make around thirty dresses. This year I was hoping to beat that number. On top of the dresses, I made a lot of my own clothes, too, not that I had much use for the closet filled with one of a kind items as I spent most of my time in various work uniforms.

I had a quick shower and changed into my low rider jeans and club tank top before straightening my hair and putting on club-worthy make-up. I took the stairs two at a time and made it down just in time to see my Grams putting the lasagna on the table. The smell was mouth-watering and made my stomach growl the entire way to the table. Once dinner was served, I immediately dug in, not caring that it was still hot and burning my mouth.

I halted when I felt my grandmother’s eyes on me, looking up at her, “You were not raised in a barn, young lady, slow down. Anyone would think you haven’t eaten all day.”

“Sorry, Grams.” I apologised. She didn’t like it when I rushed through dinner like this, so I slowed as she asked.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had slept in late, so I skipped breakfast or that the leftovers I took for lunch today were still in the fridge in the breakroom at the bank because I fell asleep when I should have been eating. I kept this to myself because I didn’t want another lecture about how much I was working.

A knock at the door halted the eating process as I shot my Grams a look, “Are you expecting anyone?”

She shook her head at me, “No, you?”

“Stay here,” I advised her before getting up to go answer it.

When I did, I was faced with a guy in his late twenties, early thirties wearing a suit that cost more than my grandmother’s car. He was at least 6’0 with spiky but well-groomed hair, dark brown eyes that would suck any girl in and a lean build. As handsome as he was, he wasn’t someone I knew and didn’t belong at our front door.

“Hello, my name is Marcus Wright. I am here on behalf of my client. I was hoping to speak with a Mrs Beatrice Marshall.”

I knew these types. We got real estate agents visits at least once a month, none as well dressed as this guy, but they all wanted the same thing.

I gave him my sweetest smile when really all I wanted to do was tell him to bugger off because I wanted to eat my dinner, but I knew that would earn me a lecture in manners from my Grams. “I’m sorry she’s a little busy right now, but I will tell you the same thing that we’ve told the last three agents that have visited us. We are not interested in selling, have a nice night.”

I didn’t wait for his response and started to close the door, but a foot in the doorway stopped me, so I opened it up and glared at him, “Did your mother not teach you that no means no.”

He smirked at me, “Yes, she did, but I’m not a real estate agent. I am here on behalf of my client who attended a high stakes poker game the other night.”

The food in my stomach started to churn at his words, and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to throw up all over his shoes.

“At this game.” He continued, “He met a gentleman by the name of Dale Marshall who, if my research is correct, owns a share of this property. Unfortunately, he put his share of this property up as collateral for a bet and lost, and my client has sent me to have a discussion with Mrs Marshall about recouping that sum by putting the property on the market.”

I signed, hanging my head in defeat. What the hell had the son of a b***h done now?