The Thing About My Rival (The Boston Commoners #1)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

HUGO

“Are you going to keep up that huffing and puffing for the whole time we have to share this office?” Wilcox asks, taking a set of blue and orange pens from a baggie and dropping them into a football-shaped cup.

“I was neither huffing nor puffing.” Maybe I was. I don’t know.

This has to be one of the most frustrating moments of my life—right up there with when Butcher passed to Hemmings instead of me when I obviously had a clear run on goal in the eighty-sixth minute of the title deciding match eight years ago.

But, hey, clearly I don’t bear grudges, so I’ll obviously be over this thing quicker than you can say “open goal.”

“I know it’s small, but we’ll just have to make the best of it.” Wilcox lifts the sex toy diffuser thing out of her cart and places it on the corner of her desk.

This office was not built for two people. The second desk and bookshelf were obviously wedged in here this morning.

My desk and bookshelves—or rather, the ones Wilcox didn’t immediately claim—are pushed against the wall next to the door to the hallway. Hers are against the opposite wall. At least that means we’ll sit back to back.

“Actually, hold on,” Wilcox says. She grabs one end of her desk and hauls it toward the center of the room, its feet making a screeching sound on the tile that could summon dogs from the other side of the Charles River.

She repeats the ear-splitting move on the other end, then wheels her chair around between the desk and the wall.

Oh, good.

“That’s better.” She surveys her work with the look of achievement akin to a surgeon who’s just wrapped up a life-saving operation. “You should do the same. Then we can confer face to face.”

I don’t want to confer at all, face to face, face to back, or face to fucking anything. “Maybe later.”

One of the two deskless walls at either end of the room has a dirty window that looks out onto the parking lot. The other has a door leading into the adjoining locker room with a full-width window next to it.

“We’re going to have to put a curtain or something over that.” I point at the clear view to where about twenty guys will be getting changed and showered every day.

“Aw, see, you’re settling in,” she says with a sickly sweet smile. “You’re already picking out curtains.”

She pulls open a desk drawer and screws up her face at whatever she’s found in there.

I tap the window and discover it’s plexiglass. “You can nail plywood over it for all I care, but I can’t have the guys worried about wandering around naked in front of a woman.”

She ambles around in front of the desk. “Is that what you do in locker rooms?” She rummages in her cart and produces a spray bottle of cleaner and a roll of paper towels. “Just wander around schlonging it out?”

She throws her shoulders back, thrusts her hips forward and swings them from side to side while holding her disinfecting products in the air.

If I wasn’t so frustrated and tragically disappointed by this whole situation, I might laugh. But I am. So I don’t. “ Schlonging it out? ”

She brushes her ponytail over one shoulder, revealing a small birthmark shaped like a four-leaf clover just below her left ear, and walks behind the desk to squirt cleaner into the open drawer. The air is immediately filled with the smell of chemical lemons.

“We’ll figure something out.” She snaps a couple sheets from the paper towel roll and gets to work wiping out the drawer.

I pace to the other window and stare through the grimy glass at the parking lot. There’s barely a vehicle there that looks less than ten years old. In fact, just one—a shiny silver Mercedes. Must be either Miller’s or Leo’s since they’re the half of the Fab Four who live in Boston. Chase and Prince Oliver are based in New York City.

I jump when Wilcox appears by my side, her right arm just inches from my left.

“There.” She places the eccentric-professor-hair plant in the middle of the windowsill.

The morning sun reveals three freckles near the tip of her nose. Right above her satisfied smile. “I’ve had this thing with me since my first job at the Portland Cedars ten years ago.”

“And you kept it alive this whole time. Congratulations.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t cope well with frosty conditions.” She turns her head to look up at me, a spark in her eyes. “So it might not last the week here.”

Yeah, she’s such a comedian. With an irritatingly cute face. “I’m not being frosty. I’m just being practical. Anyway, how come you went all the way to Oregon for a job when your dad owned this place?”

Her spark drains away and she stares back at the plant. “Maybe it was because he owned this place.”

Oh, great. So on top of me having to share the job with her, on top of me having to share an office with her, on top of her being a smart-arse, she also has daddy issues. This just gets better and better.

She gives the plant a quarter turn. “Perfect.”

“As long as you keep it on your side of the room, it is.” I nudge it a couple inches to the left.

“Hilarious.” She nudges it back.

“Oh, I’m not trying to be funny. I’m as deadly fucking serious as I am about this job being mine.” I push it farther along her side of the windowsill.

“Don’t be such a child.” She picks it up, plonks it back in the middle and heads back to her desk.

“The only way this shared job and shared office thing is going to work is if you keep your color-coordinated, aromatherapy, horticultural bullshit to yourself.” I pick up the plant and place it at the far end of her side of the windowsill.

It’s actually quite nice, in a bunch of long curly leaves sticking out of a skinny trunk kind of way. But there’s no way in hell I’m giving in now.

“For the love of God, Hugo. Don’t be so pathetic.” She marches over, posture perfect, ponytail swinging, and places it firmly back in the middle.

If I give an inch now, albeit an inch of a completely unimportant windowsill, she’ll think I’ll back down on anything. And I absolutely can’t allow that precedent to be set. I am no more backing down over this petty little plant thing than I would over man-marking being better than zonal marking.

A line will be drawn here. Figuratively and literally.

I turn to my desk and yank open the drawers one after the other. The first is empty, barring some dust. In the second, which has a sticky handle, there’s an old whistle and some paper clips. The third…

“Ah-ha.” I snatch up the roll of Joyntz physio tape and rip off a strip.

Standing in the middle of the room, I size up the width of the window to find the halfway point on the ledge.

Then I slide the plant to the left again and stick down the black tape, forming a line from front to back. “There. Your stuff goes on that side. Mine on this side.”

Wilcox drops a pile of folders on the desk, slaps one hand on top of them, and rests the other on a spot that nips the sweatshirt in at her waist right above the curve of her cocked hip.“Are you trying to be funny? Am I supposed to laugh? Because the joke’s not working.”

“Told you, I’m deadly fucking serious. And I’m sure you don’t want to work with me any more than I want to work with you.”

“Finally, you got something right. ”

“So the best thing to do is to stay out of each other’s way as much as possible.”

“And how exactly do we do that when we have to establish training protocols and game strategy, and generally, you know, work together ?”

“You lost me at ‘protocols’ and ‘strategy.’ And that’s why this is never going to work.” I point at her desk. “You’re all files of statistics and color-coordinated notebooks and smelly sex toys. And I’m all…” I make a sweeping gesture at my dusty bare desk and vacant bookshelves.

“Empty and unloved?” She’s unable to stop herself from laughing at her own joke.

The familiar flash of temper sparks in my belly. Could she be any more annoying? Could she be any more in the way of me getting my career and reputation back? And, more disturbingly, could she have a point?

While all I feel like doing right now is yelling and throwing things, six months cooped up inside my house doing just that after my knee injury taught me it achieves nothing. All it resulted in was the need for a lot of new dishes.

But what might solve my problem here is making little Miss Houseplant’s life hell.

“I meant that I’m more bare bones, that I work from my gut, without the need for office supplies. We’re too different to be able to coach together. The only way to get through this torture is to have a clear delineation in all things. Including this office. So, since there isn’t space to put up a wall between us, this tape will have to do.”

I count the floor tiles along the wall with the locker room. “Sixteen. That’s eight for you”—I stick the tape between the eighth and ninth tiles—“and eight for me. ”

I drag the tape along the full length of the room.

Wilcox quickly steps back when she sees I’m about to tape the line over her feet and stick her to the floor. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope.” When I hit the wall, I carry on taping till it meets the first strip I put on the windowsill.

I step back and admire my pettiness for a second.

Oh, to hell with it. In for a penny…

I tear off another long piece of tape and slap it up the middle of the window.

“I’m delighted to get the half of the view with the dumpsters,” she says. “But you do realize I can still see out of your half, right?”

“Just want to be sure you don’t hang any dream catchers or some shit on my side.” I slide the plant along the ledge until none of the leaves are dangling over the line. “All that matters is that your stuff stays on your side of the room and my stuff stays on my side.”

“Apart from how incredibly pathetic that is, you don’t actually seem to have any stuff.”

“Everything I need to do this job is in here.” I tap the side of my head.

“I dread to think about what’s sloshing around in there.” She picks up the pile of folders and turns toward her shelves. Damn, her arse looks good in those sky-blue leggings. When she reaches up to put the files on the shelf, her sweatshirt rises enough to reveal the faint outline of a thong between the top of her butt cheeks.

“And I’m so happy this job is turning out to be everything I’ve ever dreamed of,” she says on a sigh.

I drag my eyes away from her. Admiring the enemy’s backside will not do. “Then quit. Go back to the US team. Or back to Portland. Or anywhere. You don’t need to be here.”

She turns her head slowly and peers at me over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Which means you do , right?” She says it slowly, knowingly, like she’s seen right through me.

Shit. Did I let too much slip? “What I mean is that there’s no need for two coaches and you already had a good job.”

“Ah-ha.” Her eyes widen with realization. “So because I already had a job I should have been satisfied with that and not wanted to progress. But you’re entitled to this one.”

She turns to face me, shaking her head and pursing her lips. “Let me be very, very clear here for a second. Whichever one of us they choose to stay on after the end of the season will be the best person for the job. And you don’t get to be the best person just by needing to prove to all your buddies back in Blighty that you are capable of something. You’re the best person for the job if you want this team to win because you love this team. Not because they’re your selfish stepping stone to getting your life back.”

“It doesn’t matter what your motives are for winning, as long as you win. You just need to have the fire in your belly to score more goals than the other side. That’s the only thing that counts.” Why do so many people have to make it more complicated than that? That’s really all football’s about.

“Christ, that’s as pathetic as this line.” She steps right up to it, directly opposite me, just the tape’s width between our toes and not a whole lot more between our chests. “It’s like you’re a twelve-year-old who doesn’t want to share their bedroom.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t want to share my bedroom with you .”

She freezes, pink blooming in her cheeks. Her breasts rise and fall as she fixes me with those bright green eyes and drags her tongue along her upper teeth.

“Well, well, well.” Her words are drawn out. Deliberate. Gone are the quick-fire comebacks.

She stares at me, nodding her head slowly. “Hugo freaking Powers. You really are exactly the thoughtless, self-obsessed asshole you showed me you were six years ago, huh?”

“Six years ago?” What nonsense is she talking now?

She snorts and spins away from me. “I’m going to get a bucket. This place needs a scrub.” And she disappears out of the door.

I knew I recognized her from somewhere.

But what the hell happened six years ago?