15. Victoria
VICTORIA
Seth Carver called at seven forty-three in the morning before I’d even gotten out of the car.
“The PHL office confirmed the Detroit fine,” Seth said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand. Petrov gets a three game suspension pending appeal.”
“They’ll appeal,” I said.
“Obviously.”
“File our documentation with the league anyway. I want it on record before they do.” I looked out the tinted window as James pulled into the private entrance at Caldwell Arena.
He’d been my driver for nine years and he knew the routes the way I knew balance sheets, without having to think about them. “What else.”
“The Hargrove group is pushing for a response by end of week.”
Hargrove.
I had taken the first call from his group three months ago and run the name through every database I had access to before the meeting ended.
Gerald Hargrove. Sixty-eight. Three children.
Significant donor footprint across half a dozen professional franchises.
And one particular asterisk that mattered to me.
He was the donor who had ended Coach Colton Mercer’s tenure with the New York Titans two seasons ago by making three phone calls before nine in the morning over an alleged conflict involving his daughter.
The man who had cost my head coach his old job was now circling my franchise for a piece of his new one.
I had not mentioned it to Coach. There was nothing for him to do about it, and I was not in the habit of bringing my staff problems they could not solve. I was, however, in the habit of remembering exactly who had done what to the people I was responsible for.
Hargrove could push his timeline. Hargrove could push all the timelines he wanted.
“They can push all they like. What else.”
“The Ryan Caldwell Foundation gala committee needs a headcount confirmation for the March event. Sandra’s been holding the venue but they need numbers.”
“Tell Sandra two hundred and fifty. Same as last year.” I gathered my things, the Birkin and the clipboard and my phone, as James brought us to a smooth stop. “Anything else or are we done.”
“The contractor called about the new camera system for the arena. Quote came in.”
“How much.”
He told me.
I didn’t flinch. People expected me to flinch at numbers.
I had stopped doing that sometime around year three of running this franchise, when I wrote a check for a full ice resurfacing system without blinking and realized that the money was not the hard part.
The hard part was always the decisions. “Tell them to proceed. I want installation scheduled before the championship if possible.”
“I’ll call them now.”
“Good.” James had the door open. I stepped out onto the pavement, one heel and then the other, the morning Las Vegas heat already building at eight in the morning. I gave him a nod. “I’ll text you when I’m ready. No need to wait around — I’ll be here until late.”
He nodded back with the quiet dignity of a man who had heard that sentence approximately four hundred times and knew it meant he’d be back by ten at the earliest.
I clicked my way through the private entrance and into the cool of the arena.
My office had a view of the ice.
I’d designed it that way deliberately. Some owners put their offices in towers with city views and floor to ceiling windows facing outward, toward the world they’d conquered.
I faced inward. I faced the ice. Ryan used to say it was because I needed to keep an eye on things, which was true, but also because I loved it.
That clean white expanse under the arena lights, the clean silence of it before the team arrived and turned it into something loud and alive.
I set my Birkin on the credenza and my coffee on the desk and opened my laptop.
Eight seventeen. First call at eight thirty.
The morning stretched ahead of me in fifteen minute increments, the way it always did.
The Hargrove group’s legal team first, then a call with the PHL media liaison about the press conference strategy around the Detroit incident, then a check-in with Sandra about the foundation gala, then the arena’s general manager about staffing for the wildcard game, then three hours of email that would reproduce itself faster than I could get through it.
By noon I had eaten a handful of almonds and forgotten about them.
By two I had fielded three calls I hadn’t scheduled and ignored one from a reporter I didn’t recognize.
By four I had the legal framework for Brynn’s case against the drone operator mapped out in a document I’d send to Seth for review. FAA airspace violations on top of invasion of privacy, there was a path there, narrow but real, if she wanted to take it.
By six I had a headache I was pretending wasn’t there and a stomach making its feelings known about the almond situation.
I shut my laptop.
The arena was quiet. The team had finished practice hours ago. The cleaning crew wouldn’t be through until later. Just me and the hum of the building and the muffled sound of something coming from down the hall.
I frowned.
That was rock music.
The second I slipped out of my office, however, I was met with something that should have been illegal in an enclosed space.
That specific strain of rock music my daughter used to blast through the house as a teenager, the kind with screaming where the melody was supposed to be.
She still played it in her car sometimes and I swear for the life of me, I didn’t understand it.
The drumming alone gave me headaches sometimes.
I followed the sound, the clicking of my heels swallowed up by someone screaming incessantly onto a track.
It dragged me all the way to the weight room, where the smell of heated sweat greeted my nostrils.
My nose curled as I peered around the corner.
Whoever the hell was still in here needed to go home and get some damn rest.
But when I saw Rhett deadlifting weights, I paused.
He wore nothing but a pair of basketball shorts with black leggings beneath them.
Sweat dripped down his chiseled chest, driving liquid trails toward his happy trail that disappeared beneath the band of his pants.
Despite the fact that he didn’t have quite the chiseled abs of some of the men on the team, he still had that outlined V that disappeared from view beneath the leggings.
I felt my mouth watering as I recalled how that thin layer of softness around his muscles felt against my cheek last night.
I lost myself in the cords of his forearms. In the way veins bulged from his rock-hard thighs. He had legs like goddamn tree trunks, and I swear, he never looked more powerful.
All sweaty. Muscles pulsing. Breathing heavily as if…
“Heeeey, Miss C,” Rhett said.
My eyes dropped to my tablet, even though my cheeks burned as I looked up into his face. Holy fuck, he was close.
When the hell had I walked into the gym?
Rhett’s grin sent a shiver down my spine. “Wanna watch?”
“Have you been here all day?”
He grinned as he held out his arm, ushering me toward a bench along the wall that faced him.
My heels clicked across the tiled floor, maneuvering around the foam and rubber pads that dotted the flooring.
I took a seat on the bench, watching as Rhett got back into position with the weight bar, and then his large, callused hands gripped it.
He took great care in his form as he hoisted the bar up to his hips before easing it back down onto the ground.
I watched him repeat the motion ten times before he set the weights down and released them altogether.
“No,” he said breathlessly as he pulled a white rag out of the back pocket of his basketball shorts. He wiped off his face. “Did some weights with Jett after practice, then I went and sat with Brynn at the bar until Coach came by to sit with her.”
My heart warmed. “Thank you for doing that for her. She felt… not so good about going into work today.”
He nodded before he readied himself for another set of deadlifts. “I can’t blame her.”
“Neither can I.”
My eyes watched his motions. I devoured the way his muscles flexed with every movement of the weights.
He moved from deadlifts to something that looked like circuit training, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
I should’ve been hungry. All I did was snack on nuts and fruit and chips while I worked.
But as I watched sweat drip down Rhett’s back as he did pushups, I found myself licking my lips.
My body was hungry.
But not for food.
“Like what you see?” Rhett asked coyly as he hopped up and grabbed a bar before starting in on some pull ups.
I just tilted my head, leaning back against the wall, and crossed my leg over my knee.
It made Rhett chuckle. “Stare all you like, Miss C.”
“Don’t worry,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest, “I will.”
And I did. I let my eyes feast on him. The way he moved from machine to machine. Exercise to exercise. He was like a mountain, moving only when the earth called to him. His body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. His eyes twinkled whenever he looked over at me and found me still staring.
I didn’t even care what I looked like any longer.
Because Brynn was right.
I neglected myself for too long.
And not just the little things. Not the sleep and the meals and the haircuts I kept rescheduling and the friends I’d let drift away.
She’d been right about the bigger thing too, the part I’d cut her off before she could finish saying.
Because cutting people off before they finished saying things was the whole damn move with me. Always had been.
I’d been afraid since Ryan died.
Fourteen years of telling myself I was running a hockey franchise when really, I’d just been running.
Goddamn it, my daughter.
I’d have to deal with that later. Some other day. Not tonight.
Tonight there was a six-foot-seven mountain of a man pretending to do pull-ups for me, and I had three years of catching the fuck up to do.
“I could put on a little show,” Rhett said as he swiveled his hips while wiping off the sweat from his chest. “You know, if that suits your fancy.”
I giggled and shook my head. “You’re something else, you know that?”
He winked. “Anything for you, Victoria.”
I wrapped the towel around his waist and shimmied against it, and I let out a playful whistle.
He grinned as he slowly rolled his hips, turning back around to face me as those luscious blue eyes connected with mine.
He threaded the towel between his legs, pumping his hips in a lewd manner that made my thighs burn with a need for his attention.
I kept my cool, though.
“I think you can do better than that, sweet boy,” I said with a grin.
I swear, something akin to a low growl bubbled up his throat before he spoke. “As you wish, Miss C.”
I whipped the towel around in the air before tossing it back at him.
I giggled when it slapped against his chest, and I picked up the sweaty piece of fabric before dropping it to the floor at my feet.
Rhett dropped to his knees, crawling toward me before he picked up the fucking towel between his teeth and peered up at me.
He prowled toward me, his hands bracing themselves on either side of the bench where I sat as he perched on his knees. I snatched the towel out from between his teeth, but he quickly took it back from me.
He wrapped it around my waist and pulled me to the edge of the bench.
“Anything else, Miss C?” he asked.
The tone of his voice rattled my ribcage.
When he dropped his voice like that, just for my ears, it sent goosebumps prickling on either side of my spine.
My gut clenched. My pussy pulsed. There was something mesmerizing about this young man.
Even perched on his knees, we were still eye level, despite the height I carried as a woman.
And the longer he stared me down, the more I felt my defenses dropping.
“Yes, actually,” I said as I gripped his chin and slowly pulled his face to mine. I let my mouth flutter against his before I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I could use a foot massage after being in these heels all day.”
His eyes practically lit up as he leaned forward long enough to capture my lips. The kiss was chaste, but surprising enough that I gasped against the claim. His lips slid along my jaw, rushing down my pulse point in featherlike movements that pulled the softest groan from up my throat.
I leaned my head back against the mirrored wall as I felt him slipping off my heels.
“I don’t know how you women walk in these damned things anyway,” he said as his hands picked up my right foot.
“Pain is beau—ooooh, Rhett.”
He chuckled as his thumbs kneaded into the aching arches of my foot. “That’s a good girl. Sit back and relax.”
I tensed my muscles to hold back my shiver at that one. Good girl. I’d never been called that before.
I kind of liked it.
“There we go,” he said softly as my foot relaxed in his grasp, “let me take care of this. Just relax, Victoria.”
And relax, I did.
He moved from one foot to the other, and by the time he was done with the foot massage, I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to.
I didn’t want to put those heels back on.
I cursed myself for not sticking a pair of sandals in my purse.
I sat there, my head back against the mirror, my body as relaxed as it would get for being in a sweaty gym.
I felt Rhett’s hands sliding up my leg.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice dropping low.
“Lay back,” he murmured as I felt his fingers hook into my thigh highs. “Just lay back for me.”
I felt him inching the pantyhose down my leg. “Rhett, we can’t.”
And yet, all he did was move to my other leg, his hand creeping up my pencil skirt until he slid that thigh high pantyhose off as well.
“Rhett,” I whispered.
I felt the warmth of his lips against the crook of my knee as he picked my leg up, slipping it over his shoulder.
I sighed as he kissed up the length of my leg.
As he scooted along the floor until his teeth nibbled delectably at the dollop of softness along my upper thighs that I’d never be able to get rid of.
“Mm, mm, mm,” he muttered as he lapped the teeth marks he left behind, “delicious.”
“Rhett,” I said.
“Tell me to stop,” he grumbled as head slipped beneath my pencil skirt. “Please. Tell me to stop. Tell me I don’t have a chance so I can focus on this fucking game coming up.”
I whimpered as he mouthed over my cotton panties.
“Please, Miss C,” he begged, sounding desperate. “Tell me to go away. Tell me to fuck off. Tell me something. Anything.”
He picked his head up and I felt him studying me. I opened my eyes and gazed down at him.
“Take off those fucking leggings, Rhett.”