Chapter 6 #2
The rest of the team starts trickling off the practice field and Hunter asks, “What did you and Chloe Smith talk about at lunch?”
Fuck it. My gut instantly clenches, but I listen.
“Sorority sister stuff. No football talk, I promise.”
He nods. He’s happy to leave it at that and I have no business prodding her, but everything in me wants to know.
I am interested enough to ask, but no way am I going to indulge my curiosity because Chloe isn’t my concern and Cat is a professional.
She’s on our team and I trust her not to say the wrong thing.
Or anything about me that hasn’t already been said, like a bunch of bullshit about the promise of a new season with a healthy start.
I’m saved from embarrassing myself with an inappropriate question when Sean Patrick claps my back and says, “I’m heading inside. ”
Practice is over. Looking up, I see there’s no one left on the field. Most of the men are squeezing us out to get drinks. Knowing this signals the media that it’s their time to come at us for Q&A if they can catch us, I follow Sean and we all head into the tunnel.
The media storms us as we’re heading to the locker room and I know they’re going to follow us all the way inside, armed with cameras and mics.
But I need to ice my shoulder and back and I don’t need the media knowing about it.
Scanning the crowd, I don’t see the crazy chick Chloe.
I get a blip of something I’m choosing to interpret as relief, but my tension doesn’t go down, it spikes.
So, hiding in a huddle of offensive linemen, the biggest of the bigs on our team, I slip away to the training room.
Aside from icing, getting my lower back massaged is my number-two priority. The nagging pain there hasn’t gone away, naturally. But I can keep it managed with ice, heat, and massages and every other damn thing the team has at its disposal to keep us in the game.
I’m alone, with ice strapped to my shoulder and pedaling a bike, when I look away from the TV screen showing the endless loop of our recent Super Bowl championship game. I freeze.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” The bane of my existence—and the woman I see in my sweaty restless dreams, Chloe fucking Smith—walks in as if she belongs, as if she’s going to strip down to shorts and jump on the bike next to me.
I should be yelling at her to get out, but I start pedaling again, keeping my cool.
It’s the only way to handle her. In spite of my best intentions, my heart rate picks up and shows on the monitor and it’s not because I’m pedaling super fast, because I’m not.
An ice bath for my back sounds like a good idea right about now.
I need to submerge my entire lower body in ice to keep my dick from straining in her direction.
She’s wearing a fitted pink sheath dress that looks like silk as it shimmers over her perfect curves and strappy silver sandals like she’s going out for cocktails as soon as she leaves here.
“I came to check up on my favorite . . . player.”
I don’t like the way she says player, as if she’s hungry and sizing me up for a meal. Of course my cock loves her voice, all smoky and intense, and I know she’s playing games with me. But today I’m not full of whiskey and we’re not out at a club. This is my turf and I want no part of her.
“I came in here to get away from you.” I don’t bother mincing words, don’t care if she trashes me on air, calls me unfriendly or worse.
I’ll talk to any and all of the other reporters, including the others from her station.
That ought to send a message. “Besides, you ought to be covering the coaches’ Q&A, the star players. Talk to Gabe. He loves to talk.”
She snorts. “Too easy. And since when do you get to tell me how to do my job?”
“Turnabout—”
“That’s where you’re mistaken. There’s nothing fair about the game we play,” she says and comes closer so I can smell her heady perfume, making me want to reach out and touch the soft curls of her hair, feel them brush against my face, my—fuck.
The last thing I need is visions of her going down on me.
I need to find a real woman, one I might have a future with, to fantasize about if I’m going to go there.
“Get out of here, Smitty, before I have to escort you out. Wouldn’t want to make a scene.”
“Why not? It would go a long way to enhance my reputation around here.”
“You’d be a pariah.”
She laughs. “I already am, big boy. Didn’t you know? I’m the pathetic little girl of the late-great master trying to fill her daddy’s shoes and never gonna make it.”
I stop pedaling—my lower back is protesting anyway, getting crankier by the second—and I take a long look at those intense eyes. Is she playing me, or does she really believe her own sob story?
“I thought you were his legend reincarnate? I didn’t figure self-pity was your style.”
She shrugs. “You don’t know me. Besides, it’s not self-pity. It’s confusion.” She narrows her eyes. “Something about you and your no-bullshit attitude gets to me, makes me all girlie and talkie.”
Rolling my eyes, I can’t help a smile, because now I know she’s playing me. Except for that admission about her confusion.
“Get out, Chloe. It’s time for me to strip down and take an ice bath and I wouldn’t want you to get overexcited and out of control.”
“Now you’re talking. I sense a reverse psychology invitation in there.”
I can’t help my laugh, genuinely amused. “You’re a pip.” I pull the ice pack off my shoulder and toss it onto a shelf and walk around the corner to the room with a row of ice baths lined up and waiting. There’s a guy in one of them. A rookie who was hurt yesterday.
“What the fuck,” he says, looking past me.
And I know Chloe has followed me. Turning and blocking her from going farther or seeing anything, I put my hands on her shoulders to move her back out of the room.
The minute I touch her, my senses explode and my cock lifts my shorts.
Ignoring the damn appendage because I need to get her out of here, I spin her around and escort her straight to the nearest exit.
I’m not sure where it goes, but it doesn’t matter.
“You sure have a thing for the forbidden, don’t you?” I scold her under my breath.
“Why, I didn’t know you cared, Fontanna. Look at you, saving me from myself and all.”
She doesn’t resist, I notice as I shake my head, wondering if she’s right. I shove the door open and shove her through it, noticing she ends up on the side of the building near the fence and the street. Far away from the action. Serves her right.
As I close the door, she slips her high-heel sandal in to stop me and I know it has to hurt but she doesn’t flinch. Tough as nails. Tougher than some of the guys on the team some days. Can’t help the admiration meter in me rising simultaneously with my irrepressible cock.
“Wait, I’m only doing my job, not trying to blindside you—I have no camera, no recorder, not even a scrap of paper on me.” She raises her hands to prove it, as if I hadn’t noticed.
“What do you want?” I ask, realizing a fraction too late that we’re standing too close in the half-open doorway. She leans closer.
“I want to know how far you’ll go? How much you’ll give up to play the game, how injured you’ll allow yourself to get and still play—”
“Go away, Chloe,” I grit my teeth and try closing the door again. This time she lets me. But not before one last parting blast of nerve-tingling charm.
“See you Saturday at the station for the interview. Wear a suit.” The door shuts. My pulse spikes even though she’s gone.
Why I didn’t give her my stock answers to her questions, the same ones that have basically been asked before a hundred times, if not in so many words, and not with quite such intense passion, I can’t figure.
Maybe it’s that passion, that sense of something personal, like she’s actually worried about me—trying to save me from myself—that makes her question seem different.
Made me want to push her and her questions away.
And at the same time, if I’m being honest with myself, made me want to take her in my arms and . . . I don’t know what.
Don’t want to go there again. Need to banish her from my thoughts.
Because let’s face it, she’s the last fucking woman I need to get involved with.
She’s a damn reporter and I need to keep under the radar with my contract negotiations underway.
My agent said the team’s representative specifically asked about my back and my love life.
They’re digging into everything. No more Chloe.
Until Saturday. Fuck. I have only a two-day reprieve.