Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DREW
“I think we’re in with a chance on Saturday,” Hugo says as I pack my laptop into my bag.
Spending all afternoon running the tactics meeting together has cleared the air a little. Having to work as one, to discuss a strategy for breaking Chicago’s annoyingly solid defense and talk the players through the videos, meant we had to communicate with each other as well as them and had to not let any awkwardness between us show. We were both solely focused on one thing—winning Saturday’s game.
Well, apart from when I handed Hugo a whiteboard marker and his fingers brushed against mine. I was in the middle of saying something and stopped mid-sentence. All my neurons were suddenly directed toward blocking the tingles dancing up my arm (fail) and my underwear from becoming instantly damp (fail), leaving my brain with no capacity left for the forming and uttering of words .
And then there was the moment when I paused a video and turned around to ask Hugo what he thought about my suggested play and caught his eyes shooting up from precisely my ass level. Have to admit, there was something extremely satisfying about that.
So yes, we got through all of that fine.
But now we’re back in the office together. Just the two of us. And with no one else around to dilute the atmosphere, to force us to pretend like everything’s okay and perfectly normal, the tension is back in the air.
I don’t even know why he’s here. It’s not like he has something vital to collect from his still completely empty desk. Actually, I take that back. I did see him put a pack of chewing gum in the top drawer the other day—on the little plastic tray thing that slides back and forth across the top. I remember noticing the grass stain across the hem of his shorts as he did it.
But this tension is different—and possibly more dangerous—than the one this morning. It’s not an awkward, tongue-tied embarrassment like before. It’s more charged, more crackling, as if I can feel his heart beating from across the room. And Lord knows I wish I could slow mine down.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s as if the fight over him barging in when Ramon was getting out of hand never happened. It’s more like we’ve both moved past it.
Usually it would take more than a cup of tea for me to hand out any forgiveness, but I know that for Hugo, deciding to get me that drink, physically going and buying it, and leaving it here for me was huge . He’s not one to back down, to admit he was wrong. To lose . For him, giving me that cup of tea was like anyone else giving me their kidney .
Right now, I would willingly forgive him with the inside of my thighs. But that pub encounter was so far beyond professional, it must never be repeated.
Better that I get out of here and grab a cold shower in the safety of my own home.
“Don’t you think, Wilc?—”
“Ow.” Pain sears through my finger. “Shit. Fuck.” I shove it in my mouth and suck on it.
“What’s up?” He rushes to my side. “What happened?”
I point a finger that’s still in one piece toward the zipper on my bag.
“Ew. You got it stuck in the teeth?” He grimaces and bites his lower lip.
I nod as my tongue finds the metallic taste of blood.
“I feel your pain. I got something stuck in a zipper once. But it wasn’t my finger.” He grabs his crotch and winces.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. As if I need any more encouragement to think about what he keeps in his pants.
I lock eyes with him and tilt my head. “Thop ith,” I say through a mouthful of throbbing finger.
I take it out and examine the injury. The pain is way out of proportion with the pathetically small mark.
“Let me see.” Hugo perches on the edge of my desk right next to me and reaches for my hand.
I snatch it away in the nick of time before he can make contact. “It’s fine. Nothing.”
I’m not sure I trust myself if he touches me. We might be more at ease now over the Ramon argument, but the prickly unease over the whole passionate sex thing, over the him telling me he wanted to make new memories thing, hasn’t faded one bit. The air between us is thick with it, bubbling with it, like boiling heavy cream.
And it’s definitely in the quirk of that eyebrow.
He folds his arms, as if clutching them to his chest is the only way to stop himself from wrapping them around me.
I should be swinging this bag over my shoulder and getting the hell out of here. But instead I’m stuck to the spot, unable to take my eyes off the fingers of his right hand pressing dents into his left bicep.
“So what’s the deal with you and your dad?” he asks, the strident confidence in his voice gone and replaced with a quiet calmness and a kernel of compassion.
After the—dare I call it romantic —way he spoke to me in the pub on Saturday night, the tea apology this morning, and how he backed me up when I told Schumann to wait until the meeting to discuss tactics, there are zero doubts in my mind that he hides a kind, insightful spirit under that brash surface of bravado and cockiness.
And now his question about my dad sounds genuine. There’s a gentleness to his tone, like he’s trying to ease his way below the surface because he wants to discover what makes me the way I am.
Since I rarely talk about my family, he’s obviously spotted that there’s something not quite right there all by himself.
Wanting to learn more about me is sexy. But him picking up on little signs that would go unnoticed by anyone else, moves me on a deeper level—it cracks open my heart.
“Where’d that question come from?” I ask.
“Well, there’s obviously something odd between you two. ”
“I mean why now? What made you ask that right now?”
“Because I just watched you run that tactics session. It was all you. I was just your sidekick. You’re a great coach.”
I rest the back of my hand against my forehead and make like I might be about to pass out in shock at such a rare compliment of my skills.
“Yeah, okay.” He shakes his head and smirks, admitting defeat—conceding the fact that it’s so obvious that I’m a good coach that even he, the last person who wants to accept it, has to admit it’s true. “So I’m wondering why your dad never gave you a job here before. I assume if he had, you wouldn’t have turned it down since you love the place so much.”
“Working for the national women’s team was a privilege. Winning a World Cup…” I pause for a second to meet his eyes once he’s finished rolling them. “That was a career high, the one thing in soccer that everyone wants to do. I wouldn’t have done that working here.”
“So, if you’d been given the choice of working here or for the women’s team, you’d have picked that?” He cocks his head and raises a questioning eyebrow. “I don’t think it’s all about racking up titles for you.”
Shit, this man really does see me. “It’s not. But they’re sure nice to have.” Even I can hear my flirtation oozing from every word—Christ, I just can’t help myself with him.
Taunting him is fun. Taunting him in the area that winds him up the most—winning—is thrilling.
“Okay, fine. You don’t want to talk about your dad.”
I kind of do, though.
I want to tell him everything.
For the first time in my life, I’m filled with the urge— no, more than that, the need —to completely unload everything about my life and my career, about wanting this club to be mine, to a man. And that’s because it’s this man. This very particular, one-off man. Hugo’s the only person I know I could rely on to comprehend it all, to not think I’m crazy, to understand all my decisions. And that’s because the sport runs through his veins just like it does mine.
His understanding might be accompanied by an “Oh, that’s so fucking you, Wilcox,” but that would just be an even bigger sign that he gets it. Gets me .
Having someone get you is hot.
Having an insanely thoughtful, talented, sexy-as-all-hell guy get you is as scorching as surging lava.
“It must have been hard for you, getting to where you have.” His voice is soft and buttery and all I want to do is dissolve into it. “The sport’s hardly overrun with women coaches. I bet you took a lot of stick.”
And there he goes, getting me again.
“If you mean did I get a lot of hassle, a lot of people looking down on me, and almost everyone thinking I wouldn’t be able to do it, then yes.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Especially with your dad owning a club.”
“Exactly.” Being within range of Hugo’s gravitational pull is dangerous, so I step back and try to drag myself out of it, but it’s as difficult as hauling a lead weight out of rapid-setting concrete. Doing it while looking at him makes it even harder, so I turn my back and move toward the sun streaking through the grimy window.
“If only people knew,” I say on a sigh.
My eyes land on my plant. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but it’s been moved from my side of the windowsill to the center, right on top of Hugo’s tape line. No cleaners have been in here since last week. So there’s only one person who could have done that.
If I thought it was a big deal that he brought tea for me, walking back the no-plant-on-my-side-of-the-line thing is monumental. My heart flutters as an image of him picking it up and moving it flashes across my mind.
“I’d like to know.” His voice is right behind me. “I’d like to know what the story with your dad is.”
He rests his hands—big, and strong, and warm—on my shoulders. Slowly, they slide down my back, a ripple of tingles following them, and come to rest on my hips.
This is inappropriate for the workplace. It’s inappropriate for anywhere since we’re not only colleagues but also archrivals. But his touch now feels familiar, reassuring, and as comforting as it is sensual.
One of the last people on the planet I thought I’d ever trust is now the person I might trust the most—now that I’ve seen beneath the surface. And I don’t mean just beneath his clothes. I mean below his protective, cocksure outer shell and into the tea-fetching, plant-moving heart that lies beneath it.
“Not much to tell.” My words come out in a low whisper. “He didn’t want me. That’s kind of the beginning and end of it.”
“What do you mean, didn’t want you?”
He coils his arms around my waist and moves tight against me. If anyone walked through the door right now I’d be mortified. But I’m powerless to stop him. All sense of right and reason has fled my brain and been replaced with an addictive floating sensation I can’t give up.
He presses his muscular chest against my back and rests his chin on the top of my head, holding me in a way that says affection more than sex, adding another layer to our onion-like relationship. Every time I see him, every time I speak with him, every time he touches me, it’s like we grow another, deeper, layer of understanding.
“I mean he didn’t want me.” On the other side of the window a crow pulls a chip bag out from behind the front wheel of a battered station wagon. “He wanted a boy. Well, they had a boy, but?—”
The jolt in my insides cuts off my speech. This isn’t something I usually talk about. Even with people I know really well. Yet here, with Hugo holding me against him, the words fall from my lips as if opening up to him is the most natural thing in the world.
“You have a brother?” His chin presses into my head as he talks.
I sigh. I might as well tell him. It’s not like it’s a secret. It’s come up in a bunch of profiles about my dad, so it’s easy information to find.
“No. Well, I did have. But I never knew him. He died before I was born.” Somehow this is easier to say with my back to him. Maybe if I was facing him I wouldn’t have the courage. Or maybe I wouldn’t have the willpower to use my mouth for talking rather than kissing.
He lets out a gentle breath of surprise and slides his cheek down the side of my head until his lips rest against my ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” A tingle ripples down my side from his breath against my skin. “Guess I never thought to wiki your dad. What happened?”
The crow tries to stick its beak inside the chip bag opening, but only succeeds in pushing it farther away.
“He was born with a heart defect. They actually thought he wouldn’t make it past a year. But he lived till he was five.”
“He must have had the old Wilcox grit and determination I’ve grown so fond of.” Hugo strokes one hand over my hip.
“So my parents tried for another kid. And got me. Clearly my father had wanted a replacement son. They’d already picked out the name Andrew. So when the crashing disappointment that is me was born, they couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a new name and just called me Drew.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t like that,” Hugo says. “No parents would be like that.”
“You’d be surprised.” I rest my hands on his arms where they wrap around my belly. “My brother inherited his health issues from my dad. That’s why Dad had to step away from the club—as he gets older his heart becomes less stable. His doctor told him he had to give up the stress of business and competition. I’d always hoped that he might pass the club on to me one day. But turns out he’s not as well off as I’d thought, and he needed to sell it to fund his retirement.”
The crow tries standing on the bag and pecking at the opening to make it bigger.
Hugo shakes his head against mine and holds me even tighter against himself. “Where’s your mom?”
“New Mexico. At least, last I heard. She took off when I was two. Just as my dad was starting the club. To be fair to her, she shouldn’t have had another kid while she was still in the depths of grief from losing the first one. I imagine grief and postpartum depression are not a great combo. At least that’s how I explain it to myself—that she didn’t have full mental health when she made the decision to leave me.”
I drop my head back against Hugo’s shoulder, sinking as far into him as it’s possible to sink into a wall of solid muscle. “And I found out later my dad had had a string of affairs. So she would have been dealing with that on top of all the other awful things too.”
“Christ, he’s such a shit.” Hugo plants a gentle kiss on the top of my head. “Have you seen your mum since?”
“Nope. I see her parents, my grandparents. And they hear from her every few years. But not me.”
The crow’s beak opens and closes a few times in frustration, presumably producing loud squawks that are impossible to hear from here.
I let out a deep sigh. “So, the mother who couldn’t cope with me left me with a father who thought I was the wrong gender. Since his parents were long passed, my mother’s parents live in Wyoming, and he was busy throwing himself into starting the club, he got nannies. And that’s who raised me. Until I could raise myself.”
The crow picks up the chip bag from the bottom and flies a few inches off the ground to tip it up. Nothing comes out.
“Let me guess, you frantically learned to look after yourself at a ridiculously young age so your dad would get rid of the nannies.”
There he goes, being all perceptive and figuring me out again. I can’t help but chuckle at how on-target he is. “Yup. Fourteen.”
“That’s my girl.” He squeezes me against himself.
That phrase—the possessiveness of it, the ownership of it, the claiming his territory of it—is everything I always thought I would hate. But from Hugo it’s like a magical melody that makes my heart dance and my core sing.
Out in the parking lot, the crow tries again. And this time two broken potato chips fall out of the bag. He gives a little flap of delight, then munches on the first one. Clever bird.
“I haven’t known a life without the Commoners in it,” I tell Hugo. “After I’d shaken off the nannies, I hung out here as much as I possibly could.”
“Because if you were involved in the club, the thing your dad loved more than anything, he might love you too?”
And in seconds he’s figured out something it took me years of therapy to understand.
I twist at the waist to look up at him over my shoulder. “You’re very insightful for someone who doesn’t believe in talking about issues.”
He shrugs. “Just seems obvious. We might not have known each other long, but I’m sure I know how you tick.” He drops a featherlight kiss on my cheek and my whole body melts.
“And you’ve been doing the same thing ever since, right?” he continues. “You worked your nuts off to build a successful soccer career in the hope he might eventually see your worth. I know who you are, Wilcox. I knew who you were the moment you produced that contract from your bag in the locker room.”
Well, if there aren’t even more layers to Hugo Powers’s mind than I realized.
I let my eyes drift shut and my head rest on him again. “All I ever wanted was for him to pass this place to me so I could make something more of it.”
He turns me around in his arms and tips my face up to look at him.
“It’s a shame he couldn’t give it to you.” Deep truth and honesty fill those big brown eyes.
“You think I’d make a good club owner? ”
“Of course,” he says, like I’m asking him whether the turf is green.
“That’s the biggest compliment anyone ever paid me.” I have never spoken truer words.
“And I know what’ll cheer you up.” He taps me on the end of my nose and gives me a cute smile.
“Look.” I glide my hands over his firm pecs. “You don’t have to try to be thoughtful just because of what happened in the pub the other night. I get that it was nothing.”
“I’m not.” He pulls his head back, looking surprised and hurt by my comment. “I’m doing it because I want to. And it wasn’t nothing. Well, maybe it was to you. But not to me.”
“Of course it wasn’t nothing to me. Do you think I just go around doing…stuff like that?”
His smile broadens as he shakes his head.
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” I tell him. “How can we have a thing when we’re fighting for the same job? It’s a conflict of interest.” I smooth out his T-shirt over the little bumps of soft hairs under it. “And, anyway, when I get it, you’ll go right back to England and we’ll never see each other again.”
He chuckles, his chest shaking under my hands. “Well, I have no intention of not getting it. But I can see why you might want to leave town when I do. I mean, the shame of it, the professional humiliation of not getting the job of coaching the team you were raised with.”
“See…” I push off him, laughing. “It’s not funny though, is it? Because it’s true.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen in a couple of months. Well…” He tips his head and that fa miliar glint is back in his eye, his lips twitching. “Apart from me getting the job. That’s a dead cert.”
He tucks a finger under the stray strand of hair that’s fallen across my face and eases it back behind my ear, brushing my temple. His touch causes butterflies to flutter down the side of my neck and into my chest.
“But I know that right now there’s something I want to show you.” His voice is soft, almost velvety. His eyes affectionate and kind. This other side of him, the side the world doesn’t see, makes me feel like I’m in on a huge secret. It’s intoxicating, addictive, and impossible to resist. “Can we go with that for now?”
I’m not one to not look beyond the end of my nose when it comes to plans—particularly life plans—but I find myself silently nodding.
Inside, my heart is having a big old chat with my brain, telling it to just go with the flow for a couple hours—because I’m intrigued, because I know he gets me, and if there’s something he wants to show me, it’s bound to be something I’m interested in.
My brain, currently being a pile of gray mush, is unable to argue.
“Come on.” Hugo gives me one of his beaming, dazzling smiles. And, with a playful slap on both butt cheeks, he drops his lips to my forehead. “Let’s go.”
Then he takes my hand, and I let him lead the way.