Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
MADDY
“Oh, holy hell,” I mutter, glancing in the rearview mirror. Stopped at a red light, I look again to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing and yep. A reddish-purple mark, right on the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
A hickey. I have a damn hickey like I’m in high school again.
Granted, I never had any hickeys while I was actually in high school because when you play ice hockey, the guys see you as one of them, instead of as someone they want to give a hickey to.
But if I was the kind of girl who got hickeys in high school, they probably would have looked exactly like this.
I run a finger over the bruise, shivering involuntarily as I’m suddenly assaulted by the image of the mystery man from the bar sucking on this exact spot last night while he slammed into me from behind, one arm wrapped around my waist and his other hand around my throat, his big, hard body curled over me where I was bent over the back of his hotel room couch.
I shift in my seat, my clit throbbing at the memory.
“Get your shit together, Maddy,” I order myself as the light turns green.
I turn up the volume so “Where Does My Heart Beat Now” blares out of the car speakers and reach for the iced coffee in my cupholder, taking a long sip and letting the music and the caffeine jolt soothe me.
There’s a reason I crept out of that hotel room at four this morning while the mystery man was asleep, and it’s so this exact thing didn’t happen.
The thing being me getting attached to a nameless guy on account of some sex and a few orgasms.
The best sex of my life.
So many orgasms I probably would have needed all my fingers and at least half my toes to count them.
He was really good at sex. A sex savant. The orgasm king. The perfect blend of sweet and demanding. Growly, in the really, really sexy way. He played my body like it was a damn Stradivarius, and I lost count of the number of times I begged for more.
Me.
I begged.
I probably whimpered too, Jesus Christ.
My only saving grace on the express train straight to embarrassment city is that he whimpered too, and let me tell you, you haven’t lived until a six-foot two wall of muscle whimpers into your ear as he comes inside you.
For the third time in two hours.
I shake my head, trying to erase this entire line of thinking.
If no names or phone numbers were exchanged, it means that there’s no reason for me to obsess over last night or whether he’ll call.
And he had a hotel room, which means he’s not from here, which means I’ll never see him again, so problem solved.
I’m thirty years old and about to start the job of my dreams. For sure I can have a night of fuck-hot sex and be totally casual and cool about the whole thing.
I mean, I’ve never been casual or cool one single day in my entire life, but today seems like as good a day as any to start.
My stomach shimmers with nerves as I park in front of the sports complex that houses the Renegades’ front office and practice facilities.
Opening my emergency makeup bag, I flip down the visor and dab concealer on the hickey, before touching up the pound I already have spackled under my eyes on account of my four a.m. hotel room escape.
I could have slept for an hour once I got home, but my brain wouldn’t shut off, so instead, I used my contraband key to get into the hockey team’s practice arena and skated for an hour with my girl power playlist blasting in my ears before I got ready for work in the locker room.
It's one of my favorite ways to start the day, but it also means I’m operating on almost no sleep, and that’s a tall order for a concealer stick I bought on sale at Sephora.
Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, I see it’s just before seven. I don’t actually need to be here for another hour, but I’m getting an early start in hopes that I can avoid any errant family members who might get a wild hair to show up for my first day.
I grab my bag and my coffee and jingle the tiny disco balls hanging from my rearview mirror for luck before hopping out of the car, straightening the short black jacket I’m wearing over jeans and a plain white T-shirt—I love Maya, but no way in hell was I wearing a dress to walk the halls of a professional football facility.
I click the fob to lock the doors and then pat the hood of my beloved cherry-red Jeep Wrangler. “Wish me luck, Celine.”
All the cool kids name their cars after nineties pop stars.
Straightening my shoulders, I stride to the entrance, doing my best cosplay of Dr. Maddy Wright, sports psychologist who absolutely knows what she’s doing and definitely has her shit together.
“There she is.”
The second I open the door to the complex, I groan internally. With a grin on his face, my uncle Brian stands in the middle of the lobby, watching as I walk across the wide stone floor.
I should have known better than to think I could get all the way to my office unseen. Meddling is practically an art form in my family. And also, I don’t know where my office is, so that’s a whole thing.
“Jesus, Uncle Bry,” I mutter. “Doesn’t the general manager of a whole entire football team have something better to do than hang around the office lobby?”
“In fact, I had nothing at all better to do than this,” he says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
“When it’s my niece’s first day working for my football team, you better believe I’ll be hanging out in the lobby.
You’re lucky it’s just me. I had to talk your dad, Asher, Gabe, and Ben out of showing up too.
Jordan was even making noise about coming in from Boston and bringing his brothers.
He and Cooper said they wanted to visit Sarah and Emmy, but I could see straight through that ruse. ”
I roll my eyes at his mention of my dad and their other best friends who act less like men in their fifties and more like overgrown frat guys half the time. “Thanks for that. I think they may have forgotten that I’m thirty years old, and starting a new job isn’t that big of a deal.”
In fact, starting this particular new job is a major deal, and now that I’m here, my entire body is jittery like I downed six espresso shots instead of half a cup of iced coffee. But I’ll be damned if I let anyone see it.
Dr. Maddy Wright is the kind of woman who tells nerves to fuck right off.
Or, I wish I was that woman. I’m trying to be that woman, but I fear that, instead, I’m the kind of woman who shoves those nerves as deep into my gut as I can and covers them in caffeine, chocolate, and quirky charm.
But today could also be the day I change all of that, so I toss my hair back and straighten my shoulders, my body language giving bring it on, instead of what I really feel, which is terrified as all fuck.
“Give them a break, Mads. You’re their first kid. You’ll always be their baby. That’s just the way parenthood works.”
I eye him. “That’s not the way you are with your kids.”
“Oh, it definitely is. Ask him how he feels about Jake starting his senior year of high school next week. He’s having feelings about it.”
Grinning, I look up at Brian’s wife, Olivia, who is striding through the lobby in a summer dress, her hair pulled up into a high ponytail.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brian’s eyes light up.
Even after almost two decades together, and raising two kids, he still looks at her like she’s the center of his whole entire universe.
I wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to have someone look at me that way.
Without warning, my traitorous brain serves me up another image of last night—and the sex god with the bright blue eyes who looked at me exactly that way. My entire body tightens in response, but I shove the memory away before it can take hold again.
That was wild, fuck-the-consequences Maddy.
Today I’m professional, cares-about-all-the-consequences Maddy who is starting her dream job and definitely does not have hot, dirty sex with nameless men she meets in bars.
As soon as Olivia is within reach, Brian grabs her hand, pulling her in and wrapping an arm around her waist, bending to kiss her. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely having feelings about you in that dress right now. Whatcha doing here, Liv?”
She laughs and kisses him again. “I have a meeting with one of your players.”
“Which one?”
“Cameron Lowry. He called me last week to see if I had room in my schedule to do meals for him this season. Apparently, his regular chef quit suddenly, and there was something about his thirteen-year-old deciding to try out for the school play and his ten-year-old declaring that he can’t live without hockey.
He sounded desperate. I remember what it was like to have a ten- and thirteen-year-old, and doing it alone would have been impossible, so here I am. ”
I flip through the names that I’ve spent the last two weeks committing to memory.
In retrospect, it probably would have been helpful to be a football fan before taking a big important job with the team.
Or have looked at pictures instead of just stats.
Cameron Lowry, veteran offensive lineman and single dad of two who lost his wife when his youngest, now ten, was a baby.
“Thanks, Liv,” Brian says. “I know he can use the help.”
She waves that away like it’s nothing, and for her, it probably is.
Liv is a caterer and private chef whose client roster reads as a veritable who’s who of the Pittsburgh business and sports world.
“I’m happy to do it. And it gives me an excuse to come see our girl on her first day.
” Turning to me, she grins again and wraps me in a hug.
“How are you feeling, Dr. Wright? Ready to face the gauntlet that is digging inside the minds of professional athletes?”
I hug her tightly. When Liv first moved to Pittsburgh to live closer to her brother, Sophie’s dad, Gabe, she was my babysitter for a year or so before she started her business.
She married Brian when I was fourteen, so technically she’s my aunt, but she’s always been more of a big sister to me.
“I’m so ready. I wish I could have started earlier—gotten my bearings before pre-season—but one of the professors on my dissertation committee had a death in her family and it delayed my defense. ”
“I told you that you could have started before your defense,” Brian says, wrapping an arm around Olivia’s shoulders.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Would you say that to any other psychologist who was about to come in here and head the department?”
He shrugs, looking unbothered. “You’re not any other psychologist.”
“No,” I say, pointing at him. “That’s exactly what we’re not going to do here.
We are not going to pretend like I’m special just because I’m related to you or because my dad is a former hockey star and my brother is a current one.
Or because one of my pseudo-uncles is Asher Hansley who still holds passing records for this very football team.
Or because his son, who is currently in the process of breaking all of Asher’s records, is one of my best friends.
No one will take me seriously if they think I got the job because of who I know, instead of who I am. ”
“She’s right, Bry,” Olivia says, elbowing him.
I give her a grateful smile. Her older brother, Gabe, who raised her from the time she was eight after their parents died, is a billionaire tech genius.
He invented the smartphone that most of the world’s population has carried for almost the last three decades, so Liv knows a thing or ten about people assuming you got where you are because of your famous relatives.
“Fine,” he says, holding up his hands and giving me a wink. “Can I at least walk you to your office, or is that too much nepotism for you?”
I shrug. “Considering I have no clue where I’m going in this maze of a building, I think that’s the perfect amount of nepotism.”
He laughs and leans down to kiss Liv again. “Where are you meeting Cam?”
“Right here actually,” she says, just as the lobby door opens.
All three of us turn in unison, and suddenly I’m not standing in the lobby of the Renegades practice facility anymore.
My brain is once again a movie reel of images of the fancy suite on the top floor of the Fairmont hotel.
The room is dim, lit only by the glow of a single bedside lamp.
And the man with the bluest eyes hovers over me, looking at me like he sees straight to the core of me.
He’s over me, under me, everywhere, mapping my body with lips and teeth and tongue and hands, over and over again until all I could see was him.
He didn’t know me, but it was like he knew me. What I wanted. What I needed.
Oh my fucking god.
He was a stranger.
It was supposed to be just for one night.
He doesn’t live here.
Except I think maybe he does, because my one night just walked through the door of my brand-new workplace, and it’s definitely not nighttime anymore.
“You must be Cameron,” Liv says, holding out a hand.
“Just Cam,” he says, sliding his hand into hers to shake. His deep, rumbly voice has the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. “Everyone calls me C—”
The rest of his name is cut off when his gaze lands squarely on me. His eyes widen slightly, and then they heat, his lips tipping up in a smile I feel everywhere.
Then in a flash, that feeling turns to dread when the implications of this moment sink in.
My one-night stand and the best sex of my life was Cameron Lowry. Just Cam. Football player. Renegades veteran. One of the fifty-three players whose mental health I am now solely responsible for.
Holy fucking fuck.
I am so screwed.