by Mia Watts
As though she heard him, their gazes locked and she frowned. Her gaze fell away. The set director whatshisname told an intern to hand Ian a football. Flora’s jaw tightened and he wondered what she was thinking when the intern giggled and stroked his forearm.
Probably that he wanted the intern in the sack, too.
Ian sighed, trying to smile for the camera as flashes spotted his vision, leaving him with black holes in his sight.
Shit. If he were Flora, he’d be pissed off, too.
From Flora’s point of view, he was a fucking bastard. Of course she wouldn’t talk to him.
Fuck logic.
Fuck pride.
He needed to talk to her. The silent treatment had gone on long enough. They were working with each other nearly every day, thanks to Bobby. Did she really think they could keep avoiding each other?
If he explained, she might come clean with him about Deeks. They’d shared something special. Hadn’t they?
On the other hand, she had no reason to. He’d pretty much put the kibosh on that when he hadn’t denied Bobby’s announcement. According to Bobby, she fucked a lot of guys in the ranks. To her, Ian Tate was just another name, another lay, and another man to manipulate with the sweet clench of her pussy.
Ian eyed defensive coordinator, Coach Wilks, standing in the wings. Had Wilks screwed her? Valstet? Dryden? Had she moaned so sweetly for them? Begged them and made them feel all powerful between her legs? Had Ian merely been another stepping stone along her single-
minded path to bagging the entire team?
“Dude, you’re glaring, man,” Bing whispered. “The public don’t like brooding players hanging with their children.”
“I’m having a bad day,” he muttered. “And the blond kid keeps kicking my shin.”
“Be nice. He’s a regular on these shoots. You got about two minutes before he starts getting difficult,” Bing said.
“Difficult as in more than kicking my shin?” Ian guessed.
“My nephew has a recital today and I promised I’d be there,” Bing said. His look explained it all. Ian needed to get his shit together or get his shit beat down on the field during the next practice.
“Hey,” Ian said, forcing a toothy grin for the camera while leaning toward Bing. “What’s the story with Ms. Harper.”
“Ain’t no story,” Bing replied. He, too, spoke through his teeth.
“There’s a story,” Ian insisted.
“Naw, man, there ain’t. She’s cool.”
“What about her and the team?” Ian winced as the kid nailed him with another stinging kick to the shins.
“What about her?”
A tug on his shirt drew Ian’s attentions downward. A tow-headed boy with an upturned nose smothered in tan freckles glared at him. “Mr. Tate.”
“Yeah, kid?” Ian resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to find out about Flora during the shoot. He’d have to find another avenue.
“My daddy says the Gimlets suck. He said we sold out by buying you and we oughta throw you back to the swamp you crawled from.” The high pitched condemnation flung venom.
“Sounds like your daddy is a big Gladiators fan,” Ian said smoothly.
“The biggest.”
The set director clawed at the air in frustration. Seeing the shoot deteriorating by the minute, and being the inadvertent cause, Ian squatted down to eye level with the kid. He was thin, scraggly in the way kids are after a growth spurt before they look like the fit into their skin.
“He probably liked Gentry a whole lot,” Ian speculated. When the kid nodded, Ian nodded too to show he understood. “It’s a bummer he retired. Who did your dad like for quarterback?”
Flora clutched her clipboard to her chest, darting looks between the boy and the impatient director.
“I thought you were a tight end.” A tiny redhead said. She adjusted her royal blue headband. “Momma said you were a tight end.”
Another red haired girl shook her head. With their appearances so similar, Ian could only assume they were twins.
“No, Cassie. Momma said Mr. Tate had a tight end.”
“Oh, yeah,” the first girl agreed.
Bing snorted.
Ian figured he was coming out ahead. The boy had stopped snarling at him, and Ian’s throbbing shins hadn’t been battered in several seconds.
The tow headed boy rolled his eyes. “My dad wanted the guy whose name sounds like the star thingies.”
“Stars?” Ian asked, wracking his brain for a comparable name. “Aster?”
The boy’s expression turned to one of thoughtful consternation. “I think so.”
“John Aster is an excellent player. The Komodos are lucky to get him.”
“I guess you aren’t so bad,” the boy said, finally. “I’ll tell dad to give you a chance. He’ll listen to me.”
“Good thing.” Ian winked at him. “Your dad seems to know football. I’ll try to make sure the Gladiators didn’t waste their money.”
“You mean like you’re wasting mine, Mr. Tate?” the director shouted.
Ian stood his full height and faced down the smaller man. “Have some respect. These kids have lived a harder life than you’ve ever experienced. They’re the community heroes on this shoot.”
———
Did he win over everybody? She’d specifically requested that Taylor Fillmore be put by Ian because of the boy’s temperament and loyalty to the Gladiators. If anyone would have a bone to pick with the new quarterback, it would be Taylor, who kept up on the game and whose father was one of those bare-chested lunatics with painted letters on themselves no matter what the weather.
But of course Ian charmed his way past the little guy.
She’d needed Ian to show irritation, a finger shake, anything at the boy to make himself less appealing. Instead the bastard got down and commiserated about being the worst pick of draft until Taylor had conceded.
Bing’s smile widened, seeming to be genuinely impressed with Ian’s handling of the situation. Even the set director had quieted to a mutter and the kids were settled in for the final takes. Tilden was less impressed, filling the air with sighs and tongue clicks on the roof of his mouth as the seconds ticked by.
Ian had been dogging her every move as provided by the contract Deeks and Sterling had made her sign. It had gotten to the point where the sound of her name on his lips made her insides feel like melted putty. Not a good thing.
A blonde intern hurried over to take the football from Ian after the shoot concluded. She bit her bottom lip suggestively and twisted from side to side as she looked up at him under sooty lashes.
Ian smiled down at her as warmly as he would anyone, yet Flora had a momentary sense of panic that he gaze might have lingered on the blonde. Did that mean he was interested? Would he be asking for the girl’s number next?
Flora’s cell phone chimed and buzzed against her palm. She glanced at the screen where her brother’s name logged. She looked up at Ian, thoughtfully as she took the call. “Hi, Sage. Glad you called. I need a favor.”
Sage Harper’s warm chuckle floated through the console. “Where did you beam to this time?”
Ian kept talking to the Taylor, so she turned her back for privacy. “Nowhere. I’m right where I should be, for once. I just need you to meet someone and tell me what he’s thinking.”
“Not interested. The only guy I want to examine is standing in our kitchen, making a sandwich. I called to remind you about Mom’s Lady S Party. She thinks you’ll forget.”
“I didn’t.” She had been thinking of excuses for arriving late. She wouldn’t actually miss her mom’s party but sitting around with a bunch of women and passing around dildos didn’t sound like a stellar way to pass her precious free time. Flora would rather buy those things in private.
“Good. She’s running through the list of siblings. You can expect a call from Willow in the morning. Hell, Mom might send Dad to pick you up. She’s decided you work too hard and
need to get laid.”
Flora groaned. “Only our mother would set me up with a plastic—” She glanced around sharply, then covered her mouth and the mouthpiece of her phone. “Penis,” she whispered.
“You’re talking dirty at work, aren’t you?”
She could practically see the sparkle in his eyes. He’d teased her countless times over the years with that same timbre. “If I bring the guy to you, will you read him for me? Use your special faery voodoo to see if he’s really thinking about me or my thong?”
“Ugh. That’s gross.”
“Whatever,” she waved a hand through the air as though he could see the dismissal.
His sigh sounded heavy. “Yeah. If you promise to tell Mom that I did my damnedest to get you to the Lady S Party short of dragging you by the hair, I’ll read him for you.”
“Deal.” She glanced over to the staged area only to find the kids gathered around their handlers and no Ian in sight. “I gotta go, Sage. Love you.” She tapped the screen and her phone went black.
“Who’s Sage?”
The words curled darkly from behind her. She stiffened, then forced herself to relax before facing him. “Eavesdropping is rude.”
Ian crowded her. His harsh, whispered words rushed at her. “It’s rude to fuck some guy’s brains out, storm away without letting him explain, and then telling another guy you love him before your cunt has stopped creaming for the first guy, too. Who the hell is Sage?”
She stared up at his flashing blue eyes. Her cheeks heated with embarrassment. Gone was his relaxed demeanor and carefree smile. Ian Tate had a full-on mad happening. After his little display with the blonde moments earlier, he had a lot of gall accusing her of playing the field.
“What makes you think I’m still creaming for you? Oh, wait, did you plant a panty cam I don’t know about? Or maybe you’re just pissed because I can see right through you now that Uncle Bobby has outted you? Go back to your little blonde, over there. I’m sure she has a use for that lying tongue of yours.”
Flora stormed past him. Her knees quaked and her hands trembled. Worse, a lump had formed in her throat and as much as she blinked, she couldn’t clear the blurry haze obstructing her vision. Shit! She would not cry. Would not, she repeated in command to herself.
“Flora!” Ian called after her.
She cleared the corner of the studio and gained the hall. Out of sight from the others, she gulped in great mouthfuls of air, not understanding why the breaths shuddered and caught.
“Flora!”
Clutching her phone and clipboard to her chest, she ran. She didn’t care that the clacking of her high heels gave away her position. There was only one hallway, one direction for her to run, and if it meant getting away from him and what he did to the tightness in her chest, then running it would be. If the faeries had any mercy, she wouldn’t turn her ankle.
“Shit! Stop running,” he shouted, taking up the chase.
His heavier tread only lent speed to hers. The last time she’d been this out of breath was beneath him. No running then. No trying to get away, at all. Then she’d been rendered helpless by the passion in his eyes, the softness of his lips, the dance of his body over and inside hers. She’d been on her back feeling Ian.
Damn, him!
Her lungs burned and her ankle wobbled, but held. Flora took another corner, running blindly and knowing she had no real way to out distance the professionally trained quarterback, especially when she was blinded by tears and wearing two inch heels. “Of all the things you could have given me,” she muttered to the cursed faeries she was certain listened to everything. “You could at least have given me wings!”
“Flora, I’m sorry. Wait!”
The end of the hallway drew her up short. She realized too late there were no elevators or stairwells here. Flora wheeled around to face him as his easy jog and swaggering shoulders grew larger with each step toward her.
God she loved the way he moved. He even ran like sex. Determined, patient, and fully in pursuit of her. Her belly flipped. Her heart begged her to ignore the physical pull his nearness caused. If he had any idea how badly she wanted to be under him again…
Ian slowed. Flora threw her arms up over her face, not wanting him to see her heart more naked than he’d seen her body—and suddenly the narrow echoing changed, muffled, silenced.
She knew without looking it had happened again. Flora lowered her arms. A horrified sob escaped her as she found herself alone, in Ian’s bedroom.
“Oh, God. He saw.” Flora fell to her knees at the foot of bed. The last man who’d seen her disappear had tried to destroy her reputation. He hadn’t succeeded, but Ian had resources and information that other man never had. If Ian used this against her in exchange for sex, Flora wasn’t convinced she could resist him.
She hadn’t been able to resist Ian, yet.
———
“What the fuck?” Ian froze, midstride. There’s no way he had seen what he thought he saw. People didn’t just disappear into thin air. It wasn’t possible.
The sound of her panicked breathing had ceased. He could swear he’d seen tears threatening in her gorgeous tawny eyes and spiking her thick black lashes. Every image, sound had vanished.
Ian dragged a hand through his hair. It had been too real to chalk up to imagination. Hell, he could still smell that slight sweet berry and spice scent she wore, couldn’t he? He inhaled, closed his eyes to catch it. Yeah, he could.
“So where the fuck did you go?” he said to the empty hall, as he once again opened his eyes and visually searched for her. There was nothing to point to, nowhere he could reasonably say she’d gone that quickly. To get to the exit she’d have had to pass him, but where she’d stood, the only door was a small, see-through glass casing for the fire extinguisher.
Just to say he had, and because it made as much sense as Flora disappearing, he looked into the fire extinguisher casing.
“This is nuts. I’m nuts. I’m fucking insane.” Ian spun around and headed for his truck. There were two things he knew about Flora. She worked too much and she made his cock stand and salute. Since she wasn’t working his cock—yet—she had to be at the office. If not there, he’d cross that bridge later and it had better not answer to the name, Sage.
Ian hit buttons on his phone before he’d pulled out of the parking lot. “Bobby. I’ve played this game long enough. I just watched the woman I’m pretty fucking sure I’m in love with run away from me like I was some kind of demon sadist. Start talking.”
“Did you get her crying on tape?”
“No and I’m not going to. Whatever Flora shows me is between us. You can find another lackey, but I swear to God that if I find a snoop anywhere near her, I’ll level him and not look back.”
He took a curb, hopping over it and narrowly missed crossing the double yellow lines on the correction. He didn’t know where or how she’d disappeared, but one thing was for sure, she wouldn’t stay gone if he could bring her back. Bobby being his only tie to the blackmailing claim, Ian would begin there. If it meant going all the way up to Deeks, so the fuck be it.
Ian could see the office park in the distance with the stadium rising up behind it. Would she be there? He knew she worked crazy hours, but on a Saturday? After a big campaign shoot? God, he hoped so.
Bobby’s silence stretched the final few blocks. “I told you everything.”
A security guard glanced at Ian, smiled brightly, and waved him through.
“You conveniently left out most of that everything. Try again.” His tires took the tighter turns of the parking garage with echoing-squeals. He didn’t see her car parked in the designated spot, but he also hadn’t seen her leave the hall. In the realm of impossibility, the empty parking place meant nothing.
“She fucked Deeks. She’s fucked half the team and the coaching staff. She gets as involved as she has to in order to get information on them and then ride it to the top. That’s what I know.”
“Who told
you this load of crap?”
“Deeks.”
“No fucking way. If she wanted something on me, she had every opportunity to take it and make my life hell. What I saw on her face wasn’t superiority. It was pain.”
“Deeks sent Coach Wilks to personally deliver the request to me. You don’t think he’d involve himself personally, do you? He owns the team for fuck’s sake. Any admission would give her harassment story credibility.”
Ian shifted into park, turned off the ignition, and slid off the leather seat. His feet hit concrete. He slammed the truck door and jogged to the stairwell. “I’ll ask him myself.”
“Who? Deeks?”
“If I have to.” Ian fumbled with his wallet, found the code card, and swiped it. The door buzzed. Ian yanked it open and took the stairs two at a time.
“Don’t be stupid,” Bobby yelled. “Do you know what I had to do to get you in here and cover up your concussion shit?”
“I never asked you to. What the fuck does my concussion—” Ian gripped his phone tighter. Static touched the line but he could hear the silence on the other end like an admission.
“What did you do, Uncle Bobby? What the fuck did you do and what does it have to do with Flora Harper?”
“I owe Wilks a favor. But the whole damn thing with Harper is the truth. You don’t believe me, go web search Wilks back about twenty years ago when he was coaching the Deerhurst Dragons.”
Ian burst through the fifth floor. He didn’t hear anything moving. “Deerhurst? Is that a high school team?”
“Wilks was up and coming. You look into it and get back to me before you go to Deeks. Wilks swears this is all true and I told him that if he brought you on, I’d get his proof.”
“Wilks is a pussy.”
“This is your career, boy-o. Think about what you’re passing up before you throw it all away.”
“I am, Bobby.”
“You don’t know Flora Harper. For you, she’s a challenge and a great fuck. For the rest of us, she’s a coldhearted bitch. Get your facts before you do something you regret.”
Ian approached Flora’s dark office. The whole floor looked empty. He swore under his breath. Bobby was right about one thing. He didn’t know Flora Harper well enough to know where she drew her boundaries. His gut told him there’d been a mistake. Still, Bobby was family and Ian did have his football career to think about.