by Elise Faber
Devon frowned. “I fuc — screwed — up at the house. I didn’t handle the situation well. I was so relieved to see Clarice because I thought she was the solution to our problem. I forgot that she can be overprotective.”
Ha. Yeah. Now that was an understatement.
Except Becca couldn’t be too mad. Insinuations aside, Devon deserved to have someone looking out for him.
But who was going to look after her? asked the little voice in her head.
“Clarice and I had a chat,” Devon said. “She understands that what’s going on between us is none of her business.”
Becca snorted.
“Sweetheart…” He touched her cheek. “…I love you. I need you to know that. You’ve been different from the beginning. Clarice is going to have to understand that, or she’s going to have to go.”
“I—” Becca shook her head. “No. I don’t want to be the cause of anything. Clarice is excellent at her job. I shouldn’t—”
“Which is exactly why I love you so much.” He ran a thumb along her bottom lip. “You care about other people. You work hard. You’re smart as hell. Anyone would be lucky enough to have you as their assistant, let alone to have you gracing their life.”
The knots in her stomach loosened; the wounds in her heart closed up. “You think so?”
One-half of his mouth did that sexy, slight curve that never failed to make her insides all gooey. “I know so.” His lips brushed across hers. “Forgive me for being such an idiot.”
“Maybe.” She smiled, kissed him back. “Thank you for my mom. I shouldn’t accept it, but…”
It was for her mom, and it was a gift she didn’t have the strength to return.
“You will,” he ordered, brows pulling into a fierce frown.
“Maybe,” she countered, giggling when he started to mutter a curse then cut the word off.
“You’re a bad influence.” He glared.
“I think you mean a good one.”
His fingers laced with hers. “Yes, I do,” he said and raised their hands to his mouth before kissing the back of hers. “Give me, give us a chance?”
As if he had to ask. Devon was… well, he was pretty much everything.
“Okay.”
Brown brows came up. “Okay? Just like that?”
Becca leaned forward and hesitated with her mouth a half inch from his. “Just like that.” A pause. “Because I fucking love you too.”
The look of surprise on his face was why she saved that word for very special occasions.
EPILOGUE
Three months later
“I CAN’T BELIEVE he stole you from me,” Devon grumbled as Becca slid out of bed and started for the bathroom.
It was obscenely early, but she had a flight to catch.
“I should have gutted him when he offered you the job.”
She flicked on the lights in the bathroom and paused in the doorway. She was naked of course — clothes, pajamas, and sexy lingerie alike all seemed to melt away in Devon’s presence.
“You like Sam,” she reminded him.
“I used to like Roberts,” he muttered, throwing the covers back and advancing on her. “Until he took advantage of you.”
“By offering me a great job that is both fun and pays really well? That took me away from the HR mess that was PMG?”
Devon just grunted and an edge of annoyance gilded her tone. “I’m a good executive assistant, and you know it.” She bent, pulled her toiletry bag from beneath the cupboard of Devon’s sink.
She was still paying rent on her old apartment, not that there was any point. Not when she spent every free minute with Devon.
Except for the next forty-eight hours. Those would be with Sam Roberts, closing the deal he and Devon had been putting together.
While Devon stayed home. Which was why he was so grumpy.
At her tone, his grouchy expression faded. “I do know it. You’re the best executive assistant around.” His face screwed up. “I just—”
“Am going to miss me.” Silly man. She was going to miss him desperately too.
His face softened. “You’re darned right I am.”
Her lips turned up. “I love it when you don’t curse for me.”
He put his hands on her waist and tugged her close. “I love you. Period.” He gave a kiss that would have singed her socks, had she been wearing any, then reached behind her to turn on the shower. “Now get ready. I’ll make you breakfast. You’ll need something in your stomach for all the proverbial names you’re going to take and butts you’re going to kick.”
Her heart swelled so big it threatened to burst right out of her chest. “Devon,” she said and ran over to him when he paused in the doorway.
He didn’t miss a beat when she threw herself against him, just caught and slanted his mouth across hers.
“I love you,” she said.
A wicked grin. “I know.”
After another kiss, he released her and tapped her bottom. “Go on now. I’ll be waiting downstairs. With chocolate.”
“You’re my hero.”
He touched her cheek, smiled down at her. “And you’re mine, Bex. Always.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THANKS FOR DIPPING into the world of Prestige Media Group, I hope you enjoyed Becca and Devon’s story. If you need more hot athletes (or maybe just those yummy alphas), then check out my Gold Hockey series: Blocked (out now) and Backhand (coming April 2017)! Both are standalones with happily-ever-afters and are plum full of alphas, steamy locker room scenes, and heroines who are spunky and spicy enough to tangle with six-feet-plus hockey players.
I love connecting with my readers. Please find me on Facebook (facebook.com/elisefaberauthor), Instagram (@elisefaber), or my website (www.elisefaber.com).
Just Puck It!
-Elise
OFF GUARD
by Stephanie Fournet
CHAPTER ONE
PULLED-PORK SLIDERS or Thai ribs?
Charlie Woodruff didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
Even with a degree in public relations from Pepperdine and four years as a college athlete, it had taken Charlie about two weeks at her job at Prestige Media Group to realize she’d made a huge mistake.
Because what did public relations have to do with choosing menus for signing parties? Charlie knew how to write a press release. She knew how to orchestrate a media blitz. She knew how to turn a misdemeanor into an opportunity.
But she didn’t know how to plan a menu.
How could she? She lived on strawberries and low-fat cottage cheese. Tuna and celery sticks. Grilled chicken salad. On the days she ran, she treated herself to a square of Ghirardelli chocolate — her favorite was flavored with sea salt. And that was it.
Lean and clean.
That was Charlie’s motto when it came to food. It had served her well as a Division I track and cross-country runner, and she had no intention of changing it now. Sure, the Atomic Taco food truck she passed on her way home every night made her go weak-kneed with the scent of spicy ground meat and corn tortilla shells, but restaurant-grade ground meat had something like fifteen grams of fat per serving. And one tortilla shell was the caloric equivalent of her entire breakfast. That didn’t even include the guacamole and sour cream.
Guacamole and sour cream…
Charlie ignored the pity party in her stomach. It was five o’clock; she was still at the office, and she wouldn’t be able to get home to her new apartment and her grilled chicken salad until she finalized the menu for the signing event. And it had to be right. Organizing the party was the first task her boss, Kurt Vincent, had entrusted her to complete on her own. Charlie liked Kurt; she liked working for Prestige, a young but successful sports agency whose San Francisco office served more than three-hundred athletes, and she had to nail this.
She sighed, flapping the stupid catering menu in frustration. Why couldn’t Kurt have put her in charge of a press conference instead? And why did the trendy rotisser
ie restaurant have to use such big pictures on its menu? Charlie could almost smell the Thai barbecue sauce.
“What’s wrong, sugar lamb?” Darius DeMarco, Kurt’s assistant, sashayed up to her desk in their open-concept office. In the two weeks Charlie had been with Prestige, Darius had decided to make her his “foster child” and steer her away from “all the haters.” Darius made it a point to stop by her desk a few times a day, and they ate lunch together most of the time. Their conversations weren’t so much about the work culture at Prestige as they were about the latest guy to catch Darius’s eye, but Charlie didn’t mind. Darius was funny and sincere, and she loved him.
She held up the menu. “Kurt thinks I’m a party planner.” She gave him a pleading look. “I have $20,000 in student loans. I can’t screw this up, but I don’t do food, and I definitely don’t do parties. How is this PR, Darius?”
Darius flared his eyes and draped a hand over his chest. “But, darling Charlie, what else is a party but public relations?” The fingers on his chest rose and executed a mid-air swirl. “There’s no reason for Prestige to throw Hutch Barlow a party for signing with the Raiders except for public relations.”
“I—”
Darius shot up his hand to silence her. “Yes, he is the yummiest wide receiver to ever squeeze into a pair of football pants, but we don’t need a party to celebrate that,” he said, waving as if shooing away a fly. “It’s so all of his new huddle buddies will come to the party and see just how well Prestige treats her athletes. And they’ll say to themselves, ‘My agent didn’t throw me a signing party. Why does Hutch get a party and not me? What else is Hutch getting from Kurt Vincent that I’m not getting?’”
Charlie was beginning to feel more than a little stupid. Of course. It wasn’t PR for Hutch Barlow. It was PR for Prestige. Which meant that Kurt was entrusting her with much more than simply planning a party. Her insides shriveled.
“Then which do I get?” she asked, holding up the menu in distress. “The pulled-pork sliders or the Thai ribs?”
Darius took her face in his hands and gave her a pitying expression. “Darling Charlie, weren’t you listening?”
She just blinked at him.
“You get both.”
THE MENU WAS finalized, the band booking confirmed, and the flowers ordered. Charlie left the office just after six, walked to the BART station at Market and New Montgomery — avoiding the tempting assault from Atomic Taco, and took the F train to the Guerrero Street stop. It was just two blocks from her apartment — a converted garret atop a two-story Victorian on Hermann Street.
She shared her tiny place with her roommate Annie, who was the assistant manager of a beer garden six blocks away. Annie worked until two a.m. most nights, but she was great about not making too much noise when she came in. Charlie returned the favor every morning when she woke up to get ready for work. The two had made the most of the small, open space, each setting up their beds on opposite corners where the roof pitched low. Charlie had created a kind of wall out of two bookshelves, and Annie had done the same with a folded screen so that a living space emerged in the center with a couch, a glass coffee table, and cushioned stool. Across from this was their postage stamp of a kitchen and the bathroom, which was smaller than the closet Charlotte had grown up with in her parents’ house in Goleta.
The cramped garret was all she could afford, but it was worth it to live and work in her favorite city.
Racing against the setting sun, Charlie peeled off her work clothes, tugged on her running gear, and swept her blonde hair into a ponytail. Even though she was tired and hungry, Charlie was determined to get in a run on the streets of San Francisco before calling it a night. Her big Tuesday night plans were to take a shower, put on soft clothes, and Netflix Friends while she ate dinner. She zipped Albert’s CLIF bar into her pocket and, placating her own growling stomach, she allowed herself a bite of Greek yogurt. Then she grabbed her ear buds and pepper spray and dashed out the door.
After being in the office all day, it felt good to stretch her legs on the hills of Lower Haight. The Panhandle of Golden Gate Park was just a mile from her place, and she headed straight there, warming up and slowly gaining speed.
The base of Albert’s tree was empty. It had only been three weeks, so she hadn’t learned all of his habits, but she knew by the time she returned home, he’d be sitting there, and for a week now, she’d been giving him a CLIF bar. The chunky kind, not the skimpy ones. She’d passed him for two weeks before she started buying the nutrition bars for him. He never asked for anything. Albert seemed content to sit at the base of his tree and smile at the world. He only told her good evening and to “Keep running! You’ll catch what you’re after one day.” And when she’d started bringing the snack, he tacked on “Bless you, angel!” his smile growing as he nodded. He always took it from her with shaking hands, arthritis making his knuckles knobby and liver spots showing through his fair skin. A CLIF bar didn’t feel like enough, but at least it made it easier to pass him every day.
Charlie shook thoughts of Albert from her mind as she moved through the Panhandle and into the park proper. With the sunset igniting the sky in a blaze of orange, it seemed like the whole city had come outside to enjoy the late May evening. People walked their dogs, young parents pushed strollers, and Charlie passed other runners.
No one passed her.
That is, not until she’d entered the main park and traversed the Conservatory of Flowers. That’s when she heard the telltale cadence of an approaching runner.
Charlie listened to music while she ran — Elysian Feel was her selection du jour — but she only ran wearing one ear bud so she could hear traffic or anyone on foot drawing near. At the sound of a runner, adrenaline surged through her veins.
Not because she felt afraid. The park teemed with people, and though twilight approached, the world was still lit in a soft, orange glow. No, Charlie’s adrenal glands went to work because the race was still in her blood.
Moving from her steady pace into a sprint, Charlie pumped her quads until the sound of her challenger faded to nothing. And then she made herself redline for a full minute before she downshifted her gait and let her lungs have their fill.
The oxygen was sweet, but the taste of victory sweeter.
She missed it. It had been a year since her last track meet as a college athlete. A long-distance runner, Charlie lived for the steeplechase and 10K competitions, and while she knew that a lot could happen on the track in thirty-odd minutes, she loved to psych-out the other runners by jetting ahead just as someone tried to flank her.
Turning off Crossover Drive onto Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Charlie was smiling in remembrance when the unmistakable patter returned. Shocked, she almost turned around to lay eyes on her contender when she heard the gruff labor of what could only be male breath, and Charlie again sped ahead.
“Dammit!”
The muttered curse behind her made her almost giddy, even as her thighs burned and her lungs ached. But she held her posture upright and regal, hoping against hope that her surge appeared effortless.
She pushed harder this time, holding onto the insane pace for another minute, passing Stow Lake and dropping a curse or two herself when she finally let her body slow. But her breathing had only just returned to normal when she heard him again.
This time she did turn back, scowling at his audacity. But when her eyes landed on the challenger, her stride faltered. Her breath stuttered. Because the man running her down with the merciless glare looked like an avenging angel — or a Viking raider.
Hair as fair as her own streamed behind him, loose and wild. In gray running shorts and a black, sleeveless Under Armour shirt that hugged the peaks and valleys of his muscled torso, he raced toward her with frightening speed. In her brief backward glance, her eyes locked with his — long-lashed and evergreen — and she watched them narrow as he gave her a wicked smile.
Charlie couldn’t help it. She squeaked.
The con
fidence in that wicked smile did it. Charlie whipped her gaze back to the path ahead of her and ran like she hadn’t run in twelve months. Whoever this guy was, she was not about to let him pass her.
A peal of masculine laughter — almost alarming in its depth — broke out behind her, and despite her determination to gain ground, Charlie might have laughed, too. But she reined in her humor. Laughing would only slow her down. Let him slow down, the big oaf.
Well, he wasn’t really an oaf. He was kind of beautiful. More like truly beautiful.
As she pulled away, Charlie called up the picture she’d snapped in her mind during that one glance. Long muscles roped down his arms. The line of his broad shoulders and his tapering waist suggested a triangle, one that smoothed into tight hips and defined thighs.
Charlie Woodruff didn’t make a point of cataloging men’s bodies as she ran, but sometimes exceptions had to be made. Tonight was one of those times.
Her reverie was short-lived. As she passed the Academy of Sciences, she could feel heaviness seep into her legs. If he caught up to her again, she likely wouldn’t be able to rally a fourth time. But as she reached the tennis courts, her legs weren’t just heavy. They were leaden. Slowing her pace to a mere jog, Charlie wiped the sweat from her face and tried not to beat herself up about losing the edge she’d held a year before.
But a moment later, even jogging was too hard. Every part of her body felt weighed down. Except her head, which seemed ready to lift off her shoulders like a helium balloon. The moment she decided to walk, her knees gave, and the ground rushed toward her.
“Whoa!”
A hand wrapped around her elbow — catching her mid-plummet — and Charlie found herself on the curb, her legs as useless as a doll’s.
“You okay?”
She looked at the hand that still gripped her. It was a nice hand. Strong. Long-fingered. Broad, but not beefy.
A hand that would feel good to hold…