by Lucy Gilmore
Brute force and the leverage of his right shoulder. He realized his mistake about thirty seconds in. The burning sear was a familiar sensation in so many ways. He knew well the strain and tug of overtaxation—knew even better the determination to push through in hopes of reaching the other side.
He also knew that there was no other side. After years of physical therapy and miraculous surgery that had turned out to be not so miraculous, he could attest to that. Sometimes, the pain just was.
“Thank God. It’s working.” Hailey’s voice reached him just as he was about to give up. “Please hurry. Her breathing is becoming awfully shallow.”
Nothing could have been more calculated to keep him intent on his goal. With a reserve of strength he didn’t know he had, he continued pulling at the doors until they hit an automated system and slid the rest of the way open.
As he expected, there was plenty of room for a man of his size to slip out between the garage levels and go for help. They could probably even lift the dog out and rush her to the vet.
Rather, they could have done those things, had there not been a crowd of feet and flashing lights awaiting them on the other side of those open doors.
“It’s him. It’s Cole Bennett.”
“He pulled the doors open. Did you see that? He’s like Superman.”
“Cole, how does it feel to save the day? How does this compare to the possibility of finally making it to the Kickoff Cup?”
Cole didn’t bother answering either of these questions. With a jump and a crawl that caused his shoulder to burn even hotter, he pulled himself out of the elevator. “I need someone to get me some water, blankets, and a veterinarian,” he said. “And step on it. We’ve got some newborn puppies and a pregnant dog in distress.”
“Oh wow. He delivers babies too. Is it your dog? Did you pull the puppies out by yourself?”
Cole forced his lips into the smile that had earned him so much in this lifetime: money, women, a following of determined photographers. Hopefully, it would also get him the thing he wanted most right now: a way out of football for good.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. Unable to help himself, he smiled wider and added, “You can’t just reach in there and start yanking puppies out. It’s not a clogged drain.”
Chapter 3
“So you didn’t actually get her to agree to the plan.”
Cole winced as his sister wound a bandage around his shoulder. It was heavy and thick and had frozen bags of vegetables interspersed throughout. The peas and the corn were fine, but the okra was starting to poke in several places.
“It’s not my fault. We were busy with other things.” He paused and lifted his arm so she could wind the bandage around his rib cage. Regina wasn’t the most qualified person to provide first aid, but she was the most discreet. “Besides, I did the important part.”
“Which is?”
“I laid the groundwork. Greased the wheels. Wooed her with my strength and ability to single-handedly pull open elevator doors.”
Regina snorted and secured the bandage. She stepped back to view her handiwork, if you could call it that. He looked—and felt—like he’d been run over by a Jolly Green Giant delivery truck. “I thought you said she gave you football pointers.”
“She did. Very detailed ones…the kind you couldn’t give unless you’ve been paying close attention. Besides, she was carrying my jersey in her bag. I think she might have a crush on me.”
His sister sighed and started to roll up the remaining bandages. Ever since his surgery two years ago, she’d been buying the things in bulk. “I don’t know why you won’t just let me go to the network directly. They’d be all over it. Cole Bennett takes on the Puppy Cup. An attractive, single man dedicates his free time to the welfare and adoption of animals. I can almost smell the hormones from here.”
Yes, he was well aware of that. A man didn’t reach his level of success in a professional football career without learning a little bit about the way the world worked. If he sent Regina into the television network in full sports-manager mode, she’d emerge with a huge contract and all the puppies he could ask for.
That was the problem. He didn’t want a huge contract. He didn’t want any contracts—not television ones, not Puppy Cup ones, and definitely not football ones. To admit as much out loud, however, would be to ruin any and all chances the Lumberjacks had of breaking the curse. An announcement of Cole Bennett’s retirement would hit his team hard enough as it was. If he did it while the curse lingered overhead—while the mystical hands of fate or fairies or whatever nonsense was responsible for keeping the Lumberjacks from the Kickoff Cup held sway—there was a good chance the team would give up hope altogether.
“It’ll be better this way,” he said, striving for nonchalance. Remembering what he’d said to Jasmine yesterday, he added, “A real human-interest story.”
Regina wasn’t buying it. She lifted one of her perfectly arched brows. “Since when does the world consider you human?”
“Since the day I was born one?” Cole gave his shoulder a few tentative rotations. It hurt, but not nearly as much as it had after the elevator stunt yesterday. He met his sister’s bright-blue eyes—so much like his own—and sighed. “I know you don’t like this, Reggie, but it’s the best way. If something happens to me—”
“It won’t.”
“If something happens to me,” he repeated with careful deliberation, “the entire team is going to lose their shit—and their momentum. You know how much stock they put in this stupid curse.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“It’s pretty stupid.” Cole knew it went against all the rules of sports history and fandoms to say so, but come on. “If I can get this Hailey woman to rub some of her puppy luck off on me—publicly, I mean—then the guys will feel more secure going into the final few games. Who knows? We might even have an actual shot at winning this year. It won’t matter as much if I’m sidelined then.”
Or if I leave the team.
His sister struggled to find an appropriate response. Even though she wouldn’t admit it, this whole thing had been her idea to begin with. No one was more connected when it came to all things Seattle and football. If there was someone within a five-hundred-mile radius who could give Cole the competitive advantage, Regina had already found them, cataloged them, and run a full background check. Hailey Lincoln was no exception. She might not seem like the most obvious choice to break a twenty-year superstition, but she’d been working on the Puppy Cup for the exact same number of years that he’d been playing for the Lumberjacks.
Only her team never lost.
“Your shoulder is fine, Cole. I know it is. You just have to stop forcing open elevator doors.”
He smiled at Regina’s naive optimism. To the outside world, his sister was a ruthless sports manager, a woman who painted her fingernails bloodred to hide the stains of battle whenever she emerged from a contract negotiation. Cole knew better. If anyone realized how much she worried over things—over him—they’d destroy her. She might be older than him by two years and forged of steel, but she wasn’t unbreakable.
Neither of them was.
“I promise to never force open another elevator door for as long as I live.” He held out his pinkie but yanked it back just as his sister was about to seal his vow in their time-honored tradition. “Unless there’s a dog trapped inside and giving birth.”
“Cole…”
“You’re right. If there’s a woman trapped inside and giving birth, I should probably save her, too.”
Although Regina was laughing as she hooked her finger against his, there were etched lines of worry on either side of her mouth. They seemed to be getting deeper and more pronounced with every passing day, a thing he knew full well was his fault. He was her only client, which meant that the day he gave up football was likely to be the end of the line for her,
too.
“Uncle Cole!” A squeal from the kitchen doorway prevented them both from saying more. Even though he knew it was a terrible idea and that Regina wouldn’t approve, he swooped down and lifted his four-year-old niece into his arms.
“Just the person I came to see,” he announced. Mia’s face was sticky with some unknown red substance, but that didn’t stop him from dropping a hearty kiss on her cheek. Strawberry jam was his guess—and not the cheap kind, either. “You’ll never guess what I did yesterday.”
“I wanna see the puppies.”
“Hmm. Maybe you can guess.” He glanced at his sister over the top of the girl’s head. She had the same dark-brown hair that both he and Regina sported, but hers was done up in a pair of tufty pigtails. “Please tell me you didn’t show her that YouTube clip. It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”
“I didn’t show her anything.” Regina tsked and lifted Mia out of his clasp. She frowned at the stiff way he moved his shoulder but didn’t comment on it. “It was You-know-who. She was watching Mia yesterday, and she keeps the television on the Cole Bennett Channel at all hours of the day and night.”
Cole laughed. “Weird. I don’t get that one with my cable package.”
“You laugh now, but it’s becoming an obsession. No one should love you that much. It’s obscene.”
“I think my own mother is allowed to love me that much.”
“Sure thing, Norman Bates. It’s totally normal.”
Mia was unwilling to let the conversation veer so far off course. “I wanna see the puppies,” she said again, this time with a wobbling undertone to her voice. “Please, Uncle Cole?”
“Of course you can,” he promised. “But you’ll have to wait a few weeks until they’re old enough. Right now, they’re too little to do much of anything. They can’t even open their eyes yet.”
“But I want to see them,” Mia insisted. Her face screwed up into a tight ball. It was a cute face—all round cheeks and long lashes—and she knew how to work its assets to the fullest. “I won’t touch, I promise. I just want to see. I just want to love.”
“Don’t do it,” Regina warned. “Don’t you dare give in.”
“I don’t have a puppy to love.” Mia allowed a single tear to fall from her eye. Cole had no idea how she did it—manufactured tears one at a time, each drop designed to wrench his heart from his chest—but he was powerless against it.
She clinched matters by wiping the tear away and looking woefully up into his face. “I on’y have you.”
It was so far from the truth—this child with a loving mother, doting grandparents, a full-time nanny, and who knew how many other adults wrapped around her little finger—that Cole could only laugh and give in.
“I’m sorry, Reggie, but there’s nothing I can do. She only has me.” With a fond smile for his niece, he said, “Of course I’ll take you to see them. I’m sure Miss Lincoln would be more than happy to show them off.”
In all honesty, he wasn’t sure that Miss Lincoln was eager to see him so soon after their last parting, but it was as good an excuse as any. If he was going to run a successful puppy football campaign to break a “curse” and provide himself with a foolproof exit strategy, then he needed to get things moving.
“In fact, I think we should go over there right now,” he said. “And if she tries to shut the door in my face, you have to cry exactly like that, got it?”
“You are not using my child as a passport to some poor woman’s private residence,” Regina protested.
“But she has the puppies,” Mia said, her lower lip quivering.
Cole forced his lip to do the same. “But she has the puppies.”
Regina stared at them both for a total of three seconds before heaving an exasperated sigh. “Fine. You can take her. But only because the nanny has the morning off and I need to make sure the optics on yesterday’s stunt are where we want them.”
“A glorified babysitter, that’s me. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
Regina treated his commentary exactly the same way that Hailey had—by ignoring it.
“You will not promise that Mia gets to keep any of the puppies,” she said, pointing one of her bloodred fingernails at him. “You will not take her to the pet store afterward and buy her a consolation puppy. There will be no puppy acquisition of any kind.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he promised but with a wink at Mia. Regina saw it, of course, but there was little she could do by this time. Mia had wriggled her way down, all thoughts of tears and despair forgotten.
“She didn’t say anything about me not getting a puppy,” he said in a low voice that was clearly audible to all. “Come on, Mia. You can help me pick the cutest one.”
“Promising to adopt that woman’s litter isn’t going to make her like you,” Regina warned.
“Probably not,” Cole allowed. “But dangling this cute face at her will. I’m sure of it.”
* * *
“You can’t come in.”
Hailey slipped through the crack in her front door before pulling it shut behind her. There wasn’t enough room on the small wooden platform that served as her front porch for her and Cole Bennett and the young girl he’d brought with him, but she had no other choice. Under no circumstances could she let this man inside her house.
“Good morning to you, too,” Cole said, his low voice brimming with laughter. If she dared to look into his eyes, she was sure they’d be equally brimming—and equally laughing.
So she didn’t.
“I’m sorry if that came out wrong.” She stared at a space a few feet to the right of his head. “You took me by surprise, that’s all. What do you want?”
“That’s not a very nice question. How do you know we’re not selling Girl Scout cookies?”
“Oh dear. Are you selling Girl Scout cookies?” She allowed her gaze to fall on the little girl, who shared Cole’s gorgeous bone structure and deep-blue eyes. His niece. She knew Cole’s manager was also his sister and that the sister was a single mother, so it all checked out.
Not that she was going to admit as much out loud. Knowing a man’s detailed family history wasn’t the sort of thing one liked to roll out and shine a light on.
“I’ll take two of everything,” she said. “Except the coconut ones, please. I’m allergic.”
“I’m not a Girl Scout!” The little girl crossed her arms and stared up at Hailey. “Are you the lady with the puppies?”
“Oh. Um. Yes.”
There was no choice but to meet Cole’s eyes. As expected, they danced with amusement. Also as expected, that amusement was directed at her. It was too much. She was at her house, on her own time, and somehow she was the one who felt like the ground had been pulled out from underneath her. What kind of a man lied about selling door-to-door cookies?
“Two of everything, huh?” he asked. “Someone’s ready for second breakfast.”
“I was being polite.”
“Do you buy that many from every girl who stops by, or just the ones who come attached to football players?”
“I’m a strong supporter of young female entrepreneurs.”
Cole leaned on the porch rail as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He was dressed much as he had been yesterday, in a way that screamed casual but obscenely rich. She wasn’t sure how it worked. They were both in jeans and flannel, Seattle chic at its finest. But while she looked like she’d just rolled out of a discount clothing store, everything about him was elegant and put together.
And attractive. There was no denying it. Even without the bright lights of the football field overhead, he walked around in a haze of gilded glory. The muscles were what accounted for it. Even though she couldn’t technically see them, they were everywhere—in the powerful way his thighs strained against his jeans, in the way his shoulders extended much more broadly than any human bei
ng’s should. I am perfect, those muscles said. I am strong.
They didn’t need to be so obvious about it. She already knew.
“If we come back with cookies, will you let us in to see the puppies?” Cole asked.
“No.” Hailey didn’t mean for the word to come out like that, but it was issuing from a deep, dark place that she couldn’t control. The idea of Cole Bennett inside her house—this tiny, storybook cottage that was all she had left of her dad—was overwhelming enough on its own. Add in the fact that her decor was somewhat…questionable, and this was the result.
A strong, visceral negative.
Cole straightened and frowned, obviously taken aback by the force of her reply. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Are we interrupting something?” He ran a hand through his hair and cast an anxious look around. “My sister said I should probably call first, but I thought…”
“Who gave you my phone number?”
His frown deepened. It shamed Hailey to be so inhospitable to anyone, let alone a football legend like Cole Bennett, but she didn’t know what else to do. On a good day, she was one social misstep away from burying her head in the sand. In about ten seconds, she was going to have no choice but to bury her whole body. No matter who he was or how heroically he’d rescued her yesterday, she was determined to stand her ground, to be firm, to…
A small hand slipped into hers.
“Please, can I see the puppies?” The girl blinked up at her. “I don’t have a puppy.”
“It’s not… I can’t…” Hailey didn’t know where to look. Cole wasn’t a choice for a variety of obvious reasons, and this little girl with his eyes didn’t seem like a safe idea, either. She drew a deep breath. “They’re sleeping right now, and their mom is resting. They don’t feel up to visitors.”
“I’m very quiet,” the girl promised solemnly.
“I’m sure you are. But they’re so little and are recovering from yesterday, and—”