by Lucy Gilmore
He hitched his jeans and leaned forward. “It does. I’d like to know your secret.”
“My secret?” she echoed. Instinct urged her to sit up, but she forced herself to remain seated. To move in that direction would only bring her closer to Cole, and that was the one thing she was determined to avoid. “My secret to what?”
“Winning.”
Hailey had to pause a moment to digest this remark. She might be a painfully obsessive watcher of football, but she was just that—a watcher. For as long as she could remember, her sports skills ranked right up there with her social skills. Which was to say very, very low. In fact, the only time she did anything remotely athletic was when she ran after puppies to try to keep them on camera.
“Wait… Are you talking about the show?” she asked. “My show? Football-playing puppies?”
He nodded.
It was happening again—that sensation of feeling as though there were cameras parked at every angle, that the world was just waiting for an opportunity to jump out at her and yell gotcha. This time, however, she didn’t let it win.
Instead, she laughed.
Hailey had spent so many years working behind the television scenes that she forgot people believed whatever they saw. The story the producers liked to tell the public about the Puppy Cup was just that—a story. They pretended to separate the animals into two teams and spent weeks taping them “in training” as preparation for the big game. It took hours of footage and tons of poop cleanup to get what they needed, but it worked. Viewers bought into the idea that the two teams were in fierce competition, and only one could come out victorious.
“You know it’s not real, right?” she asked. “They’re dogs. They don’t know how to play football.”
“Yes, thank you. Even my slow athlete’s intellect is able to figure that much out.”
She blushed. She hadn’t meant to make it sound so condescending, but how was she supposed to know if he understood the magic of television? “I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t know what you’re asking for. I don’t actually win the Puppy Cup. No one does.”
“Sure you do. Your team wins every year. You’re six and oh. I watched the behind-the-scenes footage.”
“There’s behind-the-scenes footage?”
He chuckled. “Tons. I’m surprised you don’t go through it. Coach Taylor makes us go through every second of every game so many times, I see them in my sleep. It might improve your performance.”
“But you just said I’m six and oh. What is there to improve?”
Cole’s eyes acknowledged a hit. “There she is. I knew she couldn’t be gone for long.” With a grin to show he meant no harm, he added, “I didn’t watch all of the footage, but I’ve seen enough. From what I can gather, you usually take half the puppies, and some other poor PA grunt takes the other half. And then you and your puppies proceed to demolish them.”
She ignored the part where he belittled her job as a “poor PA grunt” and stared at him. That tingly sensation in her spine was sending her yet another warning, but this one came with a pleasant aftershock.
“I think you can tell where I’m heading with this,” he said.
She had an idea, but she wasn’t going to put it into words. She didn’t dare.
“Ms. Lincoln, with your permission, I’d like to be that other poor PA grunt.” When she didn’t respond right away, he laughed, obviously mistaking her silence for something other than what it was: shock, disbelief. Delight. “Cole Bennett takes on the Puppy Cup against longtime champion Hailey Lincoln. Imagine how the press would eat it up. Imagine how your boss would.”
He wasn’t wrong. All Hailey had to do was call Jasmine and even hint that Cole wanted to participate in their show, and she’d have a helicopter sent over to collect him within minutes. And they didn’t even own a helicopter.
“I don’t understand,” she said—and she really didn’t. Cole Bennett wanted to play puppy football? With her, of all people? “You want my job? What’s wrong with the one you have?”
“I know it’ll mean more work for you in the long run, but I think you’ll like what I have to offer.” He pulled out the dimple once again. “Please? I don’t have a lot of experience with dogs, and it’ll require quite a bit of coordination with my manager and my team, but it would mean a lot to me.”
Hailey could only blink at him. It would mean a lot to him? He was asking to lend his cachet and influence to the Puppy Cup, wanted to make their show the highlight of this year’s football season, and he was phrasing it as a personal favor?
Every one of Hailey’s protective instincts rose in an instant. It wasn’t the appropriate reaction to a request like this one—and Jasmine would fire her on the spot if she knew—but Hailey could no more help it than she could stop breathing. Nothing in life came without strings attached, especially where she was concerned. She’d had to fight for every opportunity, every kind word, sometimes for the very roof over her head.
“Why?” she asked, unable to keep the sharp note of suspicion out of her voice.
“Uh, for the good of the world?”
She was unable and unwilling to accept such an easy explanation. “If you wanted to do good in the world, you could donate your salary to the charity of your choosing and keep them operational for the next thousand years. What else?”
“Because I like puppies?”
“Lots of people like puppies,” she countered. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Because I like you?”
She definitely wasn’t buying that one. She wasn’t the sort of person who dazzled and awed upon first glance. She rarely even dazzled and awed after twelve glances. Most of her relationships—professional and otherwise—were the result of forced and repeated interaction.
She shook her head. “You want something else, something you’re not divulging. What is it?”
Instead of answering, he flung a question back at her. “How can you tell?”
The same way she knew that Penny didn’t really want to receive a call every time she had a puppy-related favor to ask and that Cole Bennett hadn’t shown up in her office or her home out of the blue. When it came to people worth knowing, Hailey Lincoln wasn’t the answer. She never was.
“Call it a hunch,” she said. “What do you really want?”
He watched her for a long, drawn-out moment. She fought the urge to burrow herself in the chair and succeeded only by reciting the alphabet inside her head.
“Okay, you win. There might be a slight ulterior motive to my plans.”
Her heart sank just as she reached the letter J. Of course there was. If this had been as good as it seemed, he would have gone through the usual channels, wooed Jasmine with an upscale restaurant and an expense account. Not sought out a low-level employee whose name most people couldn’t remember.
“What kind of ulterior motive?” she asked.
“The truth is, there’s a news story that may or may not break sometime here in the next few weeks, and it would be great if I could get ahead of it.”
Every muscle in her body tensed. “Define what you mean by news story.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
His brow came up. “Yes, I do. You have the most expressive face of any woman I’ve ever met—none of whom, by the way, I’ve taken sexual advantage of.”
A wave of heat overtook her, making it even easier for him to read what she was thinking.
“The puppy is gone again,” a small voice interrupted. Hailey’s first reaction upon hearing that Rufus had once again wriggled away shouldn’t have been relief, but it was. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could sit there without breathing into a paper bag.
“Did you see where he went?” She wasted no time in leaping to her feet and rushing over the k
itchen gate. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with that creature.”
“He rolled away. What’s the matter with him?”
Hailey was too busy lifting the warm, squirming bundle to reply, which was just as well, since Cole had an answer ready. “Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s probably trying to find Ms. Lincoln—or at least something that smells as good as she does.”
“Don’t—” Hailey began.
“And who can blame him? Being near her is like traipsing through a field in springtime.”
“Oh dear.”
“Or taking a long, hot bubble bath with someone else’s grandmother.”
Hailey couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She was leaning strongly toward the latter when Cole scooped up his niece and held her under his left arm like a football. He swung them both to face her. “Thank Ms. Lincoln for letting you see the puppies.”
“Aw, Uncle Cole.”
“Don’t even try it. I have to meet with my trainer in an hour, and if your nanny is to be believed, you have an appointment with a tub of finger paints this afternoon.”
“Please can I stay?” Mia tried wriggling out of his grip, but if there was one thing Cole Bennett knew how to do, it was protect that hold. “I can help.”
“I’m sure you could, but we’ve taken up too much of Ms. Lincoln’s time already.” He gave the girl a playful shake. “What do you say?”
Mia’s face scrunched up, but she smoothed it out before it had a chance to turn into a sob. “Thank you for the puppies.”
Hailey was tempted to screw her own face up into a sob, but she didn’t go through with it, either. “You’re very welcome. You did a good job watching them.”
“I can come back,” Mia offered.
“Oh, um. I don’t know—”
Cole laughed before she was forced to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t break the girl’s heart. “You’re too late. I’ve already lodged a request. We don’t want to flood her with demands until she knows us better.” His gaze caught Hailey’s and held it. “You’ll let me know what you decide? The timing is a little sensitive, so the sooner, the better.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she’d already decided—that having his name even remotely attached to the Puppy Cup was something she couldn’t pass up, even with her personal reservations—but there was no opportunity. Cole hoisted his niece more firmly under his arm and made for the front door. He paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder with an unmistakably charming grin.
“Oh, and I’ll have my sister send over a new jersey this afternoon,” he said and winked. “To replace the one that was ruined yesterday. I wouldn’t want you to go without.”
Chapter 4
“It’s looking really good today, Cole! Amazing, actually! Never better!” Cole’s companion, an enthusiastic sports trainer who only spoke in exclamation points when she was lying, stood back and examined her handiwork. In this instance, her handiwork had involved a rotation through the hot and cold tubs, an intensive shoulder massage, and weight training that had lasted about an hour too long. To strengthen his ligaments, she’d said. “How does it feel to you?”
“Like I’ve just spent the afternoon in a torture chamber, thanks,” he said. “What’s the one where they tie your limbs to four different horses and drive them off?”
“Drawn and quartered.” Garrett Smith popped into the weight room just in time to witness the end of Cole’s agony. “There’s also the rack, which I’ve always found to be a much neater approach. Same limb-rending pain, much less mess. Horses are unpredictable bastards.”
“If it doesn’t hurt, I’m not doing my job right!” Aiko replied brightly. “Pain is gain! You can have results or excuses but not both!”
Considering that all three of these sayings were posted above Aiko’s head, neither man paid much heed to them. Like the exclamation points, motivational platitudes were another of her go-tos when she didn’t know what else to say.
“I’ll just, ah, write up my report and hand it off to Dr. Hampton, shall I?” she said as she bounced toward the door. From what Cole could gather, she arrived at work every day around five in the morning and didn’t leave until damn near midnight. Where her perkiness came from, he had no idea. “All good things, of course! I’ll leave you to it!”
“Leave us to what?” Garrett asked as Aiko’s form retreated in the distance.
“Hell if I know.” Cole gingerly tested his shoulder. Excruciating pain notwithstanding, there was no denying that Aiko knew what she was doing. His range of movement had already improved. “She probably thinks I’m going to curl up in the corner and cry.”
Garrett looked him over. “Are you?”
Cole didn’t answer right away. Garrett was in the peak of health, all six feet, four inches of him in perfect working order. As Hailey had oh-so-helpfully pointed out, he was also having the season of his life. The man was light on his feet, nimble as fuck, and rarely showed signs of being winded. He was also Cole’s best and oldest friend.
“I’m thinking about it,” he admitted. “Will you hold me if I do?”
“Only if you promise I can be the big spoon,” Garrett joked, but the mood didn’t last. He knew too much about Cole’s struggles with his recovery to pretend otherwise. He’d been there when Cole took the hit that tore his labrum, visited in the hospital when Cole had his surgery, and pushed him through every physical therapy session that got him back to full fighting form.
The thing Garrett didn’t know, however—the thing that no one knew—was that Cole’s physical struggles were only part of the problem. A shoulder was a tangible thing, a thing that could be worked on, a thing that could be fixed.
His heart, however…
“Do you think they’re going to put you on limited participation for the rest of the week?” Garrett asked.
Cole grimaced. “No.”
“Should you be on limited participation for the rest of the week?”
He shrugged. The fact that he could make that motion in the first place was a good sign that he was on the mend. If he pushed, he could probably ease up on the training and practice routines, but it wouldn’t go over well. Not with the curse looming overhead, and not when everyone was working so hard to keep him in fighting form.
The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow. If you believe it, the body can achieve it. End zones, not comfort zones. Everywhere Cole turned, there were more of those stupid posters.
Where were the ones that would really help him out right now? Life doesn’t begin and end with football. You’re more than just an athlete. People won’t hate you if you decide you’ve had enough.
“No one else seems to think so. Who am I to question the authority of a team of doctors and therapists whose sole job it is to determine my physical viability?” It was a rhetorical question, and they both knew it. The amount of money that had been funneled into making sure Cole was operating at his best was enough to keep a small country running for several years. It would be an insult to the men and women who worked so hard to throw it away.
Not to mention the fans. Most of the fans, anyway. One—who would remain nameless—wouldn’t have batted one of her long, sweeping eyelashes to hear that Cole Bennett was no longer operating at full capacity. She’d blush, yes. And stammer. And maybe even release one of those back-of-the-throat moans.
But that wouldn’t stop her from saying exactly what was on her mind.
“Let me ask you something… What do you think about my unnecessary hits lately?” Cole asked.
“Is this a trick question?”
“They’re bad, right?”
“I feel like this is a trick question.”
Garrett was rarely able to sit still for long. He was the kind of man who was always moving, always pushing, always strong. As if to prove his physical super
iority, he motioned for Cole to join him at the squat rack and didn’t resume the conversation until the weights were in place.
“Does this have anything to do with that stunt you pulled in the elevator yesterday?” Garrett asked as he prepared to heft three hundred pounds. “I saw Reggie in the office earlier, and she didn’t seem too happy about it. She said you’re losing your focus.”
“Don’t listen to my sister. She has nothing but focus. She’s like a laser beam on top of a shark, and all her energy is pointed at me.”
“I wish my manager were a laser-beam shark.”
Cole sighed and put himself in the spotter position. “No, you don’t. Trust me. At least you can turn off your phone and pretend you have a life. Reggie knows I have nothing of the sort. You can lie to your manager or your sister, but you can’t lie to a woman who’s both.”
For the next few minutes, Garrett didn’t say anything. He was too caught up in his repetitions, which he pushed out with the ease of a man who had never seen the sharp edge of a surgeon’s scalpel. As he hoisted the weights back on the rack, Cole broached the subject of his game play once again.
“You’d say something if you thought I was doing more harm than good out there, right?” Cole asked.
“Of course.”
“You wouldn’t hide the truth from me?”
“Never.”
“You’d put this old, broken-down horse to pasture?”
Garrett put his hand over his chest. “I’d lock the gate myself.”
Cole wished he could believe his friend. Once upon a time, they’d been college ball players together, both so full of themselves and their God-given right to dominate the field that no one else could stand being around them. Probably not the most auspicious way to begin a friendship, but it had worked for them. They’d gone through so many football rites of passage together that Garrett knew exactly what Cole was feeling on any given day—the highs and lows, the euphoria and exhaustion.
Cole didn’t know when things had started to shift—when he had started to shift—but it wasn’t the sack that had caused his stupid injury in the first place. He suspected it had more to do with Mia’s birth than anything else. It had been a bloody, messy, terrifying affair…and the happiest day of his life.