by Lucy Gilmore
He didn’t have time for a dog; at this point in his life, he didn’t even have time for a goldfish. He wanted one, the same way he wanted to spend Sundays eating brunch with his friends and for a woman like Hailey to look at him and think “there’s a highly interesting man,” but none of that was likely anytime soon.
Yet here he stood, a dog bone in his pocket and a woman on his mind.
As if aware of what Cole was thinking, Philip lifted his head. He caught sight of one of Mia’s stuffed footballs on the couch and began inching bravely toward it.
“Go for it, buddy,” he urged the dog. “She never uses it. These days, she prefers ninja fairies.”
Philip took him at his word and pounced toward the couch. It was on the tip of Cole’s tongue to order him to stay on the floor, to avoid the curved white leather that his interior designer had insisted was the only way to sit in comfort, but he didn’t have the heart to crush Philip’s spirit.
Garrett lifted a brow but didn’t speak. He took a long, slow drink from the can in his hand instead. That deliberate action said everything his friend was thinking and more—especially when Philip turned once, pawed twice, and began liberally licking himself on the ten-thousand-dollar couch.
“Don’t you have your own house to go to?” Cole grumbled.
“I do, but Dr. Hampton wanted me to come over and check on you. And to drop off this.”
The this in question was a refill of prescription painkillers. Garrett pulled the orange bottle out of his pocket and set it on the kitchen counter, but Cole made no move to grab it.
“I don’t need that,” he said, eyeing it with distaste. “I still have some left from the last batch.”
“Maybe it’s a hint that you should start taking them.”
“Maybe Dr. Hampton needs a new hobby.”
Garrett nodded and slipped the bottle back into his pocket. “Reggie thought you might react that way.”
Cole couldn’t decide which was worse—his best friend and his sister sneaking into his house for a secret love affair, or his best friend and his sister sneaking into his house to discuss the state of his health, but he was leaning toward the latter.
With a sigh, he lowered himself on the couch next to Philip, who lost no time in pulling the football onto his lap and chewing it there. There was something soothing about running his hand up and down the puppy’s short fur, at how the warm body planted itself in place and stayed there.
He leaned his head on the back of the couch and closed his eyes. That felt good, too, until he felt Garrett sink onto the seat next to him.
“We won the game,” Cole said, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. “What more do you want?”
“Me? Not much. I mean, you could offer to feed me lunch now that I’ve come all this way, but…”
Cole laughed. “Feed your damn self. I’m not running a hotel over here.” He opened one eye and rolled it toward his friend. “Am I?”
Garrett shook his head. “Nah. It’s not like that with me and Reggie.”
Cole released a disbelieving chuff of air. There had been a time, before Mia was born, when Garrett would have given both his thumbs for a shot with Regina. “You’re adults. What happens between the two of you is no concern of mine.”
The moment stretched a few seconds too long. Although Cole tried to distract himself with the puppy, he felt a compulsive need to fill the silence. “It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to,” he said, rolling his shoulder in a slight shrug. It wasn’t a complete lie—the regular work with Aiko was building up his strength, and he really only needed the painkillers to get through game day.
That was another thing that didn’t make him unique within the world of professional football. Lots of guys were being held together by sports tape and opiates, by their determination to win no matter what the cost. For Cole, with his one tiny labral tear, to bitch and moan and act like he was the only man in the world who was suffering was ridiculous. Even the little puppy in his lap had gone through more in his short lifetime.
Hailey had been right about that, too. Real trauma, the kind that dug deep and imprinted hard, was something Cole had never known. There were too many people who cared about him, too many places he could go to seek shelter when things got rough. He had no right to whine when he had so much—when he’d been given so much.
“If I leave, are you going to sit here all day, petting your puppy and looking depressed?” Garrett asked as if reading his mind.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to leave anyway?”
“Yes.”
Garrett laughed. “Don’t worry. I can take a hint when it’s being shoved down my throat. I don’t know why you have to be such a fucking drama queen all the time, Bennett. It’s only football.”
Cole grunted a noncommittal reply, glad but not glad to see his friend go. The thing Garrett didn’t understand—the thing that no one could understand—was that only football wasn’t a term that belonged in his vocabulary. Not when it supported his grandmother and parents and sister and niece, keeping them in comfortable homes and financial security. Not when they’d spent their whole lives sacrificing everything so he could have a chance at greatness.
“What if I don’t want to be great?” he asked Philip, whose only response was a happy loll of his tongue. Cole made sure the door had closed and clicked behind Garrett before adding, more softly this time, “What if all I want is to be me?”
Chapter 9
It was just like a football player with the whole world at his feet to underestimate the amount of work required in critiquing, cataloging, and ranking fifty puppies located in different shelters across the Pacific Northwest.
“I think that’s the last one.” Penny rubbed a hand blearily over her eyes. Her perfectly winged eyeliner didn’t smudge, so Hailey could only assume she’d either made a pact with the devil or resorted to permanent marker. They’d been hard at work since six that morning. “What time is it?”
Hailey looked at the clock above her desk and groaned. “We have ten minutes until he shows up. How’s my hair?”
Penny’s grimace said it all.
“Oh dear.” Hailey sighed and lifted a hand to her head. “It looked fine this morning, but my hair is too thin to hold its shape for long, and—”
“I’ve got you.” Penny whisked the ponytail holder from her own long, perfectly shaped coiffure and reached for Hailey’s oversized bag. Hailey was about to protest this breach of privacy, but Penny was a woman on a mission. “Sit down and close your eyes. Do you have any dry shampoo in here?”
Hailey wordlessly shook her head. Ever since Cole had caught her carrying around one of his jerseys, she’d been packing light. There wasn’t even an old Lumberjacks ticket stub to give her away.
“Never mind. I’ll just use your brush. This might hurt a little.”
In reality, it hurt a lot. Hailey had no idea what Penny was doing to her head, but it involved wrenching her neck into strange positions, teasing every strand until it stood on end, and otherwise yanking her hair this way and that. Penny snapped the elastic band with a flourish and stood back to survey her handiwork.
“I’m a genius,” she murmured before reaching for the nearest desk drawer. After rummaging for a few seconds, she pulled out…a permanent marker.
“I knew your eyeliner couldn’t look that good on its own,” Hailey muttered, shrinking back as Penny loomed close. “Is this hygienic?”
“Not even a little,” Penny replied cheerfully. “But desperate times call for desperate measures. Hold still.”
Under normal circumstances, Hailey would have fought this attack on her eyelids, but these were strange times. Any minute now, Cole Bennett was going to walk through that door so they could pick puppy teams in front of an audience of twelve different newspaper outlets. The reporters were excited about it. His people we
re excited about it. Her people were excited about it. At this point, she was one small step away from being carried through the city on a golden litter.
So yeah. It might be nice to look a bit more like Penny. Just this once.
As if in agreement, Penny capped the marker and started to undo the tie at the waist of her casually elegant black jumpsuit. When Hailey didn’t make a move to strip off her own outfit—a carefully selected floral wrap dress that was the same color as Bess so it wouldn’t show any dog hair—Penny nudged her with her foot.
“Come on, slowpoke. Off with it. You can’t be nationally syndicated in a dress that looks like my grandmother’s couch.”
Hailey ignored the slight on her dress to focus on the more immediate problem. “Uh, Penny?” She gestured first at Penny’s hips and then at her own. “Are you sure about this?”
Penny slipped out of the pantsuit with the unselfconsciousness of a woman who’d come of age in a ballet dressing room. Even her underwear was perfect, a matching set with black lace that wouldn’t have lasted one cycle in Hailey’s ancient washing machine.
“Oh, I’m sure. Your waist is the size of a kitten. This will look so much better on you than it does on me.”
Hailey had no choice but to believe her. Well, she did have a choice, but it seemed cruel to leave Penny standing in the middle of the office in her underwear. With a quick look to make sure the door was firmly shut, she stepped out of her dress and handed it over.
“I think I hear someone coming,” Hailey hissed as the sound of voices in the hallway started to pick up.
Penny had already cinched the wrap dress at her waist and lost no time in helping Hailey navigate the jumpsuit. It was made of some kind of stretchy, forgiving material, so it technically fit, but Hailey would have preferred a moment to check herself in a mirror. The waist might have been the right size, but she was acutely aware that the bust and the butt areas were stretched to their limit.
“Damn,” Penny said, taking her in with a blink. “You can thank me for this by inviting me over for drinks sometime, okay?”
“Drinks?” Hailey echoed blankly.
“Yes, it’s that thing normal friends share after a long day of work. Alcohol and relaxation and maybe even a few laughs.” Penny gave her one more appraising look before nodding once. “Now switch me shoes and get out there.”
Hailey did as she was told, trading her beige flats for a pair of strappy sandals that were wholly inappropriate for the weather. She wished there was more time to unpack Penny’s statement—They were friends? She wanted to hang out outside work?—but she’d just managed to secure the final buckle before the door was pushed open.
“Welcome to draft day,” Cole said, sweeping inside just as Penny kicked Hailey’s half-open purse underneath her desk. “Are you ready for this?”
Nothing could have been more calculated to make Hailey less ready than the way he looked as he stood in the doorway, his chest and arms straining at a button-down shirt that looked as though it had been woven with strands of moonlight, his face relaxed and gorgeous. The sight of such a perfect specimen of manhood should have made her swoon—and from the way her blood was pounding, that was a likely possibility—but it also made her acutely aware of the differences between them.
Even in this, he was her master. It didn’t matter that this was her workplace and that today’s event was her doing—every instinct she possessed was warning her to run and hide, to cast this job onto Penny’s more capable shoulders and salvage what remained of her ability to protect herself.
But Penny nodded at her from the doorway with a smile and a wink. And the binder in front of her fell open to a puppy that had been living in an overcrowded dog shelter for seven of the eight months he’d been on this earth.
Some things were more important than her weak, stupid pride.
“Don’t worry. I’m ready.” Hailey drew a deep breath and tossed the binder at him. “You have half an hour to go over these, and then we’ll make our picks in the conference room. Use your time wisely. I already have my dream lineup picked out.”
He caught the notebook easily, but something in his expression shifted as he stood there looking at her. Hailey fought the urge to squirm and tug at Penny’s jumpsuit, wanting to put distance between her skin and the tight cling of the fabric.
“Well?” she asked, her tone more abrupt than she intended. She couldn’t help it—that look on his face was doing strange things to her, wreaking havoc on a circulatory system that was already prone to causing her the maximum amount of embarrassment in the shortest amount of time. “Do you want to look those over in here, or should we head to—?”
She was prevented from finishing by the enthusiastic entrance of Philip, who showed no hesitation in recognizing Hailey despite her recent makeover. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, the puppy had been washed and dressed in a teal bow tie. She didn’t know if it was the bath or the natural outcome of a day spent in a palatial mansion, but he looked, well, good.
“Hello, Sir Philip,” she said as she squatted down to the puppy’s level. He was a body in motion, squirming and wriggling as though he had no choice but to wear his happiness on the outside. “Yes, I’m very pleased to see you, too. Yes, I know you want to lick my face, but I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Is that something you don’t enjoy?” Cole asked. “Interesting.”
Hailey glanced up to find that Cole had returned to his former state—which was to say in complete mastery of himself and the room. His smile was back, though a little lopsided this time, his eyes twinkling as they took in the sight of her trying to prevent Philip from burrowing in her neck.
“I hope you didn’t let Jasmine see you come into her precious office with a puppy,” she said by way of answer. She didn’t trust herself to address the other part—the flirtatious part—until she had a better handle on herself.
“Don’t worry. We snuck in through the back,” Cole promised. He held out his hand and hoisted Hailey to her feet. A decent man would have let her go right away, but he was no such thing. He used his hold to tug her close and transfer his grip to her waist. He spanned a good portion of it, his thumb grazing her belly. “Do I dare hope this is for me, or did you dress for the cameras?”
She tried not to fall for it. She took a deep breath and willed her heart rate to maintain a steady beat. She imagined herself inside an ice castle. She pictured the deepest, darkest cave in Norway.
It was no use. Her blush spread like wildfire across her cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice prim. “But on the subject of cameras, might I suggest you start looking through that binder sooner rather than later? The photographers will be here any minute.”
Her tactics failed. If anything, they had the reverse effect of what she intended. Cole’s grip tightened, his fingers pressing into her waist so much that a shiver moved up and down her spine. There was something deliciously possessive about his hold. Even Philip pouncing playfully around their feet and Penny standing a few feet away didn’t seem to weaken him.
“You look good,” he said. And, more forcefully this time, “Really good.”
As was rapidly becoming the case whenever she interacted with this man for longer than five minutes, Hailey felt all her verbal filters strip away and her raised hackles take their place. Okay, so she was rarely the best-dressed woman in the room. And there wasn’t always time to do her makeup and hair as nicely as she wanted. And yes, she’d have never chosen this particular outfit by herself.
But it wasn’t as if she’d just stepped out of a pumpkin carriage. Her transformation hadn’t occurred by magic. All that had changed was some permanent marker on her eyelids and hair that felt about three times taller than it normally was. He could show a little less surprise.
“I know I do,” she said and stepped back. That small bit of distance bet
ween the hard planes of Cole’s body and the heated planes of her own wasn’t much, but it was enough. “And I’m going to look a hundred times better when my team of puppies demolishes yours. Wouldn’t it be awful if you lost both the Puppy Cup and the Kickoff Cup this year? What would your parents say?”
He looked as though he wanted to argue further—maybe even pull her into his arms again—but he allowed the moment to pass. With a chuckle and a shake of his head, he said, “Yet another low blow, Hailey Lincoln. You know very well what they would say.”
He was right. She did know. She might have only been in their presence for one day, but that had been more than enough to tell her everything she needed to know. One of the least helpful skills she’d developed in her lifetime was the ability to dissect a family at a glance. She could sense financial strain as soon as she walked in the door. She knew when a couple was on the brink of divorce and hoping to stall it by becoming foster parents. She felt their disappointment when the child who’d been placed with them was shy and awkward and not at all what they’d been expecting.
She also knew genuine love and affection—felt how it radiated in everything a family said and did, joined it in front of the television to watch a game of football.
Cole didn’t know how lucky he was to have that in his life—to always have had that in his life. This man, with his twelve-million-dollar arm and his good looks, his easy charm and loving family, had no idea what it was like to have to fight for every scrap of affection.
Philip did, though. Along with the hundreds of other puppies desperately waiting to find their forever homes.
“They’d tell you to get off your ass and get to work,” she said. She nodded at the expensive and wholly unnecessary gold watch on Cole’s wrist. “You’re not so far ahead that you can afford to run out the clock, Cole Bennett. But then, I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”
* * *
Cole was doing his best to concentrate on the roster of puppies spread out in front of him, but it was no use.