by Lucy Gilmore
Including, apparently, nocturnal visits from football players.
“I’m sorry.” From the other side of the opening, a tired-looking Cole winced. “I shouldn’t have knocked, but I came back to get my car and your lights were on, so—”
She shut the door and slid the chain out before opening it all the way again. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad you did. I haven’t gone to bed yet.”
That wasn’t strictly the truth. She had gone to bed—and was wearing her favorite Lumberjacks pajama set to prove it—but sleep hadn’t been forthcoming. She’d tossed and turned and contemplated calling the hospital half a dozen times for an update before giving up and making herself some hot chocolate.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Well, my dad is awake and stable, and he threatened to have me forcibly removed from his hospital room if I didn’t go home and get some sleep for tomorrow’s practice, so you tell me.”
The amount of relief Hailey felt at those words was hugely disproportionate to her relationship with a man she’d met only once, but she didn’t care. She’d been so worried—for Cole and for Reggie, for Paula and Mia—that she’d take anything she could get. A man making threats and worrying about his son’s future could only be a good sign.
“That sounds like good news,” she said. Catching sight of Cole’s expression, she added, “Also like you didn’t much care for the suggestion.”
His laugh was short and bitter, but at least it was a laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
To her, it was, but she knew enough about fathers in hospitals to recognize that Cole wouldn’t have been sent home if there was any chance of danger in the immediate future. In this, as in all things, luck had been on the Bennett family’s side.
“He’s not wrong,” she said. “You probably don’t want to miss practice this week. I don’t know why it is, but Texas’s defense always has a way of making you—”
This time, Cole’s laugh was much more natural. “I should have known better than to come here to get cheered up.”
“Yes, you should have. But now that you’re here, do you want some hot chocolate?” She felt a little ridiculous at making the offer, since brawny, football-playing millionaires were supposed to drink things like hundred-year-old scotch when they wanted to drown their sorrows, but Swiss Miss with stale marshmallows was all she had. “I know it’s not on your nutritionist-approved list, but—”
“Hot chocolate would be perfect,” Cole said, and so quickly that she believed him. “Thank you.”
Hailey ducked her head and went to the kitchen to prepare a second mug, careful not to jostle Bess or her sleeping puppies as she did. By this time, Philip had realized that his savior had come to claim him and ran wriggling to greet him. She could hear the enthusiastic sounds of their reunion in the background and felt a pang of guilt. She’d meant to do Philip a favor by placing him under Cole’s temporary guardianship, but she was starting to wonder if that had been a mistake. He was getting awfully attached in an awfully short time. Like Hailey, that puppy had no problems showing what he felt, opening his heart at the worst possible times and to the worst possible people. He was going to be devastated once he learned that he didn’t get to live with Cole forever.
She returned to the living room to find Cole making himself comfortable on the faded recliner and held out the steaming mug, complete with blobs of white marshmallow on top. Naturally, it was a teal mug with a football emblazoned on the side. Just as naturally, Cole noticed it.
“I know,” she said, feeling irritable at being caught, once again, Lumberjack-handed. “But you can’t tell me you’re the least bit surprised.”
“Not surprised, no. Just curious. Are we ever going to talk about what’s happening inside this house?” Cole took a long, careful sip from the mug, his eyes never leaving hers. “Because I have questions.”
“You can ask all the questions you want, but I can’t promise I’m going to answer them.”
Instead of accepting this rebuff as it was intended, Cole laughed. “Touchy subject? I can’t imagine why.” He paused a beat before adding, “I like your pajamas, by the way. I have the exact same pair.”
“You do not.”
“I do, too. They wanted pictures of us modeling them for a charity calendar.” He cast a sweeping glance around her living room as if searching for the calendar in question—which she knew for a fact didn’t exist. If that were the case, someone definitely would have purchased it for her by now. “I’m Mr. April, in case you were wondering.”
She lowered herself to the couch opposite Cole, watching as he sipped hot chocolate and ran his hand over his puppy as though both of these things were perfectly ordinary. It didn’t seem to occur to him that it was the middle of the night or that it was highly unorthodox to sit chatting about pajamas and sexy football-player calendars following the hospitalization of one’s father, but she suspected that was the point. He obviously wasn’t ready to go home yet—and just as obviously needed a friend.
As intimidating and unreal as it might be to have this man in her life, she knew that feeling well enough to give in.
“This was my dad’s house,” she said, nodding at the walls around them. “Most of the stuff in here—including the mug you’re drinking from—belonged to him. It’s sentimental and silly, I know, but I don’t have the heart to throw any of it away.”
“Oh.”
He said just that—oh—and she realized that if she was ever going to get this out, now was the time to do it.
“He loved football in general and the Lumberjacks in particular. He was the first in line to buy season tickets every year, and we never missed a home game—not even one year when we both had the flu. We ate Lumberjacks pancakes for breakfast on Sundays. We put up a Lumberjacks-themed Christmas tree during the holidays. He would even mow the logo into a pattern on our front lawn when the grass got too long. Believe me, it would have been much weirder for me not to become a fan after the childhood I had.”
There. She’d said it. She’d laid out all her crazy for him to see, and he could decide what he wanted to do with it.
“He died, didn’t he?” Cole asked. “That’s what you told Mia the day I brought her over.”
She turned to stare at him, but he was looking at the glass-encased football on the mantel. She had no idea he’d been paying that much attention.
“Yes, he did,” she said softly. “He had a heart attack about nine years ago. Unfortunately, his was fatal.”
“You must have been really young. I’m sorry.”
And that was all Cole said. He didn’t attempt to probe any deeper into her past, and he didn’t use the moment to talk about his own father’s condition. She should have tried to redirect the conversation, to mention the lateness of the hour and Philip’s need for a warm bed, but something about his gentle sympathy caused her to keep going.
“I know how it looks,” she said. “A single woman living alone inside a Lumberjacks shrine, all these pictures and collector’s items and knickknacks, but it’s not what you think. I like football. I probably love it. But if my dad had been a fan of cricket or building those tiny ships inside bottles, I could have just as easily become obsessed with them instead. It doesn’t have anything to do with you specifically.”
“I believe you.”
Although he spoke sincerely enough, Hailey felt it was important to drive her point home.
“He never even heard the name Cole Bennett. You were still playing college ball when he died, not yet a twinkle in the Lumberjacks franchise’s eye.” She paused, and honesty compelled her to add, “He would have liked you, though. You’re calm under pressure, and you’re really good at anticipating your team’s movements. It’s easy to tell that you know them—what their habits are, what they’re capable of. You never play down their strengths in an attempt to highlight your own.”
Ha
iley felt rather than saw Cole come toward her. One second, he was sitting opposite her, hiding behind his mug of hot chocolate, and the next, he was grabbing her by the hands and yanking her to her feet.
“What did I say—?” she began, but there was no time for her to finish. With a speed that could only belong to a man who spent as much time in the gym as this one, he had one strong arm around her waist. His free hand came up to cup her cheek.
“I’m about to kiss you,” he said. “Very deeply and very thoroughly.”
It was the same weirdly chivalrous declaration of intent that he’d made at the dog shelter, and it had the same effect on her as before. She was surprised and confused and eager, unable to do much more than lift her lips toward his and wait.
Most of the men Hailey had kissed in her lifetime either came bumbling in at the end of a date or waited until there was a clear sign from her that things were about to progress to the next level. Both of which were fine, but nothing at all compared to this. Cole wasn’t asking, but he wasn’t not-asking either. He was taking, but only once she’d given her implicit consent.
Heady stuff, that.
His lips touched hers with the same gentleness as before, a direct counter to his claim that she was going to be taken deeply and thoroughly. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel disappointed. There was something about that light graze and flutter of his mouth that felt more intimate than an immediate tangle of tongues.
He was tasting her, sampling her, enjoying her—her, Hailey Lincoln, clad in men’s pajamas bearing the logo of his professional sports team. A woman who had watched and admired him from afar for years. A woman who wasn’t particularly beautiful or interesting and whose main claim to fame was that she cleaned up dog poop on television for a living.
It was the last thought that made her lose control. Well, that and the fact that Cole’s right hand had moved from cupping the side of her face to bury itself in the tangled coils of her half-braided hair. He was holding her head in place in order to move from that light, soft, playful nibbling to…
Yep, there it was. Cole Bennett’s tongue. Inside her mouth.
“I’m sorry. Are you laughing right now?” He pulled back just enough to separate his mouth from hers, but she could still taste the light chocolate of his breath and feel the vibration of his words. “At me?”
She giggled harder. She also did her best to move away so that she wasn’t literally laughing in his face, but his grip on her hair was too strong for that.
“Not at you,” she managed, gasping. “At the situation.”
“And what situation is that?” he demanded.
“Oh, you know…” She let her voice trail off, hoping he would realize the futility of trying to kiss a woman who didn’t know a good thing when it planted itself on her lips. It was no use. He showed no sign of wanting to save himself. “I always thought I had weird reactions to situations, but I’ve obviously got nothing on you. What was it that moved you to such passionate heights? The sad stories about our fathers or the way these pajamas have a toothpaste stain on the cuff?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t move from his position.
“I didn’t notice it until right before you got here,” she said, showing him the white spot on her wrist.
“I don’t care about your damned pajamas,” he said, grumbling in a way that only made her want to start laughing again. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him that irritated before—not even in those postgame interviews where they asked deeply offensive questions about why he lost. “This is the second time I’ve been interrupted in the middle of kissing you, and I don’t like it now any more than I did the last time.”
She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and did her best to look solemn. “I’m sorry?”
His laugh came out in a chuff of warm air. “You are not. If you were sorry, you’d kiss me back instead of treating me like the guy who guesses people’s weight at the fair.” When she didn’t say anything right away, he added, “No one likes the guy who guesses people’s weight at the fair.”
“His mother probably does,” she pointed out.
Something she said must have pushed him over the edge again, because he once again fixed his gaze on hers, the laughter mingling with something more—something that caught in her chest and tugged. Hard.
“Hailey Lincoln, for the third time, I am going to kiss you. Not—as you are about to incorrectly guess—because of your pajamas or because I have inappropriate reactions to things but because I find you adorably and irresistibly charming. It was bad enough when you stood in front of me and told me all the ways my game is lacking. When you sit there and tell me all the ways it’s not, I cannot and will not be held accountable for my actions.”
Hailey’s eyes opened wide, the tugging in her chest now more of a hammering.
“And if you dare—dare—to laugh at me this time, I will continue kissing you until neither one of us can stand on our own two feet. We’ll roll to the carpet, a mess of our former selves, and not get up again for hours.”
This was such a nonsensical thing to say that Hailey was in perilous danger of laughing again. She might have done it, too, except one of Cole’s hands moved down the side of her neck, his fingers trailing along her skin in a way that left nothing but shivers and sensation behind.
“Understood?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers.
She swallowed and nodded. It would have been so much better to give him back his own again, to call his bluff and see how far he’d take his threat, but words were beyond her. No one had called her adorably and irresistibly charming before. No one had looked at her quite like that before, either.
“Good,” he said and kissed her.
This kiss wasn’t at all like the other two. There was nothing tentative or gentle about it, no light exploration of his lips against hers. There was heat and there was pressure, and then Hailey stopped being able to think about much of anything at all.
Feelings, however, were everywhere.
She felt the glide of his tongue along hers, playful at first and then increasingly demanding. She felt his hand tangle deeper in her hair, his fingers winding through the strands until their separation wouldn’t be an easy thing. She felt him shift so he hovered more possessively over her, felt the heat and the strength in every part of his musculature.
She also felt her own response to the kiss, mortifyingly passive as she struggled to accept that this was really happening. Fortunately, she felt no desire to laugh this time around. A woman didn’t laugh when a man was kissing her as though he’d never felt anything as good as her mouth opening up to his. A woman didn’t laugh when her entire body had turned to hot, throbbing gelatin, apparently unable to lift a hand but more than capable of emitting a soft moan that he captured with an even deeper kiss.
“That’s the exact same sound you make when you’re embarrassed,” he murmured, the words pressed against her lips and then the side of her mouth and then—dear God—along the curve of her jaw toward the sensitive prickle on the side of her neck. “I like it.”
She gasped as he pressed a kiss just below her earlobe—hot and wet and impossibly soft. Her whole body jerked in reaction to it, the intimacy and the unabashed pleasure, the way it set off a series of sparks that traveled insistently toward her belly.
Hailey had never been more grateful for anything than that kiss. Something about the thrill moving up and down her spine finally brought movement back to her limbs.
The first thing she did was twine her arms around his neck, latching around and pulling him down so he had no chance of escape. The second thing she did was draw him close for another round. She paused just before she touched her mouth to his.
“You like it when I’m embarrassed?” she asked.
“I like it when you’re you.”
And there it was. She was done for. Any chance she might have
had of making it out of this moment—out of this entire situation—in one piece was gone. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Cole Bennett saw her in a seriously romantic light, but it didn’t matter. Her heart had always been like that. Too soft and too unprotected, too eager for love and acceptance to care that it was being used. She couldn’t count how many men she’d scared away by the strength and immediacy of her feelings, how many just plain friends she’d scared away the same way.
Life would have been so much easier if she’d just learned to wall up her stupid heart when she’d had the chance.
It was a good kiss, their tongues meeting in the middle and their bodies pressing with equal urgency against each other. The hot sweep of his mouth over hers was matched by the willing press of her own. His low groan of approval had nothing on the increasing sighs and moans that she was unable to hold back. Just when Hailey couldn’t remember the last time she’d breathed, her whole body awhirl with sensation and pleasure, Cole yanked himself upright.
“Holy mother of God,” he said, staring at her. His hair was slightly messed up and his eyes a deeper blue than they’d been before, but other than that, he showed no signs of exertion.
He wouldn’t, of course. He was a trained athlete, a man who could spend three hours running up and down a field without growing fatigued. A hot five-minute make-out session wouldn’t have the same effect on him as it did her.
Which, if she was being honest, seemed to be the physical equivalent of running a marathon. Twice.
“What?” she retorted, breathless and so flushed that she could feel the heat throbbing in her cheeks. “You started it.”
“You didn’t laugh that time.”
She blushed deeper, but that didn’t stop her from replying in kind. “Neither did you.”
He chuckled now, pausing just long enough to run a hand through his hair and return it to its former glory. Hailey didn’t dare do the same. She could feel how loose her braid had become and knew the color wouldn’t leave her face for another few minutes. To attempt repairs without a mirror would only make her look worse.