Ruff and Tumble

by Lucy Gilmore

  He’d taught her how to love. And then he’d died.

  “Hey, why are you getting all weepy?” Penny asked. “It’s not anything bad, I promise.”

  Hailey shook her head, afraid that speaking would only loosen the lump in her throat and the tears in her eyes.

  “You’re like our goddess now, you know. You have the city’s most eligible bachelor eating out of the palm of your hand.”

  Hailey finally found the strength to issue a protest. “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, it’s like that. I was at the puppy draft. I saw the way he was looking at you.”

  At this, Hailey could feel herself starting to color up. Penny only had half the story. If she knew how Cole had looked at her the other night—the way he’d kissed her…

  “That was because you made me wear your jumpsuit,” she said.

  “Nuh-uh. No way. I’ve worn that jumpsuit around plenty of men who didn’t want to rip it off my body with their teeth. He likes you, Hailey.” Penny paused a moment before adding, “I know you don’t believe me, but everyone at the office does.”

  “Jasmine doesn’t.”

  Penny laughed. “Okay, maybe not Jasmine, but she doesn’t count. She doesn’t like anyone except her hairstylist.”

  A knock sounded at the front door before Hailey could respond. It was loud enough that all six puppies jumped to their feet in excitement, and even Bess lifted her head in inquiry. Hailey could hardly blame them for their enthusiasm—the last batch of visitors had spent hours lavishing them with cuddles and affection. They were starting to get spoiled.

  “Is that Charles?” Penny asked. “I told him I was going to stick around and hit you up for a dip in your sweet, luxurious bathtub, but I don’t think he believed me. Men will never understand the appeal of two hours spent in a haze of bubbles and candlelight.”

  It seemed likely that her visitor was either Charles or one of their other coworkers who had left something behind, so Hailey didn’t bother looking through the peephole before she pulled the door open. She regretted her mistake about two seconds later.

  “Cole!” she cried, delight flooding over her. She tried to subdue that feeling, to resist the magnetic pull of him, but it was no use. She was a gangly, awkward twelve-year-old standing on that front porch all over again. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ha!” Penny appeared behind her. “I told you so.”

  “Uh-oh.” Cole looked back and forth between them. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean, we were cleaning up, but—”

  “I told her so.” Penny nudged Hailey out of the way with her hip and pulled the door open farther. The extra space allowed Philip to dart through. Without paying the least heed to Hailey or her guest, he made a beeline for the kitchen gate. “Come on in. I was just getting ready to leave. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Cole seemed amused but not surprised to find Penny playing hostess. He also showed zero remorse at leaning down and dropping a kiss on Hailey’s cheek. Under any other circumstances, it might have been taken as a greeting between friends, but his hand pressed against the small of her back, and he sighed heavily. “God, you always smell so good. Like puppies frolicking in a meadow.”

  This seemed like a polite way of saying she smelled like a dog, but there was no mistaking the way his body leaned against hers or the way his breath moved over her ear and down her neck. Or, truth be told, Penny’s exhalation of delight at the sight of it, which bordered on a squeal there toward the end.

  “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s not here,” Cole pointed out.

  Penny laughed. “Sorry. I’ll swoon quieter next time. You two need anything before I head out?”

  Hailey felt a strange impulse to beg Penny to stay. Cole’s hand was still on the small of her back, his fingers exerting a gentle yet unmistakable pressure. The thin fabric of her logo-emblazoned T-shirt did little to prevent the heat of his hand from working through to the skin below. She could practically feel each ridge of his fingerprints leaving an impression behind.

  There was something possessive about it—something promising. Something terrifying.

  The last time he was here, Cole had made his intentions pretty clear. This time, his intentions were practically emblazoned in neon above his head.

  “I think we can figure things out from here,” Hailey said, blushing as the words escaped her lips. “But thank you for coming over today, Penny. I mean it.”

  She did mean it, and she sincerely hoped Penny would take advantage of her offer of the bath whenever she wanted, but her coworker waved her off as though the day had been perfectly ordinary. Hailey didn’t know how to explain that any of this—the football parties and the football player, the easy friendship that Penny was offering without strings—were so far out of the realm of normal for her that she was starting to suspect this was some kind of out-of-body lucid dream.

  It was a good dream, yes, and Hailey intended to enjoy it while it lasted, but she knew enough about life to accept that she’d have to wake up to cold reality eventually.

  Penny waited only long enough to gather up her purse and her sweater before heading out the door, a laugh on her lips and her friendly smile in place. Hailey’s first impulse was to check and make sure the puppies were behaving themselves, but Cole stood watching Penny walk away with a puzzled expression on his face.

  “What?” Hailey asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I could have sworn… But that’s not…” He walked over to the couch and stabbed a finger at the wall, where a blank square of plastic loomed ominously. “Hailey, is Penny wearing your signed 1995 Lumberjacks jersey?”

  Her laugh escaped before she could stop it. “Oops. You noticed that?”

  He whirled on her. “Do you have any idea what that thing must be worth? That was the year Maitland scored six touchdowns in a single game.”

  “I know.”

  “And the year Arnsdale won Best AFC Defensive Player for the second time in a row.”

  “It was the best of times,” Hailey agreed blandly. “They just don’t make football players like they used to, do they?”

  “Hailey, you wretch.” Cole came toward her in two long strides. His hands gripped her shoulders, his look one of pure intensity. “You can’t just let people go around wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of your father’s memorabilia.”

  “Why not?” Hailey did her best not to squirm under that intense gaze, but it was difficult. Cole wasn’t angry with her, and she doubted that he cared much about the money, but he seemed to feel honest outrage at her actions. “Penny got more use out of it today than I have in the entire twenty-five years it’s been sitting there.”

  “But you love this stuff.”

  “It’s only stuff.”

  “Four days ago, you said you hadn’t touched any of it in nine years in honor of your father’s memory. What’s happened since then?”

  Cole was proving himself to be a good listener. Too good, if he was going to start keeping track of everything that came out of her mouth. She was far too indiscreet a person under pressure for that.

  Her next words proved it. “You happened.”

  The grip on her shoulders tightened. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  Didn’t he understand what it meant for him to be at her house right now? For him to be looking at her with that light in his eyes? He might be used to people throwing themselves at him, introducing him to their families and kissing him without abandon, but this was all very new for her.

  “You just finished winning a game watched by thirty million people, Cole,” she said. “You could go anywhere you want, do anything you want. But instead of showering in Cristal or having dinner on top of Mount Rainier, you’re here. With me and my seven dogs. Yelling at me for letting a friend wear an old football jersey of my dad
’s.”

  “I wasn’t yelling.”

  Emboldened by the boyish petulance on his face, she got up on her tiptoes to press a kiss on his lips. “There was a little bit of yelling.”

  “Hailey—”

  “Don’t worry,” she was quick to add. “I’m not upset. It’s just that a month ago, I considered all things Lumberjacks—and all things Cole Bennett—to be some kind of magical, untouchable dream. But now I’ve met you and your family and your fancy football-playing friends, and I realize you’re not really that special.”

  He blinked, his lower lip falling slightly open.

  “Sorry, but it’s true. You’re probably the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, and you’ll go down in football history as one of the most precise and controlled quarterbacks of all time, but you’re kind of a pain in the ass, too.” A smile curved Hailey’s lips as she stood staring up at this man—at the godlike creation who looked, for the first time, as overwhelmed as she felt every time he walked into a room. “Those were compliments, by the way. In case you’re wondering where I’m trying to go with this.”

  He didn’t wonder for very long.

  One second, Hailey was holding herself warily, wondering if that bit about him being beautiful was pushing things too far, and the next, she was in Cole’s arms. Literally. Even though he had to be ten different kinds of exhausted, he somehow managed to hitch his arms underneath her thighs and hoist her to his level in less time than it took her to blink. Her legs spread to encompass his hips, and her arms twined around his neck, all of her straining to be as close to him as humanly possible.

  He seemed to feel the same sense of urgency, because he didn’t even wait until she was fully settled before he started kissing her. Nor did he bother with any of that sweet, gentle nibbling to set the mood. His hands were cupping her ass and his mouth was open against hers, the full, hot promise of his tongue making it impossible for her to do much more than let him in.

  Which was exactly what she did. She lowered her guard and stopped fighting. There was no use pretending she didn’t want this man—near her, on her, in her. She wasn’t sure how any of this had happened, but it was happening all the same.

  “I’m still mad about the jersey thing,” he said as he pressed her up against the nearest wall. There was a framed poster behind her, but Cole didn’t seem to be aware of the irony as it banged and bent under the pressure of both their bodies hitting it at once. “And we’re going to have a talk later about which one of us is the real pain in the ass.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going to argue with me about the beautiful part?”

  Hailey felt his smile curve against her lips. It was a wicked smile, slow and sensual, and it sent shivers of pleasure down her spine. “No, Hailey. I’m going to make you regret that in other ways.”

  If she’d thought it was strange to have this man’s tongue inside her mouth, it was nothing compared to having the full, hard press of him between her legs. He used the grinding leverage of his hips to pin her against the wall, which freed one of his hands to explore her body at will.

  The first thing that hand did was whip her shirt away and fling it into the nearest corner. She hadn’t been expecting company of this variety, so her bra was just a basic comfortable beige, the sort of thing one wore when jumping and shouting at the television for hours on end. If Cole noticed it, he found nothing strange about its bland functionality. He was much too busy taking advantage of her suddenly bare skin. His hand ran up and down her side, reveling in the shape of her, memorizing each dip and curve.

  “I’ve been dying to find out where your blushes end,” he murmured as he began pressing kisses over the line of her jaw and down her neck. “They usually follow this path right here, but then your clothes get in the way.”

  The path he highlighted went past her neck to the line of her shoulder and then down, down, so close to the upper swell of her breast that she gasped. Cole had yet to remove her bra or explore its contents, but the gentle kiss he dropped on the softly rounded curve was all the more powerful because of it.

  “Hmm.” He pulled back, eyes narrowed as they scanned her chest. “I thought for sure that would make you blush.”

  He was wrong. In social situations, Hailey’s blood was quick to rise to the surface and betray her—a thing Cole knew and used to his advantage all the time. In sexual situations, her blood was usually too busy elsewhere to bother. If this man knew how hot and pulsing the sensation between her thighs was right now, he’d realize that getting her to blush wouldn’t be the easy task it had been before.

  “Sorry,” she said, arching her back so that her breasts thrust more enticingly toward him. “You’ll have to try harder.”

  He lost no time in doing just that. With the same look of concentration she’d seen on his face hundreds of times on the football field and the other day as they drafted their puppy teams, he tested the various parts of her body. A deep, penetrating kiss only caused her to moan. The flat of his palm brushing over her breasts merely caused her to gasp. And the quick, effortless way he flicked her bra off did no more than kindle a fire low in her belly.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, gazing at her bare, upturned nipples. She might not be blushing right now, but there was no mistaking the havoc his kisses were wreaking on those body parts. He flicked his thumb over one tightened peak—yet another action that made her body ache for more. “I thought for sure having you half-naked in front of me would do it.”

  He loosened his hold on her hips, allowing her legs to slide down so she was once again standing on her own two feet. They weren’t very stable feet, and the way he looked at her bare torso wasn’t helping matters, so it was a good thing there was a wall at her back.

  “Actions don’t affect me nearly as much as words,” Hailey admitted. “I don’t know why, but it’s always been like that. I’m like the opposite of that famous saying. Sticks and stones can’t break my bones, but words will always hurt me.”

  “Really?” Cole sounded far too excited about this new development for Hailey’s peace of mind. He took a deliberate step back and placed his hands behind his back, touching her with nothing but his gaze. “So if I were to describe your body in explicit detail, you’d start squirming?”

  Yes, actually. Even discussing the act of discussing was starting to make her flame up. If he started using X-rated terminology, she was going to be done for.

  “The first time I ever saw you, I thought you were cute,” he said, his head tilted slightly. “In a gray sweater dress and red tennis shoes, looking like a woman who’d just rolled out of bed and went to work without a care in the world.”

  Some of the heat died. Was he forgetting the part where she was naked from the waist up? “Um, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind…”

  “Quiet.” He held up a warning finger. “I’m getting to the good part.”

  She clamped her lips shut and waited. If nothing else, this would be one more thing she could add to her Cole Bennett knowledge base. Size twelve shoes. Dry cappuccinos. A propensity to talk when a woman was basically throwing herself at him.

  “You almost always look like that,” he said and drew closer. It was just one step, and he wasn’t touching her, but she could feel the air between them start to move. “Cute. Comfortable. Quiet.”

  Again, this wasn’t exactly what she’d been thinking—

  “Now I know that’s just how you lull a man into thinking he’s safe. A friendly face, a Lumberjacks T-shirt, a puppy in your arms.” He shook his head and took another step forward. Nothing he was saying was causing her to blush, but she was definitely feeling something warm spreading up from her stomach. “But you, Hailey Lincoln, are fucking dangerous.”

  Oh yes. That something warm was definitely starting to take over. He reached out and grabbed the waistband of her jeans, giving it a strong enough tug to pull her hips toward his. He also
expertly flicked the button open to reveal the top line of her panties. Like the bra, they were boring and functional, but Hailey couldn’t find it in her to care. With any luck, she wouldn’t be wearing them long enough to matter.

  “You’ve been hiding the body of a pinup and the soul of a warrior,” he said, dropping his lips to her ear. Her whole body quivered in response. “You make every part of me ache to be inside you. I never saw you coming, and now I’m completely under your spell.”

  Hailey had never felt less like blushing in her entire life. He’d done it—Cole Bennett had done it—found the one thing in the world that wouldn’t send her into a spiral of mortification. He’d taken the heat from the surface of her skin and turned it inward, lighting a fire that scorched in the best possible way.

  She placed her hands on his chest and used all the strength she had to shove him. It wasn’t much when compared to a man of his size and stature, but she took him enough by surprise to force him to take a step back.

  “What are you—?” he began, but she didn’t give him a chance to finish. He’d kindled this thing inside her, and now he was going to have to do something about it.

  She pushed again, this time keeping her hands in place long enough to guide him toward the couch. He must have realized what was happening, because he took a few willing steps backward before falling to the cushions in a whoosh of air and laughter.

  “Uh-oh,” he murmured, his smile deepening into that charming, dimpled expression she knew so well. “Was it something I said?”

  “Shirt. Off.” She nodded at him once before kicking her shoes away and tugging her jeans over her hips. Later, she’d realize how odd it was that she didn’t stop to think about how she looked with the full lights of the living room behind her or regret that it had been a few days since she’d last bothered to shave her legs. In this moment, with Cole Bennett obediently stripping off his clothes on her couch, she could only think of how powerful she felt.