Ruff and Tumble

by Lucy Gilmore

  He didn’t know what it was about Hailey’s answer that caused such a visceral reaction. Maybe it was the confidence with which she uttered it, the way it didn’t even occur to her to question the strained relationship between him and his parents, between him and his sister. It could have been how earnest she was, how much she truly believed in what she was saying. Either way, he couldn’t stop the words that came out of his mouth next.

  “Sorry, but I don’t think you’re in a position to lecture me about my family.”

  She balked at his words but didn’t stop. “They love you, Cole. Anyone who’s spent five minutes in their company can see that. You don’t want to disappoint them, I know, but they’re not going to strip you of your name because you’re injured.” She laughed, as though such a thing was so preposterous that it couldn’t even be considered. “They’ll keep loving you. They’ll help you figure out what you want to do next. They’ll support you every step of the way. Believe me, Cole Bennett is going to land on his feet.”

  She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand. The one person he wanted—no, needed—on his side was just as wrong as everyone else. She looked at him and saw not a man, not someone who was terrified of what the future held and in desperate need of a friend, but Cole Bennett.

  The myth. The millionaire. The motherfucking quarterback.

  “You only say that because you haven’t had to answer to anyone but yourself for nine years,” he said, bitter and hurt rendering his voice hoarse. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was taking his frustration out on the wrong person—that Hailey was the closest thing to an ally he had in this—but something had broken inside him, the floodgates thrown open so far there was no way to close them again. “There’s no one whose entire sense of self and happiness is wrapped up in what you do or don’t accomplish on any given day. There’s no one who counts on you for every single thing they are. You’re alone.”

  All the color drained from Hailey face. A hole inside Cole’s chest cracked to see it, but it was too late. He’d already committed himself to this, spoken the words out loud, and there was no taking them back now. As if sensing it, Philip gave an eager whine—a sound Hailey immediately latched onto. She latched onto the puppy, too, holding him as though he were the only thing keeping her standing.

  “I’m not alone,” she said, her voice cold. “In case you forgot, there are seven dogs currently living in my house, depending on me for survival. Eight, if you keep yelling at Philip.”

  Cole had never yelled at Philip—not when he ate the cushion off his couch, not when he demanded bathroom breaks at two o’clock in the morning, and not when he almost got himself kicked off the team plane for trying to storm the cockpit. In fact, he couldn’t even imagine a world where yelling at Philip would be a choice. He adored that little dog, with his nervous qualms and his inability to keep his bow tie straight, the ratty football he carried around like it was the light of his life.

  That Hailey couldn’t see how much he loved and needed that puppy—how much he loved and needed her—was the final straw. Since the moment he’d met this woman, he’d pushed and pulled and done everything he could think of to reach her.

  None of it had worked. She’d given him her body, yes, and maybe even her affection, but she’d not once let him near her heart.

  “You mean the dogs you’re too scared to keep for longer than a few weeks at a time?” he asked without waiting for an answer. “The dogs you refuse to adopt because it’s too hard to let anyone in your life on a permanent basis? You can’t even commit to a pet, Hailey. Don’t tell me what it means to have a family.”

  He knew at once that he’d gone too far. The white pallor of her cheeks went instantly hot and red, her whole stance crumbling like stone cracked from the center.

  “I think Philip and I should go,” she said, her voice shaking so much that his heart gave an answering stutter. “I’ll let the production office know that you’re not feeling up to being filmed today. In light of your injury, I’m sure they’ll understand. We can get a few shots of you playing with the puppies later this week.”

  “Hailey, wait—” he began.

  “Don’t.” The warning in her voice was impossible to ignore. “I know you could easily go over my head, call Jasmine, and take over the entire Puppy Cup, but I’m asking you not to. You already have everything. You said it yourself… All I have are my dogs, and they don’t even count. The least you can do is give me this.”

  “Hailey—” he tried again, but it was too late. She was already clipping Philip to his leash, already talking to him in a low, soothing tone meant to bring him comfort. It wasn’t working, and had she asked, Cole could have told her that Philip needed his football and at least five treats before he was willing to leave the comfort of his home.

  But she didn’t ask. She didn’t ask, and she didn’t stick around to hear his apology. In fact, she didn’t even hesitate as she walked out the door and out of his life without a single backward glance.

  Chapter 18

  “How about Garrett Smith? I could probably get you Garrett Smith. People love Garrett Smith.”

  Jasmine sat at the far end of the conference table, so far removed from Hailey that she was having a difficult time making out her boss’s expression. Not that she needed to see Jasmine’s face to know what she was thinking. Her posture—rigid and unyielding—and the fact that she’d returned to the white pantsuits told Hailey everything she needed to know.

  “I don’t want Garrett Smith. I want Cole Bennett. Cole Bennett is on the billboards. Cole Bennett is in the ad spots.” Jasmine cleared her throat. “Because you put him there, if you’ll recall.”

  “Then what about Tucker Marshall?” It was a long shot, but she had to try. Even if it meant she’d lose her job and have to sell her house and live in a kennel with Bess and Philip and all six of the puppies, there was no way she was going back to Cole on bended knee. “Since he’s replacing Cole in the Kickoff Cup, it makes sense. You’ll still have your Lumberjacks quarterback. Just not the one you started with.”

  Jasmine sighed and got up from the table. Her movements always looked so calm, but she somehow crossed the room and joined Hailey before she finished untangling Philip’s leash from where it had wrapped around the table leg.

  Hailey braced herself for the lecture she knew was coming. Jasmine certainly had her choice of topics. It had been unprofessional to sleep with Cole. She needed to stop bringing puppies to the office. Heartbreak wasn’t a good enough reason to cancel a show they’d spent an entire year working on.

  Which was why she was so surprised when Jasmine dropped a hand to her shoulder. It was surprisingly warm. And comforting.

  “I’m sorry,” Jasmine said. “I know it isn’t ideal, but we don’t have any other choice. It’s too late to make these kinds of changes, or I’d do my best to accommodate you.”

  Hailey was too surprised by the kindness in her voice to do more than stare—a feeling that multiplied when Jasmine crouched down and extended a tentative hand toward Philip.

  “So this is the little guy he abandoned, huh?” She made a tsking sound as Philip sniffed at her fingers. “He must be a real jerk to abandon a puppy like this.”

  Hailey felt a bizarre urge to rise to Cole’s defense. “Technically, he didn’t abandon the puppy. I sort of…walked off with him in my arms.”

  Jasmine glanced up. “But he didn’t try to stop you?”

  “Well, no.”

  She nodded and rose to a standing position once again. “Then it amounts to the same thing. When you want someone in your life—really want them—you don’t let them walk away like that.”

  Hailey didn’t fail to understand what her boss was saying. If Cole wanted her in his life—really wanted her—he wouldn’t have let her walk away, either. Jasmine’s approach might not have been orthodox, but it was kind.

  “If, for e
xample, you tried quitting on me after this, I’d have something to say about it,” Jasmine persisted. She even cracked a smile. “Do the best you can with what you’ve got, Hailey. That’s all I ask. Find a way to make it work, and we’ll get you that producer credit for real next year. We couldn’t do this show without you.”

  With that, she walked away, her pristine white heels clicking in the distance. Hailey could only stare, unblinking, as she went. Even Philip seemed to sense that something monumental had just happened, because he looked a little less depressed than he had for the past couple of days.

  “Ohmygod.” Penny appeared in a doorway toward the back of the room just as Hailey staggered dazedly to her feet. “Did she really say what I just think she said?”

  “How long were you listening?”

  “She smiled at you. She was nice to you. She likes you.”

  “Isn’t that a janitor’s closet?”

  Penny moved a finger across her lips in a gesture of silence. “I wanted to be on hand in case she fired you. I thought you could use the moral support.”

  “I’m glad you were,” Hailey admitted. “I needed a witness to that. No one would believe me otherwise.”

  She and Penny shared a knowing look. For what was probably the thousandth time since Cole had said those terrible things to her, Hailey was grateful for the other woman’s presence. Without fail, Penny had come over every single night to drink and commiserate and take long soaks in Hailey’s bathtub. At this point, she’d seen Penny naked from every possible angle, but that was okay. She didn’t think she’d be here, dressed and functional, if it weren’t for her friend.

  My friend.

  It still felt strange to think about—even stranger to say—but there was no denying that Penny was exactly that. She was everything Hailey had ever wanted and hoped for in a female companion, and she’d been here this entire time.

  All it had taken was for Cole Bennett to waltz into her life to give her that final push to make it happen. Even after everything he’d done, the way he’d rooted out her biggest source of emotional pain and squeezed it, she still had something to thank him for.

  It was almost enough to make her scream. He even managed to make being an asshole a way to shine.

  “What are you going to do now?” Penny asked, voicing the exact question that had been pressing on Hailey’s mind for days. “He’s going to be at the warehouse for filming in less than an hour.”

  As if sensing that a reunion was imminent, Philip perked to a ridiculous degree. So did Hailey, which made her so annoyed that she responded with the only thing she could think of.

  “The first thing I want is for you to do my hair,” she said. “And if we have time, I think we should revisit the permanent marker too.”

  * * *

  Cole wasn’t at the warehouse when Hailey and Penny arrived. Hailey’s hair looked incredible, pulled back in some kind of twisty cascade that made her feel like a goddess, and Penny had done things with the marker that were probably going to result in a staph infection—but that were worth it, because she looked freaking amazing.

  The puppies, however, were present and accounted for. All fifty of them. No sooner had they walked in the door than Philip located his new friend Cleopatra and bounded off after her. Nala was there, too, lingering around craft services in hopes that someone would drop a platter of snacks while she was ready to catch them.

  Big and small, well behaved and wound-up, exhausted and only recently awakening from their naps, puppies were everywhere.

  Hailey normally loved days like this, where the chaos cast all other thoughts and considerations aside. No matter how empty her own house and life might be, moments like these made her feel like it was impossible to be alone. Today, however, she wasn’t in the mood to look on the bright side.

  “Well, I guess that solves one of your problems,” Penny said. “If he’s not here, you can hardly work with him. Not even Jasmine can expect you to manifest a football player out of thin air.”

  “Can’t she?” Hailey sighed as she ran through a mental checklist of her options. They didn’t have a formal contract with Cole, but he was on all the promo items and had verbally committed to seeing this project through. It would look very bad for him if he failed to show up now—worse, probably, than it would for her. He was still listed as questionable on the injury report, and rumors about whether or not he was going to play in the Kickoff Cup were pretty much all that anyone could talk about. If he bailed on the Puppy Cup now, people would be sure to assume he was in much worse condition than the Lumberjacks were letting on.

  Which, Hailey knew, was the truth. Getting the great Cole Bennett to publicly admit it, however…

  “I’ll call Reggie,” Hailey decided with a nod. “She’s the one person who can get him to do things he doesn’t want to.”

  Penny nudged Hailey with her hip and pointed to the opposite end of the warehouse, where a pair of double doors had been thrown open and light started streaming in. “The only one?” she asked.

  Hailey’s first instinct upon seeing those doors was to grab a headset and alert everyone on staff to make a dive for the nearest puppy. The last thing they needed right now was a stampede of canines making a break for it. All that stood outside the warehouse was an empty field, but it was a muddy empty field. She didn’t even want to think about how many baths they’d have to give before the puppies would be fit for filming again.

  Before she could do more than squawk a red alert, however, the open doors filled with shadows. Massive shadows, and a lot of them—all of them moving with a sense of purpose that couldn’t be denied.

  Penny was the first to figure out what they were looking at, and she clutched at Hailey as though her life were on the line. “Don’t move,” she said, only this time, her voice wasn’t loud. It was barely above a whisper. “Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe.”

  Hailey didn’t need the reminder. Moving and blinking and breathing were well outside her capabilities by this time.

  Those were Lumberjacks. All the Lumberjacks.

  It was around this time that the rest of the warehouse figured out what was happening—humans and canines alike. Most people were frozen into a kind of shocked immobility, but Philip showed nothing but joy. With a yap of pleasure that echoed through the sudden silence, he darted toward the figure leading the pack.

  Cole. Dressed to kill in yet another too-tight shirt, his arm sling nowhere in sight, looking as though nothing could touch him. He was gorgeous and confident, and all Hailey longed to do was kick him.

  “Are you kidding me right now?” She stormed across the empty space to where he’d fallen into a squat, accepting Philip’s enthusiastic greeting like a man coming home from war. “What are you doing here?”

  “Upholding my end of the bargain,” he said, his face unreadable. He moved a little stiffly, his right arm held against his side in a way that was unmistakable, but showed no other signs of distress. “Hailey, I’d like to introduce you to the team. Team, this is the woman I was telling you about.”

  It was, without a doubt, a dream come true. As Hailey stood there, bemused and bewildered, she found herself surrounded by thirty huge men, all of whom she knew by name and reputation and face. There was Johnson, the kicker. Marshall, the backup quarterback. Washington and Byrd and Aarons. Juarez and Evans and Hodges. Even Garrett Smith was there, looking apologetic and wearing a rueful smile.

  She was taken by surprise when Garrett greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. “Take it easy on him, will you?” he said, his voice a low whisper next to her ear. “He’s had a rough couple of days.”

  A snort escaped her before she could stop it. Garrett heard it, of course, but that was too bad. Let him know how incredulous she felt. Let them all know. She didn’t care how rough Cole’s days had been or what he was attempting to do here today. She had a show to film, and every Lumberja
ck in the world couldn’t stop her.

  Well, technically, they could very easily stop her. There was enough manpower surrounding her right now to overthrow a small country, but that wasn’t the point. This wasn’t Cole Bennett’s show. It had never been Cole Bennett’s show.

  He’d taken her heart and her dignity. He’d stolen the affection of her puppies and her coworkers. He wasn’t taking the Puppy Cup, too.

  “Okay, listen up,” she called, clapping her hands once to pull the attention of the entire football team—not to mention the crowd of crewmembers who were rapidly gathering around them. “I don’t mind if you stay to watch the taping, but you have to stand out of the way of the cameras and the crew. And keep the activity to a minimum, if you please. The puppies are already overly excited. We don’t want them getting fatigued before we’re even halfway through.”

  “Bennett wasn’t kidding about this one, was he?” she heard a male voice murmur. “She’s scary.”

  Hailey felt the color starting to mount to her cheeks, but she ignored it. Cole had obviously been telling his teammates all kinds of lies about her in an attempt to gain the upper hand, but she wasn’t going to let that derail her. Jasmine trusted her to make this work, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

  “Is it true you know all our stats by heart?” asked another voice. Hailey turned to see that it belonged to Jamal Hodges, a tight end who’d been on the team for almost as long as Cole and Garrett. “And you can tell us exactly what we did wrong in every game?”

  Hailey cast Cole a fulminating glare, but he was impervious to it. He was too busy basking in Philip’s love and watching as Hailey faced down thirty men who clearly had been prepped ahead of time. He wanted them to embarrass her and throw her off her game. She wasn’t sure if it was a tactic to win the Puppy Cup—or if he just wasn’t done humiliating her yet—but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “You’re a hell of a blocker, Hodges, and you can bulldoze your way through a crowd of hundreds, but until the day you learn to catch anything on the outlet pass route, you’ll never amount to much.”