Page 29 of Her New Billionaire Bosshole

“Do what?”

“Moan over food.”

That seems to render him speechless for a moment, but his eyes are so intently on me, so dark, that it holds me captive.

“What else do you hate when people do?” Elliot asks. “Is there a list somewhere?”

“Well, I hate all the obvious things — cutting me off in traffic, double dipping.”

“What do you hate thatIdo?”

I laugh, “Oh, that list islong.”

Elliot tilts his head in a way that I’m coming to recognize as being uniquely him, then asks, “Just one. What’s the number-one thing?”

“Buying teams you don’t know anything about?”

His eyebrows shoot nearly to his hairline, then he laughs, nodding, his hand around his glass. “Okay, touché, Kendall.”

“It’s not about you, though,” I have no idea why I feel the need to clarify this, but I do. When I look back at him, his eyes are on me again. Elliot is, against all odds, a very good listener.

“What could that possibly mean?” he asks.

“It’s about the club,” I admit. “Dallas is my home. I grew up there, went to college there, and now, coaching — it’s my baby. More than that, it’s like the blood that runs in my veins. Dallas is the greatest city in the world.”

Elliot laughs. “That’s a bold claim.”

“About Dallas, or about soccer?”

“Both.”

“No, okay.” I’m laughing, too, realizing how that sounded. “Dallasisthe greatest city in the world, and I stand by that. But the club — it’s more like… my life’s work.”

When the words come out, they feel so right. I pause, letting them hang in the air, and Elliot pauses too.

“Your life’s work,” he repeats after a second, his eyes carefully on mine. “After your injury.”

My eyes hit the table. This is my chance to share about it, but the last thing I want is to bring the memories to the surface of my mind. Relive them. “Right.”

Mercifully, Elliot jokes, “And now it’s being meddled with. By me.”

“Or helped,” I amend, once again allowing my eyes to wander over to the city, taking it all in right behind Elliot’s head. “You want to work together, we can work together. I can do that. And if we can… I don’t know. Maybe things keep going the way they went tonight. Keep winning. Maybe that’s the energy the team needs.”

Elliot is staring at me again, and this time I’m staring right back at him. Something about the air between us is shifting, but I can’t figure out quite how.

The moment is broken by the server, who returns to us. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“No,” Elliot says, not unkindly. “We’re doing just fine. Thank you.”

“Well,” the server says, his smile never wavering. “I did want to let you know that we’ll be closing in a few minutes. Would you like for me to send you with anything when you go? More dessert? I can have a bottle of champagne sent you your room?”

Now is the time to say no — to end the night. But when I open my mouth, I hear something else come out instead. “Champagne would be wonderful.”

Elliot quirks his eyebrow, and the promise in the movement makes my heart flutter around, trapped in my chest. Wordlessly, we stand and Elliot nods to the server — apparently having paid in some mysterious I-own-this-building way — and steers me to the elevators.

But something is scratching at the back of my mind. The moment the elevator door opens, I realize what it is and turn, racing back inside, telling Elliot I’ll be right back.

“I’m sorry,” I find our server and surprise him by walking up to him, opening my purse. “Did we forget to tip you?”