"Nothing has happened ..."
"Yet. It sounds like you were about to say yet." He smirks. "Look, it's your fucking funeral. This isn't going to end well for you or the team. But I've also never seen you act like this toward a woman before, and I am not about to piss on your parade."
"Thanks. I think."
"You’d better make sure she is worth all the pain that is going to happen to you when this inevitably blows up in your face," he warns me.
"I'm not doing anything."
"Again ... yet. But I can see it. You have the hots for her. And I get it. The woman is stunning. But then I see her two brothers ..." The St. Pierre brothers walk in and are instantly swarmed by adoring fans. "Oh, but ... it looks like you're not the only one who has noticed how hot she looks tonight. Half the room is looking at her."
He's not wrong. I watch as a man in a perfectly tailored suit approaches her. Tall. Dark-haired. The kind of guy who reeks of old money. He says something that makes her laugh. She touches his arm. My grip tightens on my champagne glass.
"Easy, killer." Sully's watching me with too much amusement. "You're going to shatter that glass."
"Fuck off."
"Come on. Let's go mingle before you murder someone with your eyes."
I let him drag me into the crowd. Shaking hands and making small talk with donors and executives, but my attention keeps drifting back to Joelle and who she is talking to. She's moved on from the dark-haired guy, and now she's talking to someone younger, a football player, I think. His face looks familiar, he's leaning in close, saying something in her ear. She's smiling up at him like he's the most interesting person in the room.
"Emmett." Sully elbows me. "The mayor just asked you a question."
"Sorry, what was that?"
The mayor laughs it off and repeats his question about playoff predictions. I give some generic answer about taking it one game at a time. But I'm not really listening to my own words because my eyes are on the scene before me.
Joelle is dancing with the football player, his hands are on her waist, pulling her close, and she's letting him. She's laughing at something he said, her head tilted back, that long neck exposed. I want to break his fucking hands.
"It was nice talking to you," Sully says to the mayor, excusing us from the conversation. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"The murder eyes thing."
"She's dancing with him ..." I throw back the rest of my champagne.
"Cut in then."
"I can't."
"Then you can't get upset if she's dancing with someone, can you?" He grabs another two glasses of champagne for us.
He's right. But I can't ask her to dance. Her brothers would kill me for sure. And I don't know if I'd be able to keep my hands to myself. I let him lead me all over the event, talking to who knows who. For the next hour, I do my job. I smile. I flirt. I let women touch my arm and laugh at jokes that aren't funny. I pose for photos, sign autographs, and pretend I'm having the time of my life. But every few minutes, my eyes find Joelle. She's always with someone different. A tech billionaire. A retired athlete. A guy who looks like he stepped off the cover of GQ. She flirts with all of them. Easy and confident, like she doesn't have a care in the world. Like she didn't moan my name into the phone. Like she isn't driving me out of my fucking mind.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've been waiting for!" The MC's voice booms through the speakers. "Our bachelor auction!"
Wait, what?
Sully groans. "I forgot about this part."
"You and me both."
We're herded onto the stage with a few other players. Pierre. Felix. Bouch. Fish. Evan. Nelly. One by one, we're auctioned off for charity. The winner gets a dance tonight. Signed Mavericks merch. VIP tickets. Suite passes. And they get to join us for a training session.
Sully goes for thirty thousand dollars to a redhead who looks like she wants to eat him alive. Pierre goes for fifty thousand. Felix for forty.
Then it's my turn.
