“I have charm.”
“Same thing,” I growl, my heart rate picking back up. I’m afraid I’ll have to put my head between my knees again.
“While that is a very interesting theory,” he says, “that’s not it. This isn’t a game I’m trying to win. I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before. I don’t even see other women now.” Heshakes his head, a low laugh in his belly. “It’s crazy.” His fingers caress my cheek once more. “Margaret McCrae, I adore you.”
I smack his hand. “Stop saying that. You—you are confused. This whole thing is?—”
“Delightful?”
“A mistake.” I shake my head.
His smile falters, and his jaw tightens with my words.
But I’m not finished. “You can’t like me because it is against every rule in the book for a player and an official to have feelings for one another. You and I being friends is pushing it. You—” I swallow, stand, and push past him, drowning in musk and pine as I go. “You cannot like me. Youdon’tlike me. The end.”
“But I do,” he says, pausing my escape. “I realize it now, and there’s no taking it back.”
“Are you trying to get me fired?” I hiss, my hand on the doorknob. “Is that what this is?”
“Of course not.” He reaches out a hand, and I block him with a swat, just like a ninja. Lucca Cruz isn’t the only one here with skills.
“Well, if that’s the truth, then you need to lose those feelings quick. And we aren’t talking about this anymore. Got it? You never kissed me?—”
“You kissed me back,” he says with a grin that I’d really like to slap off that handsome face of his.
“I didn’t. And this conversation never happened.” I charge back out to the party to find my very nice, very sweet, very much a date Mark, who has never once set my heart racing like Lucca Cruz.
Twenty-Nine
Lyingon her side with her head propped in her hand, Lindy stares at me. “But how do you feel about him?”
I peer up at my bedroom ceiling, lying next to my sister on my queen-sized bed. It’s possible I should have told her nothing, but I had to tell someone. I’m not even sure it really happened. I needed to gauge someone else’s reaction to decide if Lucca following me into a bathroom and kissing me silly was even a real, live possibility.
I swallow and purposely don’t look at her. “I told you, I’m stressed. I’m ready to pull my hair out. The man is going to get me fired. They won’t dismiss him—maybe fine him, but they’ll fireme.”
“That isn’t what I asked,” Lindy says. She clears her throat, loudly, unnecessarily, and waits for me.
I glance her way—it’s the wrong thing to do. She looks just like Mom when she’s lecturing. She isn’t allowed to lecture.I’mthe big sister. That’s my job. “What?” I say, a whine in my tone.
“How do you feel aboutLucca?” she repeats. “Not thesituation, not your job, not the dozens ofwhat ifsyou’ve already thought up.Lucca.”
I scoff and turn my attention back to the grooves on my ceiling. There’s plaster up there that looks a little like Abraham Lincoln. I study Abe. Honest Abe. What would he tell Lindy?
Seeing how he’s so darn honest, he might tell her that was the best kiss of Maggie’s entire twenty-eight years. He might tell her that a single kiss unlocked a whole lot of feelings. That it somehow brought me back to thinking of my cluster of freckles. Lucca noticed the freckle heart below my eye. He saw me up close and personal. And for some reason, he liked what he saw.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. It’s true. It’s a statement from me and Abe. I don’t know how I feel about Lucca. Sure, the man is attractive. You’d have to be living under a rock to not know that Lucca Cruz is one offensively handsome Brazilian. It’s easy to be attracted to tall, dark, and muscular. But physical attraction has never ruled me.
The thing is, I’ve learned that there are more layers to Lucca than his Greek-god face. I’ve peeled back a few, and he’s sweet. He’s sentimental. He makes me unsure of everything I thought I knew about him. He’s so very different from what I believed.
“Maybe you need to ponder that,” Lindy says.
“Ponder something that can never be? What’s the point in that?”
“Never is a very permanent word, Mags. We both know nothing is permanent. You won’t referee forever. Hopefully, I won’t work at the market forever. Wyatt’s growing up, whether we like it or not. He changes every single day.” She shrugs, her shoulders pressed into my mattress, her brown eyes on me. “Things change. Sometimes the change comes with life. And sometimes we create the change because something bettercomes along.” She gives me a small, closed-lipped grin before sitting up.
“When did you get so wise?” I say. “I’m the big sister. I’m supposed to be the one full of advice.”
But Lindy doesn’t act like she’s even heard my banter. “Think about it, Maggie. You deserve to be happy.”
