Another few seconds pass before I’m able to sort through my tangled thoughts and come up with the correct name from the team roster. Mallory Wilson.
“Hello, Wilson.”
Mallory smiles, elbowing a stoic Claire. “We were supposed to meet in the weight room five minutes ago.”
“I was on my way there,” Claire responds. “Just stopped to fill up my water bottle.” She holds it up like proof. “Let’s, uh, let’s go.”
“ ’Kay!” Mallory flashes me a friendly smile, then follows after Claire, chattering away.
I stand motionless until they’re out of sight. I should feel better now that our first interaction is out of the way.
I don’t.
I remember why I walked up to a stranger outside a nightclub in Paris.
9
OTTO
PARIS
Six Years Earlier
“Iknow who you are,” the brunette confesses after I introduce myself.
Her voice is unexpected. Low-pitched and husky. Sultry. So is the way she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth after dropping my hand.
“You do?” I reply, holding eye contact.
My ego’s oversized enough to fill Sieg Stadium, according to Coach Wagner, but I’m not so conceited as to assume every American is up-to-date on the German football roster. I’ve gotten used to a certain level of recognition around Kluvberg, but notoriety in other countries, like the scene when we arrived at Charles de Gaulle, is new.
She nods once. “I do. I have a thing for goalies.”
I grin.
The hue of her cheeks darkens to red, and I think it’s unrelated to the summer heat radiating off the sidewalk.
“Respect,” she adds hastily. “I have a respect thing for goalies. Not like an…other thing.”
“Other thing?” I ask innocently. “Like a kink?”
A word I learned from the American dating show Beck claims to only watch so he can follow Saylor’s rants about it. I watch it to support Beck being a good fiancé, of course.
“Right! I mean, right, as in, yes, that’s what I didnotmean. Not as in, yes, I have one.” She mutters something else under her breath, too low for me to hear. “I played goalie for a single season because no one else wanted to do it. And it sucked when the opponents were seven-year-old girls who forgot which end to score in. I don’t—I can’t imagine what it must be like with higher stakes than that.”
I grin. Again. Or still. I think I’ve been smiling ever since I saw her mimic driving a car. “You played football?”
“I play soccer,” she replies, pride in her voice. “That’s why I’m here.”
And she’s American. So, she’s one of Saylor’s teammates.
“This is your first Games?” I ask. My guess is, she’s younger than me.
She nods. “I’m still in college. I’ll be a senior at Lincoln University.”
I’ve heard of it. One of the more prestigious American schools.
She taps her phone against her thigh, drawing my attention back to her dress. The dress itself, I couldn’t care less about. But I’m very intrigued by all the smooth skin it exposes. She’s tall, nearly to my shoulder in heels, the sculpted muscles of her thighs and calves on full display.
