Page 6 of Hard to Handle

Even to Hunter, himself.

But I’m looking at my father, and he’s not backing down.

“This is a joke, right? You’re playing with me?” I ask in a half-laugh, half no-damn-way tone.

“I wish I were.” At least there’s contrition in his voice when he says it, and I wonder if in his father-sense he has an inkling that my casual dating of Hunter had grown into something more in my heart. “I know you two had a thing a way back and—”

“A thing?” I snort, realizing I’m reacting off my own emotion and not from something he knows. His lifted eyebrows say as much. “Yes. Sure. Something like that.”

“I saw you talking to him at the ESPY’s a few months back. I didn’t realize there was bad blood between you.”

Not bad blood.

More like unresolved feelings.

“This is just a bad idea all around.”

“Personally or professionally?” And it’s that tone—the one that says I need to suck it up, be tough, and professional—that’s a reprimand in itself, but I don’t respond. I’m busy wondering how I’m going to make a man, who despite aggravating me in all other ways, devastated me sensually and brought out an explosive sexuality I never really knew I had, come over to Kincade Sports Management. “Any way you look at it, Dekk, he’s one we have to have.”

“Why?” It’s one word but it’s loaded with so much tension.

“Because this is his year.”

“His year to what?” I snort. “Be an ass and ruin what he has going for him?”

“To win the Stanley Cup.”

“I disagree—”

“Hear me out,” he says with his hands up. He speaks quietly, and that tells me he’s put way more thought into this than I have. “Hunter’s been in the NHL for twelve years. Ten with various teams and then the LumberJacks came along and decided to build their hopes on him because he’s that freaking good.”

“They can build their hopes on whoever they want, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.” I rise from my seat and pace the room as I think. “There’s that thing with the kid in the wheelchair the other day. The one he snubbed. There are rumors about fights in the locker room with teammates. That management isn’t happy. That—”

“So, you have been keeping tabs on him.”

My feet falter as I let his words settle in the room, because anyway I respond means I’m on the defensive when I shouldn’t be about a man I don’t care about.

“I keep tabs on a lot of athletes.”

“I see,” he says in that fatherly way that is part all-knowing, part maddening, and nothing I want to address. “The question is why is he acting out? Why has he had an excellent career with a pristine reputation for almost twelve years and then all of a sudden he doesn’t?”

“I’m not a psychologist, Dad.”

“No”—he leans forward in his seat—“but you know him better than anyone else in this office.”

Shit.

He’s right in every aspect, and yet I want to argue and reject his theory because I’ve moved on and don’t want to revisit a man who broke my heart.

“Make Lennox go after him,” I say, offering up my sister while at the same time hating that she might. “Give me a different athlete to bring over.” Panic flutters in my chest at the mere mention of Hunter and the vivid memories of him that might still fill my fantasy bank.

“Hunter and Lennox?” He chuckles. “The two of them together would be oil and water.”

“Well, so were we,” I throw back as I attempt to fathom why my dad would ever assume I’d be the right one to go after Hunter.

More like a match to gasoline.

But oh, that one time with oil was so damn fun.