Page 4 of Hard to Score

“Come on.” He chuckles as he tries to figure another angle to entice me.

“I look forward to hearing from you.” I take a step back. “Oh, and you seem to have mistaken me for someone who actually cares if you drop your towel.”

I turn on my heel, catch a couple of coughed-out laughs from his teammates who overheard our conversation, and lift a hand in silent greeting. As the door closes behind me, I overhear one of the guys giving Justin shit for being a dick.

At least someone’s calling him out on it.

Normally it would be me. I’m the Kincade sister with the loud mouth who’s known for voicing my opinions, but not this time. Not when my dad has given me the task of recruiting Justin Hobbs away from his agent, none other than the prick extraordinaire, Finn Sanderson—otherwise known as FuckFace in my phone contacts.

Justin will be a pain in my ass. A player an agent tolerates simply because he’s a great commission despite being a cringeworthy human. But if he’s going to help Kincade Sports Management get some of its shine back after Finn tried to lessen it, then I’m game.

Anything for my family.

Or at least that’s what I said before meeting him.

Now as I make my way through the maze of corridors in the underbelly of the stadium toward my next meeting of the evening, I cringe at the prospect of possibly working with him.

But that cringe pales in comparison to the yawns of boredom I endure for the next few hours, as I negotiate and cajole and persuade the general manager of the New York Raptors that my free agent linebacker would be a great fit with the organization.

I love my job, I truly do, but as of late, I’m getting a little sick of inflated egos with ridiculous demands. Especially while I try to save their asses from whatever they did that was caught on a phone and is now viral.

I’m not burned out, but rather just totally sick of the bullshit.

Where did all the nice guys go?

It’s the question on repeat as I make my way from the confines of the now almost empty stadium, toward the far end of the parking lot.

I grumble at how far I have to walk across the lot in my heels, but it’s my fault. There might come a time in my life when I’m actually not running ten minutes late.

Maybe.

But I’m not holding my breath.

I startle at a noise to my left. It sounds like heavy breathing mixed with grunting combined with who knows what. It’s a sound most normal women would scurry away from. I head toward it and find myself on the outskirts of the parking lot, looking through a chain-link fence, down at the team’s pseudo practice field.

Or at least it used to be until the team built a fancy one outside of the city a few years back.

Nonetheless, in the moonlight, I see a figure down on the turf. He has what appears to be a headlamp attached to his helmet that bobs with each and every move he makes. He has about twenty footballs set up on kicking tees all around the scaled-down version of the field. I watch as he randomly picks a football up and then fires a throw into one of five target nets set up in various distances away from him.

With each grab of a football, he dances backwards a few steps, arm cocked back with the football in hand, and then fires a rifle straight into the target.

I take in his red T-shirt, gym shorts with a towel tucked in the waistband that he dries his hands on after every couple of throws, and the white of his helmet.

“Well color me impressed,” I murmur to myself, surprised to see him out here, but so very pleased that he is. “Justin Hobbs is the real deal.”

I can’t tell you the last time I saw a professional athlete finish a game, be unhappy with his performance, and then head straight to the field to improve it.

Now this? This is a man I can represent and sell.

One after another he hits his target with both natural talent and finesse that’s astounding. This is what Justin was missing in the game tonight. Sure he’s skilled, but there’s an instinctual confidence about him right now that he needs to translate to the field or else I fear it’s going to be a rocky year for him.

That is what I didn’t tell him to his face.

Those are things you reserve to tell people when they’re your contracted client, not when you’re trying to win them over.

But there is a massive glimmer of hope in what I’m watching and that, in and of itself, is worth me standing out here in the summer night air instead of driving myself home.

I don’t know how long I observe from the fringes of the parking lot, awed by Justin’s talent and contemplating why he’s not making use of the lights that tower above the practice turf, but it’s long enough for him to run through the cycle of throws three times.