Page 8 of Hard to Score

But I can’t let this go.

Not the incredible talent I saw two nights ago or the notion that he’s sitting second string, when I know so many teams who would kill to have his arm behind their offensive line.

And while that’s all true, it’s also a huge lie. Major. Maybe I’m sitting here like a crazed fangirl because . . . I really want to see him again.

He was the boy’s face I pretended my pillow was when I “practice-kissed” it every night before I went to bed.

My first real kiss.

The boy I had wild fantasies about—holding hands, Homecoming dance date, college sweethearts.

All those things died a quick death when our lives irrevocably changed.

Maybe I never laid them properly to rest and right now I feel like if I see him again, I’ll know if I’m just manifesting something that doesn’t exist.

Besides, he called me gorgeous.

The hopeless romantic in me sighs at the words, at the soft smile on his lips when he said it, and ridiculously wonders if this chance meeting was meant to be.

But when it comes to matters of the heart, nothing good has ever come from my romanticism. Just a whole lot of heartbreak that had me swearing off love the last time it happened—a whole four months ago.

Good thing when I looked him up I found out he wasn’t married. Even better when I asked his teammate, my client, about Drew, he let it slip that Drew didn’t have a girlfriend.

Let’s hope that’s true or this might be super awkward.

Nonetheless, I shake my head and force myself to get out of my car. I’m here, I might as well follow through. The spiel I practiced in my head over and over—the one about how I’d be interested in representing him if he wasn’t happy with his current agent—Ari Longmire—is on repeat in my head as I put one foot in front of the other and cross the street.

His house sits in a quiet upper-class suburb across the Hudson. Mature trees line the street in front of perfectly manicured lawns. Drew’s house is large but not flashy with a ledgestone front and a massive wooden door. It sits back from the street on a large lot with perfect landscaping and stonework.

I’m not sure why this picture of suburbia surprises me. Maybe I expected a sleek condo overlooking Central Park for him, but I welcome the surprise.

Regardless, I’m standing here staring and shouldn’t be surprised if any of the neighbors in this high-end neighborhood have called the cops on the woman loitering on the curb.

That puts my ass in gear and has me walking up the long pathway to the front door where I ring the doorbell.

A dog barks somewhere down the street as my resolve wavers with each passing second.

A muffled, “Just a second,” can be heard from inside. My heart jumps in my throat and the stupidity of what I’m doing kicks in.

The lock turns.

The door rattles.

And when the door swings open, Drew Bowman is standing before me in a pair of Raptor sweatpants and nothing else.

I struggle to speak. I mean, no sane woman would blame me for my complete loss of intelligible thoughts if she were looking at the eight-pack of abs on display in front of me. I try not to look, I really do, but how can I not glance down when he’s there looking like that?

“Brex? What—how did you—what are you doing here?” Drew asks as he leans against the doorframe, casual as can be, and crosses his arms over his chest. And crosses them in the way that their sculpted firmness is innocently displayed.

“I don’t know. It’s a long story,” I finally spit out before I sigh and point at him. “You. You said the other day, ‘probably for the same reasons as you.’ What did you mean by that?”

So not what I had planned on saying . . . but it’s out there nonetheless, and now I’m stuck standing behind something that he might not have remembered but that rooted itself firmly in my brain.

“You mean why our paths never crossed until the other night?”

I shrug as he angles his head and studies me for the longest of beats. “I guess.”

He chuckles. “You guess? And yet you thought it was an important enough question that somehow you found out where I live and are now standing on my doorstep?”