Page 104 of Her Player

I could think of worse damn ways to prepare for a championship.

35

VICTORIA

I didn’t hear the shutter.

That was the thing that kept circling back to me in the days that followed. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see the flash. I didn’t clock the lens pressed between the iron slats of my front gate at six forty-seven in the morning when I walked Rhett to the door in nothing but my robe and my glasses, my hair loose and sleep-rumpled, his hand cupping my jaw while he kissed me like he had all the time in the world.

I didn’t hear a single thing.

The first I knew about any of it was my phone.

It started at seven twelve. A text from my lawyer, Seth, that simply said call me when you’re up. I assumed it was about the stadium’s updated insurance contracts we’d been going back and forth on all month. I set it aside and poured myself a second coffee, leaning against the kitchen counter in the quiet of my house, listening to the shower running down the hallway where Rhett was cleaning up before heading to Caldwell Arena for his first cleared practice.

Five days of rest. Doctor’s orders honored. Championship in forty-eight hours.

I had a thousand things to do and I was standing in my kitchen in a silk robe drinking coffee and smiling at nothing in particular like a complete idiot.

My phone buzzed again.

Seth.

Then Brynn.

Then a number I didn’t recognize.

Then Seth again.

Then my business partner Sandra, who I hadn’t spoken to in three weeks and who never called before nine a.m. under any circumstances whatsoever.

The smile left my face.

I picked up on Seth’s third call before it finished its first ring. “What happened?”

“Victoria.” His voice had that flatness it got when he was delivering news he’d already mentally prepared himself for. “I need you to sit down.”

“I don’t sit down, Seth. What happened?”

A pause. “There are photographs.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. “Of what.”

“Of you. And Rhett Calloway.” Another pause, shorter this time, like he’d already rehearsed the next part. “They’re everywhere, Victoria. I mean everywhere. PHL Sports Network picked it up forty minutes ago. It’s already trending.”

I set my coffee mug down on the counter very carefully. The kind of careful that happened when your hands were threatening to shake and you refused to let them. “How bad.”

“The pictures themselves are tasteful. You’re fully clothed. It’s just—” He exhaled. “It’s the context. You’re in a robe. He’s clearly just spent the night. And the caption is⁠—”

“Tell me the caption, Seth.”

“Vegas Vipers Owner Victoria Caldwell and Star Captain Rhett Calloway: Love on the Ice?”

The kitchen went very still.

“Send it to me,” I said.

“Victoria, I don’t think⁠—”