Page 12 of Her Player

“Okay, guys,” Brynn said, “why don’t we just⁠—”

I took a step toward the man. “I relinquished my position over the two of you dating, and this is how you repay me? By not even sitting down and running her through the risks of dating you?”

The man puffed out his chest, attempting to tower over me. But he was about to find out that I didn’t play that game. His muscles and his height and that daring stare of his didn’t intimidate me one bit. I perfected the art of intimidation.

And this man had stepped into my domain.

With my daughter crying on his arm.

“Mom, please,” my daughter whispered.

Two words that disarmed me at the drop of a hat. I drew in a deep, sobering breath before I leveled Coach with a look.

“I want you to tell me what your solution is to this problem before I tell you exactly how stupid it is and tell you how we’re really going to handle it,” I said flatly.

Coach blinked. “Good to see you can use your words.”

Fury lit me up behind the eyes. “And I think, for once, you should use your words instead of sticking your tongue down my daughter’s fucking throat.”

“All right, all right, everybody!” Rhett said cheerfully as he slammed my office door open and clapped his hands, rubbing them together like a hungry teenage boy staring at a buffet of his favorite foods. “Who’s up for lunch, yeah? I could order us something. We could go out. We could head out of the city to this little place Coach and Bry go to sometimes where⁠—”

Coach glared at him. “I thought I told you to hit the locker room.”

Rhett just grinned that boyish grin of his. “I did. Gave it the best right hook I could.”

As he walked toward me, standing about halfway between me and Coach, the sound of Bry’ giggling was the only thing that disarmed me. Gone were those tears in an instant, replaced by a soft, half-hearted smile at just a few words from that boy’s lips. But when I watched him wrap an arm protectively around my daughter’s shoulders, I felt the scowl on my face return.

Too late for that.

In my eyes, he already proved he couldn’t protect her.

That picture of her bare back up against the floor-to-ceiling glass of his penthouse, caught by some fucking drone, was proof positive of that.

But with my daughter looking at me as if I had all the answers, I forced my brain to jumpstart, running through half-cocked scenarios of what we could do in the meantime until the heat died down.

Rhett, however, was the first to pipe up. “What you guys need is a routine that gets you away from the press.”

I scoffed as I turned my attention to him, watching him as he walked up to me. “You guys have an undefeated season and you’re about to go up against the Detroit Pirates. Your greatest rivals. The media isn’t dying down anytime soon.” I shot a look at Coach. “Which is what he should’ve known if he used his brain to think instead of his⁠—”

“Mom!” Bry exclaimed.

Rhett held up his hands in between the three of us before he looked over at me. “Then what you’re going to need is a place to hide out until this is all over. You know, until the media has to cycle to something else.”

“Might take a while,” Coach grumbled.

I pointed at him. “One more word out of you and I’m liable to make you disappear.”

“Mom! Stop it!” my daughter exclaimed.

I turned my heated stare to her. “He made you cry. He didn’t protect you, he was flagrant with your body on a game where he should’ve known the press was going to be in the city, and now you’re in my office, in my arms, crying. You don’t get to take my anger away from me because someone made my daughter cry.”

That silenced the room. But not for long.

Rhett really did have a set on him sometimes.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems,” he said as he clapped his hands together, “if there isn’t an option to hide out or run an alternative schedule in the meantime, then the only other option is being escorted everywhere you go so that, if the media does come down onto your heads, you’ve got help getting out of the situation. All three of you.”

I crooked an eyebrow at Rhett. “Even if we were to orchestrate something like that, they could still watch us anywhere. Brynn, working at the bar. Me, going to and from the house. Locking ourselves away isn’t the answer.”