Page 124 of Her Player

“You were busy with the Senator.”

“You had a conversation with my investor.”

“I had a conversation with a man at a party,” he said mildly. “About hockey. And about what this franchise means to this city. And about the kind of ownership that built a championship team in three years from something nobody believed in.” He shrugged his good shoulder, the left one having been cleared fully six weeks after the championship, right on the doctor’s timeline. “He seemed interested.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

I thought about the rewrite of the term sheet. The clean version Seth had dropped on my desk last night, sent over from Hargrove’s people without so much as a phone call to explain it. Terms that would have taken three months of negotiation to drag out of a man like that under any other circumstances.

I thought about the months between that gala in March and this morning. Five. Almost six.

Five months that Rhett had walked in and out of my office with coffee from the good place. Five months he’d straightened my glasses and tucked my hair behind my ear and read investor packets before I was awake. Five months of casual easy presence, with not so much as a hint, not a flicker, not a single damn word about what he’d actually done.

He hadn’t told Coach. I could see that in the unbothered set of his shoulders every time the four of us were in a room.

He hadn’t told Brynn.

He hadn’t told Jett.

He hadn’t told a single soul who might have told me.

He’d just handled it. Quietly. The way he handled everything that actually mattered.

This man. This infuriating, enormous, soft-hearted, impossibly perceptive man who had spent three years making himself impossible to ignore and then spent the months since the championship making himself completely impossible to live without. Who showed up at my office with coffee from the good place and sat in my chair just to make me tell him to move. Who straightened my glasses with one finger and tucked my hair behind my ear and read investor packets before I woke up.

Who had stood at the boards of a championship arena in front of forty thousand people and kissed me like he had been waiting three years to do it in public.

Because he had.

“The PHL conduct committee closed their review,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. Seth called me too.”

“No findings. No sanctions.” I closed the folder. “Apparently an owner dating a player is only a conflict of interest if it can be demonstrated to compromise competitive integrity. And since we won the championship⁠—”

“Hard to argue we weren’t competitive,” Rhett said.

“Extremely hard.” I set the folder on the desk. “Though the sports media tried for about six weeks.”

“They did.”

“And then Jett gave that interview.”

Rhett pressed his lips together. “He did.”

“Where he described our relationship as—” I paused. “What was the exact phrase.”

“I believe it was ‘the most inevitable thing that has ever happened in the history of professional hockey,’” Rhett said. “With some additional commentary that I would prefer we not repeat.”

I had read the interview. Twice. I had also, in the privacy of my own home, laughed until I couldn’t breathe, which I would be taking to my grave.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Good,” Rhett said. “Really good.”

My phone buzzed on the desk. I glanced at it.

Brynn: Running 10 late. Colton forgot his wallet again. Love you.