Page 66 of Her Player

I picked up my pen.

I signed the bottom of the disclosure form.

I slid it back across the desk.

"I'll file the league copy today," I said. "You'll receive confirmation within seventy-two hours." I picked my pencil back up and turned back to my clipboard. "Close the door on your way out, Coach."

He picked up the folder. He stood.

He didn't move toward the door right away.

He stood there with the folder in his hand and his eyes on the front of my desk, the way a man stood when he was deciding whether to say something or let it go. I waited.

"Miss Caldwell."

"Coach Mercer."

"There's one more thing." He didn't look up. "I know who's been calling about the New York investment group."

My office went dead still.

"I have a Google alert on his name," Coach said. "Have for two years. The notifications dropped twice in the last month, both referencing this franchise." He finally lifted his eyes to mine. "If his presence at the table compromises the deal, or compromises the optics of him being adjacent to a team I head-coach, I'm prepared to step aside. From the championship. From next season. Whatever you need."

I looked at him for a long damn moment.

I had not expected him to know. I had carefully not told him precisely because I did not want him to make the offer he had just made.

"Sit back down, Coach."

He sat.

"You're not stepping aside. From anything. Gerald Hargrove does not get to walk into this building and dictate which of my staff stays on payroll. Not because of you, and not because of his daughter, and certainly not because he wants a piece of a franchise he had nothing to do with building."

"Miss Caldwell⁠—"

"Sit there. And listen." I leaned forward in my chair. "I run this franchise. I decide who coaches it. I have been deciding who coaches it for fourteen years and I have been right every time, and I am right this time, and I do not need a sixty-eight-year-old donor with an axe to grind from a different city telling me who should be on my damn bench."

He didn't say anything.

"His investment is a courtesy. Not a requirement. If the terms aren't what I want, the deal doesn't close." I sat back. "Are we clear."

A pause. Then: "Yes, Miss Caldwell."

"Good." I gestured at the door. "Now you can pick the folder back up."

He picked the folder up.

He stood, slower this time.

He got halfway to the door before I spoke again.

"Colton."

He stopped.

It was the first time I'd used his first name. We both knew it.

"Don't make me regret that signature," I said without looking up from my clipboard.