Page 9 of Her Player

“Oh, I don’t know. Why would you let me in your home after changing your tire? Why would you let me sit on your couch and watch Golden Girls with you? Why does anyone do anything if not because it’s exactly what they want?”

Maybe those heels made her feel powerful, but as I loomed over her, she seemed just as small as she had that night. I stood at six-foot-seven-inches, a towering mass of muscles flying around on the ice on sharpened pieces of metal. No one took a second look at me unless they wanted to get their heads slammed into the ice. I was the intimidator, and it helped that I was just as agile as I was conniving while on the ice. But even in those heels, my body dwarfed hers.

I could tell by the flush of her cheeks that she didn’t mind.

“Rhett, we can’t,” she whispered as she peered up at me through her reading glasses.

I reached my fingers up, gripped the middle band of her glasses over the bridge of her nose, and slid them off her face. “Why not?”

She snatched them from my hand, but she didn’t move. “Because. We can’t.”

“I can just fine. What I’m asking is, why can’t you?”

“Rhett,” she groaned as she slipped those folded-up glasses into the breast pocket of her blouse, “don’t do this. We’ve got a very important game coming up, and there are things we need t⁠—”

Her tanned skin glistened underneath the warm white lights of her office. Her brown hair was pin straight, twisted up into a pristine bun at the crown of her head that only had one sliver of hair out of place. The small bump it left behind made me grin. Victoria was always so put together. Yet in my presence, she seemed to allow herself to be a little bit…messy.

It got the blood pumping through my veins as I looked down at her. But I kept my hand on the wall where it was. I’d earned my way this close to her once tonight. I wasn’t going to push the rest.

“Tell me to go.”

She stopped mid-sentence.

“That’s all you have to do, Miss C. Three words. Rhett, go home. And I’ll walk out that door and never bring it up again. You won’t have to deal with whatever this is for one more minute.”

I dropped my hand from the wall and took a single step back.

That was the part she wasn’t expecting. I watched her process it. Watched her realize that I was actually waiting for her answer instead of charming my way past her objection. Watched something behind her eyes shift, because Victoria Caldwell had spent fourteen years bracing for the next push and I’d just stopped pushing.

“Three words,” I said quietly.

She didn’t say them.

She didn’t move toward me, either. She just stood there with her composure still in place, the breast pocket of her blouse rising and falling with breath she wasn’t quite controlling, and the silence stretched between us until it became its own kind of answer.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

And then a rapid set of footsteps echoed down the hallway just outside of her office door.

I heard a very familiar voice.

“Victoria!” Coach bellowed.

I was already a step back when his voice cut through the air, but I gave her another one for good measure. Victoria dipped down and ripped her clipboard up from the floor before she strode across her office, those hips of hers sashaying with a determination that held my eyes hostage. God damn it, those tight little skirt numbers she wore would be the death of me. She had this beautiful, globed ass that jiggled whenever she moved.

“Mom!” Bry exclaimed as she slammed into the office.

I watched with confusion as Victoria’s daughter collapsed into her arms. I looked over at Coach, who gave me an equally confusing stare. But when my eyes dropped to the phone clutched tightly in his hand, I walked over to him and took it from him before my eyes drank in the headline lit up on the screen.

“What’s wrong?” Victoria asked sharply as she clung to her daughter. “Brynn, talk to me, sweetheart. What’s happening?”

I didn’t even have a chance to open my own fucking mouth to answer her question before Coach glared at me, ripping the phone from my hand, and shoved it in Victoria’s direction.

He held it out for her to see. “This dropped about an hour ago. The local outlets ran it first. It’ll probably be national by lunch.”

“It’s already national.” Brynn’s voice was muffled against her mother’s shoulder, but the words were sharp. She pulled back and swiped at her face with the heel of her hand, that practiced motion of a woman who’d cried in professional settings before and refused to let it slow her down. “AP picked it up forty minutes ago. My phone started blowing up while I was watching practice.”

Victoria’s jaw quivered as anger hardened her gray eyes. “’Disgraced PHL Coach Has A Type’? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?! This is exactly what I was afraid of!”