Page 44 of A Whole New Game

“Care to explain?”

She sighs. “Look… Corey. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I know what’s going on with me. I care about my job.”

What doesthatmean?

“I care about your job too.”

“Great.” She nods. “That’s good. Then you understand why what happened between us can never happen again.”

“I don’t see how the two are related.”

“Corey.” She groans, then looks nervously over her shoulder at the conference room. “I don’t have time for this right now. Neither do you. You have interviews to do.” She gestures to the conference room. A glance confirms no one has noticed my presence yet, but it won’t be that way for long.

Carlee is right. I don’t have time to say everything that needs to be said right now, but I won’t let this conversation end without making some sort of progress.

“Fine, I’ll drop the conversation for now.”

Her shoulders fall in relief. “Thank you.”

“But only if you agree to go out with me tonight.”

She rears back. “What?”

Her surprise is adorable. It makes me want to kiss her.Again.

“Go out with me. Tonight. Let’s meet in the hotel lobby at seven.” The one good thing about us working for the same organization is we’ll stay in the same hotel when we travel.

“No.” Carlee shakes her head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Okay. We won’t meet in the lobby. How about at the bar across the street from the hotel? It looks nice.”

“Corey… no. We can’t.” Again, she looks around, as if waiting for someone to jump out from behind the fake Ficus and shout “gotcha”.

I can see Carlee is nervous. While some of it is because of me, there’s something else that is holding her back.

“Carlee,” I lower my voice, and I allow emotion to seep into my next words. “Please… just come out with me tonight. Let’s talk. Let me explain myself.” Because after all these years, that’s the least I can do.

I see the yearning in her hopeful brown eyes. She chews her bottom lip, and it takes everything within me not to seal my mouth to hers and kiss away the tiny red marks her teeth leave behind.

“Fine,” she whispers.

My heart flips in my chest. “Fine?”

She bobs her head once. “Yes. I’ll meet you at the bar across from the hotel at seven.”

“I’d rather meet you in the lobby.”

“Don’t push your luck, Johnson.” Before I can respond, she spins around and strides into the conference room, leaving me behind with a stupidly large grin on my face.

Carlee Jones just agreed to go on a date with me, putting me one step closer to convincing her to be mine.

16

CARLEE

I’m a fool.A daydreaming, romance-loving fool. I can’t believe I agreed to go out with Corey. Actually, I can. Hence, I’m a fool.

After successfully avoiding him for weeks after that breathtaking kiss by the team’s bus, I’d started to believe I’d be able to make it through the season without doing something else to destroy all the progress I’d made over the past ten years. And I’d been doing so well.

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