Page 53 of Hart Breaker

“We win this game, and Philly loses to Dallas, I’m better than good.”

“I can do my best to make the first happen; the other’s out of my control.”

When the elevators open, I see Lauren, Sydney, Maggie, Izzy, and London wheeling suitcases down the hall on our floor.

“It’s easier with security to keep everyone on one floor.”

“I get that,” I say as my eyes connect with Lauren’s, and she grins. I lift my chin. “Put them on a shelf if you got to, right?”

“Whatever it takes,” Logan says before heading toward his wife.

TEAM DINNER

Riley

Lo kicks me under the table when Hudson Hart enters the dining room.

“If I’d actually fucked him, I’m not sure I’d ever be the same,” she whispers. “He’s hot as hell.”

“I’m here in Vegas, and I did the whole mess the dress thing, both at your insistence. My sin is abolished.” I turn and pin her with a glare. “We good?”

“I’m good.” she wags her brows. “Just checking out the dessert buffet I’ve been drooling over all this time and deciding which one I’ll taste first.” She looks at me. “So, just to clarify, you’re not going there with Hart?”

“I’m not talking to you right now.”

She giggles as she shoves her fork into the tenderloin. “Enough said.”

Did I see Hart walk in? Sure did. I could pick him out of a crowd of hundreds. But admitting that would be humiliating, to say the least.

I was drunk with a capital D when I saw the hot-as-hell player who I’d announced and welcomed to the family on draft night. He was the picture in my head, or on my screen, when I got myself off until Brett came back into my life. And when he didn’t recognize me during the team meet and greet, I tamped down my hurt feelings that he didn’t recognize me and leaned into the fact I’d fucked my fantasy guy.

Then, when he started showing up at the brewery, I panicked, and Lauren … well, she saw it and offered.

I should have never agreed to it.

“This seat taken?” Boone asks as he approaches us.

“Aren’t you supposed to eat with the team?” Sydney asks, her face turning red.

He sits down. “You ladies are part of the team.”

Grimes sits beside him, and a new guy asks, “Is this seat taken?”

“Ooo, you have an accent,” Lo notes.

He nods. “Oden Voss. And you are …?”

“Off limits,” comes from a familiar voice who plops his ass right next to me. “These ladies are part of the owner’s co-op.”

“And that makes them off limits?” Voss asks but quickly answers his own question. “Very American.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Hart asks in a very un-Hart-like manner.

I use a Lo tactic and kick him under the table. He doesn’t flinch.

“Americans view dating and sex differently than we do in Europe.”

“We do casual sex in the US,” Sydney states, which also shocks me.

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