Page 25 of The Wedding Deal
“If anything, you’ve got a football where your heart should be.”
“Weird.”
She laughed, full out, the happy noise drifting across the breeze and smacking him square in the chest.
“How many drinks did you have at dinner?”
“None. I’m high on the beach. Plus, I get sorta punch drunk when I’m overly tired and hit my second wind. My body is like, okay, if you’re not going to give me sleep, you get three extra doses of adrenaline and energy, and now you’ll go super-speed until you crash.”
My God, the thought of her on super-speed—it was both terrifying and exhilarating, and for some reason he wanted to experience more of it. “And how long does this normally last?”
She shrugged. “It’s been a while since I’ve hit this point. An hour or so.” She shimmied her hips to music only she could hear. Then she drifted closer to the wet sand, leaving tiny footprints next to his large ones.
“How tall are you without your shoes, anyway? Five feet?”
Her mouth dropped as if he’d delivered a major insult. “Five-two!”
“Oh, so sorry.”
“Hey, those two inches are important.”
“And in the shoes?” he asked, jerking his chin toward them.
“They add about four inches.” She leaned closer. “I’m not sure we should talk about inches. It might lead to a place that’ll get us in trouble with HR.” She giggled, and he peered down at her, his amusement growing.
There was a thread of desire as well, but he was doing his best to ignore that. Or there’d be more inches of something else showing, and he’d end up in that trouble she mentioned.
She drifted close enough that their arms brushed. “Hey. About what I said earlier during dinner. Or I guess it was more whatyousaid earlier.” Her eyebrows lifted in the middle in that way they did when she was confused—he was also slightly confused, no clue what she was talking about. She had the most expressive eyebrows he’d ever seen, and suddenly he was thinking there was something sexy about them, and who knew eyebrows could be sexy? “What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry about your knee surgery and that it ended a really impressive career.”
He shrugged it off. “It’s in the past.”
“I know, but you said that thing about being grounded from it, and I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose something you love…”
“Yeah, what would you do if someone took away your handbook and forms?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Very funny. And you’re trying to brush it off and act like it’s nothing. I’ll let you this time, but I sincerely hope you find some of that love again as you’re rebuilding the Mustangs. Honestly, when I heard you were taking over, I thought you’d be a spoiled, entitled former player with a huge ego who didn’t have a clue about how to run an entire team.”
“Wow. Why don’t you tell me what you really think?”
“That’s why you kept me around, remember? I say it how it is. And I wasn’t done yet, so hush.”
Man, she was on one. He couldn’t remember the last time someone told him to hush—he wondered if he’d lost his mind because it only made him want to hear what she’d say next that much more. Enough that he slowed his pace so they wouldn’t reach the hotel before she could finish her possibly insulting thoughts.
“If we’d carried on the same way, we were just going to have another losing season. After seeing your vision for things and how you’ve made hard decisions… I think you’re just what this team needs. Sometimes you have to tear it all down and start over.” She bumped her shoulder into his and gave him a smile. “Even if it’s made my job harder.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that. Not so sure about the entitled ego part, but you got there eventually.”
She laughed. “I was doing the tough love coaching thing. Tear you down”—she mimicked an explosion with her hands and then made a fist and pumped it once in the air—“then motivate and rebuild.”
“Totally doing it wrong, so we’re gonna have to work on it,” he said, bumping her back and grinning at her wobble. She was so tiny and pretty, and yeah, he didn’t expect this walk, yet it felt like exactly what he needed. “I do like that you always saywe, notthe team.”
“That’s because I’m a true fan. And as a fan who closely follows the Mustangs, I also think we have a lot of good players who are underutilized: Smitts, Crawford, and Carter to start.”
“You might be right, and I’ll take a look at them and their contracts. But what we need most besides an amazing head coach is a quarterback. A leader. Then, depending on who we choose, we figure out how best to use our number one draft pick. Or maybe that’s what our pick should go to, but that gets tricky, too.” Pressure built inside, gathering steam and spreading throughout his body. “We can’t afford to waste it.”
“Well, at least we’ve got one quarterback on our team.” She poked his arm and shot him a grin. “I’m sure we’ll find the right one for the field. Just might take some digging.”
“And begging.”
