Page 10 of The Proposal
I try not to eavesdrop as I repack Ella’s and my toiletries. It takes a lot of effort to block out the richness of Renn’s tone and focus on the cream bottles and hair ties instead. His voice raises, then softens. It’s gruff, then smooth. I can only gather that someone, presumably his father, isn’t too happy.
As I zip the last cosmetics bag, I hear him end the call.
“Everything okay?” I ask, shoving a curling wand under one arm and picking up the bags. “Sounds like you’ve been a bad boy.”
I turn the corner, and my feet falter.
Renn is standing next to the dresser with a pair of my yellow panties dangling from his finger.
“I’m always a bad boy. Want a demonstration?” he asks, smirking.
I drop the bags and wand into Ella’s open suitcase before snatching my panties from his grasp. My cheeks burn as I tuck away the rest of my lingerie.
“Actually,” he says, “I wasn’t being reprimanded. Onlyreminded.”
“Of what?”
“To be on my very best behavior. I promised my dad I would be as good as gold.”
I glance at him from the corner of my eye. “So you lied to your father?”
He chuckles, taking the clothes hanging in the closet off the hangers. “No.” He draws the word out as if he’s thinking it through. “I endeavor to be on … probably not mybestbehavior, but I don’t plan to ruin my contract terms or his business deal.”
I hum.
Renn’s suspension from international rugby was worldwide news. Even if I didn’t follow the sport, I would’ve known.Renn transcends rugby. So when he returned to the States, the big question waswould he sign with a team here? It was touch and go for a while, and he sat out last season. But a few months ago, he signed with the Tennessee Royals to play with Brock.
“What kind of deal? Anything interesting? Or is it boring like Tate?”
He lays the clothes on the bed next to the suitcase. Then he sits beside it. “Dad is in the process of purchasing the Tennessee Arrows.”
“The baseball team?”
He nods. “All owners have to vote and approve any team purchases or transfers. It’s a fail-safe to preserve the league's integrity. Apparently, they’re concerned about our family’s reputation—mine specifically—which is all kinds of bullshit considering we’ve owned a pro hockey team for twenty years and a dozen corporations without a problem.”
Wow.What kind of first world problem is that?
“It’s really just a campaign by another shareholder to keep us out because Dad pulled strings they didn’t want pulled on a business deal in the nineties,” he says. “So they use my …spirited behavioras ammo. And the fact that the Royals made me sign agood boy clausein my contract didn’t help.”
“That seems kind of unfair.”
Renn shrugs. “It’s how it goes. Baseball is much pricklier than other sports, it seems.”
He hands me a dress. I avoid his fingers and take it.
“So why baseball and not rugby?” I ask. “Or soccer?”
“I don’t fucking know. It’s all Gannon’s doing, I think.”
I take another dress from the stack. “Another brother, right?”
“Yeah. The biggest prick of them all.”
“So he’s not boring like Tate?”
He narrows his eyes playfully and gets up from the bed. “Stop thinking about Tate.”
I laugh and lay the dress on top of the other.
