Page 97 of The Situation
“You can only blame yourself for this.”
“Sounds about right.”
He rolls his eyes. “When McCabe comes back, or when we find a replacement for him, I need to do something conducive to the rest of my life.”
I shrug, taking another bite. “Of course.”
“And you, gorgeous, are a part of the rest of my life.”
My chest tightens. The fork nearly falls out of my hand.
“You made me say it,” he says. “I wasn’t going to go there.”
I lay the utensil back in the pan. When I look at him, he’s smiling as if we’re still talking about an errant hockey puck twenty years ago.
His words both scare and comfort me. I can’t help but wonder if those emotions are not two sides of the same coin.Is it possible to feel comfortable if you haven’t identified and moved past the things that scare you?
I don’t know how to respond to him, so I change the subject.
“The Good Day reports were emailed to me this evening,” I say. “I took a quick look at them before I left my house for Caesar’s. Interesting stuff. Derek will tear into those numbers tomorrow and regurgitate them to the rest of us by the beginning of next week. I copied Charlie on it, just in case.”
“How do you feel about the rebrand?” he asks.
“I think the team has done an excellent job so far. Tally has been identifying community outreach projects we can get involved with, and I must admit, I'm surprised it hasn’t been done with the team before. We have lots of things in the works not to just appeal to your typical male hockey fan demographic, but to bring in women and children, too.”
He smiles. “I love the way you light up when you talk shop.”
I do?
“Your body is fucking fire, but your brain is the sexiest thing about you,” he says. “And I mean that in the best way.”
“Wow. I don’t think anyone has ever complimented my brain before.”
“Have you always worked in sports marketing?”
I laugh, finding the question amusing. “No. This is the first time I’ve worked directly in a marketing position like this.”
“No shit?”
“Like I said, I worked as a cheerleader for a while in my twenties. That’s essentially marketing. But I did that just to be involved with sports because I loved them so much but could never play.” I paste on a fake smile. “Little girls don’t get dirty.”
He draws a line up my leg to the apex of my thighs. “Your parents would be very disappointed in you tonight.”
“You have no clue. I didn’t have sex until I married my first husband, and, in retrospect, I probably only married him so I could have sex. He was a virgin, too.”
Tate’s hand stops moving. “Kudos to him for waiting … but how?”
“He went to our church.”
“That’s some kind of dedication.”
He pulls his arm back and picks up his fork.
“There was no dedication in that marriage,” I say, stretching and yawning. “Neither of them, really. Not to me, anyway. The first one had control issues. I see that now. He had a love/hate relationship with me working for the Legends. He supported me publicly but shamed me at home. Actually, he took a job here in Nashville, so I’d have to quit.”
“What a fuck.”
“It gets better,” I say, laughing angrily. “He told me he didn’t want to have kids about a year into our marriage—knowing I did. But we were already married, and I thought maybe he’d come around. He did.” I shake my head. “He went on a mission trip and came home with a pregnant mistress.”
