Page 92 of Fever Dream
“Good,” he says around a mouthful of food. “Riley knew already of course. Kind of obvious when I told him you were sleeping in my bed last weekend. But he has things ready to go and he’s going to call the club and organise a meeting for both of us.”
“Yeah? Did he say when?”
“Probably Thursday so he can fly up to Sydney and there’s less people around the club,” he tells me.
“And Luna? What did she say?” I ask, suddenly nervous.
“She desperately wants to meet you,” he grins, knocking me with his knee and keeping it there. He’s probably touch starved after being away on the phone for the last forty-five minutes. That’s okay. I’ll happily make it up to him.
“But if it makes you feel better, she thought you were, and I quote ‘hot’from the photos in the papers,” he tacks on, making me smile.
“I’m glad I have your sister’s approval,” I smile.
“Well, at least she has good taste,” he shrugs, scrunching his nose up at me. “You’re definitely hot.”
“You nearly done with that omelette?” I ask, running a suggestive hand over his shoulders.
“Why? Are you propositioning me, Harrison Thornfield?” he grins. He’s adorable. Just adorable.
“I might be,” I shrug.
“Well, isn’t this a nice change,” he chuffs, and I want to just kiss his gorgeous face and hold him. All day if he’ll let me.
Which he does after he takes his merry time eating the omelette I made for him, the little tease. Then I take him to my room, and we shut the door, and we talk and laugh and kiss and cuddle and I remind him how very, very much I love him. For the rest of the day.
CHAPTER 33
casey
Riley meets us at Harrison’s apartment at midday on Thursday and we drive to the club together. The timing of the meeting means there won’t be many players or staff around, but I still feel a hitch of nerves as I drive us to the club.
Harrison and I returned to work on Monday morning, both of us strolling in together like nothing had happened. We didn’t hide the fact that we arrived together, nor that we have left together at the end of each day. But we were extra cautious with all our interactions at the club, leaving nothing for speculation.
We pull into the player’s carpark and none of us moves for a minute. Harrison reaches over and squeezes my hand, giving me the shot of confidence I need.
“You both ready for this?” Riley asks from the backseat.
“Yep. Let’s do this,” I say.
We walk into the club together, borrowing confidence from each other as Riley takes the lead. We make our way to Coach’s office but find it empty when we knock. Dean walks past on his way to his office.
“I think he’s in the boardroom,” he tells us on his way through.
We glance at each other before heading towards the business section of the club where the corporate happenings happen. Riley knocks on the open door to the boardroom a moment later and I see Coach rise to his feet. He gestures us inside and that’s when I see the rest of the cast of a thousand who have turned up for today’s little chat.
Harrison pauses at my side, and I can see the confusion on his face too as we eye the almost full room. This is not what we were expecting.
An elegant woman in a pink pencil skirt and silk blouse stands at the entrance where she points to a legal document on the table.
“If you could all sign the NDA before we start,” she says, handing me a pen. Riley plucks it from my grasp before he bends down to flick through the multipage NDA, landing on the final page which contains the signatures of everyone else in the room. “It’s fully standard,” the woman tuts. “Nothing to be afraid of. It’s for Casey’s and Harrison’s protection above all and means everything spoken in this room today is bound by confidentiality.”
“Fine,” Riley says, signing his name in his allotted spot before motioning for Harrison and me to do the same. As soon as we’ve all signed our lives away, the woman collects the document and moves to a seat on the other side of the table.
Coach clears his throat. “Casey. Harrison. Good of you to call this meeting,” he says. “It’s probably become a bit bigger than you expected but I’ll do some quick introductions around the room. You remember Alan Davies, Chairman of the Board for the Fever?”
I flick my gaze towards Alan to find him smiling and nodding at me so I do the same back. Coach continues the introductionspointing first to Renee—Head of HR, Nikki—Head of PR, and Alice, the woman in the pink pencil skirt who is Head of Legal. There is one man remaining in the room and our eyes fall on him before he rises and holds out a hand to us to shake.
“Larry Kimber, AFL Player’s Association representative. Riley asked me to join,” he tells us. That’s when I note the slight tension in the room between the guy who acts for the player’s union and the club who probably wanted to keep this in house.
