Chapter Nine

Moonlight danced across Charlotte’s twisted-up hair as she bent to remove her heels. She hooked them in her fingers and straightened, several inches shorter than when they’d exited the restaurant. “There. Much better.”

He extended a hand. “Need me to carry your shoes?”

“I’ve got them,” she said cheerily, practically bouncing on her feet. She said she wanted to walk along the beach for the few blocks to the hotel, and he’d offered to go with her. A walk sounded nice, the temperature was perfect, and he found that without forms at her disposal, he liked spending time with Charlotte. Especially the beach version who dug her toes into the sand and spun in a circle for no apparent reason, like she’d done earlier today and was doing so now.

She’d completely charmed his entire family at dinner. Dad liked to tease people, who often didn’t get that he was joking, but Charlotte had given it right back. Add in the remarks about football and showing off her stats knowledge, and how easygoing she was about their big, boisterous group, and that couldn’t have gone any better.

As he’d hugged Mom goodbye, she’d commented on how smart, kind, and beautiful Charlotte was.

In other words, Mom had decided they should be more than work associates. Which was good. It’d keep her off his back for a while, and Charlotte knew the truth. All in all, this might turn out even better than he’d expected.

“I love the beach. If I was rich, I’d buy a big house right here.” She stopped mid-spin and faced him. “Why don’t you have a house on the beach? Or do you?” She brought a hand up over her mouth. “Never mind. That’s really none of my business.”

“Yeah, getting way too personal there,” he teased. “We lived inland growing up, and my parents still do, but we came to the beach fairly often. We visited my grandfather in Texas now and then, too, and he took us to the beaches down there if it was the off season.”

She cocked her head. “Why didn’t your mom and dad inherit the team?”

A more personal question than the beach house one. Not that he minded—she seemed a bit like a cat. Curious to a fault, although she tried to stifle it. “You heard my mom say she tried to stay away from the football world. She dealt with my dad doing all the required training and traveling for years, and when he retired, she talked nonstop about how done she was with it and how she was glad they could finally live their lives.

“When my grandfather drew up his will, he asked if she was sure she didn’t want it. She said no and made him promise he wouldn’t burden my dad with it, either.”

A crinkle creased Charlotte’s brow, assumedly because she was wondering the same thing he had when Mom let him know about the will and his role in it—how it’d be a burden. Yeah, he understood it involved a lot of big decisions and spending and taking in a lot of money. He didn’t fully understand until the weight of it had fallen on him.

“My dad had a minor heart attack a while back,” he explained. “It scared us all, and Mom doesn’t want him to have extra stress. My ticker’s in better condition.”

“Because it’s made of ice?” she asked, completing another spin.

“Yep, that’s me. Cold, calculating.”

She held out her arms as if she needed to recalibrate herself. Then she stepped up next to him. “So not true. I thought that at first when you were insulting everyone and firing them, but after seeing you with your family… I was just teasing, you know.”

“I know.”

“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 what you said 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 say we, not the 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.”

“And a lot of money,” she said.

“And a lot of money,” he echoed. That was another worry that only cranked up the stress level. That he’d make all these changes and spend millions of dollars and still lose. But he couldn’t think like that, because that was a good way to end up defeated before they even started.

Their hotel loomed ahead, and he decided to shove his worries away for a few more minutes. They’d still be there when he arrived at his room. For now he was going to enjoy walking next to a woman in the moonlight, the waves crashing to his right.

“I like your family, by the way,” she said. He wasn’t sure how that was by the way, but he happily embraced the change in subject.

“They like you, too.” His arm grazed hers again, and she sucked in a breath. Earlier tonight he’d squeezed her hand, the same way he’d done on the plane when she’d needed a hand to hold. His fingers itched to grab hold of it again, but he was sure she’d pull away. More than that, he shouldn’t touch her more than necessary because it only made him want to touch her more.

She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Your mom’s getting the wrong impression of us, though.”

“We can’t control what other people think.” Right now he couldn’t seem to control what he was thinking. There was a tug between them, a push and pull like the tide that came and receded and then came back stronger and claimed a little more sand.

“Says the guy who’s been in hot water with tabloids before for what they think.” Her teeth sunk into her lip like she thought maybe she shouldn’t have said it, but it was out there now.

Earlier in his career he’d often responded without thinking, the whiplash sensation of living and breathing the game to having to answer a barrage of agitating questions getting the best of him. “It took me years of repeatedly telling myself that I couldn’t control what they thought to make peace with what they printed. Whether or not I only got the gig because of who my grandfather was, or if I was the hero or the whipping boy that week. And sure, sometimes when a reporter was in my face with a microphone, asking ridiculous questions after a game we lost, I temporarily forgot it and lost my cool.”

The PR department and his coaches had both gotten on him. Don’t lash out at the reporters. Remain gracious no matter what they say. And if he didn’t talk to the press, he’d get fined. Slipping up in the post-game interviews hadn’t been what landed him in hot water, though. It was the other part of his past he kept in a tightly locked box in the darkest corner of his mind. “Same with my personal life.”

A raw mix of anger and old hurts churned through him. His ex had constantly talked to reporters, and then they’d want to confirm with him what she’d said. It put him in a tough spot. If he didn’t corroborate what Sage had said, she’d be pissed, but he hadn’t wanted them to analyze and rip apart his relationship like they did with the way he played ball. He also thought his relationship wasn’t anyone’s business. Sage wouldn’t stop talking to them, though, and his relations with the press had turned especially ugly when the rumors about her cheating on him with a teammate had come out.

Even uglier when it turned out to be true. He’d threatened to rearrange a guy’s face and shove his mic where the sun didn’t shine, and every other reporter there had raced to print up everything they could about his horrible temper and how his knee injury had cost him more than just his career. There’d been jokes about how maybe he’d had one too many concussions, too—how maybe that was why he was too dumb to see what’d been happening right under his nose.

“I get that,” Charlotte said. “I’m sure it’s hard to have that added pressure to say the right thing after hard losses and to have your personal life splashed across the internet for entertainment, and I’m sorry I blurted that out without thinking.”

“The past is always harder to outrun than we’d like.”

“True that.”

A chuckle slipped out. He doubted she had much of a shady past, considering she always followed the rules. “I’d also like to think I’m a different person than I was then.” He was, but even that eligible bachelor article bothered him more than it should. Stupid tabloid rags. “So yeah. I’m back to my mantra of we can’t control what other people think.”

“Again, it’s a solid idea and all…” She sighed. “I just hate to disappoint people—that’s more what I meant with your mom and her getting the wrong idea. I’ve never had that family dynamic, and I like your family, so I don’t want things to get messed up because of someone like me.”

He dragged his finger lightly down her forearm, the back of her hand. “I’m guessing this has something to do with the raised-by-nuns and a gambler father.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe. I wasn’t actually raised by nuns, for the record. After my mom passed away, I just went to Catholic school and spent a lot of time after school with a few. Mostly because my dad tended to forget he had a daughter. I always had to work so hard for his attention, and when he discovered what my brain could do with facts and figures, suddenly he wanted to spend more time with me. So I milked it and studied stats and percentages like my life depended on it. And if I helped, he also won more often, which left us both less stressed.”

Lance frowned, his hand automatically curling around hers so she could hold on if she needed the support.

She faked a smile that looked completely wrong on her features. “It’s not a big deal. Thanks to that and my freakishly good memory, I landed a job I love. Anyway, I was just thinking about family dynamics and—”

“That sucks. He sucks for making you feel that way.”

She blinked at him and then slowly shook her head. “He…he’s trying. Getting help and… Wow, this got real quick.” She cleared her throat and increased her pace, pulling her hand from his grasp.

“Oh, look! There’s my room.” Her voice was too high, and her words had a flighty edge to them. “It’d be nice not to have to walk all the way to the door in the middle, but unlike your room, it doesn’t have a fancy walkway, and I’ll never be able to climb that balcony in this skirt.”

“That tiny balcony? I could chuck you right over it.”

She paused long enough to cast an eye roll at him from over her shoulder. “I’m not a football.”

“I noticed,” he said, his gaze running down her before he reined himself in. “Come on. I’ll boost you.”

She glanced around as if they were doing something illegal. Her shoes were tossed over the railing and landed with a clunk, and she reached for the rails.

He linked his fingers together to make a foothold, and she stepped into it. Halfway up, she was clearly rethinking the plan. “I’m not sure I can get over without flashing you, and this was a mistake.”

“I’ll avert my eyes. Just throw your other leg over.”

A mix of squeaks and grunts came from her, and he forced himself to keep his eyes down. But then a whimpered “help” drifted down to him, and he looked up to see her stuck, the rail under her gut. She’d started laughing and couldn’t push herself up—anyway, that seemed to be the problem.

“I’m going to have to shove your…backside.”

“That’d violate section three of the handbook. Section four as well, actually.”

“I’m pretty sure leaving you hanging on the balcony violates a couple of sections, and people are starting to give us odd looks.”

“They are?” she squeaked, and he laughed. No one was really out, although there was a couple a few balconies over that undoubtedly thought they were attempting to break into the room—talk about the worst burglars ever.

He braced his hands on her nice round booty and gave her a firm shove, doing his best to keep his hands flat and in “helping” instead of “copping a feel” range.

She swung her legs over the railing and landed on the other side. Her skirt was hiked up on her thighs, and he told himself to avert his eyes again, but they didn’t want to listen. His mouth went dry as she worked her skirt back into place. Then she peered down at him, and for some reason, it made him think of the horrible Romeo and Juliet production he was in during high school. He hadn’t wanted the role of Romeo, but he was used to memorizing plays and therefore good at memorizing lines.

They were still emblazoned in his memory.

O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? A douchey line by Romeo really, and one Lance wouldn’t dare repeat, although he found he didn’t want the night to end. He definitely felt unsatisfied at it having to.

“Can we pretend this never happened, and that I did the reasonable thing and took the main door instead of saving myself another quarter mile of walking?”

“No way. I’m going to cherish the memory of the night you did something slightly inadvisable and climbed your own balcony. Maybe hang it over your head. Bring it up in meetings.”

“Jerk,” she said, but she said it lightly.

He almost made a joke about how it’d also be faster for him to come in through her balcony and walk to his room a few doors down. But that was courting trouble, and he figured if this night went on much longer, he’d land himself in a mess.

“Good night, Charlotte.”

“Good night, Lance,” she said. When he didn’t move, she added, “Um, are you going to leave?”

“I want to make sure you can get into your room first. You’ve proven you’re not the best at climbing—”

“Ah! In a dress.”

“Which you’re still wearing. So unless you plan on shedding it if you can’t get into your room and have to climb back down, let’s play it safe and make sure you’re not locked out before I leave you without help.”

She sighed extra loudly but swiveled her purse in front of her. She kept digging out different items and saying “not it, not it”, and for someone so organized when it came to forms, evidently her purse was an unorganized disaster. “Found it.”

She slid the card into the key slot, watched the light turn green, and then pushed open the balcony door. “I’m good.”

“Until tomorrow, then. Bright and early, since we’ve got that football game and need to practice your catching skills at some point.”

“Unless I don’t play.”

He backed away, his gaze still on her. “You’re playing.”

“Is that an order from my boss?”

“Yep. And don’t give me some shit about how it’s not part of your job. Section six of the handbook clearly states that team-building drills are important to the work environment and morale, and all employees are required to take part in them.”

She leaned over the railing and adamantly shook her head. “That’s not what section six says.”

“It will after I make a few changes to it.”

“All the employees aren’t here, so…”

“You’re playing, Charlotte, so prepare to bring your A game.” He turned around and walked toward his room before she could argue any further. Not that he didn’t expect her to have a bullet-point presentation about it drawn up by tomorrow morning.