Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
I laugh at the look of horror on his face as he relives the memory.
“It traumatized you, didn’t it?” I ask.
“Have you ever been hit in the face with something hard and …” He smirks. “Never mind.”
I elbow him in the stomach, making him chuckle.
We’ve been tucked away naked in his bedroom for hours. I left once to pee. He left one time to grab water and pie for us. Otherwise, Wednesday faded into Thursday with a soundtrack of our laughter.
My leg drapes over Tate’s. His hand rests on my thigh, gently stroking it back and forth. I’m not sure he even realizes he’s doing it at this point.
And I love it.
“Can’t be too mad at hockey, though,” he says. “It brought me to you.”
I slide my fork into the pie we’ve so carefully positioned on a pillow between us. “What are you going to do if Charlie comes back?”
It’s a thought that’s run through my mind a few times tonight during our haphazard conversations. Will he go back to traveling? Work out of another office? Stay at the Raptors?
“What would you like me to do?” he asks.
“It’s not really my choice.”
“Maybe it’s not ultimately your choice, but you have a say in the matter.”
I look at him, both brows lifted. “This is business. Your family counts on you. What I think doesn’t matter.”
He falls deeper into the pillows and shakes his head as if something I said amuses and frustrates him at the same time.
“What?” I ask, shoving the bite of pie in my mouth.
“Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“You don’t want to hear it,” he says, staring at the ceiling.
“I don’t want to hear half of the things you say, but I listen.”
He turns to me, dropping his jaw for my benefit.
I laugh. “Really. Tell me what you were thinking.”
“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.”