The way Eli drives is turning me on. That’s never happened to me before, and I have no idea why it’s happening now. People have always said Jude had a sexy car, and I have to agree now that someone hot is driving it. Eli’s pushing the speed limit, zipping in and out of lanes and handling the hills with this wild gracefulness. He looks over at me and winks. “I think I need to get one of these cars.”

“You should offer to buy his,” I reply. “Once he’s a dad, he should have a minivan. At least that’s what I keep telling him. If I had the money, I’d buy him one just to see his reaction.”

Eli laughs. “You and Jude are exactly like me and Levi.”

I nod absently and text Sadie to tell her I’m on my way. Then I realize a calendar alert has popped up. I was supposed to meet the ALS chapter director in forty-five minutes to talk about my social media campaign idea. Shit. I totally flaked. “This day can’t get any more stressful.”

I quickly dial her number. When she answers I take a deep breath and try to sound professional. “Hi, Kelsey, this is Dixie Braddock. I know it’s short notice, but is there any possible way we can move our meeting? A family emergency came up.”

“Of course! I hope everything is all right,” she says sincerely.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not a life-or-death thing.” I pause and Eli snorts at that. “I mean, it’s a life thing. My sister-in-law is in labor at the hospital, and I’d just really like to be there. I know that’s not exactly an emergency.”

“It’s a new family member! That’s important,” Kelsey replies, and I can hear her smiling through the phone. “I mean, if we can’t be with our family for events like this, what’s the point? No worries at all about the meeting. Call me later this week when things settle down and we’ll reschedule.”

“Thank you so much.” I am so relieved I could cry. Eli must see it on my face, because he reaches over and squeezes my knee gently. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. All of it. Everything.”

“The reaction at the ALS Foundation was a pleasant surprise compared to how the Thunder reacted to me wanting to leave,” I mutter.

“It sucks they wouldn’t let you leave.”

“Oh, that’s not the half of it,” I reply and explain to him how mean Trish was acting.

He’s smiling when I finish my story, which is weird, but at the same time it’s soothing. “That’s why I love hockey so much. If someone pisses you off, you get to beat the shit out of them, and the only punishment is sitting in a box for five minutes.”

I laugh. “If only life were like hockey.”

“The world would be a better place.”

He slows and turns into the hospital parking lot, pulling right up to the front doors. “Go!” he commands and I start to open the car door but turn back around.

I grab his face in my hands and press my lips to his. I kiss him with every shred of energy left in me. When I finally let him go his eyes are dark and glassy and his lips full. “This job has taken a lot from me today. I wanted to take something back.”

I jump out of the car and run into the building. I find my sisters in the emergency waiting room, but my mom and dad are nowhere to be found. Sadie stands up. “False labor.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah, because if it were real, that kid would be here by now and you’d have missed it,” Winnie remarks with a half smile on her face. “And you’d have lost any chance at being the favorite aunt.”

“I got here as soon as I could,” I reply defensively.

“Mom and Dad left already. Dad was exhausted and he’s still under the weather,” Winnie tells me. “Levi and that sweet girlfriend of his just left like a minute ago with Jude and Zoey.”

“You should have told me it was a false alarm so I didn’t rush over here.” I follow along beside them as we make our way toward the front doors I just burst through.

“No, we wanted you to show up,” Sadie explains with a wicked grin flashing across her features. “So we could take you out for drinks.”

“I have to work in the morning. In fact I should be working now,” I explain. “I canceled a pitch with ALS to come here.”

Winnie rolls her eyes and grabs onto my arm. “Oh my God! Quit being Corporate Climbing Barbie and just come have fun with us. I know you know how. You used to be good at it.”

“I still am.” I fight the urge to say no to them because I really could use some sister bonding. “Okay, fine. Just a couple drinks. Not some late-night bender.”

“Sure,” Sadie says, but she completely winks at Winnie right in front of me.

“I mean it!” I bellow as they hook their arms through mine and lead me out the door.

They take me to some crazy Western-themed bar with a live band and a mechanical bull in the middle of the room. I have no idea how they found this place or why the bartender knows them by name. I would ask, but I’m sure I don’t want to know the answer. Eli texts me as we grab a table.

“Winnie, look! She’s smiling.”

“Oh! I know that smile,” Winnie announces. “That smile is caused by a man.”

“Shut up, you two,” I mumble and start to text him back, but Sadie swipes my phone out of my hand and bolts from the table. “What the actual hell!”

Winnie cackles with laughter and as I jump off my stool to chase after Sadie, she catches my arm. “You know resistance is futile, Little D.”

I sigh and sit back down. “Don’t call me that. Only Dad gets to call me that.”

“Of course.” Winnie rolls her eyes as Sadie comes back to the table skipping and smiling ear-to-ear. She puts my phone down on the table and I grab it.

“What did you do?” I demand as she smiles coyly and flips her long hair over her shoulder.

“I told him to come join us,” she announces. “Well, you told him, since it’s your phone. I also told him…I mean you also told him you miss the feel of his mouth on your body.”

She turns and high-fives Winnie as my eyes bug out of my head and I frantically pull up my text messages. I groan loudly because she wrote exactly what she said she wrote. I glare at her but it only seems to make her smile grow larger. “Oh and she’s got some hot-as-fuck pictures of him on her phone. I sent myself a few so I could show you.”

She holds up her own phone to Winnie, and I watch Winnie’s jaw drop. She grabs Sadie’s phone. “Holy crap, your goalie has one hell of a body, Dix. How can you walk away from that?”

“How can I not?” I counter. With the day I’ve had, I have to admit my job is losing a little bit of its luster. I know that will pass but right now…“I need a drink.”

Winnie lifts her arm and waves at the waitress. As our second round comes, the bar starts to fill up, the music gets louder and Eli is suddenly standing next to my stool. He smiles down at me with his ruggedly handsome face and warm green eyes. “Hi again.”

“Hi,” I squeak out, embarrassed about the text he thinks I sent.

He looks over at Winnie and Sadie. “Which one of you two charmers lured me here pretending to be Dixie?”

Sadie raises her hand gleefully. “Guilty!”

“But I fully support my sister,” Winnie pipes up, trying hard to look serious, but she keeps slipping into a grin. “I’m the oldest sister, and it’s my job to look out for these two. And Dixie tends to get a little obsessive and hyper-focused when she has a goal in mind. We decided she needs to relax and get a little more of this in her life.”

Before I can stop her, Winnie has reached for Sadie’s phone, and she’s holding up the bathroom selfie of Eli in nothing but a well-placed towel. He looks horrified for a split second, and then he bursts out in that deep, vibrating laugh of his that’s so sexy it makes my pussy pulse.

“Let me buy you nosy Nellies a drink,” he says and calls over the waitress, resting a lazy arm across my shoulders. Oh God, this is seven hundred kinds of wrong, but it’s the best feeling I’ve had in ages.

I cut myself off after that round because I have to work in the morning, but we stay at the bar another two hours laughing and telling embarrassing childhood stories, mostly about Jude and Levi, so it’s extra enjoyable, and daring each other to ride the mechanical bull. Finally I let rational thought take over. “I have to get to bed, guys. Work tomorrow.”

“You and that damn job.” Sadie sighs dramatically.

“We’re not leaving until someone rides that bull,” Winnie declares, slapping the table with her palm. “And if it’s Eli, preferably shirtless.”

“He can’t get on that bull shirtless,” I warn. “If you think I work a lot now, wait until I’m dealing with those photos all over the internet.”

Eli shrugs and starts to lift his shirt by the hem. Winnie and Sadie start to whistle like they’re at a strip bar. I grab his hands and stop him before he reaches his nipples. He gives me a devilish smile. “Trying to keep it all for yourself?”

I don’t answer him. Instead I turn to my sisters. “Listen, Slutty Spice and Skanky Spice, I am going home, no bull, mechanical or otherwise.”

I grab my coat off my stool and suddenly Eli is helping me put it on while my sisters pretend to fan themselves and sigh dramatically. I look up at Eli. “I am so sorry. Now I know why Jude wishes he was an only child.”

“Come on, I’ll walk you home,” Eli offers and puts a hand on the small of my back as we weave our way out of the place with Winnie and Sadie following behind. It’s raining now, so we huddle under the awning out front and I hug my sisters good-bye. The both hug Eli too before climbing in the back of a cab. As they drive away Winnie rolls down the window and calls out, “Hey, Dixie, save a horse, ride a goalie!”

Sadie lets out a “Woo-hoo!”

I bury my face in my hands as Eli’s laugh rumbles up beside me. He holds my shoulders, giving them a squeeze. “Your family is amazing.”

“That’s not the adjective I would have gone with,” I reply. He takes my hand and starts leading me down the street. I try to stop him, but it’s impossible. “It’s raining!”

“So? Are you made of sugar, sweet Dixie?” he asks and keeps pulling me down the street. “Live a little. Be a little reckless.”

So we walk, on a Sunday night in the pouring rain, down the dark, almost abandoned streets. And somehow, for the first time in a very, very long time—since before my father’s diagnosis, since before my double life working in PR, since before I decided I had to be a glass-ceiling-busting corporate badass—I feel completely at peace. And maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s slipping down over my soaked hair and dripping into my ears and drowning my common sense or washing away my very well thought-out life goals, but all I want to do is kiss him.

As we start to walk by an alley I step into it, pulling him with me, and then with all the strength I have I grab him by the front of his jacket, shove him against the damp brick wall, rock up on my toes and kiss him. My lips cover his the way they have since the elevator—perfectly. And our tongues move together with matching need and urgency. He reaches up and cups the side of my face as his lips pull away just enough to talk. “Do you know what you’re doing here, sweet Dixie? What about the rules?”

“I’ve played by the rules enough today.” I let my hand slip between us and palm the front of his jeans. “I think it’s time to give this reckless thing a chance. Just for tonight.”

I start to lower his zipper, and the way his eyes widen makes me smile. I kiss him again, tugging on his plump bottom lip for just a second as it ends, and I slip my hand into his open fly. My fingers brush against his shaft, and he punches his hips forward. “You should come home with me,” I say.

He wraps his arm around my waist and lifts me, spinning us around so it’s my back against the wet bricks. “We’re supposed to be reckless here.” His breath tickles my neck and then I feel his lips on my earlobe. “There’s nothing reckless about fucking at home.”

“Everything about us is reckless,” I remind him in a whisper.

“Then let’s act like it,” he responds, his hand slipping up under my trench coat and skirt. He cups my pussy in his palm, his fingers grazing over my slit through my lace thong. “Let me have you now. Here.”

A ripple of desire rolls down my spine. I pop the button of his jeans to give my hand more access, and then I reach for his cock again, wrapping my hand around it. He lets out the hottest deep, dark noise from the back of his throat. And it does me in. “Fuck me, Eli.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

As I walk into work the next morning, I try not to smile too brightly but I can’t help it. Wild sex in a public place really leaves an afterglow. The way he tugged my underwear aside so forcefully they tore. The way I moved my skirt up my legs, just enough to show him where he needed to go. The forceful way he held me close, pinned between his body and the wall, and pushed into me as I rolled my hips. It was insane—we were insane—and it was insanely satisfying. We’d stumbled back to his hotel, which was closer than my place, and fell into bed soaking wet and exhausted. I woke up at four in the morning, quietly got dressed and headed home.

Now, as I make my way to my desk, I try not to think about last night at all. The less I think about it in the harsh light of day, the longer I can pretend it wasn’t a colossal mistake. I hate letting people down or appearing unprofessional. I sit down at my desk, and as I shrug out of my coat I realize Nadine wasn’t at her desk. Mr. Carling’s office door opens, and Ann walks out. Our eyes meet, and she’s wearing that same grim expression from last night. She walks over, smoothing the front of her gray slacks with her hands. “Thanks again for staying last night and getting things done. Are you an aunt?”

I shake my head. “False alarm. Is everything all right?”

Ann sighs heavily. “We had to fire Nadine last night.”

“What?” I blurt out way too loudly. “Why?”

“She slept with Eddie Rollins.” Her grim expression gives way to one of disgust. Ann and I have both talked about how creepy Eddie is. “He apparently confessed to HR, and judging by the look on her face yesterday, I know it’s true.”

“Why the hell would he tell HR?”

“I guess a trainer overheard him bragging about it,” Ann replies. “He didn’t deny it because he was probably done with her, and getting her fired is an easy way to get rid of her. Because he’s pond scum.”

“Shit.” I feel sick. I love Nadine. But my stomach isn’t just churning for Nadine. It’s roiling with guilt and angst because—this could be me. “Do they have to fire her? I mean, they aren’t firing Eddie, right?”

Ann frowns. “Of course not,” she replies, her tone edged in bitterness. “The sports double standard is real, Dix. Our HR policy is zero tolerance and immediate termination. The players’ policy is zero tolerance and immediate stern talking-to.”

She’s being sarcastic. It doesn’t say “stern talking-to,” but they must have worded it without the promise of termination for their policy. I get it. They’re not as easily replaced as we are, but it still makes me sick. “I can’t believe she would be so stupid,” Ann laments and sighs.

I can. I am that stupid.