Chapter Eight
Dominic
Damn Dean McCormick. Dominic had tried to explain about his and Corey’s connection. Instead of that giving the dean a reason to make her leave, it seemed to harden his resolve that she could actually make a difference here. Now the dean thought of Dominic as Corey’s own personal bodyguard. Shit.
Dominic couldn’t remember the last time someone had handed him his ass on a platter like she had just now. Corey was good, she was tough, and she couldn’t be intimidated. He still wished she’d leave. He knew this was bound to become a huge cluster-fuck, but it would be a hell of a ride. The whole time she was telling him off, only half his brain had been listening. The other half was thinking about how fucking sexy she looked doing it. He still had a semi.
He walked into the athletic building, his domain, and stopped dead in his tracks. Was that vanilla he smelled? He followed the scent down the hall past his office to an open door on the right. There, sitting behind a feminine white antique desk, was Corey Cooper. Pounding away at a pink laptop. Two questions came to mind: where had maintenance found that girly fucking desk, and why was vanilla wafting out of her office? Both were really frillying up the vibe in this building.
“I see you found your office.” Dominic leaned casually against her doorframe.
Corey didn’t bothering looking up when she answered. “Yup. Made it all the way over here by myself without someone humping my leg. You should be so proud of me.”
He ignored her sarcastic remark. “Why does this whole building smell like vanilla? And where did you find that desk?”
“Maintenance found this desk in storage. They thought I would like it. And it was sweet that they were so thoughtful. As for the vanilla, it’s a candle. This office smelled like dirty sweaty boy.”
Dominic rolled his eyes. “The whole place smells like dirty sweaty boy. It’s the athletic building. And I’m sure I can speak for the rest of the coaching staff as well as the students when I say, we like it that way. Blow out your girly candle.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to stand his ground about something as silly as a candle. But Corey made him feel antsy and unsettled.
Dominic’s assistant coach and right-hand man, Keller Byrne, picked that moment to knock on the door right next to Dominic’s face. Fucker almost punched him, accidentally he hoped.
“Hi there, sweetheart, I’m Coach Byrne. When I heard we had a girl in our midsts, I wanted to come by and introduce myself.” He took a step into the room, passing Dominic and moving closer to Corey. “Good god, what is that amazing smell?”
Corey stood up and crossed her office, offering Keller her hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Coach Byrne. I’m Corey Cooper, the new guidance counselor. You like the smell? Coach Hardy here was telling me how y’all preferred the sweaty boy stench over the sweet vanilla one.” She gave a long, appreciative look up and down Keller’s body, and Dominic fought the urge to slam his best friend’s head into the wall.
“Oh, well.” Keller glanced over at Dominic with a face that said he was wondering what he had walked into. “I really like the vanilla, and it’s a nice change from what it usually smells like in here.” Dominic cleared his throat and shot daggers at his friend. “But, well, you know, should probably blow it out, fire hazard and all that.”
She leaned her hip against the edge of the desk, arms crossed, pulling her black long-sleeve t-shirt even tighter against her chest. “Coach Hardy really is the boss around here, isn’t he?”
Keller chuckled. “We like to let him think that. He gets real cranky otherwise.” He winked at her and Dominic narrowed his eyes in irritation. “It was nice meeting you, Ms. Cooper. I presume I’ll be seeing you around.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you as well, Keller.” She gave a quick glance at Dominic, meeting his eyes with a smirk on her face. “Please call me Corey, and you can be sure you’ll be seeing me.” Was she flirting with Keller to piss Dominic off? Because if she was, it was working.
Dominic waited until Keller left the office and then all but growled at her. “What the fuck was that?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Coach Hardy.”
“Oh, so now I’m Coach Hardy and he’s Keller?”
“Well, he was being nice, personable, and welcoming. You have spent the better part of the morning being an ass. Nice people get called by their first names, tool-bags get called Coach Hardy.” She smiled sweetly.
“This tool-bag,” he pointed to himself, “had his tongue down your throat and your ass pressed against a door less than twenty-four hours ago. Or have you forgotten?”
Corey laughed. “Oh I haven’t forgotten. I also haven’t forgotten you talking about me to the dean behind my back, or you busting in here insulting my candle. As much fun as it would be to stand here and listen to you call yourself more names, I have actual work to do. This morning the dean informed me that I start meeting with your players tomorrow.”
The dean had mentioned that he needed Corey to start working right away, but he’d never said anything about her meeting with his players. “He wants you to start with my team?”
“Yeah, something about them having to be cleared to start the season? I found that somewhat odd. I’ve never had to sign off on any players before they were allowed to participate. Would you like to explain that to me?”
Dominic sighed. Now he understood why the dean was in such a hurry to hire someone. The previous counselor must have never finished the reports on Dominic’s players before he up and disappeared. Fred Henderson had been the counselor here for about eight months before he left without notice. He was a whiny pain in the ass, and apparently lazy as well.
“A few years back, before I started coaching here, the team got into some trouble. Had some aggression issues on the field. It was a wild season, and ever since then, the board has insisted upon a counselor checking the boys out before the first game.”
“Baseball players had aggression issues on the field? Correct me if I’m wrong, Coach Hardy, but baseball isn’t a full-contact sport.”
“Thus the reason they got in so much trouble. Look, the dean is right. They have to be cleared before next week or we would have to forfeit the first game of the season.” Man, he hated what he was about to say, and he was pretty sure it was going to cause her to jump his ass again. “I know all these boys. If you need any help or you have any questions, my door is always open. They can be a handful at best and are going to be irritated that they have to go through this process again. But I would really love to speed this along and get on with coaching my team.”
Corey cocked her pretty little head to the side, sarcastic disbelief on her face. “Wait a minute. Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly. I was hired, for the most part, in order to give written consent for a baseball team to start their season on time?”
“Well, I’m not sure that the dean would agree with that assessment—”
“This whole time, all this talk about me not being able to handle or control the boys, was not about me being in over my head dealing with one hundred fifty adolescent males. It was about me being in over my head dealing with eighteen baseball players?”
“That’s not what I said at all. I didn’t even know the team hadn’t been cleared yet. You aren’t listening, and you’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Like hell it wasn’t. Screw you, and screw the dean. You two obviously need me way more than I need you. So maybe y’all should both leave me alone and let me get on with my assessments.” She waved her hand toward the hallway. “Please close the door behind you.”
Well. That had gone fucking horribly. Dominic stuck his head into Keller’s office on his way back down the hall. “So it turns out that sorry excuse for a human never signed off for the boys to play. Ms. Cooper has to go through and reevaluate the whole team. And she only has a week to do it.”
“Only a week? That would mean she’d have to meet with more than two or three boys a day. That’s gonna be tough on her and the guys.” Keller leaned back in his chair and smiled up at Dominic. “Am I crazy, or were you getting a little territorial back there with the lovely Ms. Cooper?”
Dominic wanted to wipe that grin off his friend’s stupid and apparently handsome face. “Yep. You’re crazy.”
Keller gave a slight lift of his eyebrows. “I know you’re lying, Dom, I could feel the anger pulsing off you. You hid it well. I don’t think she noticed. But I’m your best friend, and I have flirted with plenty of your, uh, let’s call them conquests, and you’ve never reacted like that before. Now, tell me what’s really going on.”
Dominic collapsed into one of chairs facing Keller’s desk and placed his head in his hands. “I’m in over my head here, Kell. I met Corey yesterday before her interview with the dean and invited her to meet me for a beer after she was done. I never thought she’d get the job. I mean she’s young and beautiful, two characteristics the dean tends to stay away from in his staff.”
Keller let out a fake chuckle. “Speak for yourself, dude. I’m both young and beautiful.”
“You know what I mean,” Dominic rumbled.
“You mean that because she’s a woman the dean wouldn’t hire her, that he wouldn’t think she could handle the team and their antics?”
“Exactly. But when we met at Moon Bar she told me she got the job. I figured I could talk to the dean and explain that I didn’t think it was a good fit and he’d ask her to leave. I drove her home after dinner and we made out like teenagers on her front porch. It was hot. She was, I don’t know, I can’t even put into words what she was. She felt perfect in my arms. She told me I smelled mouthwatering, like all her favorite scents rolled into one. All these weird thoughts kept coming into my head. But then we heard a wolf way too close to the house. It killed a rabbit yards from us. My whole body went on alert, I had this insane urge to protect her and kill the wolf. Like instantly territorial.”
Keller sat forward, his gaze incredulous. “Let me get this straight—you already made out with the hot new guidance counselor?”
“Kell, come on, man, this is serious. I wanted to kill a wolf. I didn’t even know which wolf it was or what it was doing there. Corey brought out the beast in me. And mouthwatering? That’s how my mom used to describe my dad. All signs point to the same thing. Corey, she’s mine.” Dominic hung his head again. Saying the words out loud to his best friend made the whole situation all too real.
“Wow, man, I don’t know what to say. Are you sure?” The humor had left Keller’s face, as well as his voice.
“I’m pretty fucking sure, Kell.”
“Did you try talking to the dean?”
He nodded his head. “Yeah, first thing this morning. But he seems to think this is a great revelation. He can keep the new counselor and I was made to be her personal bodyguard. He won’t even have to pay me extra because apparently ‘it’s in my DNA.’ But I never wanted this. I never wanted forever. It destroyed my parents and it’ll end up destroying this team.” He sighed, more exhausted than he ever remembered being. “Anyway, she overheard the dean and me and she thought I was going behind her back to get her fired.”
“You were going behind her back to get her fired. No wonder she was pissed at you and flirting with me.”
“But not for the reasons she thinks. If she stays here, I’ll eventually claim her and everything will go to shit. I’m trying to save her, man.”
“Seems to me you need to let her make that decision for herself. You don’t really have another choice. If she’s actually yours, like you say she is, she can handle the truth. And she deserves it. Pretty soon she’ll know something’s not right, and she’ll be drawn to you against her will. You’ll be all she can think about, all she can focus on. Maybe you should try to stop being such a dick and make her actually want to be with you.” Keller folded his hands on his desk.
“I thought if I could get her to leave, then it wouldn’t even be an issue. We have only spent a few minutes alone together. If I could have gotten her in her car and out of town by this afternoon, everything would have been fine. But now we need her, the team needs her. Baseball is the only thing holding these kids together some days. If they can’t play, they’d lose it, you know that.”
“Then you have your answer right there, bro. And who knows, this might be the best thing that ever happened to you. I hear sex with your soul mate is mind-blowing,” Keller said with a wicked grin.
“Really? Did your mated sister tell you that?” Dominic grinned and waited for Keller to start gagging before he got up to leave. He turned back toward Keller with his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and if I ever catch you winking at Corey again, I’ll rip your eye out of its socket. Bro.”
Keller’s laughter followed him all the way into his office and made him smile. Keller and Dominic had been close from the start. Kell was the first assistant coach Dominic hired after he’d been given the head-coaching position at St. Leasing. Keller played college ball down in Texas and had even played a few seasons on a farm league. He was good. He was calm and mild-mannered. He never overreacted, he was quick with a joke or a laugh, and helped keep the boys calm. He helped keep Dominic calm too.
And he was right, Dom needed to talk to Corey. He needed to bite the silver bullet, so to speak, and lay it all on the line. The more she knew about him and his team, the better she could help them. And, yeah, maybe he was being a sexist asshole. These kids were away from their families and surrounded by nothing but male influences. Hell, maybe a woman’s influence was exactly what they needed. Maybe they’d shower more and cuss less?
He’d have to sit them down and set some ground rules, like no touching, groping, sniffing, or flirting with Ms. Cooper. For the younger ones he’d probably have to add no trying to gross out Ms. Cooper. Dominic felt himself start to relax; if he was smart about this, and smart about her, maybe it would all work.