Chapter 12

If anyone asked, Cole would swear up and down that meeting professional athletes had become old hat.

That he was so accustomed to meeting his sports heroes that he barely batted an eye when he got to shake hands with someone most people would only ever see on a TV screen.

But the truth was, it never got old.

He’d never grown out of the giddy shock of how awesome his job was.

Today was no exception.

Adam Bailey wasn’t Cole’s favorite athlete. Nor was golf his favorite sport. Still, the man was well on his way to becoming a legend, and the sports fanatic in Cole couldn’t help but feel a little starstruck.

Still, at least he was holding it together.

It was more than he could say for his co-editor.

Cole shook his head as he watched Penelope giggle like a schoolgirl over whatever it was the golf pro was telling her.

For all her protesting about Adam Bailey’s being a womanizing pig, or whatever, she looked pretty damn willing to be one of his women.

Cole studied her. She was wearing her usual clothes. Dark flats, dark pants, button-down shirt.

Cole wasn’t exactly a woman’s fashion expert, but he dated often enough to know that her attire, while perfectly respectable, wasn’t particularly stylish. His eyes narrowed slightly. But was she wearing…makeup?

He didn’t think it was his imagination that her lips had more color than usual. Her big eyes stood out even more than they usually did. What the hell?

Surely she hadn’t done that for Bailey. She’d spent all of yesterday reminding Cole the ways in which the golfer was the human equivalent of scabies.

His eyes narrowed as she laughed again, even louder this time, and then hit Adam playfully on the shoulder in the most awkwardly obvious flirting move of all time.

“Sharpe.”

Cole finally registered someone trying to get his attention, and pulled his eyes away from Penelope to find his boss standing beside him. From the irritated look on Cassidy’s face, it wasn’t the first time his boss had said his name.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Cassidy lifted an eyebrow and shifted his gaze toward Penelope and Adam. “Problem?”

“Why would there be a problem?”

“You were glaring,” Cassidy said.

“Yeah, well. The guy’s a dick,” Cole said, grabbing a water bottle from the buffet table and twisting off the cap.

“Well, really glad he’s on our cover, then,” Cassidy said drily. “Which, as I remember, was your idea.”

Cole took a drink of water and continued to glare at the golfer.

Cassidy looked like he wanted to smile. “You want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what? Adam Bailey?”

Cassidy lifted a knowing eyebrow, and Cole shook his head. “Dude. Just because you and Jake decided to overlap your professional and personal lives doesn’t mean the rest of us have any intention of following in your footsteps.”

“Absolutely,” Cassidy said with a quick nod. “Better that way. Plus, Jake and I aren’t dating co-workers—not technically. Just women who happen to work in the same building.”

Cole said nothing.

“Sharpe.”

“Yeah?”

Cassidy’s gaze was shrewd. “Penelope’s damn good for Oxford.”

“Agreed,” Cole said slowly.

“I’d hate if she decided it didn’t work out.”

Cole didn’t play dumb. He knew what his boss was getting at. “I’m not going to mess with her.”

Cassidy nodded. “Good.”

“If you’re so anti me and Penelope together, why did you okay both of us coming to the same dinner party?” Cole asked, hoping Cassidy wouldn’t notice the irritated note in his tone.

Cassidy blew out a breath. “Emma can be…persuasive. Still, she doesn’t have to deal with the two of you on a daily basis if there’s a messy fallout,” Cassidy said.

“Nothing to worry about,” Cole said. “We’re just friends.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Cassidy muttered before walking away to talk to Adam Bailey’s agent.

Cole snuck another look at Penelope, who gave a nerdy wave to the golfer as the photographer’s assistant led him away.

She glanced over at Cole, and he was slightly mollified when her smile bloomed wider as she met his eyes.

Penelope headed his way, and when she got closer, he realized he was spot-on about the makeup.

“This is new,” he said, letting his eyes roam over her features.

She sighed. “I know. Do I look like a clown?”

Cole grimaced. There was no easy way to answer this. It was just like the old Does this make me look fat? trap.

You say no, they assume you’re just saying what they want to hear, and start lecturing you about the importance of honesty.

You say yes, you’re a dead man.

“Uh—”

“The makeup girl did it,” she said, touching her fingers to her pinker-than-usual cheek. He wasn’t sure if it was from blush, or from embarrassment, and in case it was the latter, he nudged her shoulder with his, even though he had to stoop to do so.

“Hey. It looks good.”

It was the right thing to say.

She smiled up at him, and he had an odd sense of triumph that he’d been able to sneak beneath her walls, at least for a moment. And Cole was damn sure he was right about her having walls.

The over-the-top friendliness, however genuine, was also deliberate. It was her way of ensuring that guys knew to keep her in the friend zone.

“So, Adam asked if I wanted to grab a drink after this,” Penelope said, biting her lip.

His head whipped around. What the…

Maybe he was wrong about the friend-zone thing, because apparently Adam Bailey hadn’t gotten the Let’s just be friends pep talk.

“Yeah?” Cole asked, keeping his voice casual. “What’d you say?”

“I said maybe,” she said, chewing her lip as they both looked over to where Adam was expertly posing for the cameras as though he’d done it a million times. Because he had.

“I thought you said he was a pig.”

She lifted a shoulder. “I’m not going to marry the guy. And you’re the one who said I should let myself be wooed.”

“Not by him!” Cole said.

His voice was louder than he’d intended, and several people turned to stare.

He forced a smile before lowering his voice. “You know what? I think you should go on a date with him.”

“It’s not a date, just a drink,” she said.

Cole shook his head.

Clueless. So adorably clueless.

“It’s a date,” he said.

“It’s not,” she said emphatically. “In fact…you should come!”

Yeah. Because that’s just how he wanted to spend a Thursday night. Watching a playboy pro athlete put the moves on the one woman who’d rejected him.

“Can’t,” he said.

“Plans?” she asked.

It was the distracted, uninterested note in her voice, as though she didn’t care one way or another, that brought the lie to the tip of his tongue. “Yup. Got a date of my own.”

That got her attention.

She snapped her head around, and he didn’t think he imagined the slight delay in her usual smile.

“Oh! Well, have fun,” she said.

“I will. And you have fun with Adam.” He wiggled his eyebrows just to mess with her and she narrowed her eyes.

“I told you, it’s not a date. I have absolutely zero intention of becoming one of Adam Bailey’s women.”

“Uh-huh.”

He walked away then, not wanting her to pick up on his bad mood, and Penelope’s voice followed him.

“Hey, where are you going? The shoot’s not over yet.”

He turned around and walked backward as he answered. “Gotta go call my date. Confirm where we’re meeting.”

Once outside the studio where the shoot was taking place, Cole pulled out his phone.

Only not to call a woman.

Lincoln picked up on the first ring. “Yo.”

“Need help.”

“Name it.”

“I need a last-minute date.”

Lincoln paused. “And you’re telling me this because…”

Cole rolled his eyes. “Come on. I know you’ve got like a dozen rejects you can set me up with.”

“I may have plenty of women on speed dial,” Lincoln said slowly. “But I don’t want you messing with them.”

There it was again—that implication that Cole was a callow user of women.

“This from the guy who’s never had a relationship in…ever?” Cole shot back.

Lincoln was quiet for several moments. “When you say last-minute, how last-minute we talking about?”

“Tonight. Come on, Mathis, I’m not looking for my soulmate, just a woman who wouldn’t mind grabbing drinks with a good-looking guy.”

“I refuse to vouch for the good-looking part,” his friend said. “But I know a few girls who don’t mind letting a guy buy them a drink. No expectations of hearts and flowers and the like.”

The mention of hearts and flowers reminded him of his conversation with Penelope, and it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if Lincoln knew of any women who preferred onion rings to chocolate.

Shit. This had to stop.

Penelope Pope was…hell, he didn’t want her. Didn’t want to date her.

Which was good. Because she didn’t want him either. She could not have been more clear about that. I don’t want this, Cole. I don’t want you, not like this.

“Sure, call one of them,” Cole told Lincoln. “Or text me a number and I’ll make the call.”

“You got it,” Lincoln said. “But dude, you sound weird. What’s going on?”

Cole hung up the phone without responding.

No point in responding to a question you didn’t have the answer to.