CHAPTER SEVEN

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Rosie woke to the cool serenity of an off-white ceiling and was momentarily disorientated.

Where was her blood red paint and black netting? Then Simon murmured and stretched along the length of her and she became aware of his naked ass filling her palm. She squeezed it just to reassure herself he was actually here.

Suddenly everything was alright.

“You’re killing me.”

Rosie smiled at his sleepy voice. Last night she hadn’t been able to wait an extra ten minutes to get home and they’d ended up back at his place instead — for the first time. It had seemed only sensible, being mere minutes away from the restaurant and given her total disregard for the road rules as she’d considered his zipped fly fair game.

“I don’t know,” Rosie murmured, her hand moving from his ass to other interesting regions. “You younger men, no stamina.”

She hit pay dirt and smiled, her hand encasing evidence to the contrary.

“You were saying?” Simon murmured before flipping her over and pinning her to the bed in one swift, well-executed move, forcing a surprised little squeal from her mouth.

Rosie laughed. “I may have been wrong about the stamina.”

“Damn straight you were,” he muttered as his mouth lowered onto hers.

The door opened and both of them froze as a voice floated toward them. “Simon, darling, I just noticed your car here.”

He cursed under his breath, placing his forehead against hers briefly before rolling off to stare at the ceiling.

“Mother. Have you ever heard of knocking?” He sat up, the duvet bunching around his waist.

Mother?

Rosie lifted her head off the bed to sneak a peek at the woman advancing into the room. She looked like a cross between Camilla Parker Bowles and Barbara Walters.

“I’m sorry, darling. You’re so rarely home these days I —”

Rosie heard the reproach in her voice as a pair of cold, slate grey eyes settled on her. She gave a small smile and waved.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you had —”

Rosie, completely starkers under the covers, felt like even they’d been stripped away by Simon’s mother’s scrutiny. It didn’t take Iris’s gift to know that she didn’t exactly measure up. She felt that shrewd gaze everywhere.

On her bed hair, her heavily kholed eyes — no doubt panda-esque by now — her eyebrow piercing, the studded collar encircling her throat.

Rosie waited for the floundering matriarch to finish her sentence, half expecting her to say, a prostitute in your bed.

“—a guest.”

Rosie smiled as good manners won out over motherly disdain. She flicked a glance at Simon. “You live with your mother?” she murmured.

Simon looked down at her. “You think I live in a mansion by myself?”

Mansion?

Rosie blinked and looked around at the room. It was rather spacious. She squinted — was that the river she could see through the French doors? She suddenly wished she’d paid her surroundings more heed last night. But the truth was, the only surroundings she’d been interested in were the Italian designer ones preventing access to his body.

How to get them off him in the shortest space of time had been her only concern.

Simon looked at his mother and sighed. “Mother, this is Rosie. Rosie, my mother.”

Rosie wasn’t sure of the etiquette after being sprung in bed with your twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend by his mother. She was thirty-six years old, for fuck’s sake!

“Pleased to meet you Mrs. Lewis.”

“Geraldine, please.”

Rosie nodded at the tight smile, fairly sure that Simon’s mother was merely being polite. There were a few moments when nobody said anything and Geraldine looked at Rosie like she was Monica Lewinsky and her son like he’d just been caught picking up a blue dress from the drycleaners.

“Er...was there something you wanted, Mother?”

“Yes, of course.” Geraldine smiled another tight smile. “I was going to ring you a little later. Henry Lichfield is coming for lunch today. He wants to meet you.”

Simon whistled. That was quite a coup. He was wealthy and connected and didn’t do pity lunches and could be a useful ally for his future political aspirations.

But.

“Can’t, sorry. I have another engagement. You’ll have to reschedule.”

His mother became very still. “Reschedule? Do you have any idea how difficult it was to arrange this today?”

“Yes, Mother, and I really am sorry but I just can’t make it.”

She pressed her lips together in a disapproving line. “And what, pray tell, is more important than your future?”

Simon knew that note in his mother’s voice. He’d grown up with that steely resolve to have her own way and he had to admit it grew more impressive in its execution every year.

Rosie squeezed his thigh under the covers and he thanked God she didn’t scare easily as he said, “A football game.”

“You’re going to blow off a man with enormous political influence to watch football?”

Rosie marvelled at the way Geraldine Lewis made football

sound like the dirtiest word ever invented.

Ella was going to love her.

“Rosie’s friend, Ella, is principal of Hanniford High. Their team is playing in the BSFC today. It’s their first match.” He shrugged. “It was sort of my idea.”

Rosie felt the brief sideways slide of Geraldine’s gaze that blatantly said, hmph, your friend. Figures.

“Hanniford High?”

Rosie almost laughed at the way Geraldine’s eyebrows had practically hit her hairline. There was no doubt the older woman knew of Hanniford’s rep.

“I promised, Mother.”

“Darling, if you want to get involved in local school sport I’m sure the Brisbane Grammar would welcome your interest. They won the Schools Cup your last year, didn’t they?” She glanced at Rosie. “Simon went to Grammar. He gave the valedictory address his senior year. He was dux.”

And she was corrupting him. Rosie was getting the message loud and clear.

Well — her hand slid higher on his thigh — she’d do her damnedest.

Simon had had enough. He wasn’t going to have a career discussion with his mother on a Saturday morning while his girlfriend — if that’s what he could call Rosie — watched on like an engrossed Wimbledon spectator above the covers and a sex maniac (her hand finding its way into his lap) beneath.

“Please give my apologies to Henry,” Simon said sharply as Rosie gave him a very intimate squeeze and he fought to keep his eyes from closing on a surge of pleasure. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Geraldine looked from one to the other and then sniffed. “Very well.” She nodded at Rosie and exited with practiced regal grace.

Simon fell back against the bed. “Sorry ’bout that.”

Rosie waited for the door slam and was surprised to hear only a dignified click. Man, she was repressed! There was some serious passive-aggressive stuff going on with good old Geri.

He rolled up onto his side as her silence stretched, his hand resting against her belly. “You’re speechless, aren’t you?”

Rosie shook her head. “No, just waiting for Jeeves to enter with the morning paper.”

He grinned. “It’s his day off.”

Rosie gave a half-hearted laugh before the opulence of the room sobered her. It was the ultimate in Vogue chic. “Seriously though. You’re kind of...rich, right?”

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “I’m afraid so.”

A small smile was playing on his delicious mouth and Rosie’s heart swelled in her chest. God, what was he doing with her? “How rich?”

“Disgustingly. Is it turning you on?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Would you prefer it if I were poor?”

Rosie gave a rueful smile. “Yes, actually.”

Poor she could do. Poor she was used to. She was the daughter of a carnie, after all. Poor boys turned her on. God knew, she’d dated enough of them. Sure, she’d known he wasn’t like the others. She’d known he was from blue ribbon stock, but this level of wealth was surprising.

To say she felt out of her depth was an understatement.

“Do you want me white-collar poor or Oliver poor? Because you know...” He stroked a hand down her flat stomach. “I know how to beg, right?”

Rosie’s muscles undulated in reaction to his touch and she smiled despite the weird depression settling around her and the certainty that this could never last. “I know you can in handcuffs.”

“Please, Rosie,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck. “I want some more.”

She shut her eyes as the touch of his mouth on her skin made her want things she didn’t want to get too used to. “Your mother doesn’t like me.”

She felt the quirk of his mouth against her skin. “My mother doesn’t like anyone. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even like me most of the time.” He kissed up her neck. “She barely tolerates my father.”

“I bet she liked Penelope.”

He stilled in his ministrations then flopped onto his back and sighed. “She adored Penelope. In fact I’m not sure she’s forgiven me for breaking it off.”

Rosie was damn sure she hadn’t. She rolled up on to her elbow. “How long were you together?”

“Five years.”

“Five years!” Rosie’s statute of limitations was more like five weeks.

“That’s bad right?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not at all. It’s...sweet. It just seems so...mature. You’re obviously the adult in this relationship.”

He groaned. “I’m guessing that’s not a compliment.”

“It’s not that. It’s just...settling down with one woman and having all this expectation on you about your future...Don’t you want to just, I don’t know, live a little first? Leave the heavy stuff for middle age?”

“This country needs young, energetic politicians with a vision for the future. Politicians that stand an outside chance of actually being alive to see their policies come to fruition rather than making pie-in-the-sky promises that they know they’re not going to be around to see through.”

Rosie’s heart tripped a little at the conviction in his low, passionate words. He was right. She smiled. “I like it when you talk clean. I think I just came.”

He laughed and kissed her neck. “Orgasms are no extra cost.”

He nuzzled her neck for a bit and Rosie shut her eyes, enjoying the sensations that fizzed in her blood and pricked at her skin, ignoring the dull nag inside her. If a life of civic duty was truly what Simon wanted then she’d be nothing but a liability.

He needed someone like Penelope.

She pushed away from him. “Why did you break it off with Penelope? It seems to me she’s probably the type you need by your side.”

“Technically, she is,” he sighed. “But I suddenly realized that while she was everything I could ever ask for in a political wife — serene, demure, unopinionated, unflappable, organized, with this great ability to blend into the background — she was, in actual fact, mind-numbingly boring.”

Rosie didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that blending wasn’t her forté. She thought about how she’d unzipped his pants on their way home from the restaurant last night. “Not the kind of girl who’d give you a blowjob while you were driving?”

“Oh, no.” He laughed. “Penelope never went down.”

Rosie blanched, not quite believing what she’d just heard.

“You were with her for five years and she never sucked your dick?”

He smiled at her horrified face and smiled. “Never. In fact, I’m not even sure she touched it at all.”

God! No wonder he was with her. She studied his handsome face, his dimples like a siren’s call to her hormones. “Oh no, poor Simon,” she crooned, her hand sliding down to fondle his neglected penis. “And it’s such a nice specimen too.”

“I like to think so,” Simon muttered as he sucked in a breath.

He hardened stiff as a pike in her hand. “And look at that.” Rosie gave him a squeeze. “It’s in full working order.”

She was amazed it worked at all after their marathon session last night.

“Mmm.” He shut his eyes. “I wonder where I can put that?”

Rosie gave him wicked grin. “I have the perfect place for someone with as much catching up to do as you.”

As she disappeared beneath the covers, Rosie pushed aside thoughts that maybe this was only about the sex for Simon. That maybe she was just a stopgap until he found Penelope mark II.

Whatever version of Penelope he ended up with, Rosie hated her already.

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Geraldine bade them a stiff goodbye a couple of hours later.

“Why do you still live here?” Rosie asked as Geraldine’s stony face grew steadily smaller in her side-view mirror.

“Aside from the river views being a great way to impress chicks?”

Rosie rolled her eyes. “But of course.”

He shrugged. “Convenience. Close to work. Great venue for entertaining. Rent free.” He frowned at her unimpressed look. “It’s expected, I guess, and I can come and go as I please. I have my own wing, my own privacy.”

“Oh, like this morning?”

“It freaks you out that she caught us, doesn’t it?”

“No,” Rosie blustered. “I just...can’t believe you still live at home. With your mother.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “This from someone who lives with

two crazy old aunts?”

She looked out the window and muttered, “That’s different.”

“How?” Simon asked amusement lacing his voice. “How is you living with Selma and Patty any different to me living with Rose Kennedy?”

Rosie smothered a smile at his apt character portraits and turned to face him. “I live there because I want to. Not because it’s convenient or expected. Because I love those crazy old ladies and that crazy old house.”

Simon nodded. He could see that. He tried to imagine feeling such attachment to the Lewis family house and just couldn’t. Growing up the only child in a cold, stone mansion had been a lonely life. No siblings to climb the trees with or play hide-seek in the many, many rooms.

Not that such frivolous childish antics would ever have been tolerated. “You’re lucky.”

“Yes. I am,” she said, the conviction in her voice absolute and he couldn’t have agreed more.    

“Hey,” she said a few minutes later as Simon drove in the opposite direction to the football field the Hanniford Demons were scheduled to play at today. “Wrong way.”

Simon nodded. “A footy team needs a mascot. A symbol of their potency. A representation of their strength. Something to strike fear into the hearts of their opponents.”

She blinked at him clearly confused. “And that’s at my place?”

Simon nodded again. “Cerberus.”

“Cerberus?” Rosie paused for a second. “I hate to break this to you, but he’s hardly a spritely specimen of canine virility. He’s small and old and suffers from an abandonment complex.”

Simon smiled at her. “He’s Cerberus, the hound from hell.

They’re the Hanniford Demons.” He shrugged. “It’s symbolic. Besides, won’t Daisy and Iris want to come?”

Rosie blinked a sudden spurt of tears. God, this man was so sweet and, suddenly, as she looked at him she could hear the Wedding March in her head. But he didn’t get the whole home and hearth thing and as much as they were having fun, she so wasn’t his type.

She wasn’t a Penelope.

She tried to channel Ella and lectured herself about the perils of falling too hard, too early, but it was no use. It was already too late. Maybe she could learn to be a Penelope?

Ella was so nervous she couldn’t decide whether she was going to throw up or have a full-blown panic attack.

From her vantage point in the opposition stands, she watched Jake and Pete talking, or rather strategizing, if their hand gestures were remotely indicative. Jake wore a baseball cap tugged low on his forehead and a pair of dark sunglasses but still she could see people nudging each other and pointing at him.

Although, to be fair, that was probably nothing to do with who he was and everything to do with how he looked and the fact that eighty-five percent of the spectators were women. And not just any women, but mothers. Ella had seen enough of them over the years to recognise that if any one group of women could use a bit of gratuitous eye candy from time to time, it was mothers.

And Jake certainly didn’t disappoint.

The man was simply mouth-watering in his jeans and snug-fitting tee. He was like the Lindt chocolate of eye candy. The Ferrero Rocher.

The Tim Tam.

Ella could practically feel the fat cells on her ass multiplying as her mouth watered. She dragged her gaze away, focusing instead on the boys warming up on the sidelines, searching for Cameron. He was standing on one leg, stretching the other up behind, staring at the ground in fierce concentration.

The panic returned. Yes, they needed this win for the school but Cameron needed it more.

“Don’t the boys look amazing?” Rosie said, nudging Ella’s arm.

Ella nodded. They did. They really did. In fact she and Rosie were really going to have to stop thinking of them as boys. Today they looked exactly as Jake had hoped, in the red-and-black strip he’d bought for them with Hanniford Demons emblazoned on the front. They looked mature.

A force to be reckoned with.

Ella had protested his generous gesture. Not only were the jerseys new but he’d also splashed out and bought each of his players top-of-the-range boots. In fact, he’d totally kitted them out. She had no idea how much it had all cost but it didn’t look like the equipment came from the 7-11.

She didn’t want to be that indebted to him. She was in deep enough.

But Jake had insisted that becoming a team involved claiming and projecting an identity. Ella had been dubious but damn if those boys - young men - weren’t all standing a foot higher. They certainly looked the part next to the opposing team, who oozed confidence.

The Bribie Bullets had been in the comp for twenty years and were looking at the Demons like they were mere bugs on the footpath. Their football field was immaculate, decked out in yellow and blue flags, making Hanniford’s oval look like a mosh pit the morning after a rock concert by comparison.

Jake called the Demons together and Ella kept her eyes glued to him as they formed an eager huddle. Jake had well and truly made up for his tardy start. He only had to say jump and the boys wanted to know how high.

“This is your cue,” Rosie urged. “Go down and give your team a pep talk.”

“They’re not my team,” Ella murmured as Jake gee’d them up. What could she possibly offer?

Rosie placed a firm hand against Ella’s fidgeting ones and looked her straight in the eye. “You’re their principal. They’re going to shut this school down. They’re the only team you’ve got, babe.”

Ella faced her friend then glanced at Simon. He nodded and gave her an encouraging smile. “What do I say?”

She didn’t have a clue what all this secret men’s business stuff was about. What did seventeen boys revved up on nerves and testosterone expect their headmistress to say to them? She’d spent the last two years trying to figure out teenage boy speak to no avail.

She hated to admit it, but she just didn’t get them.

Simon shrugged. “Tell them they’ll get detention for a week if they don’t win.”

Rosie dug him in the ribs. “Not helping, Simon.”

Simon half laughed as he rubbed at Rosie’s point of contact. “Tell them to listen to Jake.”

Ella nodded. That sounded like very good advice to her. She stood and made her way down through the almost empty stand, ignoring the stab of disappointment she felt at the lack of Hanniford supporters. She knew the school wasn’t known for its community spirit and this away-game was quite a distance from home, but she had hoped.

So much was riding on today. Maybe a big show of support would make a difference?

Ella caught the odd word of Jake’s speech as she approached. She didn’t understand any of it but Jake seemed to know what he was doing and Pete and the team were nodding. She stood quietly, waiting for him to finish, feeling every inch the uptight school ma’am intruding on a male bonding ritual.

Would they start picking nits off each other soon?

Jake finished his pep talk surprised to find Ella standing nearby shifting from foot to foot, looking great in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair loose. Had she been smiling, she would have been totally bootylicious. Instead she looked like she was about to face a root canal.

He noticed Miranda leaving Trish’s side and coming down the stands toward them too. The irony wasn’t lost on him. These were the stakes.

Two unrelated females who had his nuts in a vice. “Ella?”

She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if I could just talk to the team for a moment?”

Jake hesitated. What the hell was she going to say to them? Have you washed behind your ears and put some sunscreen on? Because none of his team needed to be reminded of their mediocrity this morning. Not after he’d spent weeks building them up.

But there was a determined jut to her chin now and he reluctantly gestured her forward and she fell in beside him. He turned away slightly and dropped his head so his mouth was almost brushing her ear.

“They’re nervous,” he murmured. “Keep it light.”

Ella shivered as the low timbre of his voice slid into all her susceptible places. She gave a small nod and he (thankfully) pulled away.

She cleared her throat. “Well, guys, this is not something I know a lot about but I just wanted to say that I’m proud of you.” She caught Cameron’s gaze and held it. “Very proud.”

He looked nervous and she wanted to reach out and give him a reassuring squeeze. For a second she cursed Rachel for keeping them apart for thirteen years. She wished she’d known him as a baby, bonded with him. Surely things would be easier now?

“So, um...I don’t know.” She turned to Jake. “Do you say break a leg or something?”

Pete slapped his forehead in the background and Jake shut his eyes and shook his head. “No, Ella, not under any circumstances.”

The whistle blew and Ella was grateful for the interruption to her completely botched debut pep talk as thirteen boys stormed past her in a cloud of testosterone.

She noticed Cerberus watching attentively from the side- lines and called his name. He wandered closer and she sat on the low wooden bench behind her, reaching out to stroke the dog’s soft ears.  

Cerberus, hound of hell, whimpered in ecstasy.

Play started and after a few minutes, Jake joined her on the bench. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About the breaking a leg thing.”

“It’s fine,” he said, his voice terse, his gaze intent on the game.

Except he seemed really pissed at her. “I just wanted to be ...succinct and you know I don’t know one end of the football from the other. I mean I know you guys like to pat each other on the bum and hug a lot —”

He frowned as one of the Demons fumbled a pass. “Only when we score a try.”

“Right.” Ella nodded, faintly amused amid her consternation that Jake felt the need to clarify the physical contact. “But it’s hardly appropriate for me to do that, is it? I’m their principal. There are boundaries. I want them to know I support them and God knows Cameron probably need this more than most and I’m going to really try hard but —”

“Ella,” Jake interrupted, dragging his gaze off the field. “Must you talk?”

Ella glared at him, already bamboozled by the game and so nervous she was contemplating hitting the toilets and going for the forced vomit to get it over with. “What?” she cooed. “Can’t do two things at once?”

He shot her a lazy smile. “I think we both know that’s not true.” 

Ella blushed. She’d so picked the wrong man for that quip. He’d multi-tasked his ass off two years ago. “Sex doesn’t count.”

He snorted. “Sex always counts.”

They stared at each other for a moment. “Don’t you have a game to be watching?”

“Are you going to let me?”

She held his intense gaze for as long as she could, wondering if he was thinking the same X-rated things as her, before she broke eye contact. “I won’t say another word.”

Jake nodded and turned his attention back to the field. The Demons were going to get hammered and he felt like he was watching a bunch of lambs going to the slaughter. His competitive streak was burning a fiery path through his veins and he realised suddenly he wanted to win.

Not just for Hanniford High or for Ella or Miranda but for him, Jake Prince, washed up ex-footy star.

The nervous energy radiating off Ella though was distracting as hell. “Are you okay?” he asked impatiently.

She shook her head. “I’m so edgy I could puke.”

“Don’t be,” Jake said, smiling at her with a confidence he did not feel. But he knew how to bluff with the best of them. “This is in the bag.”

Ella didn’t know whether to believe him or not but it was still good to hear his conviction.

She looked down at the four reserves sitting at the end of the bench and noticed that Cam was among them. Miranda was sitting beside him and they seemed to be involved in the same sort of conversation she and Jake had just had - Miranda talking, Cam watching the field intently, nodding occasionally.

She still couldn’t wrap her head around those two. 

For the next forty minutes, Ella sat on the edge of her seat. Rosie and Simon had joined her and she clung to Rosie’s hand like the lifeline it had always been. Occasionally Jake would sit beside her and explain things but more often than not he was wearing a path in the sideline, yelling encouragement and direction.

Pete also trekked endlessly up and down the sidelines, video camera in hand. Jake explained that he’d use it to review the team’s performance during the week. Cerberus shadowed Pete’s every move, barking when things got exciting, whining when Jake’s encouragement got particularly animated, and taking shameless advantage of spectators who threw the mangy-looking hellhound their hot dog leftovers.

Every successful kick or pass from the Bullets earned a massive roar from their supporters and triggered a peppy routine from their cheer squad. The squad was irritatingly perfect, with big plastic smiles, short blue skirts and tight yellow tees encasing their perky chests. Blond and bouncy, all twenty of them.

“Jeez, I didn’t realize public high school science budgets ran into the millions,” she murmured to Jake at one stage.

He frowned. “Huh?”

Ella nodded in the direction of the cheer squad. “Some genius at Bribie has managed to clone Barbie.”

Jake laughed. “You don’t approve of cheerleaders?”

Ella shot him a disgusted look. “Emmeline Pankhurst would be rolling in her grave.”

He laughed again. Then the Bullets made a break for their try line and he was running up the sideline, calling to his team strategizing on his feet.

At the half-time hooter, Bribie had them by eighteen points. Ella watched with trepidation as the Demons walked off the field, all red-faced and sweaty, their shoulders slumped. Cameron didn’t even look at her and Ella felt his dismay arrow straight through her soul. She sat on the bench, powerless, wanting to build the team up but not having a clue how to go about it.

Luckily Jake seemed to know. He talked non-stop in the ten-minute break. Pete saw the team fed and watered while Jake talked - reviving their spirits, praising them, encouraging them. Reiterating their goals, focusing them on the next forty minutes.

By the time the Demons ran back onto the field they were standing tall again.

And Ella was officially turned on.

Jake had been magnificent. He’d been articulate and passionate, his belief in his team and his passion for the game blazing from his eyes. He’d been eloquent and animated and in those jeans, it was a potent combination.

The whistle blew and she dragged her attention away from Jake, forcing herself to concentrate on the game. And what an amazing forty minutes it was as the rejuvenated Demons clawed back control. She could barely watch as two minutes out, the Demons levelled the score. And then ten seconds before the final hooter, Cameron kicked a field goal.

The Hanniford supporters may have been paltry in comparison to the home team but when they rose to their feet in wild jubilation, they made just as much noise. Ella, who’d sat with her hands over her eyes for the last minute, stood too.

Had they won? It certainly looked like they had from all the clapping, cheering and stomping that was filling her ears.

“How much is a field goal worth?” Ella grabbed an ecstatic Pete as he charged by, arms waving in the air.

Pete laughed. “One point.”

He pulled out of her grasp as realization sunk in. They’d won. Cam was enthusiastically picked up by his teammates and lifted high on their shoulders and Ella thought her heart was going to burst right out of her chest.

She’d never seen him so happy and tears came to her eyes.

“We won?” she shouted to an approaching Jake, still amazed and unsure. Still waiting for someone to tell her the score was wrong. Nothing much had gone right in the last two years — it’d be par for the course.

He grinned. “We won.”

Ella felt the tears gain momentum as a heavy weight lifted from her chest. Maybe they could pull this whole crazy thing off.

“Thank you,” she mouthed to Jake as he was dragged into the maelstrom of seventeen jubilant, hyped-up teenagers. She saw him touch two fingers to his forehead in a small salute to her before he was swallowed in a mass of sweaty bodies, high on their achievement.

Her earlier state of arousal roared to life as she watched him laughing and joking, basking in the celebration.

Rosie came up behind her and gave her a huge hug. “Cam was great.” She grinned. “Jake was great.”

“Yes.” Ella nodded, still watching Jake with the team.

Rosie nudged her friend’s shoulder. “You’re thinking about dirty footballer sex again, aren’t you?”

Ella blushed. “Absolutely not.” She waited a beat and then added, “How can you tell?”

“Are you kidding? After that brilliant performance? After watching him prowl up and down the line for eighty minutes? Hell, every woman here wants to jump his bones.”

Ella sucked in a breath. Over her dead body.