Chapter 5
With the air of a warrior preparing for battle, Erin reapplied her lip gloss, then fluffed her hair. Satisfied her armor was fully in place, she snapped shut her compact mirror and shoved it in a drawer, then checked the time.
Four minutes until her meeting with Brendan.
She hadn’t even flinched when the meeting appeared in her diary, nor did she bother to give Suzanne a hard time when her young assistant revealed that she’d forgotten to ask what it was about. She knew exactly why Brendan was coming to her office, and she was ready for him.
She didn’t have a plan, but she had a goal. She wanted the scales to tilt back in her favor. For him to back down, quietly go along with her concept for the annual report and slink off into oblivion.
Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.
The phone on her desk rang. She punched the speaker button.
“Mr. Young is here to see you,” Suzanne announced.
Mr. Young. Erin rolled her eyes. “Send him in.”
She moved to her wall of windows, crossed her arms and turned her back to the door. A clichéd posture, yes, but for good reason. It exuded superiority.
Behind her the door clicked open and shut. She didn’t bother to glance over her shoulder, knowing full well who was in the office with her.
“Brendan,” she stated evenly.
He laughed, and she spun at the derisive sound.
“What is this, The Wolf of Wall Street?” he asked, arching a brow.
Her cheeks heated but she kept her expression cool—no easy feat when she took in a full, sweeping view of the man before her.
Damn, he’s hot.
He’d ditched the formal attire and wore slim-fitting jeans and a thin T-shirt that hugged the contoured muscles in his arms and shoulders. His hair was slightly mussed, his eyes hard and clear as emeralds, his mouth set in a tight line.
She ached to kiss him.
“What can I do for you?” she asked instead, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of her desk as she took her seat behind it.
He remained standing. “You crossed a line yesterday.”
She tilted her head. “Which one, exactly?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know what you did.”
“There’s the rub. I know what you did, too. Are still doing, I think it can be fairly assumed.”
He shook his head. “I work the odds. That’s all.”
“You don’t bet on them?”
“Not for months, no.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s true.”
She sighed in exasperation to cover her surprise. She expected him to come in and insist that gambling wasn’t immoral, not that he wasn’t doing it. What was the point of all those detailed, meticulous, crazy-person-handwriting calculations if there was no money involved?
Yet for some bizarre, gut-level reason, and despite practically catching him red-handed, she didn’t think he was lying.
“All that work, all those probabilities—you’re telling me they’re just for fun?”
His expression faltered slightly, then toughened again. “Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
He lifted a shoulder.
She sat straighter, regrouping. This wasn’t about his motivation or even whether or not he wagered money in contravention of league rules. This was about making him do what she said.
“Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Anyone who sees what I saw will assume you’re betting. It’s more than enough evidence to get you booted out of Skyline and discredited forever. No one reads the follow-up stories, they just remember the headline. Do you want to go down in history as a goalkeeper or a gambler? This is your moment to choose.”
“I’ve been choosing for eleven years,” he insisted, taking a step closer. “It’s my legacy. Not yours, not the league’s.”
Guilt bleated at the back of her mind. She shoved it aside. “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. Maybe they’ll remember you differently in Liverpool or Valencia, but unless you’re planning to move back to Europe I suggest you get on board.”
“With what, my own scapegoating?”
“Not if you cooperate. I’m willing to pitch an idea to the Board that will focus on your service, not your mistakes.” She leaned back in her chair, preparing to elaborate on the plan she’d formulated last night. “I know you’ve done a lot of work with people with intellectual disabilities. If we can spin that into some kind of—”
“You’re not spinning a goddamn thing,” he demanded, his tone suddenly harsh and sharp with anger.
She rose from her chair. “May I finish?”
“No.” His entire body was stiff, his brows drawn together. “I’ve been advocating for sports for players with intellectual disabilities since I was an undergraduate. It’s more important to me than any trophy I’ve ever won. I will not let you turn it into some bullshit public-relations drivel.”
“It’s not bullshit,” she replied testily, her heart rate increasing as she stepped out from behind her desk. “And it’s the best offer you’re going to get.”
“Shoehorning fifteen years of volunteering and investment and dedication into an article about how I’m so sorry I placed some bets online is no offer at all.”
“Beggars, choosers,” she spat back.
He inhaled to speak, then seemed to second-guess himself. She crossed her arms and propped her hip against the desk, waiting.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked finally. “You know me. You know I’m not who the Board is trying to make me out to be.”
Fury exploded into her chest like a burst pipe. She stepped up to him, fists clenched, their bodies inches apart.
“Are you kidding me?” she demanded. “You’re the one who kept my credit card bill like a stalker, then waved it in my face when I was prepared to go to bat for your shitty reputation. I don’t know you at all. You brought us to this point, not me.”
“I’m a stalker?” he asked, incredulous. “You snooped my house.”
“Because you pushed my back against the wall,” she countered. “You lit the match. I just fought fire with fire.”
He snorted. “Is that what you tell yourself? Does blaming me make you feel like less of a vindictive psychopath?”
She met his cold stare without wavering. She couldn’t believe she’d slept with him. Couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to give him that power, even if only for a night. Couldn’t believe she still thought about doing it again every single day.
“Be careful,” he warned, his voice barely above a rumble. “Your career is just taking off, but mine’s almost over. Don’t underestimate a man with nothing to lose.”
They stood in mutual antipathy for one, two, three, four long seconds, each poised for the other to break first. Then she made a terrible mistake.
She looked at his lips.
He saw it.
The atmosphere in the room changed completely. Heat overran hostility, and the charge between them shifted from rancor to crackling attraction. Delicious tension fisted in the center of her chest, then worked its way down through her stomach, her lower abdomen, and settled tightly between her legs.
He held his aggressive stance, but lust flickered in his eyes. She recognized it, remembering the first time she saw it in Vegas. She’d cajoled him into putting twenty dollars on a roulette spin. He started verbally working through the probabilities of landing on one number, two numbers, three numbers, so she grabbed the twenty, plunked it on black and told the croupier to spin.
She doubled his money. He turned to her, mouth slightly ajar, eyes wide, lust burning in their green depths. At that moment she decided to have sex with him. Her New Year’s gift to herself.
Her nipples tightened inside her bra as she recalled the warm press of his hands, the solid weight of his body, the heavy, stretching fulfillment of him between her thighs. She swallowed.
He saw that, too.
His gaze dropped to the hollow at the base of her throat and made a slow, lazy ascent back to her face. His jaw was looser but his expression more focused, and as he dipped his head almost imperceptibly closer she wondered what he was thinking about.
Maybe—like her—he remembered that first kiss in the elevator, the insistence with which he’d pushed her against the wall the second the doors banged shut after the last guests stepped off.
Maybe he was reliving the way he’d shoved the cups of her bra out of the way and scooped her breasts out of the V-neck top of her dress before lowering his mouth to taste each one in turn.
Or maybe he was thinking about what happened in the shower when she’d stroked him so slowly, so lingeringly, with such stubborn refusal to give him what he wanted that he had to brace himself against the tile and repeat her name in a broken, pleading voice.
She heard his breath quicken in the silent office. She stole a glance at his zipper and permitted herself the hint of a smile at the strain she saw there.
She inched closer, her skirt whispering against the denim of his jeans. She arched her back slightly, giving him a faint view of the now achingly hard points of her breasts.
He moved swiftly, decisively. Raised his hand to cup the back of her neck, the skin bare below her upswept hair. Her breath caught in her throat and the complexities of their situation, the games and maneuvers and goals and highest of high stakes all vanished from her mind.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him inside her and she didn’t care where or how or when as long as it was soon, very very soon.
He brought his cheek against hers. She closed her eyes at the faint scrape of stubble, drowning in the scent of him, wood smoke caught in denim on a crisp fall morning.
His lips brushed her ear and he whispered, “Neither of us deserves this.”
Her eyelashes fluttered shut as she luxuriated in the deep, warm vibration of his voice. “Speak for yourself.”
“You know it as well as I do.” His lips skimmed the line of her jaw and her hands found his waist, twisting her fingers through his belt loops.
“We’re sinners, you and I,” he murmured. “You saw my chart. I saw your debt.”
She shoved him away, his words sizzling across her nerves like ice-cold water tossed on glowing coals.
“We’re nothing alike,” she clarified sternly, taking two big steps backward. “You put your career and reputation on the line for a stupid vice. I had to build an image—an expensive image—without ever having pulled down the sort of money you did as a player. Not because I wasn’t as talented or as successful, but because even the best woman doesn’t get paid anywhere close to the worst man.”
He crossed his arms, slamming the door on whatever accord they’d briefly shared. “Four hundred dollars on a slot-machine app in one day. Are you blaming that on systemic inequality?”
Shame closed an icy fist around her neck. Over the last few years what started as a fun, diverting stress reliever with the added benefit of occasionally pocketing some extra cash had spun completely out of control. She knew that. She also knew she was getting it back under control, one day at a time. She hadn’t even opened the app since… Okay, yesterday had been a stressful day so she’d taken a couple of spins at lunchtime, but before that—anyway, it wasn’t relevant to this conversation.
“Let’s be clear that you’re referring to my personal, private information which you had no right to access,” she reminded him primly.
“The personal, private information you left in my hotel room.”
“And which you held on to for six months.”
He shrugged. “You said you didn’t want to see me again, so I didn’t have a chance to give it back.”
A bolt of guilt raced toward her heart but she halted it mid-trajectory. He wanted her to feel bad. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Why are you here?” she asked instead. “What do you want?”
“For you to back off.”
“Not happening.”
“You know if you don’t, I’ll—”
“You’re not in control anymore, Brendan. Deal with it.” She dropped into her chair, resuming her position of power in the room. “You have nothing more on me than I have on you. And to be honest, you probably should’ve thought of that before you waved that credit card bill in my face. It’s not a good idea to threaten to open other people’s closets when your own is packed full of skeletons.”
He shook his head slowly, his face settling into an expression so cool and composed that a kernel of worry formed in her chest. Had she missed a move in this game?
“You still don’t get it,” he said quietly. “The stakes aren’t even. We have different bets on the table. You have a hell of a lot more chips to lose than I do.”
She rolled her eyes to disguise her sudden uneasiness. “Make life easy for yourself. Go along with the plan for the year-end report. Just cooperate and I’ll make sure you come out looking good. I promise.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, silently studying the floor. He stood like that for so long that she was tempted to tap her foot under her desk or drum her fingers, but she knew that’s what he wanted. He may be a great goalkeeper, but she’d been a hell of a striker. She was trained to keep her next move a secret from him as intensely as he was trained to spot it.
So they remained, in unmoving deadlock, for nearly five minutes. At least she gauged it to be about five minutes—she didn’t dare glance away from him in case she gave away her impatience.
He broke the stalemate, dragging his gaze up from the carpet to meet hers. His eyes were unreadable, but determination set his shoulders.
“Don’t push me,” he told her finally. Softly. Evenly.
She didn’t blink. “I’ll push as hard as I want.”
They sized each other up for another handful of seconds, two masters of inscrutability facing off across sky-high odds. Then he turned abruptly and left her office, the door closing behind him with a gentle click.
She exhaled so heavily her head spun. She rushed to her feet on a surge of adrenaline, walking back to the windowed wall and crossing her arms over her chest.
She’d won that round. She thought. Hoped.
He had a point about their respective chips to lose, but she was pretty sure he was bluffing. If he didn’t care about his legacy he wouldn’t have bothered to go this far to protect it. He had, so he did, and that meant the scale was still weighted in her favor.
The risk was whether she’d missed something, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She had to believe he’d do the right thing. Agree to her terms and let them both move on relatively unscathed. If not, the consequences were unthinkable.
So she wouldn’t think about them, she decided, returning to her seat and clicking to open her inbox. She wouldn’t think about her disgrace if that credit card statement became public, or the tailspin into which it would throw her career, or the abject shame of her parents finding out…
He sees everything, her traitorous thoughts reminded her.
She flattened one bracing palm on the surface of her desk, waiting to feel something—anything—at a level appropriate to the situation. Fear. Anxiety. Anger. At least one of them should be surging through her body at this point.
Nothing.
She swiveled away from her desk and picked up her phone, scrolling to the same slot-machine app that had gotten her into this trouble in the first place. She should give up, she knew, but these were exceptional circumstances. Stressful circumstances. Unprecedented, unlikely-to-be-repeated circumstances for which she could justify a few minutes of playing.
Five spins, she assured herself as she scrolled to her account details, double-checking that she’d loaded a credit card that hadn’t reached its limit. Just enough to get that rush. To put a crack in this icy, numb wall.
She navigated back to the main screen and tapped to spin.
No matches.
One spin down, four to go. She tapped again.
Two cherries and a seven. Closer.
She tapped again. Three more spins. Or until she’d lost five dollars. She’d skip her fancy coffee on Monday morning.
Or seven dollars. Seven wasn’t much. She’d skip her coffee on Monday and Tuesday.
Okay, until she’d lost ten dollars, but no more. The free coffee in the lunchroom was fine, anyway.
Or fifteen dollars. Fifteen dollars was her hard limit, not a cent more…