Page 64 of Her Player

“Maybe this is the beginning of the end,” Rhett said as he opened my car door for me.

I dipped down behind the wheel of the car. “One can only hope.”

He closed my door before he jogged around and slumped down into the passenger’s seat. Then with a crank of the engine, we headed back to Victoria’s estate. I fell in behind Coach’s truck, following the backroads he took in an effort to dodge any straggling media syndicate vans that may have been waiting for us around the bends.

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the wrought iron gates of her estate closed behind us.

“Hungry?” Rhett asked as we pulled up the winding driveway. “I think I saw some pork chops defrosted in the fridge. I could whip us up something.”

I furrowed my brow. “You cook?”

He chuckled. “What? You think I live on takeout like Jett?”

I paused. “Yeah?”

He barked with another laugh, and it tugged a smile across my face as I parked my car in its usual spot at the estate. I didn’t like the fact that being here still felt unfamiliar, even though it was mine.

I tried not to think too much about it, though.

“Come on,” Rhett said as he slipped out of the car, “I’ll whip us up something quick.”

I grabbed my purse and eased my way out of the car as well. “Good. It’ll give me a chance to get cleaned up and out of these heels.”

“What? You mean you don’t sleep in them?”

I snickered. “You’d know.”

He chuckled as he came around, his hands falling effortlessly to my hips as if they belonged there. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.”

I crooked an eyebrow. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He grinned as he pulled me against his body, his ass resting against my car. “I don’t know. What do you want it to mean?”

I crooked an eyebrow at him before I shoved his chest playfully and stepped out of his grasp. “I swear, men are so weird.”

His tongue darted out, licking his lower lip as he tilted his head. He studied me, making a show of raking his eyes up and down my form.

“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” he said as he pushed off my car and started toward me.

I scoffed. “And how else would you put it?”

He took my purse from my hand and slipped his arm around my waist. “I would’ve used the word ‘obsessed.’”

And the way he practically growled the word against the shell of my ear made my knees practically buckle in the middle of my own goddamn driveway.

Thank fuck, I was used to walking in heels.

22

VICTORIA

He knocked on my office door at seven forty-five the next morning.

I knew it was him before he opened it. Coach Mercer had a distinctive knock. Three sharp raps with the knuckle of his index finger, evenly spaced, like everything else about that man was evenly spaced and deliberate and slightly exhausting. I set down my pencil and folded my hands on top of my clipboard.

"Come in," I said.

He opened the door and stepped inside and closed it behind him. He was in his coaching clothes, track pants and a Vipers pullover and running shoes. He had a folder tucked under his arm. He looked like a man who had rehearsed whatever he was about to say at least four times and was now deeply regretting every single version of it.