Skin in the Game (11 page)

“You would?” she choked out.

“Hell, yes. I’ll do it right now.” He lowered his head a fraction, his gaze fixed on her mouth. “Just say the word.”

She stared at him. Was he actually trying to bribe her into having sex with him? And if he was, should she be flattered that he wanted her so badly or insulted that he thought it might work?

Oh, why kid herself? It was working. Her skin prickled in anticipation—of his touch, his kiss, and most of all, his big, delicious body braced over hers, moving inside hers. His offer to give up the head coaching position only gave her an excuse to let herself have what she truly wanted—another night with him.

But then she would want another. And another.

“I can’t,” she said.

To her amazement, he bent his head and brushed his lips softly, sweetly against her forehead. “I know.”

She blinked, confused by his compassion. “You do?” In her experience—which, admittedly, wasn’t huge—men tended not to handle rejection well, especially not when they were hot and bothered.

“I know you don’t trust me yet. And maybe you shouldn’t because if you’d accepted, I would have had to break my promise to Coach, and that’s something I’d hate to do. Although, I’ll admit,” he added with a rueful glance at his nether regions, “parts of me sure as hell hoped you’d say yes.”

“I don’t understand you. Why do you even care? It’s not like you have any skin in the game. It doesn’t matter to you what happens. You should be getting ready for your big comeback, not coaching high school football.”

“My agent agrees with you,” Cade said with a chuckle, “but the fact is, I care because it’s something to care about. Maybe I’ll get to make that big comeback and maybe I won’t, but in the meantime, this job gives me a purpose. And until I’m not needed anymore—”

“I—that is, we don’t need you now. We were doing just fine without you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” He pushed away from the bus, his biceps flexing impressively as he did, and straightened. “You do need me, Angie Peterson. More than you know.”

Before she could respond or object to this pronouncement, he turned and strode in the direction of his rented Cadillac, leaving her hot, bothered, and more bewildered than ever.

And the worst of it was, he was probably right. She did need him—desperately, painfully.

But only sexually.

She hoped.

###

It was half past nine when Angie finally shambled downstairs, bleary-eyed and groggy after a night of tossing and turning with unsatisfied lust. She’d tried everything to ease the ache between her legs—up to and including the use of her trusty vibrator—but if anything, the orgasm only made things worse because it was so plainly inferior to the ones she’d experienced with Cade.

As she reached the bottom of the staircase, she heard her father’s voice. He must be talking to someone on the phone, she thought, until she rounded the corner and saw he was sitting at the dining room table, drinking coffee with none other than Cade Reynolds.

Her knees threatened to buckle. She was instantly aware of how awful she must look—wrapped in a shabby knee-length robe, her hair frizzy and uncombed, her eyes undoubtedly graced with bags the size of Paris Hilton’s luggage for a week-long trip to the Hamptons.

What was he doing here? How dare he come to her home, invade her privacy, make friends with her father?

Because the latter was clearly what he was doing. They were both drinking coffee, carrying on an obviously amiable conversation. Her father looked as happy as a pig in slop.

Angie paused at the foot of the stairs. If she turned around now, they might not even notice her. She could go back to her room and at least make herself presentable before coming down to confront Cade. On the other hand, if she did, she’d be giving him time to ingratiate himself to her father, which would make getting Cade out of the house that much harder.

The choice was taken out of her hands. Her father caught sight of her. “Ah, here she is now,” he said. “Look who’s here, Angie.”

“I see,” she said drily, her heart thumping hard against her ribs as Cade turned to look at her.

And look at her he did. Slowly and appraisingly, from mussed head to slippered toe. Self-consciousness heated her cheeks. On the plus side, at least now he’d probably stop trying to seduce her in deserted classrooms and parking lots.

Except when he met her eyes again, the look in his was every bit as smoky as when she’d been wearing that little black dress. Her knees wobbled, and she shivered despite the fact that her midsection had just turned as molten as Cade’s gaze.

She blushed harder as she recalled that her father was sitting right there. Fortunately, he seemed oblivious to the heated glance that passed between them.

“Cade and I were just sitting here talking shop,” he said with a pleased-as-punch grin.

“You look like you could use some coffee.”

Uh, thanks, Dad.

“Don’t worry; I’ll get myself a cup. As soon as Cade explains what he’s doing here at nine thirty on a Saturday morning.”

Cade feigned surprise. It had to be feigned because there was no way he could find it surprising that she hadn’t been expecting him. “I told you I was going to look at the playbook over the weekend and get back to you.”

“‘Over the weekend.’ Not ‘by tomorrow morning.’”

“I’m a quick study. Besides, I needed something productive to do with myself last night.”

The glint in his dark eyes said she should take that exactly the way she did.

Her father, apparently sensing the undercurrent for the first time, rose from his seat. “I’ll get your coffee for you, chickadee, and leave you two to discuss business. I’ve got some tinkering to do in the garage, anyway.”

Angie shook her head. Didn’t he see anything wrong with his freshly-out-of-bed, not-fully-dressed daughter doing “business” at the kitchen table with a fully clothed—and ridiculously handsome—man who also happened, however temporarily, to be her boss?

“That’s okay, Dad,” she said to her father’s retreating back. “Mr. Reynolds should come back later. Or we can go over this on Monday. I don’t see what the rush is.”

“Mr. Reynolds?” Cade mouthed, his eyebrows raised.

She gave him what she hoped was a scathing glare.

“Oh, no,” her dad said above the clink of ceramic, “you can’t do that. Not when he went to all the trouble of coming over here this morning. I think you should talk.”

“I agree with your father. There’s no harm in talking, right?”

The way he talked, there most certainly was harm in it. Harm to her resolve not to get into a relationship with a man who would absolutely, positively break her heart. That was why she’d never planned on anything beyond a one-night stand.

“That’s not the problem, and you know it.”

Her father came out of the kitchen with a steaming mug. “What is the problem, then?”

Angie wanted to throttle both of them—her father for not seeing the obvious and Cade for the smug expression that said he knew he’d won. Instead, she took the cup from her father.

“I’d just like to shower and get dressed, that’s all.”

Her dad gave her an appraising stare and shrugged. “You look fine to me. And, like I said, Cade’s already here. You can’t very well expect him to leave without getting what he came for.”

“You look fine to me, too,” Cade put in. To his credit, there wasn’t a hint of lasciviousness in his tone, but she knew it was there, lurking under the surface. As annoyed as she was with his blatant ruse to worm his way into not just her work life, but her personal life as well, the fact that he found her attractive in her current state made her breathless and a little lightheaded.

Which was all the more reason she ought to throw him out on his ass. He knew what he was doing, even if her father didn’t.

But for some reason, she nodded and slid into the seat her father had just vacated across from Cade’s. “All right.” She sighed. “We might as well get it over with, I guess.”

Her playbook—a dog-eared notebook roughly half an inch thick and filled with sketches and a thousand barely legible notations—lay on the table in front of Cade with half a dozen or so Post-It notes affixed to its pages.

“Good,” her father pronounced triumphantly. “I’ll get out of your hair now.” He went back into the kitchen and then out into the garage through the adjoining door.

Angie doubted there was anything he really planned to work on out there and wondered why he was so willing and eager to leave the two of them alone in such clearly inappropriate circumstances. Cade was technically her boss, however much she might wish he wasn’t. He had no business here at her kitchen table while she was still in her pajamas and her dad should know that. Had Cade said something to her father to make him believe that this was an opportunity at matchmaking?

“So, at least I finally get to see what I missed the other morning,” Cade murmured.

Angie eyed him balefully over the rim of her coffee cup as she took a fortifying swallow.

“Well, feel free to leave now that you’ve satisfied your curiosity.”

Shaking his head, he patted the playbook. “I really did come to go over this. I didn’t expect to find you still in bed at nine o’clock in the morning. But I can’t say I’m sorry I did. You look…wonderful.”

“Oh, please. I look like death warmed over.”

“I think you look sleepy and rumpled and desperately in need of kissing.”

“You have to stop that,” she snapped. Because all of it was true. As irritated and unsettled as she was by his presence, her lips felt heavy and swollen with need.

Both pairs.

“Why?”

At first, she thought he was pulling her leg, but then she realized the question was absolutely genuine. He really didn’t see a conflict.

“Because you’re my boss. You can’t just come to my house first thing on a Saturday morning and hit on me while I’m still in my pajamas.”

“Well, you could always take them off,” he suggested, waggling his eyebrows.

“Oh my God, you’re impossible.”

“On the contrary, when it comes to you, I’m willing to be very, very possible.”

At the mock leer he gave her, Angie clutched her robe together beneath her throat. It didn’t matter that she was flattered by his admiration, even wanted his attention. For more reasons than she could count, she had to nip this in the bud.

Okay, it was probably well past the bud stage, but still…

“You’re just as bad as Donnelly, you know. No, you’re worse. You’re a hypocrite, acting offended on my behalf because he’s harassing me then doing the same thing yourself. The only difference between you and him is that I never made the mistake of sleeping with Donnelly.”

In the stunned silence that followed the words, she threw back the rest of her coffee and stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go get my shower. You can show yourself out.”

As she stalked by him on her way toward the stairs, his hand snaked out and encircled her wrist.

“Please, don’t go.” His voice was soft, contrite even. “You’re right. I’m an ass. I’ll stop.

Just sit down and go through this with me.” He pointed to the playbook. “I promise, I’ll keep my hands and my more colorful thoughts to myself.” He raised three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Angie looked from his warm brown eyes to the notebook with its marked pages and back again. She should stick to her guns, but a combination of her curiosity about what he’d found to criticize and her perverse enjoyment of his company made her cave.

She sat back down. “All right. But no funny business, Mr. Reynolds. And remember, you can’t win our bargain today. No matter what I think of your ideas, the boys still get to vote.”

He smiled, nodded, and opened the notebook to the first marked page. She knew when she saw the play he’d chosen and what he’d written beside it that she was going to lose.

Johnson?

That one word followed by its question mark, scratched in the margin alongside the X’s and O’s that laid out the Eagles’ longest pass play, spelled Angie’s doom. She knew before Cade explained what that one word meant.

“This is a really well-designed play,” he began. “In fact, this whole playbook is brilliant.

Better than most college teams have and maybe even a few in the NFL. You could probably get a job as an offensive coordinator with a major university if you wanted.”

Angie tried not to let the praise go to her head—and failed. Miserably. Because for a few seconds, she basked in the glow of his words.

“But after watching the team last night and thinking about what I’ve seen in practice this week, I don’t understand why you don’t have Tyler Johnson in at quarterback when you run this play. Don’t get me wrong; Hanssen’s great and he’s definitely got a gun, but your receiver—what’s his name?” Cade snapped his fingers a couple of times.

“Anton Rodgers,” she said softly, already knowing where Cade was going.

“Rodgers, that’s it! He can outrun Hanssen’s range by a mile. Johnson hasn’t got the same touch on the ball, but damn, that kid’s got an intercontinental ballistic missile for an arm.

You should take advantage of that and let Rodgers just plain smoke the coverage. As it is now, he has to either slow down or come back to the ball, and the play isn’t as successful as it could be.”

Angie couldn’t help smiling a little at the irony of it. She’d had this exact conversation with Harvey at the beginning of the school year, except that she had been the one taking Cade’s position.

In response, she repeated Harvey’s objections. “Tyler Johnson is a sophomore, that’s why. He doesn’t have enough game experience yet.”

“And how is he going to get that game experience if you don’t give him the chance?”

Cade countered. “I’m assuming when Hanssen graduates, Johnson’s your boy. Why not give him part of this year to get some actual game time under his belt? That way, he’s not a virtual novice at the beginning of next year when he needs to shoulder the load.”

“Because Jake is the higher-percentage player. And because we have a shot at the championship. We can’t take the chance of sacrificing this year’s record on the altar of next year.” She winced a little in spite of herself as the point of view she’d so vehemently disagreed with earlier in the season rolled off her tongue.