I shower and get dressed, then grab my keys and check my phone for the address of Caldwell, Price & Associates. Sixth Avenue, Midtown. Twenty minutes from my apartment if the traffic cooperates.
I stop at a coffee shop on Columbus first. It's a place I go to a few times a week. The barista's name is Dani, and she has my order memorized.
“Large black, right?” she says.
“Actually, I need six today.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Having a party?”
“Dropping off coffee for someone.”
I ask her to mix it up. Two black, two lattes, and two cappuccinos, figuring I'll cover enough bases to make everyone happy. Then I point at the pastry case and tell Dani to put together a box of whatever she recommends.
She loads up croissants, muffins, scones, and some kind of almond Danish that she says is the best thing they make.
Someone taps my shoulder, and I turn to find a man in a Renegades hat grinning at me. “Hey, are you Logan Shaw?”
“I am.”
“Big game tomorrow in Chicago. Good luck out there.”
“Appreciate that. Thanks.”
He asks for a photo, and I stand next to him while Dani takes it on his phone. I pay for my order and carry two bags and a tray of six coffees out to my car. I arrange everything on the passenger seat and the floor of the back seat, then drive downtown toward Sixth Avenue.
Caldwell, Price & Associates is on the twenty-third floor of a glass tower in Midtown. The lobby is all marble and polished metal. I give Jasmine's name to the guard manning the securitydesk. He calls up and tells me to take the elevator to twenty-three.
The elevator doors open onto a reception area with a woman behind a desk. She picks up her phone the second I give my name.
Two minutes later, Jasmine appears around the corner, and my brain short-circuits.
She's in a charcoal blazer over a cream blouse and a short skirt. She looks like a woman in command of her world.
She looks genuinely surprised—and pleased—to see me. “Hey, Logan. What are you doing here?”
I hold up the tray and the bags. “You said you needed coffee. I brought reinforcements.”
She looks at the six cups and the two bags of pastries, and then she looks at me. “You brought coffee for my entire office.”
“I didn't know how many people you work with, so I estimated. There's also croissants and some kind of almond Danish that the barista said would change my life.”
She laughs. “You drove to Midtown to bring me coffee and pastries before your flight to Chicago.”
“I had time.”
As Jasmine takes the tray from my hands, her fingers brush mine. Heat shoots up my arm and warms my chest.
A door opens down the hallway, and a woman with dark hair and a coffee mug appears. She takes one look at me and one look at the coffees and stops in her tracks.
“Clara, this is Logan,” Jasmine says. “Logan, this is my good friend, Clara.”
Clara's eyes go wide. “Logan Shaw. Number twenty-four. My husband and I watch every Renegades game. He's going to lose his mind when I tell him you were in our office.” She turns to Jasmine. “You didn't tell me he was this tall.”
“I didn't think his height was relevant to the sponsorship account, Clara.”
Clara turns back to me. “That hit you made against Tampa in the second period last week was brutal. My husband rewound it four times.”
Jasmine is trying not to laugh. “Clara, let the man breathe.”
