Page 50 of Ruff and Tumble

Penny waited only long enough to gather up her purse and her sweater before heading out the door, a laugh on her lips and her friendly smile in place. Hailey’s first impulse was to check and make sure the puppies were behaving themselves, but Cole stood watching Penny walk away with a puzzled expression on his face.

“What?” Hailey asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I could have sworn… But that’s not…” He walked over to the couch and stabbed a finger at the wall, where a blank square of plastic loomed ominously. “Hailey, is Pennywearingyour signed 1995 Lumberjacks jersey?”

Her laugh escaped before she could stop it. “Oops. You noticed that?”

He whirled on her. “Do you have any idea what that thing must be worth? That was the year Maitland scored six touchdowns in a single game.”

“I know.”

“And the year Arnsdale won Best AFC Defensive Player for the second time in a row.”

“It was the best of times,” Hailey agreed blandly. “They just don’t make football players like they used to, do they?”

“Hailey, youwretch.” Cole came toward her in two long strides. His hands gripped her shoulders, his look one of pure intensity. “You can’t just let people go around wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of your father’s memorabilia.”

“Why not?” Hailey did her best not to squirm under that intense gaze, but it was difficult. Cole wasn’t angry with her, and she doubted that he cared much about the money, but he seemed to feel honest outrage at her actions. “Penny got more use out of it today than I have in the entire twenty-five years it’s been sitting there.”

“But you love this stuff.”

“It’s only stuff.”

“Four days ago, you said you hadn’t touched any of it in nine years in honor of your father’s memory. What’s happened since then?”

Cole was proving himself to be a good listener.Toogood, if he was going to start keeping track of everything that came out of her mouth. She was far too indiscreet a person under pressure for that.

Her next words proved it. “Youhappened.”

The grip on her shoulders tightened. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

Didn’t he understand what it meant for him to be at her house right now? For him to be looking at her with that light in his eyes? He might be used to people throwing themselves at him, introducing him to their families and kissing him without abandon, but this was all very new for her.

“You just finished winning a game watched by thirty million people, Cole,” she said. “You could go anywhere you want, do anything you want. But instead of showering in Cristal or having dinner on top of Mount Rainier, you’re here. With me and my seven dogs. Yelling at me for letting a friend wear an old football jersey of my dad’s.”

“I wasn’t yelling.”

Emboldened by the boyish petulance on his face, she got up on her tiptoes to press a kiss on his lips. “There was a little bit of yelling.”

“Hailey—”

“Don’t worry,” she was quick to add. “I’m not upset. It’s just that a month ago, I considered all things Lumberjacks—and all things Cole Bennett—to be some kind of magical, untouchable dream. But now I’ve met you and your family and your fancy football-playing friends, and I realize you’re not really that special.”

He blinked, his lower lip falling slightly open.

“Sorry, but it’s true. You’re probably the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, and you’ll go down in football history as one of the most precise and controlled quarterbacks of all time, but you’re kind of a pain in the ass, too.” A smile curved Hailey’s lips as she stood staring up at this man—at the godlike creation who looked, for the first time, as overwhelmed as she felt every time he walked into a room. “Those were compliments, by the way. In case you’re wondering where I’m trying to go with this.”

He didn’t wonder for very long.

One second, Hailey was holding herself warily, wondering if that bit about him being beautiful was pushing things too far, and the next, she was in Cole’s arms. Literally. Even though he had to be ten different kinds of exhausted, he somehow managed to hitch his arms underneath her thighs and hoist her to his level in less time than it took her to blink. Her legs spread to encompass his hips, and her arms twined around his neck, all of her straining to be as close to him as humanly possible.

He seemed to feel the same sense of urgency, because he didn’t even wait until she was fully settled before he started kissing her. Nor did he bother with any of that sweet, gentle nibbling to set the mood. His hands were cupping her ass and his mouth was open against hers, the full, hot promise of his tongue making it impossible for her to do much more than let him in.

Which was exactly what she did. She lowered her guard and stopped fighting. There was no use pretending she didn’t want this man—near her, on her,inher. She wasn’t sure how any of this had happened, but it was happening all the same.

“I’m still mad about the jersey thing,” he said as he pressed her up against the nearest wall. There was a framed poster behind her, but Cole didn’t seem to be aware of the irony as it banged and bent under the pressure of both their bodies hitting it at once. “And we’re going to have a talk later about which one of us is the real pain in the ass.”