Page 103 of Her Player

"What?" she asked, clocking my expression.

"Nothing," I said. "You're just something else, Miss C."

I took it from her hand, set it back on the nightstand, and pulled her into my lap. She made a sound of protest, but her arms found their way around my neck anyway.

"Rhett," she said flatly.

"The tape will still be there in an hour," I said.

"We have a championship in five days."

"And I have you right now." I tipped her chin up with one finger and held her gaze. "Which one do you think I'm more focused on?"

She stared at me for a long moment. Then the corner of her mouth curled upward. Not the full smile. Victoria didn't give those out easily. But enough. Enough to make something in my chest go warm.

"You're insufferable," she said.

"You keep saying that." I pressed my lips to the corner of her mouth. "And you keep letting me stay."

She turned her face toward mine and kissed me properly, slow and unhurried, her hands sliding up the back of my neck into my hair. I felt the last of the tension in her body dissolve against me and I held her there, in the early morning quiet of her bedroom, with the championship five days away and everything we hadn't said yet still humming in the air between us.

I didn't need to say it again right now.

She damn well knew.

She'd always damn well known.

She just needed the time to decide she was ready to keep it.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Victoria pulled back and glanced at it without moving from my lap.

"Coach," she said.

I didn't even look. "Ignore it."

She raised an eyebrow. "It could be important."

"It's about Langley's hip."

She blinked. Then she picked up the phone, read the text, and set it back down without a word.

I grinned. "Told you."

"You're annoyingly perceptive," she muttered.

"You love it."

She didn't answer that. But she settled deeper into my lap, reached past me for her coffee, and tilted the tablet back toward herself with her free hand.

Back to the gap on the right side.

Back to the work.

I pressed a kiss to the back of her shoulder, wrapped my arm around her waist, and let her study her tape while I thought about the Canadian Dynamites and the five days standing between us and the biggest game of my career.

Five days.

And every single one of them, I'd wake up with her.