Page 14 of Her Player

I knew better than to question Victoria while she was like this. And to be quite honest, I enjoyed her dominant side. Her barked orders. She was easy to read, despite the stoic demeanor she kept. You always knew where you stood with her, she always spoke her mind, and she never once lied.

She’d go silent if she didn’t want to answer truthfully.

But she never lied.

“Shit,” I hissed.

Just as I went to pull the living room curtains closed, I watched two separate news vans roll down the road. I shook my head as I watched people leap out of a sliding white door on the side of the van, and I whipped the curtains closed before they could brandish their cameras to snap pictures of me.

Because the last thing we needed was the press thinking that the owner of the team was fucking the captain of the team.

I mean, unless we actually fucked.

I wouldn’t mind that if she actually hiked that skirt up and showed me what was underneath.

“Are you. For fucking. Real?” Victoria asked, punctuating her words as she came up behind me.

I whipped around just before I saw her peeking through the living room window curtains I had just pulled closed. “Don’t worry, they only just pulled up.”

She released her finger from the blackout curtain, and it fluttered closed. “I’ve got my stuff packed. Head into my room and grab the two suitcases and the toiletry bag. I’ll go get started on Bry’ things.”

I nodded. “On it.”

She packed light for a woman on a mission. I tossed the two suitcases onto one of my shoulders, then grabbed the little toiletry case. For a woman who seemed as snooty and put-together as Victoria, she didn’t pack a great deal. Most women, for a stay of unknown length, packed at least half of their closets. Hell, some of them packed a suitcase just for their shoes!

Not Victoria, though.

It was intriguing to say the least.

That woman always kept me on my toes.

But after loading her things into the back of my car that we had parked around the backside of her home, I went and found her in Bry’ room. Folding and packing things like it was a game of Tetris. Like she’d be graded for it. And as I stood there, leaning against the doorframe of her daughter’s bedroom, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that Victoria picked me. Volunteered me for this mission without asking. Without a second thought.

Almost as if it were instinct.

The thought tugged a smile across my face.

I’m finally wearing her down.

Only took me three fucking years to do it.

I stood there longer than I should have.

She didn’t notice. She was already three moves ahead, refolding a sweater she’d just folded, repositioning it in the suitcase with the same focused precision she gave everything. Brynn’s room was a mess by any normal standard. Clothes draped over the chair, books stacked sideways, a throw blanket that had migrated from the bed to the floor to somewhere underneath the desk. Victoria moved through it like she was solving a problem, pulling order out of chaos with quiet efficiency, and I watched her and thought about the fact that this was probably what she’d been doing for fourteen years.

Making order out of chaos. Holding things together by sheer force of will. Running a franchise and raising a daughter and grieving a husband and never once letting anyone see the seams.

Until me.

Not that she’d chosen it. Not that she’d offered it consciously. But something about the way she’d looked at me in that office today, the way she’d said it so easily, like I was just part of the plan. Like I was already accounted for in whatever equation she ran in her head without even meaning to put me there.

I picked up the bag she tossed my way without looking up.

“You good?” she asked, still not looking at me.

“Yeah, Miss C,” I said. “I’m good.”

She packed in silence. She tossed me the bags in silence. We tossed them into the back of my car… again, in silence. But once we dipped down into my car, I watched as a couple of men with cameras slinked along the edge of the property toward the back of the house.