Page 102

“Sam, the news crew needs someone at Gate 12. They’re having issues with their satellite truck placement.”

I pressed the button on my headset. “Copy. Sending Briggs now.” I pulled up Briggs on my phone and fired off a text with the gate number and the issue. He responded in seconds, which was exactly why Viv had hired him. He was fast and didn’t rattle easily.

I made my way to the owner’s suite where Viv would likely be, saying hi to people as I passed them and keeping an eye on how things were running. We needed this first game to go off without a hitch.

Viv stood at the window in the owner’s suite with her arms crossed, watching the field below. She wore a fitted black blazer over a silk blouse, her dark hair straight and perfect, and she looked every inch the woman who’d spent billions of dollars and half a decade building this franchise from the ground up.

She also looked exhausted, but you’d only know that if you knew where to look. The subtle tension in her jaw. The way her thumb kept pressing against her index finger, a nervous habit most people probably never noticed. I’d thought that I was good at faking it, but Vivienne Gordon was on another level. Some people had called her an ice queen, but I understood now why she was so guarded. People weren’t always kind to a woman in power. She had to work three times as hard for the respect her male peers seemed to earn in one golf game. It frustrated the hell out of me, but she always seemed to take it in stride.

I still worried about her.

“Ticket sales capped at 50,238, but for an opening game for an unproven team, that’s not too shabby,” I told her, coming to stand beside her. “The local news crew is set, and social media engagement is already triple what we projected.”

She nodded once. “Good.”

I studied her profile for a moment. She’d changed in the five years since she’d walked into the hockey house and announced she was starting a franchise. She’d always been driven, but somewhere along the way, the drive had consumed everything else. She’d lost friends when she’d broken from Gordon Holdings. People she’d known her whole life had chosen her parents’ side, especially after her parents painted Viv as the ungrateful daughter who’d spurned her family’s legacy. The betrayals had calcified her. She ran this franchise with eighty-hour weeks and no one waiting for her at the end of them.

At least when I worked myself to the bone, I had Harry at home to hand me a glass of wine when I walked in the door and give me a foot rub.

Viv didn’t have anyone.

“Hey, you okay?”

Her chin lifted with that stubborn Gordon tilt that Harry had too. “I’m fine.”

“Viv. Remember who you’re talking to.” Not only did I know I was one of her closest friends—apart from her bestie, Addison, who lived in LA—I was also her sister-in-law.

She exhaled through her nose and some of the composure dropped. “My mother called this morning.”

I blinked. That was new. The Gordon parents hadn’t spoken to either Viv or Harry in nearly five years. “What did she say?”

“She wished me luck.” Viv’s voice was carefully neutral. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

I didn’t either.

“You don’t have to do anything with it right now,” I said. “Tonight is yours. Everything else can wait.”

She looked at me, and a little bit of the tension around her eyes loosened. “Thank you, Sam. For everything. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“You absolutely could have. But I’m glad you didn’t have to.”

Her mouth twitched and she turned back to the window. Down on the field, the coaching staff was gathered near the fifty-yard line on the sidelines, and my gaze snagged on the man at the center of the group.

Tanner Russell stood with his arms folded across a broad chest, clipboard tucked under one arm, watching his players get into position. He was tall, just like his brother Ty who’d played on the LA Wolves as part of the famous defensive group known as the Fierce Four. Tanner had retired from playing football two years ago after a shoulder injury, and Viv had hired him as head coach six months later.

It had been a controversial pick. A lot of people discouraged her from choosing a first-time head coach for a brand-new franchise. The sports media had been brutal about it, calling it a vanity hire and a sign that the Montana Thunder weren’t serious. But Viv hadn’t flinched. She’d said Tanner understood what it meant to build something from nothing, and she’d been right. He’d assembled a coaching staff that had turned heads across the league, and the players respected him.

I also wondered if she’d chosen him because he’d already weathered a public scandal when he played a role in exposing his brother’s wife’s history to the media. It had been a mess back then, but he’d handled it with grace and taken accountability for his mistake. I suspected that was a big reason Viv chose him, as much as it was for his understanding of the game.

Tanner glanced up toward the suite, and for a fraction of a second, his gaze caught on the window where Viv was standing. She didn’t react and didn’t look away. But her thumb pressed harder against her index finger.

Interesting.

My phone buzzed. I looked down and grinned.

Eric

Are you kidding me with these seats? Talk about best sister ever!