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I closed my eyes, wishing that life could be different. That rules and regulations wouldn’t keep us apart. Whether I liked it or not, very real feelings had sprung up over our three-week flirtationship. Tatum made me smile. He was strong and sexy as hell. He had a grin that could chase away even the haziest mental clouds. I liked the way I felt when I was around him, and tonight—before he tackled me—I had been planning on asking him if he wanted to try the dating thing out.
I was done with his house. There were no more professional boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed.
But just as I thought I was home free, impenetrable cinderblock walls of the team’s code of conduct jutted up between us.
Cheerleaders and players were strictly forbidden from fraternizing or having any type of contact.
Tatum froze in his tracks. “I think I want some answers, Little Bird.”
I cut my eyes to the door. “Not here,” I begged. My lip started trembling. “Please…Not here.”
He wasn’t swayed. Instead of walking away, he closed the door behind him, set his helmet at the foot of the hospital-style bed, and pulled the doctor’s rolling stool over to my side. “The entire team knows I’m up here. If I walk back down to the locker room, they’re gonna have more questions than if I stay for a few minutes.”
He held the football between us, silently urging me to take it. “The team figured you earned yourself the game ball.” He cracked a smile. “If you want it, I mean. Or you could just sell it on eBay.”
I snorted. “You’d have to sign it for it to be worth anything.” The dull throbbing in the back of my skull returned, so I closed my eyes and rested my head on the half-ply pillow. “I have so many questions, but…”
“But?”
“The more I think about it, it all makes sense.” I let out a tired sigh. “Your schedule. You saying that you travel a lot for work. The penthouse…”
“You having a lot of prior commitments at night,” he offered as he wrapped his hand around the red leather shaft of my boot. “The cheerleaders… They, uh… They practice here at night when we’re gone, right?”
“Yeah.”
Tatum nodded. “Yeah, it was that way in Seattle, too.”
I let out a caustic laugh. “Tatum Bryant…” I tried his name on for size. “Happens to move to Providence at the same time that T.J. Bryant Jr. gets released from Seattle’s training camp.” I scrubbed my palms down my face. “I should have known… I usually keep up with preseason trades to the Reds better than this.”
“You’ve had a lot going on…” Sighing, he asked, “Would you have told me to get lost?” The gaping wounds around his heart showed. I wondered who had put them there. “If you had known who I was when you walked into the bistro three weeks ago?”
I sighed. “I would have thought you were the most attractive man I have ever laid eyes on, then called the firm and had one of the other designers take over your project.”
He took my hand in his. “Then let’s call this one a win.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you—I mean, did the team win?”
He cracked a smile. “Yeah. Defense did good. Held ‘em off until the clock ran out. Which was a damn good thing, too, because I would have been useless out on the field after I tackled my girlfriend and watched her go unconscious.”
“To be fair, I was where I should have been. You were out of bounds.”
Tatum laughed. “Blame Miller for jumping me mid-air. He pushed us out of bounds before we hit the ground.”
The word hit me like a ton of bricks. Or like a very solid wide receiver. “Did you just call me your girlfriend?”
“Yes, Miss Porter,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning in to kiss me.
I turned my cheek. “We can’t.”
“We already did.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I argued, raising my voice. “I could get kicked off the team.”
“If we get caught.”
