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She’d run out of arguments, and she slumped against the brick terrace wall. “Do you have a better idea?”
“I sure as hell do. Mind your own business.”
She took a deep breath, then slowly shook her head. “I can’t.”
***
Coop popped one of the small yellow pear tomatoes in his mouth. It didn’t go well with the remnants of his cherry sucker, but he needed to stall. She was right. He’d been messing with her. Trying to make that wrongheaded kiss seem as meaningless as it should have been.
He gazed over at her. She looked so damned disappointed in him. Like she’d caught him torturing a kitten. What she wanted was over-the-top and doomed to failure, but he still felt about two feet tall, an emotion he hadn’t experienced since his college coach had deservedly called him out for too much partying.
“All I’m asking for is an hour,” she said. “Two at the most.”
He never let anybody put him on the defensive, yet that was exactly what she’d done. She saw herself as some kind of knight-ess in shining armor, and she expected him to join her crusade. She worked for him, damn it. He was the quarterback, and she didn’t get to call the plays. “You’re asking for a lot more than that.”
She wouldn’t give up. “Isn’t a young woman’s life worth a little of your time?”
He countered her attempt at emotional blackmail with cold logic. “Her life isn’t in danger.”
She gazed over the wall at a big maple that had turned red. For once, he couldn’t tell if she was sincere or playing him. “Being born in this country gives us opportunities most people in the rest of the world don’t have,” she said. “Where you happen to be born. It’s the luck of the draw, isn’t it?”
He’d been born dirt poor, but . . . Shit. She was going to make him do this. Or maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was the challenge of what she wanted.
***
The prince smelled of some bullshit cologne that probably cost a couple of oil wells but made Coop queasy. The guy had dyed black hair and a thin mustache shaped like seagull wings. His eyeglasses were tinted a weird
blue at the top but clear at the bottom, and he wore western clothes—a suit custom fit to his small build and cap-toe gray oxfords that might have fit Coop’s feet when he was ten. Coop didn’t have anything against small guys. It was Prince Aamuzhir’s big ego that put him off.
“You must sail with me before I sell my yacht. It’s one of the largest in the world, but the pool is in the stern, and I only swim in the sun.” The prince spoke flawless English with a British accent. “With a second pool in the bow, I can swim regardless of which direction I’m sailing.” A chuckle. “I’m sure you can’t understand why this is important enough to me to buy a new boat. Most people can’t.”
Coop was in a foul mood. He’d met more than his fair share of assholes like the prince—wealthy men who fed their sense of self-importance by rubbing shoulders with jocks and, at the same time, condescending to them. Still, he nodded affably. “Me? I’m only a worn-down football player. Now you . . . You’re a man of the world, a real smart guy. I could see that right away.”
Sherlock had done her research. “Some of the Realm’s princes are fairly stand-up guys,” she’d told him. “Well educated. Businessmen and government ministers. A fighter pilot. Prince Aamuzhir isn’t one of the decent ones. He spends most of his time away from the Realm throwing parties with very expensive hookers.”
The prince blew a plume of cigarette smoke that Coop did his best not to inhale. “Invite some of your friends to sail with me,” he ordered. “Dean Robillard. Kevin Tucker. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting them.”
Fat chance. Robillard and Tucker would dangle this douchebag over the rail of his single-swimming-pool yacht and drop his ass straight in the water.
“I’ll give ’em a call,” Coop said. “See if they can get away.” He took a sip of some very old scotch from a heavy crystal tumbler that he doubted even the Peninsula’s collection of luxury barware kept on hand. He’d been in this suite a couple of times, but he’d never seen that gold fountain in the corner, those jewel-studded ashtrays, or the embroidered purple silk throw pillows.
The prince had taken the chaise that sat near the grand piano. As he crossed his ankles, he revealed the pristine soles of shoes he apparently wore only once.
“Tell me, old sport . . .” The prince let loose another stream of air pollution. “How do you think you’d have played against Joe Montana or John Elway?” He asked the question as though it had never been asked before, as if rookie sports journalists all over the country hadn’t offered up the same query more times than Coop could remember.
Coop pretended to think it over, took another sip of scotch, then gave his customary answer. “Those guys were my idols. I only wish I’d had the opportunity. All I know is, no matter who I played against, I did my best.”
The prince recrossed his ankles. “It is my observation that too many quarterbacks are impatient. They don’t read the defense properly.”
Coop nodded, as if the prince were one of the great football analysts instead of an egotistical jerkoff who didn’t know shit.
He gestured toward Coop’s hand. “You have worn your Super Bowl Ring.”
Super Bowl rings weren’t known for their subtlety. The Stars latest was a gaudy, oversize son of a bitch with enough diamonds to outfit a high-society ball. Coop gazed down at his finger. “Beautiful, i’nt it?”
“Exquisite.”
Coop could practically see the guy salivating. “I’ll tell you what, Your Highness . . . I never let anybody try on my ring. I worked too damned hard to earn it, but for you . . . Aw, hell . . .” He pulled it off his finger. “You’re a man who understands the game the way most people don’t. See what it feels like to wear one of these.”
