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“What school?”
“St. Francis.”
Christian nodded. He was sitting on the couch, with one arm slung across the top and one foot propped up on the coffee table. It certainly didn’t look like he was in any rush to get up, and he seemed perfectly content just talking about, well…nothing.
I tilted my head. “Can I ask you something?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Why are you here?”
“You mean at the Bruins?”
I shook my head. “No, here with me at this moment. You must have plenty of other things you could be doing right now that are more fun than listening to my drivel.”
“Maybe I like drivel.”
I snort-laughed. “No one likes drivel.”
He smiled, and his eyes dropped to my lips for a fraction of a second. “Maybe I like you.”
I shifted in my seat to face him. “Why?”
Christian shrugged again. “I don’t know. I think you’re interesting.”
My eyes narrowed. “What about me is interesting?”
“You’re a billionaire who lives in a rent-controlled apartment over a fruit stand and tried to give the team you inherited to your grandfather. What’s not interesting about you? Given your situation, most people I know would live in a penthouse by now and take car services, not walk twenty minutes to the stadium every day after getting off the train or humping it on two buses to Queens to see a high school game.”
I raised an eyebrow, and a grin spread across Christian’s face.
“Plus, you’re hot.”
That last part made me smile. “And technically, I’m your boss.”
His grin widened. “That makes you even hotter.”
I chuckled. “Tell me about yourself, Christian. I feel like you know so much about me, but I don’t know anything about you, other than your stats, of course.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“You think I’m hot too, don’t you?”
I laughed. “Just answer the question, Knox. Something tells me your ego gets stroked enough.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shook his head. “No girlfriend.”
I tapped my lip with my pointer. “What do you do in the offseason?”
“Recover. Let my body heal. Sleep. Fish. I have a cabin on a lake up in Maine. Spend time with friends. Travel. Keep up with my training.”
“That sounds so…normal.”
“The season is anything but normal when you play in the NFL. It’s tough on the body and mind. You’re on the road all the time, the media follows your ass around, women hand you underwear with their numbers written on them and sneak into your hotel room. So normal is good.”
My face wrinkled. “Women give you their underwear?”
Christian smiled. “Any other questions?”
“Am I demented if I’m curious to know whether the underwear are clean or not?”
He laughed. “Maybe. But I like the way you think.”
A little while later, Christian’s cell chimed. He slipped it from his pocket and swiped. “I promised PT I’d stop back down before they close at seven thirty for a quick recheck of my knee, so I have to run.”
I tapped the screen on my phone to check the time. “Oh, wow. I can’t believe it’s seven fifteen already. We never even talked about the players or the staff.”
“Which means I have to come back.” Christian winked and stood. “Unless you want me to come back after and we can talk over dinner?”
I smiled. “I should probably get going.”
He nodded. “Another time, then?”
“Sure.”
He walked to the door. “I’m going to hold you to that sure.”
CHAPTER 5
* * *
BELLA
“Hey, kiddo.” I waved to Wyatt from the bottom of the bleachers as he ran over. He’d just kicked a forty-yard field goal to end the second quarter and was all smiles as he thumbed back toward the uprights.
“Did you see that? Where’s my contract? The Bruins gotta get them some of this.”
I laughed. “I think you should try finishing high school and college first.”
He waved me off. “Man…school’s for dummies.”
“I went to four years of college, did my master’s, and three quarters of a PhD. What does that make me?”
Wyatt grinned. “Wasteful. You own a football team. You didn’t need to do all that.”
He was teasing, so I spared him the lecture about the value of a good education. “Is your mom here? I didn’t see her in the stands.”
“She’s gotta work late again. She said she’d try to make the end of the game. But I told her not to. I don’t want her taking two trains to get here only to see the last sixty seconds. There’s a game next Saturday she can come to.”
“I’ll cheer you on for both of us.”
He waved. “I gotta get to the locker room before Coach kicks my ass. See you after the game?”
“Butt—before the coach kicks your butt. And yes, I’ll find you after the game is over.”
Wyatt ran back to join his team.
I took a seat on the bleachers and spent halftime catching up on emails from my phone. It was hard to imagine how most people in the Bruins organization got anything done with the amount of emails and meetings they had to manage. Five minutes into the third quarter, I noticed a news truck pull up in the parking lot not too far away. Then another one, and another. I really hoped they were here for the team and not me. I slouched down into my seat, just in case. By the end of the third quarter, there had to be a dozen trucks crammed into the already-full lot of cars. But none of the media had come in. They’d gotten out of their vans and were standing around waiting for something. I tried to focus on the game and pretend they weren’t there.
