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It’s happened to my mother—a woman far more beautiful than I am—half a dozen times in my life. I swore when I was little more than a child that I would never let that happen to me. That I would never let some rich man try to buy me. And yet here I am, surrounded by thousands of dollars’ worth of presents from Hunter meant to do just that.
The tension in my gut turns to sickness. I’m not angry—how can I be angry about him doing what rich men always do? But just because he thinks that’s how things should go between us doesn’t mean that I do. And he’s not the one in control of this relationship. I am.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, willing to believe that maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing here—at least until I speak with him. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let things start off like this. Because I’m not. No way in hell.
Which is why, when the courier comes back twenty minutes later with a grin and a cocky, “I was told I’d have some shoes to return?” I hand him more than four pairs of shoes. I hand him the whole lot and then turn away, letting Alice’s exclamations and pleas for me to reconsider fall on deaf ears.
Chapter 18
Hunter
I hang up the phone from the courier I hired to take Emerson the stuff for tonight and try to figure out what the hell I did wrong. Tanner said to woo her, so I tried to woo her. And obviously fucked the whole thing up every way that I could fuck it up.
I don’t understand. I’ve dated women before—not for a while, sure, but I used to be pretty damn good at the dating thing. And the present-giving thing. So why the hell did she just send it all back? The dress, the shoes, the jewelry, the underwear? Damn it, I was really looking forward to seeing her in those scraps of blue lace. That ass of hers would look amazing in those cheeky panties.
“Dude, you look like someone just stole your dog,” Shawn tells me as he walks up behind me in the locker room.
“I feel more like someone just stole my girl,” I mutter, shoving my phone into the cabinet at the top of my locker. “Come on, let’s go. I feel like hitting something.”
“I think you’ve got your job confused with Tanner’s. You hit anything out there and Coach will pop a blood vessel. He’d lock those magic hands of yours up six days a week if he could.”
“Cuz that would work really well for me.” I shoulder my way through the door with a grunt.
“Right? Then some guy really would steal your girl.” Shawn holds the next door for me. “I talked to her today, by the way. She’s too nice for you. And too smart.”
“I think she’s beginning to figure that out.”
I start jogging toward the fifty-yard line, with Shawn keeping pace beside me. I’m no slouch, but he can leave my ass in the dust if he wants to—he isn’t one of the top three wide receivers in the league for nothing. But he seems content to run along beside me until we get to where the offensive coaching staff is waiting for us.
We’re running a couple of new plays today, designed specifically to shut down the Panthers’ vicious defense. We’re 4-0 this season, but we haven’t been tested yet. Not really. Sunday’s game is going to change all that.
And yet, as the plays get called, I can barely keep my head in the game. I’m running on autopilot as I twist then sidestep to avoid the Raiders’ favorite defense combo. Tanner is blocking to my left, Seb to my right, and they’ve provided me a few seconds to run straight up the center. But I’m so distracted it takes less than that before I’m sacked, or virtually sacked as I’m currently wearing the untouchable red jersey.
I fuck up the play two more times before I can finally get my shit together and then I’m running for the end zone with Tanner clearing the way in front of me. About damn time.
We’re on the field for three hours, and though I spend most of it focusing on how to evade the Panthers’ trademark plays, I still find myself thinking about Emerson more than I should. In fact, if not for the red shirt I would have had my ass handed to me no less than half a dozen times.
It makes me feel like a jackass. Maybe that’s why, as we’re heading back to the locker room, I knock a shoulder into Tanner and say, “You screwed me over, man. She didn’t like the Loubis.”
“Bullshit.” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “All women love the Loubis, which means you fucked it up. What’d you do?”
“I don’t know. All I know is she sent ’em back, along with everything else I got her.”
“Everything else…what’d you do?”
The accusation puts my back up. “Why the hell do you keep thinking I did something? I wooed her, just like you told me to.”
“Obviously not.” He claps me on the back as we make our way into the tunnel. “Step into my office and tell me all about it.”
“Yeah, cuz that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”
He laughs. “You worry too much. Doesn’t he, Shawn?”
“No shit.” Shawn sails past us. “But if you want to know what’s up with your girl, Browning, you should man up and ask her.”
Four hours later I’m still trying to figure out how to do just that. I texted her on my way home, to make sure she was good with me picking her up at seven for dinner before the ball. She’d texted back right away, told me seven was great. And never mentioned the returned presents.