“Liliana, Richard is serious. He made it clear that if you refuse to work for the team, we’ll be forced to cut you off financially.”
Oh, whatever. “Okay, thanks for the info gottagobyeeeee.” I pushed the hang-up button, shooting metaphorical lasers with my eyes at the pickup truck driver through its tinted windows. Cut me off, financially? I didn’t know why they thought that would work.
Why the hell was he so desperate to have me work for him, anyway? I wasn’t buying the whole you owe me for paying for college thing. As far as money went, besides tuition, I’d only asked my mother to help financially when my dog, Joker, had needed surgery, and when a couple of my foster dogs needed medical help I couldn’t afford. Even with the expensive surgery, I still lost my boy, Joker. But both of the rescues went on to forever homes. The couple of times my mother had helped me out, Dick admonished her for “setting a bad precedent and using his money to do it.”
My mom was a lot of things. Vain. An unfit mother. A social climber. A former Dallas Bulldogs cheerleader who moonlighted as a jersey chaser.
Audrey Costello-Head may have been a flake who needed a man to take care of her so she could go shopping at Neiman’s and get on the committee for the Cattleman’s Ball. Still...
She wasn’t a Dick Head.
Finally! Someone left me enough room to squeeze in behind the jerk in the pickup. “Yassss, biiitchesss!” DFW drivers believed our daily commute was a contact sport. As such, we took that shit as seriously as we took our Friday night football or the Red River Rivalry. Pushing my way into the exit lane felt like my very own touchdown dance. Slowing down, I moved over to the right, rounding the truck on its left side. The pickup driver turned on their signal to move into the lane in front of me. Refusing to let the truck over, I pulled even with the passenger side, rolled down my window, extended my left arm, flipping the driver off with enough force that surely the sonic boom reverberated through his cab.
Asshole.
Yet, somehow, he managed to slip in behind a Tesla two cars back. I didn’t think anything of it until I took the right toward the apartments where my appointment was, and the truck turned behind me.
Oh, shit.
There was a scene in Miss Congeniality where Sandra Bullock tackled a guy in the crowd during the talent competition. She told the pageant director that the dude had a gun. The pageant director replied that in Texas everyone has a gun.
Yeah. That.
I tried to hold it together, except when I turned in to the garage for the building, the truck followed. Convincing myself I was being paranoid, I found a guest spot and put the car in park. It was a nice building. The first floor had a gym, spa, coffee shop, restaurant, dry cleaner. Good. That meant people were close by. A thought that gave me little comfort when much to my horror, the truck whipped into a numbered spot catty-corner from me.
Fuck. I double-checked to make sure my doors were locked then put the car in reverse. The truck bounced as the sound of the driver’s door shutting echoed off the concrete walls, and a large man in basketball shorts walked to the bed and grabbed an athletic bag.
I knew that neck-length messy black hair. That scruff. Those wide shoulders. The breath rushed from my chest. I rested my forehead against the wheel hoping he wouldn’t notice me. Only, when I chanced a peek, his maple-syrup-colored eyes met mine, his pink lips turned up at the corners. Shit. I would have rather faced a gun.
Shutting the car off, I grabbed my bag while he leaned against the bed of his truck. I made my way over knowing I wasn’t getting out of this without saying hello.
“Well, well. Liliana Costello. Fancy meeting you here.” Brody Shaw’s voice was all dark, sweet hot fudge, and I was the ice cream melting under the sound.
His lips curled in something like flirty amusement. “Especially after you flipped me off.”
My heart sped up. “Hi, Brody. It’s been a while.” The term “sex on a stick” was invented for this man. At six foot three and 252 pounds, Brody used to run the forty in five seconds flat. The man was built like a brick shithouse. Though he’d had shoulder issues the past couple of seasons, Brody Shaw was the archetypal middle linebacker for the Dallas Bulldogs. Big and fast, he had a Mastiff-sized set of shoulders and his ass resembled two bowling balls trapped in a pair of football pants. The man’s arms were surely a gift from some long extinct Roman god, and those legs...oh my God, they were my crack. I had a thing for strong legs—the kind of thick, ripped thighs a guy only got from squatting four hundred pounds or digging into the turf to push other men around.
I know. Very cavewoman of me.
We’d chatted a few times before, when my mother forced me to attend team functions. I knew the dude was witty, quick with his devastating smile, and flirty as all get-out.
The first time we talked, he’d approached me during a rooftop gala. I knew him, of course, but he didn’t realize who I was at the time. He’d spent a solid thirty minutes making me feel like the center of the universe. We’d discussed politics, books, a shared love of the TV show Supernatural, and the foundation we were there to support—an organization working to minimize the instances of concussions in high school sports. He’d even asked me for my number before one of his teammates interrupted and mentioned I was the GM’s stepdaughter.
An hour after that convo, he left with a tall blonde he hadn’t arrived with. Not that I would have given him my number, anyway. I didn’t date my stepdad’s players—if being Billy Costello’s daughter had taught me anything, it was that football players were fickle, hedonistic, and volatile.
It didn’t stop Brody and me from gravitating to each other at any and all subsequent events before he inevitably left with a different woman. Between that, and the very recent fantasy suite scandal, it was clear Brody Shaw was bad news with a capital Bad Boy.
Fun to look at, even to flirt with on occasion, but that’s where it ended.
I swept a stray hair behind my ear as I tried not to stare. It wasn’t easy. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’m running late for an appointment. In fact, I should get going. It was good to see you.” I started to sidestep him to head for the elevator. Brody slung his bag over his shoulder and matched my strides. The lines in his forehead deepened as he squinted an eye shut, catching his bottom lip between his front teeth.
Jesus. Ten years into his career and he looked even better than he had in college. The laugh lines, the bronzed skin, and hard muscles underneath. I’d watched Brody play football at UNT when I was a student. That Brody was a boy. A boy who did things to my lady parts, granted, but still a boy. This version of Brody was a man. The sharp jaw, the crooked nose with the scar across the bridge, the dimples hidden by his dark scruff and eyes that warmed every part of me.
My breath came out in a pant. Annnd that wasn’t embarrassing at all.
“Lily, aren’t you a dog trainer?”