by Sosie Frost
I stopped at the top of the stairs, but I turned east instead of west to see what else Piper had done. She had taken the white room for her own, a soft space filled with pastels, feminine and lovely.
And the baby?
I nudged open the door.
Rose slept in the pink room—everything perfect and light and as beautiful as a princess deserved.
Her crib was beat up—some rickety thing that still seemed to comfort her into a quiet sleep. The baby nestled next to a stuffed bunny and curled under a pink blanket.
Absolutely content. Dreaming with a little smile.
I set my jaw. She’d need a new crib. A better crib. Her furniture wasn’t good enough, not for my house, and not for the sweet little thing sleeping so innocently under my roof.
The anger rushed away, replaced by exhaustion.
No.
Something different. Something new.
Contentment?
That didn’t make sense, and I wasn’t figuring it out tonight.
I left the baby to sleep and collapsed in my own room, my head swirling, heart racing, and soul knotted in sheer confusion. This peace I felt wasn’t something that had ever infected me before. I had no defense against a feeling like this—how was I supposed to fight a calmness that stole my temper and replaced it with a sense of…
Letting Piper and the baby into my home might have been the worst decision of my life.
Or maybe they would be the ones to save it.
11
Cole
I dreamt of Piper. That mean I didn’t just wake up with a bruised and broken body. I also wielded an inconvenient hard-on.
Mondays usually hurt. This day was worse. Even my arms ached too much to jerk the stiffness from my cock, the only part of me that wasn’t sore. Usually a good night’s sleep took the edge off after a game, but I should have iced myself on and off through the night.
Live and suffer, my fucking motto.
I peeled myself from the bed. I needed a hot shower to ease my battered body and a couple minutes to tame the beast between my legs.
I hadn’t even touched Piper last night, but she still invaded my mind. I wasn’t sure what I liked more—the teasing little camisole she wore as pajamas…or the memory of her bare skin in the hot tub.
I never wanted a woman as badly as I wanted her. I had to take her. Hold her. Show her just how I liked to recover after a hard game.
If only she’d let me close.
If only she realized how badly I needed her. How beautiful she was. I wished I could tell her that every time she argued with me or teased me or challenged me, it was…life-altering. I didn’t understand it, but, for the first time in my life, I connected with someone. I’d never let anyone close before, and now I couldn’t get rid of her. But was it a curse…or luck?
For too long, I believed what people whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear. They called me ferocious. Dangerous. A monster.
Piper was the one person who made me feel like a man.
I showered and ignored my throbbing erection. I wasn’t animal enough to jerk off thinking about her. Yet. I dressed, stretched, and took the stairs one hobble at a time.
I tensed as a playful shriek echoed through the house.
The baby.
The noise shocked me. I wasn’t used to sound in my halls. I tolerated the hum of an air-conditioner, the trickle of a shower, and the clank of the machines in my weight room. Otherwise, I preferred silence. No voices or distractions.
And no one ever giggled.
The bottom of the stairs was baby-gated. Of course. But even in the light I didn’t understand the mechanism. I stepped over the damn thing. My hamstrings ached, but at least I didn’t fall on my face.
Especially since my landing was the most popular damn spot in the house.
Rose toddled to the stairs, screeching like a drunk banshee haunting a sorority house. She pointed at me. I didn’t know what to do, so I pointed back. It was an acceptable greeting. Rose proceeded to tell me the story of her life in a rush of noises that contained no coherent sentence structure, diction, punctuation, or recognizable words.
“Ba da pop ricky bunny bam mamamama!”
“Uh.” I froze. “Good?”
It appeased her. Rose held her arms up and sighed.
“What?” I asked.
“Up up up.”
“Oh no.” I retreated backwards and smacked the baby gate. It jiggled, but it wouldn’t open. I was trapped. “I don’t do up.”
“Up!”
“No…that’s okay.”
Her smile faded. Her pout chubbed her cheeks and puffed her lip. Now she asked slower. Maybe thinking I didn’t understand her? Why else would someone ignore her request and be so cruel?
“Up?”
“Really…it’s not a good idea.”
Rose disagreed. She stretched her arms high and whined. My heart crashed against my ribs like it was a goal line struggle in the middle of a playoff game.
Nope.
I couldn’t hold a baby.
A single squeeze, and I’d pop her head clean off. She was so little. Too tiny, too dangerous, for someone like me to lift, hug, carry.
The shame rushed over me in a cold, humbling sweat. I didn’t trust myself with the baby.
I wanted to protect her from me, but the only way to do it was to break her heart and deny her only babbling desire.
“She’s saying up.” Piper appeared from the hall and slung the kid into her arms. “She wants you to hold her.”
I might have nodded, but I couldn’t speak.
Piper wore a soft sundress, a pastel yellow that contrasted with the hazelnut perfection of her skin. Her hair rested low in a thick ponytail, and she smiled with the baby on her hip.
Feminine and perfect.
My veins pumped with grit and mud and sweat. Nothing sweet. Nothing gentle. Nothing as pretty as a lovely woman bouncing her smiling baby.
My chest tightened. Panic? No. Something worse.
It was only day one of our living arrangement, and I already felt claustrophobic in a fucking mansion. I wouldn’t let it get to me. I needed to eat, drink, and do a couple laps in my pool until my lungs mercifully filled with water.
Piper followed me to the kitchen. I didn’t know why. Was this something people…did? Or was it just Piper’s prerogative to pester the hell out of me?
“Glad you’re finally up, sleepyhead.” Her eyes drifted to my bare chest, the ink on my arms. “I was starting to get worried.”
No one ever worried about me. I tensed, but I didn’t think she patronized me. She waited for my response.
I didn’t know how to talk to a baby, but I couldn’t ignore a woman. Piper wouldn’t let me.
My voice was a hoarse rasp after yelling to my guys on the field. “I sleep-in after games.”
“Well, you’ve missed all the fun today.” Piper seated the baby in a high chair. I guessed I had a high chair now. “We’re not used to all this room. Rosie can just run, run, run. We even played a bit in the garden. It’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like the roses there.”
I shrugged. What the hell did she want flowers for? The prettiest Rose was sitting next to her, sticking Cheerios in her nose.
And Piper kept on talking.
“So we went for a long walk and looked over the grounds. And I showed her the pool. We’ll try it out after lunch. I’ve never taken her swimming, but I think she’ll love it.”
I abandoned my plans to swim laps, even though it was the only exercise my body could handle. I’d retreat to the weight room instead. Do a little cardio before the team meeting and film review at four o’clock.
Piper scrunched her nose as I heated premade chicken breast and freezer-burnt vegetables in the microwave.
“If you like, I was going to make spaghetti for dinner,” she said.
“I don’t do carbs before Friday.”
That was harsher than I meant it. Piper arched an eyebrow
. Christ, she saw right through me.
“So…you’re still upset about the game?”
I could handle her invading my space. I could make allowances for her living here. I might have even tolerated conversations in the morning as we passed in the kitchen.
But I wasn’t talking about what I’d felt during the game. Not now, not ever.
“You actually watched it?” I asked.
Piper dropped the pleasantries. “I called the Monarchs this morning.”
“And?”
“They said the penalty was an overreaction, but we’re waiting to hear from the league if they want to issue a fine.”
“Of course.”
“If they fine you, I’ll appeal it.”
Feisty little thing, acting big and bad in her sunshine yellow dress while teasing a baby with a spoonful of cereal. I knew she’d fight it for me. Made her as adorable as she was naïve.
“Don’t waste your time,” I said. “Frank Bennett will fine me for looking cross-eyed at a quarterback. Let them bill me and be done with it.”
“But it isn’t fair.”
“The game’s hardly fair.”
Piper sat at the counter, drumming her nails. “I don’t understand what happened at the end of the game. You sacked their quarterback, and there was no time left on the clock. Why did the offense get another play?”
I lowered my fork. “You don’t know a thing about football, do you?”
She took the insult as poorly as I thought she would. Her voice edged harder, and I got the distinct impression she wanted me to choke on my breakfast. The woman sucked at being confrontational.
“I’m reading an instructional book,” she said.
“You can’t learn from a book. Christ. The game can’t end on a defensive penalty. They called unnecessary roughness on me, so the Cougars got another snap, even though there wasn’t time on the clock. They scored on that play and won.” I set my plate aside. “How’d you make it this far in your Dad’s agency without learning anything about football?”
Piper didn’t aim for my jugular, so I got off easy. “I can read a contract. I can build a case file. I understand accounting and taxes. I can—”
“Get coffee for the office?”
“You got me, big shot.” Piper shrugged. “My daddy never taught me how to play football. Boo hoo. At least I’m trying to figure it out now.”
“I don’t think you can learn it by yourself.”
“Not like you want to teach me.”
I considered taking the challenge. It might have distracted me, silenced some of the dirtier thoughts as Piper leaned over the counter with a neckline that plunged just enough to tease me for looking.
Christ, she sat so casually in my kitchen.
Like she belonged there.
Like she had always been there.
I motioned for her to stay where she was and retrieved my playbook and iPad. Piper said nothing, offering Rose some cut-up fruit with her cereal.
The playbook crashed onto the counter. Rose giggled so hard I almost did it again.
“Uh-oh,” Piper said.
Rose agreed. “Uh-oh.”
“Get comfortable,” I said. “This will take a while.”
She stared at the playbook, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
“Teaching you football.”
“Are you serious?”
I pointed to the book. “Lesson one. Me.”
Piper laughed. “Cole, you don’t have to—”
“I play linebacker. That means I eat quarterbacks. This is where I line up for most plays.” I tapped the book. “And this is who I’m after—the other team’s quarterback. See these five guys on his offensive line? They exist to protect him from me.”
She didn’t buy it. “Cocky, aren’t you?”
“You don’t believe me?”
She arched an eyebrow. “A quarterback needs five men to protect him from you?”
“Sometimes more.”
“How dangerous. Here I am…sitting in the belly of The Beast.”
“Would you rather sit in my lap?”
“I won’t learn any football then.”
“What better way to teach you downs than by going down?”
“You’re a terrible tutor.”
“I’m a better lover,” I promised.
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“I can give you a demonstration.”
“Oh, that’d be fun, but I just agreed to be tutored by some big, mean linebacker who wants to teach me how to play the foosball.” She flipped through the pages of the playbook with a smirk. “Let’s start with the basics, big boy. And try not to be too offensive, there’s a baby in the room.”
Easier said than done. Damn tease.
Piper knew the type of pleasure I could offer, but she refused me every time I got close. If I chased, she’d play the mother card. Rose buzzed at her side, just happy to be a part of the group and armed with enough Cheerios to make a mess in my kitchen. Maybe a baby would have scared off another man, but if he couldn’t see Rose for the gift that she was, he didn’t deserve a woman like Piper.
I ignored the heat surging through my veins. Piper was right. Lessons came first…followed by the lady.
I gave her a brief summary of the game. Positions and downs, rules and formations, scoring and penalties. Piper was more intelligent than anyone I knew, and she picked up on a decent amount of terminology at the agency. She learned the rest quick enough, using my instruction and the videos I pulled from YouTube.
After an hour of study, Piper closed the playbook. Rose toddled around the kitchen, amusing herself with a pot, a wooden spoon, and the ability to dish out migraines. I sipped from my soda and shrugged.
“Any questions?”
“Yeah.” She stole drink and took a sip, almost daring me to lose my shit. “Why does everyone call you The Beast?”
Any question but that. I didn’t answer.
Her gaze lingered on my bare chest. “Why do you get so many penalties and cause so many problems for your representation?”
“Sorry to be a burden, Highness.”
“You know what I mean.”
I wasn’t giving her the truth, so I offered the obvious instead. “The league is all about player safety. When your twinkle-toes quarterback has a hundred-million-dollar contract, you gotta protect him. They added new rules, and now we play differently. More conservatively with a kinder, gentler tackle.
“But, aren’t you just…smacking into someone? I didn’t know there was a tackling technique.”
“Want me to show you?”
“Uh, I rather not get hit, thank you very much.”
I didn’t want to hit her either, not unless it was a good spank before a deep thrust. I curled my finger, beckoning her closer. “I won’t hit you. Just trust me.”
“Oh, sure. No problem.”
“You afraid of a little hands-on experience?”
Piper’s lip twisted, an amused smile. “All in the name of education?”
“Of course. Come get me. Show me how you’d tackle me.”
She glanced over the kitchen. “Here?”
I loved her confidence. “Do you really think you can bring me down?”
“I could bring you to your knees in an instant, Cole Hawthorne.”
Wicked woman.
“The key to a clean hit is extending yourself across the ball-carrier’s body.” I took her arms and laid them over me, where she would have gripped me in a tackle. Piper played along, rolling her eyes. “Wrap me up. Aim with your shoulder, not your head. Drive forward.”
Piper barely touched me, but the warmth of her arms stirred through me. She shrugged, her citrus scented curls tickling my chest.
“I’m half your size. It’s ridiculous.”
Rose darted around our feet. Somehow she found one of my shoes. The damn thing was as big as she was, but she presented it to her momma like it was some sort of treasure.
I had
an idea. It was a bad idea. A terrifying idea, but I knew how to win her over.
“Think of tackling like it’s a big, intense hug,” I said.
I reached down, grasping the kid under her arms. Rose giggled as I accidentally tickled her, but at least she didn’t scream.
I lifted her from the ground, amazed by how little she weighed and how easily she surrendered to being hauled into the air. I presented the baby, held out at arm’s length.
“There,” I said. “Tackle her.”
Piper wasn’t amused. “You want me to tackle my toddler.”
“Aim your shoulder low, keep your head high, wrap her up, and drive it home.”
She laughed, but she pantomimed what I asked. Rose giggled as her momma leaned in and squeezed her tight. But my lesson fell apart as Piper lifted her baby’s shirt and blew a raspberry on her chubby little stomach. Apparently, Rose found this hilarious.
“Like that?” Piper asked, taking Rose back.
“I have a feeling blowing bubbles on Jack Carson’s tummy will draw more penalties than pile-driving him into the dirt.”
Piper giggled. “Might get more women to watch the games.”
“They say I’m a dirty player, but I’m not that dirty.”
Rose wiggled, and Piper let her scurry on the floor. “Are you a dirty player?”
“What do you think?”
She bit her lip. “I think you’re stronger than you realize.”
“I think I’m exactly as strong as I realize.”
“And that’s why you don’t trust yourself.”
We weren’t talking about football anymore. “Do I scare you, beautiful?”
“Should I be scared? Do I have anything to fear?”
I wished I had an answer for her. “Unless you strap on an Ashenville uniform this week, you should be fine.”
“And if I was an Ashenville player? And you wanted to hit me dirty? What kind of tackle is that?”
She bit her lip, and I stared, enraptured. Was it possible to be jealous of her own bite?
I edged close to her, sensing her heat and inhaling her scent. My cock hardened as her mouth parted, puffing a hesitant breath as she waited my answer.
