He needed someone out there fighting for him, getting his name in front of the people who mattered. He needed an agent who believed in him.
He needed Payton.
“Thank you,” Cedric told her, because he needed to.
“For what?” she asked.
“For taking this seriously. For taking me seriously. I was sinking when you found me, you know? I’d called just about every major agent in the business and no one wanted to take a chance on me.”
“When did it change from you taking a chance on me to the other way around?” she asked.
“When I discovered just how much I needed someone like you in my corner. As much as I want there to be something more between us—and, believe me, I want that really bad—I need you as my agent even more. I need you to fight for me.”
Not just for him, but for his brother, Derek, too. Payton would be his key to making sure Derek could remain at Marshall’s Place.
Payton reached across the table and covered his hand. She gave it a firm squeeze.
“Fight for you is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Chapter 8
Payton held a folded edition of The Post over her head in an attempt to shield herself from the rain that had been falling in a steady downpour for most of the day. She made sure her car doors were locked and headed for the Linden Avenue Recreation Center. Even though the mini-football camp was scheduled to end in less than an hour, Payton was relieved she was able to get here at all. Her meeting with the representative from Electronic Sports Gaming had lasted longer than she’d anticipated.
The raucous yells indicative of middle schoolers riding high on sugar and unexpended energy greeted her as she entered the rec center’s front door. She wasn’t sure how much Cedric and his teammates had been able to accomplish in the rain, but from the sound of things, the kids were having a great time.
Payton walked through the short entryway and into a bevy of activity. She recognized the Sabers players instantly. Besides the fact that they were twice as tall as the room’s other occupants, she’d also studied the backgrounds of each one of them. She knew the rookie linebacker, Percy Johnson, could have scored a much better deal than what his agent had gotten for him. Payton was biding her time before she approached the young player.
She spotted Cedric at what appeared to be the same time he noticed her. He jogged toward her, a half-dozen kids following in his wake.
“You made it,” he greeted her.
“Barely,” she replied. “It’s pouring out there. But I’m here and ready for some football.”
Cedric caught his lower lip between his teeth—and wasn’t that the sexiest thing she’d seen all day. He shook his head. “Sorry, but you’re too late. The flag football game ended about an hour ago.”
“And we won,” one of the kids who reached just past Cedric’s waist said. He high-fived another little boy, while the other kids in the group glared at them. Payton figured they had been on the losing team.
“So what’s left?” she asked.
“We’re just running through a few more drills. These guys—”
“And girls,” one of the girls said.
“Sorry.” Cedric smiled down at her. “These guys and girls didn’t know there would be a quiz at the end of today’s camp,” he finished.
“Quiz?”
“A test?”
The kids scurried away like bits of paper flying in the wind.
“You sure do know how to clear a room.” Payton laughed.
“I was kidding about the quiz. I knew that would send them running.” He grinned, looking over at the kids who had already joined the other groups. “They’re a good bunch. Other than a couple of near fights over the ball, we haven’t had any problems. To be honest, this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
“Better than spending your weekend off in Atlantic City?” Payton asked.
“Much better.” His brown eyes sparkled with amusement. Payton was no match for their magnetic pull. He caught her gaze and held it captive. Delicious little butterflies fluttered around her stomach, and her skin tingled with sparks of the electricity that snapped between them.
“Hey, C-Man!” A little boy with crooked glasses ran up to Cedric and tugged on the hem of his shirt. “Do we really have to run sprints if we miss three passes in a row?”
Cedric’s gaze finally broke away from hers. He looked over to one of the rookie wide receivers and made a cut motion, waving his hand in front of his neck.
“What? You said to make it like our normal practice,” the wide receiver called.
“They’re not getting paid to catch passes,” Cedric replied. He returned his attention to Payton. “The rookies have been harder to handle than the kids.”
“C-Man?” she asked, referring to the name the little boy had called him.
His face broke out in a grin. “Some of the kids thought I needed a nickname.”
“Ah.” Payton nodded. “And C-Man was the best you could come up with.”
“Not me, them. We’re going to call the area they sit in at the Sabers game ‘C-Man’s House.’”
“They’re going to a Sabers game? When did this come about?”
“Not one of these kids has ever been to a game. Can you believe that? I figured what’s a few tickets, you know?”
It would not be just a few tickets. If Payton’s estimation was correct, it would probably be close to forty since he would have to provide for chaperones, or as many as sixty if each child brought a parent. Payton knew he could afford it—Cedric was a millionaire, after all—but not every player was thoughtful enough to do something like this. And she hadn’t even had to tell him to do it. In fact, the idea had never crossed her mind.
“That is so generous of you,” she said with a sincere smile.
Again, he shrugged it off as if it were no big deal. But it was a huge deal. The image of the partying, hotheaded, troublemaking Cedric Reeves she’d mistaken him for had been replaced by this laid-back, kindhearted person who spent an entire Saturday teaching disadvantaged kids the game of football, then promised them all tickets to a game. Why hadn’t this Cedric been talked about in the newspapers? Payton doubted he’d made such drastic changes just in the few weeks they’d worked together. Why had his good heart been hidden from the rest of the world?
“Are you going to make me beg?” Cedric asked.
Her brows shot up at his question.
“Your meeting? ES Gaming?” he hinted. “You’ve been here for ten minutes and haven’t mentioned it.”
“I’m sorry.” Payton laughed. She should have known he’d be itching for news. Too bad she didn’t have much to share. She shrugged. “It’s still too soon for me to know what will come of it. It was a good meeting. I told my contact that I was confident you would remain a New York Saber. We’ll see how it goes. But these things take time.”
She started toward the group of kids. “So, how can I help?”
Cedric fell into step beside her. “Help? In those clothes?”
She looked down at her gray pencil skirt that ended just above the knee and the matching cinched-waist jacket. Her black three-inch heels clickety-clacked on the rec center’s painted cement floor.
“Yeah, okay. I’m not dressed for football,” Payton conceded. “The bag with my sweats and sneakers is sitting next to my front door, along with my forgotten umbrella.”
“Don’t sweat it. We’re almost done here anyway,” Cedric returned. “We’re going to go over a few more safety fundamentals and wrap it up.”
Payton stood to the side as Cedric and his teammates huddled the kids together. In a booming voice that carried throughout the open space, Cedric imparted the importance of being safe, even when playing touch football. He then led the kids in a huddle yell, much like the ones Payton had watched the Sabers do right before the start of a game. The huddle broke apart with many high fives and laughter.
“Ms. Mosely?”
Payton turned, finding Mrs.
Shipley, the rec center’s director, waving her over to a side door. She pointed to a cardboard box at her feet. “This just arrived addressed to you.”
“The shirts!” Payton said, running over to the box.
She had thought to order the T-shirts two days ago. She’d found a local screen printing shop and had paid for rush delivery, but the owner had emailed to say there was a possibility the shirts still would not be delivered by today. Payton ripped the packing tape from the box and fished out a teal-and-silver T-shirt.
“Those are great,” Mrs. Shipley cooed.
“They did turn out pretty good,” Payton agreed. “Let’s go pass them out.”
The kids went wild as Payton and the director began passing out their surprise T-shirts.
“Where did these come from?” Cedric asked, lifting a shirt from Payton’s arm and holding it out. He read the caption. “The First Annual Cedric Reeves Mini-Football Camp?”
“I thought the kids would like a keepsake from their day,” Payton explained, grinning at the group of kids, many of whom pulled their T-shirts right over the tops they were wearing.
“You thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“The kids seem to like it,” she said. She glanced at him, a smile tipping up her lips. “You know what this means, right?”
“What?”
“You now have to hold a second annual Cedric Reeves mini-camp.”
He puffed out an exaggerated breath and rolled his eyes.
“Stop it.” Payton gave him a playful punch on the arm. “You know you enjoyed this just as much as these kids did.”
“Yeah, I did,” he admitted, an adorably sheepish grin on his lips.
Mrs. Shipley announced that the bus had arrived to take the kids home. Payton had agreed to pay the rec center’s bus driver extra for working on a Saturday, but with the rain pounding the sidewalks outside, she would make sure the man received a bonus. If not for him, the kids would have to walk home in this terrible weather.
The kids all said goodbye, many of them running up to Cedric to give him a hug. Payton’s heart filled as she watched him give each child his undivided attention as they said goodbye.
Mrs. Shipley and another of the staff members with an umbrella guided the kids in small groups to the bus. When one of the girls dropped her knapsack, Cedric darted out into the rain for it. He grabbed it from the slick sidewalk and carried it to the bus, then rushed back into the center.
“You got any T-shirts I can fit into inside that box?” he asked her, holding out his arms. He was soaked to the bone after less than a minute in the unforgiving rain.
“Sorry,” Payton said. “Unless you want to try stuffing yourself into a child’s large.” She held out one of the leftover T-shirts to him.
His brow lifted skeptically. “I couldn’t get this over my arm.”
Payton had to agree. The roped muscles of his rock-hard biceps would probably tear the T-shirt in two. But, God, he had to find something else to put on. The white Sabers shirt he wore was now plastered to his chest, outlining the smooth, solid muscles underneath.
“Hey, Cedric, we’re out of here,” Percy Johnson called as he and Vance Boyd, the rookie wide receiver, walked toward the side exit door, along with the rec center’s other two staff members who had volunteered to help with the event.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” Cedric called out to them.
“Like we had a choice,” Vance returned.
Turning to her with a roguish grin, he said, “I get way too much pleasure out of giving those rookies a hard time.”
A little boy with dreadlocks down his back came running from the rear of the center. “Where did everybody go?”
“Hey, little man, where have you been?” Cedric asked.
“I had to go to the bathroom.”
Cedric caught him by the shoulder and shuffled him toward the door, but they were too late. The bus had already taken off.
Mrs. Shipley came through the door shaking the water off her umbrella. She stopped when she spotted the boy. “Daniel Johnson, what are you doing here?”
“Bathroom,” Cedric explained. “I can take him home,” he offered.
“No, I’ll do it,” Mrs. Shipley said. “I know where he lives. This isn’t the first time he’s been left behind.” She motioned for the boy to follow her, but before walking back through the door, she turned to Payton and Cedric. “Ms. Mosely, I know we have a few things to discuss. Do you mind hanging around for just a bit? I won’t be long.”
“Sure,” Payton said. “We’ll start picking up some of this equipment.”
Mrs. Shipley nodded and led the little boy out of the center.
Payton turned to find Cedric standing with his arms crossed over his damp shirt. “I didn’t mean to automatically include you in cleanup duty,” she said. “You’ve been here all day. I don’t expect you to stay.”
“I can’t think of another place I’d rather be right now,” he answered in a silky voice.
Payton stopped short. She attempted to speak but for the life of her couldn’t form a single response.
Cedric took a step toward her and her synapses began firing again. Payton sidestepped him and headed toward the middle of the room, where remnants of the day’s activities lay strewn about. She grabbed a mesh bag that was draped across the back of a chair and began stuffing it with the pieces of uniform equipment Cedric had brought for show-and-tell.
“Looks like the kids enjoyed themselves,” she said, shoving the knee pads and helmet into the bag.
“We’ve already had this conversation,” Cedric said, his voice both amused and sexy.
The blood rushing through her veins picked up its pace. Payton tried to stuff the bulky pair of shoulder pads into the bag, but the protruding edges kept getting caught up in the bag’s webbing.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” she groused.
Cedric grabbed her wrists, halting her assault on the equipment. “Would you relax?” he said. “Give me this before management fines me for destroying team property.”
“I’m sorry,” Payton said. “It’s just…” But she couldn’t finish the statement. How did she verbalize what had her wound so tight? She couldn’t allow Cedric to know that just being around him sapped every bit of her will to resist him. It would only encourage him to try harder, and Payton knew she was living on borrowed time when it came to fighting this attraction. If he pushed any harder, she was going to cave.
She let him handle the shoulder pads while she started picking up footballs.
“Didn’t you have a couple of other guys who were supposed to help out?” Payton asked.
“Jared was here earlier, but his girlfriend called and he went running like the whipped little girl that he is.”
She smiled at the thought of the big football player dropping everything to rush to his girlfriend’s side. “I think that’s so sweet,” she said.
Cedric’s right brow arched, and in a husky whisper he said, “That’s good to know.”
His seductively murmured words traveled along her skin like a sensual caress. Payton felt a hot flush creep up her neck. Her eyes were drawn to his mouth and that sexy dip right in the middle. As if he knew what it would do to her, his tongue darted out and wet his lips.
Payton sucked in a swift breath. The urge to kiss him was so overwhelming she had to stop herself from closing the distance between them and connecting those lips to her own.
“So, everything went okay?” she asked, for what, the third time?
“You really need to stop fighting this,” Cedric said.
Payton pretended she didn’t hear him. She had to fight this, even though it was getting harder by the millisecond to deny the intense attraction that suffused the air whenever she was around him.
She picked up another football and tossed it into the air. “I’m sorry I missed the game,” she said. “I was in the mood for a little football.”
Cedric cinched the drawstring on the mesh equipment
bag and shoved it to the side. He motioned for her to throw the ball. “Let me see what you’ve got,” he said.
“You want to play football?” she asked.
He hitched a shoulder in a casual shrug. “It’s what I do.” He clapped his hands together, then held them out. “Come on, Ms. Football Guru. You may know a lot about the game, but there’s a big difference between knowing a few plays on paper and knowing how to execute them in the real world.”
A slow smile curved the edges of Payton’s lips. She could never say no to a challenge.
Against her better judgment and the threat of ruining one of her best pairs of panty hose, Payton kicked her heels off and tossed the ball to Cedric. She jogged a few yards away, turned and caught his light pass with minimal effort.
“You throw like a girl,” Payton taunted.
“Maybe because I’m throwing to a girl?”
“Well, try to forget that detail,” she said, throwing the ball back to him with a lot more force than he’d used.
He caught the ball against his chest. “I told you once before, there’s no way I can miss the fact that you’re all woman.”
A tingle traveled up Payton’s spine, just like the first time he’d said those words to her.
“Ready?” Cedric called, his arm poised to throw.
“Hold on,” she said. She jogged to the other end of the room. “I want to see if they’ve got you playing the right position.” She held out her hands. “Ready.”
The ball came spiraling toward her. Payton reached up and caught it midair. She tucked the ball between her arm and chest, just as her daddy had taught his players, then she took off toward an invisible goal on the other side of the room.
Cedric waited for her, crouched like a defender, a wide smile spread across that gorgeous face.
I'll Catch You (Kimani Romance) Page 9
