I crossed my arms over my chest. "Your brother warned me you worked here."
"I didn't realize I was intimidating enough to require a warning." She smiled, and I had to give her credit for holding it in place as my own mouth flattened into a line. "Welcome to Washington, Noah. I heard about the trade yesterday."
Her polite attempt at conversation almost had me relaxing my stance and softening my tone just a little bit. But as I studied her face again, beautiful and fresh-faced and sweetly smiling, I decided that was the worst damn thing I could possibly do.
The last time I'd been kind to a teammate's wife, giving her a ride home because she drank too much, I was rewarded by her shoving her hand down my pants, a slap on the face when I told her to get the hell out of my car, and the loss of my position on the team when she told her husband that I hit on her.
Just another example that no woman was worth putting my career on the line for.
"It wasn't my choice to be here, trust me."
She watched me carefully, eyes darting over to the elevator panel before she leaned over and slapped the emergency stop button.
"What are you doing?" I hissed. She knocked my hand away when I tried to hit it again.
"Calm down. We have a solid five minutes before anyone in security is notified."
My answering stare was nothing short of incredulous. "How do you know that?"
"The twins tried it once because they were curious," she said calmly. "Paige was pregnant, and they wondered what would happen if she got trapped in the elevator. We turned it into a labor and delivery drill." Molly tilted her head, smile spreading as she told me. "Logan was so pissed because they disappeared from the practice field with his stopwatch to time it from beginning to end."
Rubbing my temples, I felt the beginnings of a headache blooming behind my eyes. Questions, so many questions, sprang to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down.
"Hit the button, Molly. I need to go to the weight room."
She glanced at a slim gold watch on her wrist. "We have just over four minutes." Then she pinned me with those blue eyes. "What's your problem? You're acting weird."
I pushed off the wall. "You don't know me. You wouldn't know how I act under any circumstances, let alone this one."
Her face pinched briefly. "Fair enough, but I used to know you. You were a nice guy, Noah."
"I was a college athlete who let his dick make stupid decisions. I screwed around and wasted my time on video games and parties and women who I don't remember anymore. Typical player, in more ways than one, and you'd do good to remember that."
The words were intended to hurt. And I saw the moment they hit their mark, as clearly as if they'd drawn blood from her smooth, pale skin.
Molly rolled her lips in, the edges of her cheekbones turning pink, but she didn't reply right away. I expected capitulation. Another kindly spoken request. And for the second time that day, she surprised me.
"I was in diapers when my brother started playing professional football. I've worked here for four years and interned for two before that. I'm the last person who needs a lecture about asshole football players. I daresay I've known more of them than you have."
"Whatever you say, Miss Ward." I shouldered past her and hit the button.
The elevator chugged back into motion, and she shook her head.
"There's no reason we can't be friends."
A laugh burst out of me. "There are so many reasons, and I have no desire to explain any of them to you. You've known a few players. Good for you. But you don't understand the kind of pressure I'm under, or the way that I operate, so I'll tell you this." I leaned toward her, gratified when she swallowed roughly, and her eyes widened. "I'm not here to make friends. You were a mistake that I narrowly avoided making, and I have no intention of going down that road again."
For a moment, I expected the crack of another small female hand against my cheek. But that was not what Molly did.
"What happened to you?" she whispered sadly.
The elevator doors slid apart, the area beyond blessedly empty. I gave her one last look. "I grew up, Molly. You should do the same."
I strode past her, and before I was out of earshot, I heard her mutter, "Dick."
The apprehension and nerves were long gone, but my jaw clenched at the surprising pang of irritation I felt. I'd been called worse by women. By teammates. Not by someone like Molly, though. Someone kind and friendly.
I kept walking, not a single pause in my long strides, because I was here to do a job, and Molly Ward had nothing to do with it.
Chapter Four
Molly
"Conceited."
Smack.
"Arrogant."
Smack. Smack.
"Little."
Smack.
"Prick."
Isabel raised an eyebrow. "Little, huh?"
"Shut up." I punched the bag again, grinning when it moved her backward from where she was bracing an arm against it. I pulled back one more time and hit the front of the heavy bag with a right cross, then shook my arm out and braced my gloved hands on my knees.
Isabel handed me my water bottle and dropped onto the floor, folding her legs neatly underneath her. The kickboxing gym didn't hold any classes during the lunch hour, so it was empty. Paige used to come here when she first married Logan, and slowly, our whole family became involved in one way or another. Isabel, the showoff, had to one-up everyone by taking over as the manager a couple of years ago when the owner was ready to spend more time with her family.
Perks of being sister of the manager was a private place to work out my lunchtime frustrations when my former crush, minor though it might have been, turned out to be a major league asshole. Flopping onto the floor next to her, I stretched my legs out and hissed at the burn in my quads. "If you do more squats tonight in class, I'll walk out."
"No, you won't," she said. "That's the reason your ass looks so phenomenal."
I sighed. "True."
"What happened?"
No sigh this time, but a deep, tortured, dramatic groan. "Do I have to talk about it?"
Isabel laid down next to me and folded her arms calmly over her middle. "Yes. I'm bored and have no life outside of work, and I'd like to live vicariously through your drama. Just like I always have."
And it was true. I was older than Iz by two years, and she was two years older than our twin sisters, Lia and Claire. The small gap in ages between four girls meant that we were up in each other's business allllll the time.
I shifted, stretching an arm over my chest. "He was so ... mean. And all I did was get onto an elevator. Like I even knew he was in there!"
"And you haven't seen him even once since, you know, the incident?" she asked delicately. Which should've been humorous because it was Isabel. She didn’t do anything delicately.
"Nope." I pulled my gloves off and tossed them over by my bag. Sitting up, I wrapped my fingers around my toes to stretch the backs of my legs. Isabel sat up too, tucking her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "I mean, I knew he played for Miami because I hear his name all the time. It's not like I was clueless about what he was doing, but"—I shrugged—"he was just the guy I used to have a crush on. I had lots of crushes in high school. He was hardly special."
Isabel pursed her lips.
"Shut up," I said. "I know what you're going to say."
"Do you, though?"
I tugged at the Velcro around my wrist and slowly unwound my sweaty wraps from my hand. "I can make an excellent guess."
Iz set her chin on her knees and watched me. She used to do that as a kid, too. Watch everything around her. Soak it up and process what she observed. It was what made her a good listener because she saw everything.
"So he's, what? Been pissed at you for nine years because you did something monumentally stupid as a teenager?"
"Geeez," I muttered. "Tell me how you really feel, Iz."
She gave me a look. "You climbed through
his window, Mol. It wasn't your brightest moment."
Hurt and embarrassment warred for my instant reaction, but I couldn't bring myself to deny it. At sixteen, I'd been boy-crazy, just like all my friends. And it was just my luck that as a next-door neighbor, I'd been given the ultimate gift. A hot college boy who was home a lot during the offseason.
"I was so convinced that he saw me, that he noticed me like I noticed him." I pulled off the other wrap, dumping it into a pile with the first one, then flexed my fingers. "I used to blame Mom, you know? Like her leaving us created this insatiable desire to make sure people liked me enough to want to stick around."
Isabel snorted. "I still blame Mom for a lot. Just ask my therapist."
My head swiveled in her direction. "You go to a therapist? Since when?"
"Eh, I went twice before it pissed me off. She was a whack job who kept asking me stupid questions. If I knew why I was so angry with my mother, would I be paying her a hundred bucks an hour?"
Laughing under my breath, I shook my head. That sounded about right. The thought of my emotionally reserved sister spilling her guts in a comfy chair to a shrink did not compute, not in any reality I was aware of. It sounded like something I would do. Allow a perfect stranger to untangle my emotions and figure out why the woman who gave birth to us didn't love us enough to want to stick around.
All four of us bore scars to varying degrees, and over time, they'd all healed differently. Mine was a sense of urgency if I knew someone didn't like me, whatever the reason. A niggling discomfort under my skin to fix it, fix it, fix it.
I sighed. "I'm sure that's part of it, but it was him, too. I'd completely convinced myself if I just ... had the chance to really talk to him, he'd fall head over heels in love with me, and I'd have the hottest boyfriend out of all my friends, who played college football."
"Not surprising for a sixteen-year-old."
"No, but it was crazy. To do what I did." My face flushed hot when I thought about it. Something I hadn't really done in years. The moments before his dad walked through the door, I'd never felt more alive. More womanly.
It should have been a blazing red warning light that Noah had no qualms about kissing me like he did or touching me like he had after I climbed through his effing window without so much as a single meaningful conversation between the two of us.
That five minutes after my legs cleared the windowsill, I was straddling his lap. I should’ve worried that his big, hot hands were underneath my shirt, sliding up my back and tugging it up over my head, when we'd barely kissed. That my hands shook where I'd laid them on his muscular shoulders because when he did kiss me, it felt like I was drowning in something so much bigger than I'd been prepared for.
If his dad hadn't walked in, I would've slept with Noah Griffin that day. And he probably would've never spoken to me again afterward.
It was something I had to come to grips with after it all went down.
After Mr. Griffin marched me back home to face my furious brother and my disappointed sister-in-law, I curled up in my bed and sobbed my sixteen-year-old heart out. The look on Noah's face when he realized how old I was cemented the fact that any happily ever after I'd imagined with him would stay firmly planted in my teenage brain.
"You know how every age you're at," I said, "you feel like, this is the most mature I'll ever be. Right now, I have it all figured out."
Isabel smiled.
"And then a few years pass, and you want to slap your past self for ever thinking something that stupid."
She laughed under her breath. "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."
"I wish I could go back and handcuff myself to my bed, so I never climbed through that damn window. I wish I could go back and get on the elevator two minutes later so that I never realized what a big, dumb asshole he is now." I shook my head. "I really, really wish I could take back the moment I said I wanted to be friends with him."
Her face was sad as she listened. "That doesn't sound like you. You're friends with everyone."
"Not Noah Griffin."
Inexplicably, that made Isabel grin.
"What?" I snapped, well aware that I sounded like the human equivalent of a pout.
"How'd he look?"
I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. "Isabel."
"That good, huh?"
Lifting my head, I glared at her over my shoulder. "You know what he looks like."
"Yeah." She sighed. "Sure as hell do. But seeing him in person, being stuck in an elevator with him, that's a whole different thing, and you know it, Molly. Give me the goods."
How did he look?
Oh my stars, I didn't want to think about how he looked.
Angry.
Big.
Beautiful.
More than likely, Noah would've hated that I called him beautiful, but he was. The symmetry in his features, the bold slash of his lips, the rock-hard angle of his jaw, the shock of dark hair, the icy color of his eyes ... everything about that man's face was a gift of genetics, and it pissed me off on principle.
A face that perfect should be smiling. Kind. Warm.
And he'd been the exact opposite. He took me in, judged me, then decided I wasn't worth a single ounce of his kindness.
What a prick.
I sighed. "It was stupid how good he looked, Iz."
"What are you gonna do?"
I rolled my neck. "I'm not sure. I do not want to turn down the new job from Beatrice because of this. There's no guarantee that Noah will be involved anyway. More than likely, they'll follow one of the other new guys ... maybe the new running back."
Isabel's eyebrows bent in. "The guy from the New England practice squad?"
I nodded. "It's not like Noah is the only new contract they signed this week."
"He's just the biggest name," she said gently.
"Thanks."
She held up her hands. "Just saying."
"It'll be fine, even if he is the one they want to highlight." I licked my lips as I thought about the rest of my day at work. "I'm going to go meet with Beatrice before we talk to Amazon, and they start filming at practice. Because I will not let him ruin this chance for me."
"And if they do choose him?"
My lip curled into an uncharacteristic snarl when I considered what that meant for me. It meant my single chance at proving myself to my boss would rest in the hands of the one person in the Wolves organization who hated me.
Awesome.
I bumped her shoulder with mine. "Maybe you can come beat him up for me if he's mean again."
Isabel stood with a grin, holding her hand out for me so she could tug me to my feet. "You got it."
After I'd dumped all my stuff into my gym bag, I slung it over my shoulder. Iz held out her fist to me, and I bumped it as I passed.
"Go get 'em, tiger," she said. "I'd bet on you any day of the week."
"Damn straight," I muttered. Noah Griffin didn't know me anymore either, but he was about to find out exactly what I was made of.
Chapter Five
Noah
My reputation as The Machine preceded me, that much was evident. The guys were polite in their greetings but nothing effusive. No violent, back-pounding hugs, nothing outside of reserved happiness that my football talents were now wearing black and red.
There was very little in any greeting about Noah Griffin as a person, and that suited me just fine. Until I got out on the practice field and saw Kareem Jones, outside linebacker and one of my former roommates from U Dub. Before he so much as opened his mouth, I braced myself for the attention I'd been actively avoiding.
He hooted loudly when I cleared the doors, drawing the attention of every damn person on the field. I laughed under my breath as he barreled toward me and lifted me in a massive hug with arms as big as tree trunks. He was two inches taller than me, so my feet cleared the ground for a second before he dropped me.
"Damn, boy, what they been feeding you in Miami?" he said around a wide, happy gri
n. "The Machine got fat."
I shoved at his shoulder. "You're delusional, Jones. I'd still kick your ass at the line every time, and you know it."
His booming laugh thawed a bit of the icy wall of distance I'd stood behind since arriving. But I still found myself glancing around to see if anyone was watching with suspicion or distrust.
It was ridiculous to think they would. Drama happened in the locker room of every team in the league, and the reason for my hasty departure out of Miami, made up or not, hadn’t been fed to mainstream media. What golden boy QB wanted to admit that one of his teammates—bigger, stronger, and more established on the team—had a chance with his Playboy Playmate wife? Not the QB I'd left behind, that's for sure.
But still, common knowledge or not, it rankled that anyone might look at me and think it was the truth. It made me wish I could go back and not offer her a ride, that I'd called her an Uber or called her husband or another one of the WAGs who'd been at the event. A drunk woman wasn't my responsibility, even if she'd felt like it at the moment as I came upon her swaying dangerously in the parking lot as she tried to find her keys.
Kareem waved another teammate over to introduce me, and I took a deep breath. No one was judging me. No one was watching with narrowed eyes.
Except maybe Logan, I thought as I caught sight of him at the edge of the field, watching me carefully underneath the brim of his well-worn black cap with the Wolves logo stamped on the front.
Turning my attention to the guys who approached, I recognized a few but not all. They all smiled, made small talk, and joked around with Kareem. The kind of familiarity that typically grew between teammates.
Just not with me.
Sometimes, I hardly recognized that about myself, but I'd been that way for so long, it felt like a fool's errand to try to change it. Change myself.
"Relax, man," Kareem said quietly as the other guys started talking amongst themselves.
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