A Secret for a Secret (All In 3)

We arrive at the team meeting room. A catered hot breakfast buffet is spread out along one end of the room. Half our team is already seated at the tables, shoveling food in their faces while they catch up after off-season. Bishop and I grab a plate and load up.

“Shippy, King, have a seat!” Rook Bowman, our team captain, gestures to the two open seats at his table.

“Always with the Shippy bullshit,” Bishop mutters.

Bishop and Rook loathed each other with the fire of a thousand burning suns during the team’s first season. It got a lot worse when Rook found out Bishop was dating his younger sister. They had it out behind a garbage dumpster—I mediated—and now most of the time they get along.

“Keep calling me Shippy, and I’ll tell you all about your sister’s favorite positions in the bedroom,” Bishop mutters as he takes the seat across from Rook.

Rook half chokes on his sausage link, and Chase, one of our teammates, who’s sitting on his other side, gives him a couple of slaps on the back. He waves his hand away and shoots a glare at Bishop. “You wouldn’t.”

Bishop gives him a you-try-me look. “Only your sister is allowed to call me Shippy, so unless you’re going to start snuggling with me during movies and fondling my—”

I slap the table to prevent Bishop from finishing that statement. Also, Rook looks like he’s about to launch himself over the table. My shirt is white, and I would prefer not to walk around all day with remnants of my breakfast splattered on it.

“It’s too early for this nonsense. We don’t need the team captain scrapping with teammates on day one in front of the actual rookies.” I nod in the direction of two very fresh faces standing by the door, watching their new captain and his brother-in-law get into it. They’re too new to know that it’s just two guys giving each other the gears. Mostly.

“We’re good.” Rook shovels in a forkful of scrambled eggs and pushes away from the table. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and tosses it at Bishop before he heads for the new guys.

“Man, I’m glad I don’t have to be all friendly and peppy this early in the morning like he does.” Bishop picks up a strip of bacon and folds it accordion-style into his mouth.

“I’m not sure peppy is something you could achieve, even if you mainlined energy drinks and ecstasy,” I offer.

“Probably not.” Bishop looks around the room and tips his chin up. “You think our GM got himself an assistant?”

I follow his gaze to the front of the room. Standing at the desk with her back to us, arranging papers, is a woman with wavy chestnut hair that nearly reaches her waist. “Maybe an intern?”

She’s wearing a navy dress that conforms to her very feminine form. I trace the dip of her waist and the curve of her hip, skimming down to where the hem of her dress hits the bend in her knee. Her calves are bare, athletic, and toned, and her heels boast a little bow on the back. Classy, yet sexy. “Possibly.”

“I hope the eye candy is gonna be permanent,” someone at the table behind us says, loud enough for everyone close by to hear.

“I wouldn’t mind if she helped me with my jockstrap,” one of the other guys chimes in, eliciting a loud chuckle from the rest of the table.

I glance over my shoulder and pin them with an unimpressed glare. I recognize Foley from Tampa, and Dickerson is an LA trade. They’re notorious womanizers. “Watch your mouth and have some respect. That’s someone’s daughter.”

“Take it easy, King. It’s not like we’d actually say that to her face,” Foley says.

I don’t have an opportunity to reprimand him further because the GM, Jake Masterson, and our head coach, Alex Waters, enter the room through the side door. The GM crosses over to the woman, whose back is still turned to us, and he gives her a smile that seems . . . overly warm. He leans in and squeezes her shoulder as he says something with his mouth close to her ear.

“Maybe she’s not his assistant. Maybe she’s his new girlfriend, ’cause that looks pretty damn friendly to me.” Bishop jams a sausage link into his mouth.

“Maybe,” I agree.

She turns slightly, giving me a glimpse of her profile. Her cheeks are flushed pink. I blink a couple of times, because she seems incredibly familiar.

“I think I know her,” I mumble, more to myself than to Bishop.

“Not as well as our GM does, by the look of things.”

It hits me like a puck in the chest without pads on. I do know her. Queenie. My one-night stand who bailed the next morning and left a Post-it and panties hanging from my doorknob. Destroyed panties. “Oh God.”