Coach's Daughter

“Greta uses the training facilities to work out in the off season,” he explains quietly. We face off across the table until a few minutes later when the handle turns on the door and Greta appears in the entrance, dressed in a white sports bra and red yoga pants, hair in a sweaty bun on top of her head. She looks so wide-eyed and innocent, her gaze bouncing between me and her father that I encounter another hostile flash of guilt, but I banish it quickly. I let the lust win. Let the hunger and need and infatuation with her win.

“What is this about?” she asks, taking a hesitant step into the room.

Rick, looking a little seasick, pushes out a chair. “Have a seat, please.”

Greta sinks into a chair at the far end of the conference table, only a second passing before she peeks up at me through her thick eyelashes, her nipples pebbling inside her sports bra. And this, this is why I shouldn’t feel guilty. When I kissed her last night, it was obvious she felt this electricity between us. This…intensity. This rightness. I’m not letting some rule she made before we met get in the way.

“Mr. Bentley has a condition for signing the contract,” Rick says, staring down hard at the paperwork. “You, Greta. He wants you for his wife.”

Gradually, it sinks in and her chest starts to heave. “But…what? No.”

“He won’t sign otherwise.”

My throat starts to hurt. I don’t like her looking cornered. Or betrayed. So I remind myself I’m going to make her so fucking happy. I’m going to prove her theories about athletes wrong and we’re going to lead a blissful, loyal life together. This is just an obstacle we have to get through.

“What did I tell you?” she says, clearly at a loss for breath. “Athletes and their shiny toys. Money and power get you anything you want, don’t they?” Her eyes flash toward her father. “Same goes for coaches, doesn’t it?”

“Greta…”

“I won’t do it. I don’t care if he signs. You’re can’t just marry me off.”

“You’ll do what’s best for this family, you ungrateful—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” I growl, not liking the impatient, warning tone he takes with her. Nor do I like that he barely put up a token resistance to what I’m doing. I expected a fight. Then I realize I have no right whatsoever to be mad. Look at what I’m doing. Taking away her choices. Letting my obsession with her cloud my sense of right and wrong. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let her walk away, but I don’t want to fulfill her assumptions of me. “Take a walk with me, Greta.”

She wants to tell me to go to hell. That much is painfully obvious.

But she wants a reprieve from making this agreement even more.

When we walk back into this room, I need there to be an understanding between us. Right now, she’s looking at me like the devil and it’s burning me alive. All I want is to be her savior and for her to be mine.

I push back from my place at the table and stand, gratified when her eyes go a little dazed over my height, my strength. I’m built to satisfy you, angel.

Does she read my mind?

When I reach her chair and find those beautiful legs crossed so tightly, it seems possible. I hold out my hand, and after a slight hesitation, she takes it, letting me pull her up and guide her to the door. I’m holding her hand and she isn’t resisting time alone with me, so I incorrectly assume things are going well.

That misconception is cleared up as soon as we step outside the conference room. The second the door closes behind us, Greta rears back and slaps me.

Chapter Four

Greta

I’ve always had a volatile temper. Once, in second grade, my father had to come pick me up from school early from the principal’s office. I’d kicked over a bookshelf in class because the pudding cup was missing from my lunchbox. Some might say that’s an overreaction, but hey. When you’re expecting chocolate, the absence of chocolate is unacceptable. That’s just a basic fact.

Do I not have every right to slap this cocky bastard?

Who demands a wife as a contingency to a sports contract?

That is insane.

Also insane? The fact that when I walked into the conference room and saw the relentlessly gorgeous point guard—the one who haunted my dreams last night—my first reaction was excitement. It started in the crown of my head and traveled all the way down to my toes, leaving a trail of fire behind. That heavy-lidded way he watches me, his strapping body poised to move at all times, touches a place deep inside of me. Makes me ache, makes me want to forget that I don’t trust athletes.