CHAPTER ONE
‘COMING through!’ Lena clapped one hand over her eyes and pushed the changing room door open. She always sang out the warning, giving them time to cover up if they wanted. Some did, most no longer bothered. Eighteen months in the job and they were so used to her being around she might as well be wallpaper. But today she was in and out more than usual, and they were in and out of clothes more than usual, too.
She peeked through her fingers and registered that they were out of their clothes at the moment—but that they’d towels round their waists. Short towels. Dropping her hand from her face, she lifted the heavy bag off her shoulder and started pulling out the contents. ‘I’ve got the next lot—you want them now?’
‘Not yet, it’s the shower shot,’ Ty, the team captain, answered for everyone.
‘Oh, okay.’ She dropped the handful of shorts and looked up to find a place to leave the bag. And froze. Silently she swivelled her eyeballs left to right and back again and refused to let her reaction show.
Because nineteen nearly naked guys now surrounded her. Closely surrounded her.
Lena called on all her internal discipline to keep her focus up on their mischievous faces. The temptation to ogle was always there—how could it not be? They were championship-winning athletes with the megamuscles to prove it and no red-blooded woman could be immune to the urge to admire.
Lena was as red-blooded as any other woman. She just pretended not to be.
She narrowed her gaze because they were all grinning at her and stepping closer still, tightening the circle. Yep, she was in the middle of the men’s changing room, in the middle of a rugby scrum. While there might be thousands of women in the world who’d beg to be in that exact position—sans the towels—she wasn’t one of them.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, affecting a long-suffering big-sister tone.
‘We need your help,’ Ty answered for them all again, too innocently.
She handed him the bag in the hope he’d step back and take the others with him. ‘I’ve got to go and get the shirts. I’m just getting creases out of a couple of them.’
Her job description included that nebulous sentence ‘other duties as required’, and this one day of the year that meant playing the part of wardrobe mistress while the Silver Knights endured the photo shoot for their annual calendar.
‘We need you to do something else first,’ Jimmy, the first five-eighth, spoke up.
‘Really? What?’
‘The photographer says we have to glisten.’
Lena closed her mouth and took a microsecond to keep cool. Then she asked for clarification. ‘Glisten?’
Jimmy nodded and held up a bottle. Baby oil. ‘All over the torso.’
‘You can rub it on each other.’ She bit back an add-on comment about them liking grappling each other out there in the mud. She never let sassy snark out in the stadium; professionally polite was how she played it. Once she got to know the newbies she was friendly in a sisterly way, but, until then, pretty frigid.
‘We’ve got ball shots coming up straight after.’ They glanced at each other and smirked. ‘We’d lose our grip if we get that oil on our hands. Too slippery.’
Slippery, huh? With balls. Oh, they were appalling today.
Lena might not be interested but she was human and being surrounded by nineteen nearly naked, extremely buff sports stars would make any woman break into a sweat. Lena point-blank refused to sweat but, even so, her temperature slid up a notch. ‘Just wash your hands,’ she slowly stated the obvious solution.
‘It doesn’t work.’ Ty rubbed the tips of his fingers in her face as if to show how slippery they still were.
‘You have to help us,’ Max, one of the props, pleaded with puppy-style eyes. ‘I mean, we could get the photographer to do it but…’ He trailed off.
She knew these ultra-competitive jocks liked to tease. She had their respect. They always listened to her work requests and refrained from the worst of their laddishness around her, but she also knew they urged any new recruit to have a crack at asking her out. It seemed being shot down by her was some kind of initiation ritual for the young bloods. So she never failed to disappoint and said no to everyone. Truthfully, gorgeous as they were, she didn’t want to date any of them. Driven, elite demigods never prioritised girlfriends, and in her next relationship—which would be years from now anyway—she was totally being the top priority. Not to mention, the only woman. Three was so a crowd.
Besides, it wasn’t as if they actually wanted to date her. She wasn’t some to-die-for babe, it was simply another game for them, not anything to take seriously or be flattered by.
But facing this prank now, she refused to be flustered, wouldn’t blush or giggle or do anything girly. She knew what they were waiting for—the usual clipped brush-off. But they’d just gone a step too far and for once she wasn’t going to play the way they expected. They wanted her to rub baby oil all over their torsos?
‘Sure, no problem.’ She held her hand out for the bottle. ‘Who’s first?’
Their eyes widened.
‘You will?’ the guy in front gasped.
>
Yeah, they’d never have thought she’d say yes. Not when it was her personal policy never to get within two feet of any of them.
‘Of course.’ She flipped the lid of the bottle and squirted oil into her hand. ‘Other duties as required, right?’ She stepped up. ‘But of course I could sue you guys for sexual harassment….’ She paused for effect, then slapped her palm hard on the first broad chest in front of her.
She felt the wince, registered the sudden total silence and suppressed her smile. Yeah, now they were worried.
‘It’s not like you’re the one having to pose almost nude for pictures for people to pin up on their wall,’ the puppy-eyed prop managed to wheeze. ‘If that’s not sexual harassment I don’t know what is.’
Lena raised her brows. She squeezed the bottle again. ‘That’s the price, boys. Fame costs…’
‘And we’re paying.’ The next in line winced as she smacked her oil-slicked hand onto him.
With ruthless efficiency she slapped and swiped oil over the broad bare skin in swift strokes. It took mere moments to get through each in total scary-school-nurse fashion.
‘Are you guys ready yet?’ The photographer appeared from the tunnel entrance, accompanied by Dion, the stadium’s new CEO.
‘Almost,’ the last one croaked.
‘Right,’ Lena said briskly, glancing around. They stood silent and wide-eyed. She saw one of them pressing a hand to his chest where she might have slapped him a little too hard. She tightly pulled in her mouth to stop from laughing, because despite her efforts to prove the contrary, she was human and she had to react to this. But she had to be alone before she could.