The thought startled me, but it wasn’t as scary as it should have been. Instead, I felt a sense of contentment, mixed with an urgent need to make the beautiful brunette mine.
As a professional athlete, I’d had a lot of women throw themselves at me. Not once had I ever felt the desire to even take one on a date, but here I was dreaming about knocking up this beautiful woman.
My mother would be bouncing off the walls with excitement if she knew what was running through my mind. She’d been after me to settle down for a couple of years now. My older brother, Ward—a tech genius and self-made billionaire—was a workaholic and she’d given up on getting grandkids out of him. Our younger brother, Caden, was twenty-five, but he was training with the U.S. Olympic soccer team. And my twin sisters were only eighteen. My dad’s head would probably explode if one of his baby girls got serious with a guy.
Looks like I’ll have to take one for the team.
I returned my perusal to her face and stared at her, mesmerized when she laughed at something someone said to her as they left. Damn, she was so fucking beautiful.
She looked young, but not enough to be one of my teammate’s daughters. I hoped. Glancing around, I tried to figure out who she might be with, but there were only a handful of people left, and they were talking to the players they’d been here to meet.
I moved toward her as though she was metal and I was a magnet. Her eyes came to mine and widened for a moment, before they sparkled as she returned my smile.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said when I was less than a foot away. “There’s no way I would have forgotten you.”
Her blue eyes filled with humor, and she put her hands on her hips. “Does that line ever work for you?”
I inched closer, keeping my steady gaze locked with hers. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never used it before. Because I never say a thing I don’t mean.”
Her expression flitted with shock, then her face flushed with pink as a pleased smile curved her lips. “Um…” She shuffled her feet nervously. “No, we haven’t met.”
“Prentice,” I said, moving just a tad closer, so I was invading her space but not touching her.
“Naomi.”
“That’s a beautiful name. It suits you.”
Naomi dipped her head as she blushed again. “Thank you.”
I played football in high school, was recruited by Notre Dame for college, then was drafted when I was twenty-one and spent the past eleven years playing for the Nighthawks. I’d done hundreds of press conferences, speaking engagements, and numerous other things that required me to talk. But for the first time that I could remember, I felt tongue-tied.
Before I could come up with something to say, our wide receiver, Hale, and his wife, Lisa, stopped to say hello. I nodded in response to their greeting and gritted my teeth in frustration while they introduced themselves to Naomi. After a few minutes, they said goodbye and I breathed a mental sigh of relief.
“So who are you—”
“Naomi!” Dana, the girlfriend of one of our rookies, called out. “See you at the club!” I frowned, irritated at yet another interruption, and wondering who the fuck she was going to a club with.
Once they were gone, we were finally left alone, and I opened my mouth to try again. But clearly, our win was the only luck the universe was going to give me that night because Nixon, one of our newer defensive linemen, came barreling into the room and right up to Naomi.
“What a game, Mims!” He shouted as he picked her up and spun her around. “We crushed the other team!”
I clenched my fists so I wouldn’t snatch her from his arms. She laughed at his antics, and jealousy burned in my chest. I ground my jaw, telling myself not to be a bastard—I had never been the kind of guy to go after another man’s woman. But Naomi had me questioning my ethics.
Nixon put her down after a couple of twirls and dropped his arm around her shoulder. “Hey, Prentice,” he greeted me with a grin. “I see you met my baby sister, Naomi.”
Sister? Thank fuck she wasn’t there with anyone else.
However, considering how young Nixon was, I couldn’t help wondering if she was legal. I doubted he would bring his sister around if she were under eighteen. But the worry lingered.
3
Naomi
It turned out that my concerns about being uncomfortable while waiting for my brother in the post-game room had been unnecessary. Sally had taken me around to introduce me to everyone, and I’d fit right in. Only nobody warned me that Nixon would be one of the last players out of the locker room. Or that I wouldn’t care how long he took because I’d have the best distraction in the world.