I looked down at her and then back at Wes. "Can she do that? I mean … I don't know of any football teams with little girls on them, and the season already started." I gestured around the field as if to say, "Obviously."
"You let me handle it. I've got some contacts. I'll find her a good team with nice boys, and I'll even help her practice."
Lexi's little hands covered both of my cheeks and forced my eyes to hers. "I can play in one day?"
I shrugged. "I might have to wrap bubble wrap around you like a mummy, but sure, why not."
"Ayeeee!" she screeched. "Football in one day, one day, one day," she sang.
Wes smiled down at my daughter. "Don't worry, Win. I'll make sure she has all of the right equipment. I'll even take her to practice if you're too busy."
It took a lot of willpower to keep my face in an easy smile versus the what-in-the-hell-is-happening look that I really wanted to give.
Because, seriously? What was happening?
Wes teaching my daughter football. Wes saying he would take care of everything-team, equipment, even driving her to and from practice …
Who was this man?
And the real question … was he planning on sticking around?
The halls were quiet, the hustle and bustle of players and coaches fading into the night just like the last splinters of sunlight.
I'd been getting lost in Winnie and her daughter when Coach Bennett came over and pulled me away for a last-minute briefing-something I'd specifically requested he do in the past-and I had immediately gotten annoyed. I'd been trying to make sense of why ever since.
Why would a guy who'd all but tattooed the fact that he wasn't into women with kids or kids in general on himself suddenly feel bereft after being taken away from … a kid?
It was a serious mental conundrum, and I hadn't come up with much, but there were two things I'd managed to walk away sure of.
One: I owned a goddamn football team, but the time I'd spent on the field with Lexi Winslow a couple of hours ago had been the most fun I'd had with the sport in years. Maybe it was because I was stressed, or maybe it was because Lexi had real, untainted, unmarred by years of disillusion passion for it, but either way, the result was the same.
The career you have because you love it can so easily turn into something you have to work to love. I wouldn't have ever thought that would be me, but it was. I'd let it become a job-and I hated myself for it.
And two: Lexi Winslow might have been six years old, but in practice, she was more of an adult than Thatch. So, really, it was basic science that she'd annoy me less than him.
Right?
I'm still not sure, but it seems plausible.
I wanted more time to test the theory.
Which brought me to now.
The hours got long during the season for people like Winnie and me, people who had decisions to make and staff to organize past the point when the last player's cleat left the field. I'd been doing this-putting in hours and hours after the sun went down-since I could remember, and I knew Winnie hadn't exactly been relaxing in the tropics for weeks at a time.
So, tonight I hoped to find her before the hours bled into nothing and the time to do something other than work completely escaped. I wanted to change, and the first step toward that was to spend time with her-get to know her.
We hadn't had time for much other than foreplay, fucking, and football, and my brain was finally starting to wonder what it was about her personality that kept me coming back for more. I knew why I craved her body, but I didn't have the answers for the rest of my yearning. Prolonged attraction and downright affection for a specific woman and some newfound tolerance for kids? Honestly, I was really nothing more than a big ol' bag of what the fuck these days.
As I neared the end of the hall, moments away from turning the corner into the one that led to her office, a buzzing started to build in my blood.
Anticipation or some form of psychosomatic indication that Winnie Winslow was near-it could really have been either one. Her back to me, she moved with grace, but not the kind that lacked a spark. She swayed and swooped like she had something hidden in each step. With the way I felt when I watched, I was starting to think it might be magic.
Her hair fell down her back like a sheet, covering a large portion of the plum color of her shirt, and a barely there wave had set in thanks to hard work and a little sweat.
I wonder if her skin tastes salty … if her pulse will thrum slow and steady or erratic like the buzz of a hummingbird's wing while I suck softly on the vein in her throat.
"Winnie," I called, eager to see her reaction to me and calm the one in my pants. We'd left on pretty good terms, and I felt pretty confident that I'd scored some points with the whole aiding-in-distracting-her-kid thing.
When Winnie turned and her nostrils flared more than her eyes, I decided maybe I shouldn't have been so eager. And yet, even in the face of her distaste or disinterest or uncertainty-or whatever it was making the whites of her eyes get bigger and the plump of her cheeks hollow out-the scales tipped so far toward needing more time with her, with them, confusion felt like a distant memory. The Winslows were apparently like chips, as I was left completely unsatisfied with just a little of them.
"Busy?" I asked. She reached up to fidget with the ends of her hair, pulling a nonexistent piece out of her face-it was clipped back at the top-and shifting her gaze to the beyond boring pattern of tile on the ground.
It took a few seconds, but eventually, her shoulders relaxed and her eyes met mine again. "Just finishing up, actually."
Fantastic.
"Come out to dinner with me," I told her. I figured I had a better chance that way than if I asked her. It was one of those rarely practiced truths; people said no a hell of a lot less if you didn't present them with an easy opportunity.
She looked down the hall to her closed office door, a door I knew concealed her daughter, who waited on her mom to be done. She was probably curing cancer or answering several unsolved meteorological quandaries, but no matter the math or science, she was, indeed, waiting for her mom to finish up.
She's just doing it with style. I smiled at the thought.
Winnie's eyes softened slightly at the change in my face, but they didn't lose their edge completely.
Her expressions walked such a thin line, every smile only a heartbeat away from a frown, and every glare just moments away from ecstasy. So easily manipulated, I loved to see the way her face changed, and I often found myself playing with her just to get the chance.
Knowing exactly where the conversation was about to go and wanting her company badly enough not to care, I beat her to the punch.
"Lex too. I want to take you both." I smiled and reached out to put my hand to her jaw, but I stopped when she looked hesitant. I tugged at the very end of a clump of hair instead. "Hell, I owe her dinner after how smart she made me look today. Players and coaches, everybody thought I taught her all that information."
Laughter creased the very corners of her eyes, and she bit her lip, shrugging one sweater-covered shoulder. It was practically a turtleneck, the cowl covering nearly every inch of skin at her throat, but my mind wandered to the skin underneath as it moved and pulled, and suddenly, it seemed like the sexiest clothing ever made. Her wardrobe had been transitioning slowly along with the turn in the temperature, and I found there wasn't ever something Winnie used to cover her body I didn't like-except for the very obvious obstacle it presented when I tried to catch a glimpse of a whole lot of skin.
"She taught herself all that."
"I know."
"On a Wednesday."
I smiled deeper.
"In an hour."
I thought of the way Lexi constantly dug for information and imagined being the person who most often had to supply it. "She must keep you on your toes."
She laughed and shook her head, the tension melting right out of her shoulders as we talked about her biggest accomplishment. "She's easy. Far more mature than most kids, and looks the other way when I have to cheat and look up the answers to her questions on Google."
I could picture it happening: Winnie, acclaimed doctor and brilliant mind, sneaking away to find the answers to questions posed by her six-year-old.
"That's how I learned so much about Teen," she went on.
"Ah. The clinical penis," I said, remembering that day nearly two weeks ago. In some ways, it seemed longer. In others, it felt like no time had passed at all. I still wanted her with an intensity I couldn't justify, and I still knew it was a bad idea.
The only difference now was that there was no stopping, no turning back-I couldn't have if I'd tried.
"Dinner?" I prompted again. If I dropped it, so would she. I was going to have to be like a dog with a bone this time around.