Touching Down(61)

“I’m Sophia Fontaine, Ralph’s granddaughter.” She folded a sleek sheet of ice-blond hair over her shoulder, holding her smile like the girls in The Clink held their pocket knives—close and proficiently. Girls like her, who’d grown up in privilege and money, used their smiles as weapons, crafting them to either piss off or berate their enemies.

“Ryan Hale,” I said, lowering my hot dog. The sight of it seemed to be making her nauseated. Or maybe it was the smell.

She nodded conventionally then tapped at the outside corner of her mouth. When my head tipped, she did it again. “Mustard.”

“Oh.” I wiped at my mouth, finally getting what she was alluding to. “Thanks.” Plucking a big red straw from the tray, I tore off the wrapper and plunked the straw into the big blue Icee Grant had remembered to send up. If I couldn’t eat my hot dog without feeling judged, at least I could slurp my Icee.

“So that’s your daughter?” Sophia’s light eyes moved to Charlie, who was still clutching the foil-wrapped hot dog like she’d forgotten about it entirely.

“I suppose I’ll claim ownership today. She mowed the lawn and didn’t say anything too profane.”

When Sophia’s expression dropped, I realized all measure of joking would be lost on this one.

“Joking,” I added before sucking up a stream of Icee. “Yeah, Charlie’s my daughter.”

Sophia continued to study her. “She’s a beautiful girl. And she’s already a hit in this room because she clearly loves her football.”

I waved at my plastered-to-the-glass daughter. “Obviously. And thank you. She is a great kid.” I was just telling myself to cool down and stop being so bitchy-judgey, when Sophia sniffed.

“Who’s her father?” She asked her question with a smile, but damn, I’d never seen a blade more dangerous looking than that smile.

Working out my reply as I worked on my Icee, I returned her version of a smile. “Her father,” I answered with a shrug.

She gave the briefest of laughs, leaning back in her chair and crossing her knees. The position made her legs looks extra long, almost like they were as long as I was tall. “Grant and I go way back. Well, at least ever since he came to the Storm a few years ago.”

If she thought that was way back, I guess Grant and I had met in the Jurassic period.

“How long have you known him?” she continued.

My eyes drifted to the field, where Grant had just caught the ball at the twenty-yard line. Charlie let out a whoop that rocked the windows, making a few people jump. Yeah, because a fan cheering at a football game was such a novel notion.

“A while,” I answered, setting my Icee down so I could clap with Charlie.

Sophia was clearly getting irritated at my vague answers—it was her eyes that gave her away—but she held that smile like she was a former Miss Congeniality. “What’s it like dating one of the biggest names in the game?”

I struggled for an answer to that. Not for how it was like being with a guy like Grant, but how I wanted to answer this woman I knew nothing about. “It’s nice,” I settled on at last.

She blinked at me. “Dating the Grant Turner is ‘nice?’”

“It’s really nice?” I reached for my Icee again, like it was a safety blanket, and conjured up a smile.

“Well, it’s not really nice all the time, right? I’ve dated my share of players to know all about that,” she exhaled, tinkering with the gold bracelets on her wrist.

I assumed she was getting at something, though I wasn’t sure what. My raised eyebrow must have cued in her.

“You know. The reputations. The rumors. The stories.” Her eyes roamed to the field. “The secrets.”

The way she said secret, I knew this was the point she was really getting at. My head shook. “Grant doesn’t keep secrets from me.” He never had—he never would.

Because Grant might have been hot-headed and stubborn, possessive and intense, but he’d also been trustworthy. Always. I knew that quality had transferred into the present.

Sophia looked at me from under her long dark lashes. “You don’t believe that, do you? No matter how well you think you know a person, all men have their secrets.”

And this conversation was going nowhere. If she thought this little warning was enough to make me tremble in my Cons, she didn’t have a clue what type of woman she was trying to intimidate.

“Not Grant.”

She watched me for a minute—studying me as though she were trying to see if I truly believed that or if I only wanted her to believe I believed that. I held her stare, unblinking.