Page 99 of Player For Hire

I wanted to be published. I wanted it almost as much as I wanted this amazing man sitting in front of me. But I wouldn’t be here. I’d be almost six-hundred miles away.

“Right.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I could go with you. I still have some friends in Chicago. I could probably find a job.”

“What?” I sat up.

“I love you, Naomi.”

My mouth dropped open. “I…” My eyes filled. “I love you too, Colder.”

He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. “Thank God. I was afraid to say that. Afraid I’d scare you away.” He cupped my face and kissed me soundly. “I think I’ve loved you right from the day you tried to hire me.”

I laughed and dashed away a tear that rolled down my cheek. “That fast?”

He nodded. “Right from the jump. When you called me to stop the elevator even. That hood came down and all this red hair tumbled out and those huge blue eyes… I was gone.”

I curled my fingers around his wrist and pulled his hand into my lap. “I couldn’t ask you to uproot your life, Colder.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.” He looked down at the floor and seemed to think something over, then his eyes met mine. “You’re it for me. Endgame, Naomi. If I have to go to Chicago to stay in your life, I’ll do it.”

“I don’t even know if the offer is worth it yet.”

“Then we’ll make the decision when we know more. You have to promise me something though.”

I clutched his hand and he covered both of mine with his other one. “What?”

“You won’t put this book on the backburner. You’re still going to go after publication.”

“I promise.”

“Good.” He smiled at me, but there was a sliver of something in his eyes that I couldn’t figure out. Was it because he’d have to leave his friends and family?

Maybe I wasn’t worth moving across the country with. We’d only known each other for a short time.

“Hey, Cal!” Duncan and Jimmy were a few beers in and happy to see him.

Colder twisted around to see him, then he turned back to me. “I’m just going to go check in with him.”

“Are you going to talk to him right away?”

He stroked a hand down my hair. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”

Iona looked from Colder to me, before she crossed the patio to me. “What’s going on?”

“So much.”

I filled her in on the voicemail and the job offer.

“What the hell?”

“I know. I was just as surprised as you were.” I sagged back in the chair.

“Let me see it.”

I pulled out my phone again and handed it to her. She read the message, then she even lifted the phone to listen to it herself. She handed it back. “He sounds like a douche.”

I laughed. “He is kind of.”

“He just fucking fired you and now he wants you back? And the way he worded the offer. Please. He’s getting butt-fucked by his clients because his idea is backfiring, I bet.”