Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers) (25 page)

“What?” I smile just as wide as he does. It might be the first time a man has made me smile like this in a long time. Eli was serious, but there’s a twinkle in this man’s eyes, and it’s infectious, even as I’m standing here in the foyer of his estate, glancing at the obviously expensive artwork adorning his walls and the deep blue oriental rugs lining the long, dark hallway.

“Cold feet. I can’t work that way. A man’s gotta have warm feet to be productive. Or a woman. Tell me, Cadence, do you have slippers? Really warm ones?” He raises an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious. This time, I laugh out loud, shaking hard against the bannister. My exhaustion is making me giddy, and I sit down on the wide bottom stair, still laughing. “It’s no laughing matter,” he says, but there’s amusement in his voice.
 

“No I don’t. I—” The porter interrupts us and barrels down the stairs and out the door.
 

“Have a good night, Mr. Corbett,” says the porter, barely looking back.

Rowan sighs and shakes his head. “Good help is so hard to find. But I’m about as blessed as a man can be, in the way of money, I mean. I’ll take what I can get.” I wipe tears away from my eyes from laughing so hard, and there’s a thudding and thumping directly up the stairs.
 

“Is there someone else here? What the—” Before I can finish my thought, a black and white flash starts down the stairs. My heart starts beating fast, but before I can leap to my feet, there’s a cold nose against my arm, followed by a few tentative licks of a warm tongue.
 

“Damn that porter. He must have gotten that dog stirred up when he was up there. Normally she just lies around and sleeps all day.” Rowan steps up to us and takes the dog’s collar, but she pulls against him, sniffing my arm and pressing her nose against my jeans. It looks like she’s a pit bull, her body adorned with black and white spots, her head and muscular body absolutely enormous. I freeze for a second and let her sniff me. “Eliza—you go on now—don’t bother Cadence.”
 

“Eliza?” The dog pulls against Rowan again, the stump of her tail wagging wildly back and forth. She presses her nose against my face and licks me once and then again.

“Yes, this is Eliza Doolittle—”

“Like
My Fair Lady
?” I laugh, and the black and white dog licks my face in glee, maybe from hearing her name. “Nice to meet you, I guess.” I look to Rowan.
 

Rowan pulls her away, and the dog looks up at him like he’s completely betrayed her. “She’s a rescue. She needed a little book-learnin’ before she could be in polite company. She’s not making a good show of it right now. But she was scared of her own shadow. She was abused, and now she’s just crazy about people.” Eliza keeps wiggling and whines like she’s about to lose her mind.
 

“It’s okay. I like dogs. I’m just not real used to big ones like this—”

“She won’t hurt a flea. And once we get the guest house running again, you won’t have to worry about her.”
 

“Seriously, it’s fine. You can let her greet me. She seems pretty well-behaved. Besides the licking.” Rowan gives me a doubtful look, but he guides Eliza Doolittle over to me again and lets her go. Her rump wiggles uncontrollably, and she puts her big white head in my lap, her deep brown eyes looking up at mine. She whines once, and I put a tentative hand to her ear and rub it. Her short hair is silky and soft under my fingers. She leans hard into my hand, and I laugh.
 

“You got a friend for life, there. That’s the thing about dogs, especially rescues. They’re so grateful when you give them attention, and they’re loyal as hell.” I might be imagining it, but Rowan’s voice cracks a little when he says the last part of that sentence. I look at him, but I keep my mouth closed. I’m not one to pry in someone’s personal life, but it seems like Eliza Doolittle is the only other creature who lives in this house. She snorts and presses into my hand again, wagging her stump as hard as she can.
 

“You’re just a big sweetheart, aren’t you?” I look down at Eliza and stroke the black spot on top of her head. Her nose is spotted pink and brown. Even if she’s big as hell, she might be the sweetest-looking dog I’ve seen in a long time.
 

“Oh she is. She’ll sleep next to your bed all night if you let her.” He pauses, and the silence makes me remember how tired I am. “Speaking of which, I think we’d better get you upstairs. If I were organized at all, I’d have my secretary here getting you situated in your room, but I’ll just have to trust that everything is as clean as it’s supposed to be.”

“I’m not too hard to please.” The heat rises in my cheeks when I say the words because it makes me think of Rowan’s long, muscular body. No, it wouldn’t be too hard for him to please me. The heat rises even higher at that thought, and Rowan catches my gaze. It looks like there’s a spark there too, but I know I must be imagining it. This shit doesn’t happen. The whole boy meets girl thing, the meet cute with me nearly falling down the stairs.
 

This isn’t real life, is it?
 

“Then you might like the blue guest suite. It’s my favorite one. It’s at the end of the hall, opposite end from where I sleep. So... nothing improper about that, right?” I laugh nervously, and he offers his hand, helping me up from the step. When his strong, weathered hand touches mine, a jolt of sweet, delicious heat travels through my body, pooling between my legs. Scared of what it means, I pull my hand away nonchalantly and follow him up the stairs. Eliza walks between us, her tail stump wagging the whole time. Rowan leads me down the hall, over more soft, thick oriental rugs, all in blues and reds. It’s dark, so I can’t really tell what the paintings on the walls look like, but I can
feel
how expensive they are. For the first time, I wonder how he picked
me
, and why in the hell he did. Walking behind him makes me feel hyperaware of my body, every brush of my skin against my clothing.
 

Better not. You’re no good with a man, Cadence. And this one has so much money it’ll hang over you every day you’re with him. Just paint and try not to look too deep into his eyes.
 

He opens a door at the very end of the hallway and ushers me into the room. When he flicks on the light, I gasp. On the far wall, there’s a huge painting, maybe seven or eight feet wide and just as high. If I look at it one way, it looks like the ocean, but if I turn my head to the side, it looks like the sky with pricks of white light mixed through the deep blues and aquas the artist used. The quilts on the four-poster bed match the painting almost exactly, and the rug in here is a light sky blue, contrasting with the dark floors.
 

“I had the designer just put things in here to match the painting. I know more about painting than any other type of artsy stuff, so I let her do what she wanted. Thought an artist might like this room. Occurred to me when you walked in.”
 

I smile. “I do. It’s beautiful. Is the guest house this nice?”
 

“Oh. Oh yeah. It’s nice too. It just needs some TLC. Should be up and running in about a week.” He runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair and turns to walk out. “I’ll let you get some sleep. I’ll take you by the building tomorrow. Go on and get comfortable, Miss Cadence.” He winks at me and walks toward the door, Eliza following close behind. His departure is abrupt, but I guess it’s appropriate since it’s almost one in the morning. I gulp, though, and wonder if I did anything to offend him. “Night,” he says.
 

“Night. Thanks for the room.”

“My pleasure,” he says.
 

The way he says it sounds almost dirty, and that simple word threatens to undo me completely.
 

Later, after putting on a nightshirt and brushing my teeth in the grand, marble bathroom, it takes me a long damn time to fall asleep.
 

Because I’m thinking of Rowan and wondering exactly what his pleasure might be.

CHAPTER FOUR

Even after I’ve tended the horses and ridden up over one of the trails with the new mare, unsaddled and brushed her, Cadence is still asleep. I check my watch.
 

“Eight in the morning, nearly. Dammit, and it’s later in New York.” I laugh. She’s a city girl
and
an artist, probably used to setting her own schedule. I take my boots off and set them in the mudroom next to the kitchen. I should probably see about the quarterly taxes, or the damn fundraising event next week for Coming Home, but hell, I can barely see straight I’m so hungry. Normally, it’d be a green shake and protein for the day before heading into Ruidoso to meet with the board of directors. But the week after Thanksgiving is always quiet, even for a nonprofit.
 

And maybe Cadence’s mural can wait, at least until she’s been fed. They might have served her dinner on the plane, but it wasn’t my jet so there’s no way of knowing if she ate good or not. Even if she’s an artist, she might need a little nourishment to get her gears going.
 

Eliza Doolittle greets me with a little bark at the door of the kitchen and then comes to settle in at her bed under the table. Joanna had that bed made for her and embroidered with the dog’s full name. Hell, Eliza loves that damn bed, but she never could stand a hair on Joanna’s head.
 

“You got more sense than I have, Liza,” I say. She looks at me quizzically and then glances at the refrigerator like she’s reminding me I need to make breakfast. “You’ll get a slice of bacon out of this, just maybe.” I open the door to the fridge and pull out eggs, Eliza’s favorite bacon, and the bread dough that I started the other day.
 

“And this bread mix should be just about ready, girl, but you don’t get any bread. Just bacon. Never thought I’d have a gluten-intolerant dog, but that goes to show you that I don’t know everything, do I Eliza?” I set the dough on the island in the middle of the kitchen and step into my Uggs. I think back to Cadence’s reaction and stifle a laugh. Who says a billionaire can’t keep his feet warm? We don’t all wear smoking jackets and have a full closet of Armani or whatever the hell my brother Dylan has.
 

I get out the cast iron skillet and turn on the flame of the gas stove. I empty the rasher of bacon in the pan and listen as it starts to sizzle. That smell ought to wake anybody up, and if it doesn’t, I bet the smell of fresh bread will do the trick. I knead the dough out and form it into a loaf before placing it into one of the many Le Creuset dutch ovens that Joanna bought but never used. I rub it with salt and olive oil and put it into the oven to do its thing and rise like it should. The dog gets up and comes to my side.
 

“This’ll get Miss Cadence right out of bed, you wait and see, Miss Doolittle.” I fiddle with the bacon until it starts to crisp up just how I like it, and I whip up some eggs with fresh jalapeños and shallots from the garden. “And I’ll top the omelet off with some goat cheese from that farm down the road. No cheese for you either, Eliza. Don’t look at me like that. But don’t you think it’ll impress our resident artist?”
 

I hear a yawn in the hallway outside of the kitchen and turn around to see Cadence, still in her nightshirt and one of the terrycloth robes I keep in the closet. “I’m already impressed,” she says. Her hair is a mess again, and she lifts a hand to it. The way she does it, puts that hand to her head like she’s self-conscious, it’s all sexy as fuck. That slightly messy look makes me almost lose my composure, like she’s broken wild after only a day of being here. For a moment, I forget I have my bacon cooking. It starts to sizzle and pop, begging to be turned over. “I forgot my kerchief. I wear it to sleep,” she says. She looks down like she’s embarrassed.
 

“I wouldn’t have noticed.”

She yawns again. “Is that fresh bread?” She takes a long sniff of the kitchen. “And bacon? What if I’m a vegetarian?”

“That was a risk I was willing to take, I guess.” I flash a smile, but inside, I’m hoping like hell that she doesn’t hate me for cooking bacon. “It’s all local, organic, grass-fed, sustainable.”
 

She laughs and puts her head in her hands for a second. The robe falls open for a split second, and I’m left staring at the deep V of her night shirt. “I’m definitely not a vegetarian. Don’t worry. I’ll gladly have some local, organic, grass-fed bacon.”

“And sustainable. The guy has wind on his farm.”
 

“Well then. I guess I’m in for a treat. You need any help? I’m all thumbs in the kitchen, but I can put out plates and butter for the bread. You got any jam?”

“I have fig preserves and honey.” I gesture to the fridge. “And plates and cups are up on the shelf by the Kitchenaid.”
 

“The Kitchenaid, huh? So you’re not just a billionaire—you’re a chef, too?” There’s a flirtatious tone in her voice that wasn’t there last night. I saw that spark, like it could be there. She cuts her eyes at me, a golden brown flicker under those dark lashes. And God help me, something in me feels like it’s being unlocked... or cut open, more like. My eyes wander down to her bare legs, to the bright red polish on her toenails. The whole picture is careless and wild.
 

Fuck work for just now
, I think.
 

“Yeah I got a Kitchenaid. And Uggs. What of it?” I flip over the bacon and start whipping up the eggs. “The bread will be done in about four minutes—I can smell it forming up like it’s supposed to, and I’m about to die to slather a piece with butter and fig preserves.”