Page 7 of The Triple Play

Her cheeks went red. Not just a hint of color—full-on flushed, like she'd been caught in the middle of a thought she shouldn’t be having.

Huh.

She tried to play it off, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and muttering something under her breath.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was guilty about something.

Or maybe I was reading her wrong.

Maybe she was just shy. Or surprised to see me up close instead of on a screen.

Still, the way her eyes flicked over me, then dropped to the mic cord in her hands like it suddenly needed untangling?—

It didn’t feel like nothing.

But something was definitely happening in my pants.

The way her tight, long-sleeved green shirt clung to her torso almost exaggerated her striking figure, her smaller breasts hugged tightly by the fabric, and the looseness of her black trousers that cinched at the waist only made the ass Colton had so inappropriately described look even better. “Sorry we missed it.”

She blinked up at me, her eyes darting to her side, checking, I imagined, that I wasn’t speaking to someone else. I almost laughed. Almost. “What?”

“I heard you had a set,” I say again, enunciating my words, a little grin pulling at the side of my mouth. “I am sorry we missed it.”

Her nose crinkled in confusion as she hesitantly bent down to put the cable in her bag. “It’s fine, it wasn’t that great anyway. You didn’t miss much. Why are you…?”

Well, this was going perfectly.

“Sorry, I should have introduced myself. Cole Maxwell, Atlanta Fire,” I said casually, offering out a hand and almost cringing at myself for it.

She blinked at me again as she stood, a little chuckle shaking her shoulders. “Yeah, I know who you are. I served you a drink after the game last week. And I saw you on the television earlier.” She held a hesitant hand out in return, shaking mine limply, almost reluctantly. “I’m Annie, in case you didn’t remember that. I don’t exactly have my nametag on right now.”

A hint of embarrassment crept through my veins.Idiot.“No, I… I remember.” I smirked, dropping her hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for my introduction to sound?—”

“Pompous? Grandiose? Self-important? Nah, definitely didn’t,” she laughed. She licked her lips before catching herself, her gaze flicking away as the blush deepened across her cheeks.Oh shit. She’s into this?“Seriously, though, it’s fine. Considering how many women come and go through here, I doubt it’s very easy for you to remember faces. Either that or you hit your head pretty hard when you slammed that guy into the boards earlier.”

I huffed out a quiet laugh and leaned in slightly, giving her a look. “Don’t even get me started on that. The ref made a terrible call,” I grumbled.

She shook her head, her singsongy laughter ringing out again. “Nah, I watched it. Looked like a fair penalty to me?—”

She cut herself off as a man a few inches shorter than me sidled up next to her, nearly out of breath. He was lithe and lanky like Xav but with half the muscle, a set of black glasses resting on his nose. Shaved dark hair made for a shadow where hair should be around his head, with the telltale sign of a receding hairline in points above his brows. “Hi,” he said, grinning up at me. “Elliot Fairbanks. You’re Cole, right? Maxwell? Left wing?”

I raised a single brow. I wasn’t the most patient person to begin with, and this fucker inserting himself into a conversation I wastryingto have with Annie rubbed me the wrong way. “Uh, yeah. I was in the middle of?—”

“I’m sorry on behalf of him,” Annie said, rolling her eyes as she stepped to the side and gave herself a modicum of space from Elliot. “This is my boyfriend. Big fan.”

I silently made anohwith my mouth. This was just getting worse for everyone by the minute. “Gotcha, gotcha,” I chuckled, trying to brush off the hit and shift into fan-greeting mode. “Yeah, man, what’s up? Nice to meet you.”

“Can I get an autograph?”

Annie’s head swung in his direction, her eyes going wide, her jaw steeling. “Elliot.”

“What? It’s Cole fucking Maxwell, what do you expect?” he whispered harshly, and I almost rolled my eyes at his assumption that I couldn’t hear him.

“Do you have a pen?” I asked, almost reluctantly, just wanting to get this over with now.

Annie glared at Elliot, her lips pursing together, clearly annoyed on my behalf. I almost respected her for it, almost felt bad that she couldn’t even have a conversation with me without her boyfriend stepping in. “Yeah,” she said eventually, slipping one out of her bag. She grabbed a handful of unused napkins from one of the nearby tables and handed them both to me, an apologetic glint in her big blue eyes.

God dammit, she was cute.

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