Page 62 of Cole

“I know. Maybe it’s a pity date or something.”

“Make-a-wish date?”

The women laughed, and Annie felt her stomach clench. She was afraid she was going to lose her dinner.

Not wanting a confrontation, she stayed by the stalls until she heard them leave. Moving quickly, she went to the sink and washed her hands.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, she spotted Cole right away. Her steps faltered when she saw that he was talking with two women. Two women who could have just been in the bathroom.

His face lit up with a smile when he spotted her, making some of the hurt ease away. The women with him turned, and Annie could see the moment they realized that she had likely heard them in the bathroom.

Annie approached them and took the hand Cole held out to her.

“These two lovely ladies are Lisa and Megan,” Cole said, gesturing to them. “Lisa is married to one of my teammates, and Megan is engaged to another one.”

They looked very much like Annie had imagined they would. Tall, willowy, beautiful.

“Lovely?” Annie couldn’t help asking as she lifted her brows at them.

The women both lowered their gazes and shifted. The silence that followed her single word response was heavy.

“What’s going on?” Cole asked, his hand tightening around Annie’s. “What am I missing?”

One of the women sighed. “I think Annie heard Megan and I talking about her in the bathroom.”

Cole’s easygoing demeanor vanished in a heartbeat as tension filled his body. “What were you saying about her?”

“Just that we were surprised to see you with someone like her, and that Tamara was going to flip her lid.”

“You know that Tamara wouldn’t consider any of us to be good enough for you if she wasn’t.”

Cole didn’t say anything at first, then a little of the tension eased out of his grip on her hand. “That is true.”

“And the make-a-wish date comment?” Annie asked. She wasn’t sure why she was pushing this, but if she was going to be in Cole’s life, she didn’t want people thinking that just because she didn’t look or act like them that they could walk all over her.

“I’m really sorry about saying that,” Lisa said, her expression truly remorseful. “Megan and I can get a little catty at times, but we don’t mean anything by it.”

“What did you say?” Cole asked.

Megan sighed. “We were just wondering why she was your date, since she’s nothing like the women you usually bring to these events.”

“That’s because she’s not,” Cole said. “I haven’t been serious about any of them.”

Both Megan and Lisa’s eyes went wide, and they glanced at each other before Lisa said, “And you are serious about her?”

“Yep.” Cole smiled down at her. “Very serious.”

Annie’s heart tripped over itself as its rhythm was suddenly all out of whack. She’d known things were getting more serious, but this moment just ramped everything to another level.

“Well, we’re very sorry for what we said, Annie,” Lisa said. “And I hope we can get past this wrong foot that we’ve gotten off on.”

Annie was willing to let things go, but she hoped that these women weren’t in relationships with players that Cole was super close to. She wasn’t sure they were as sorry as they said they were.

Unfortunately, this interaction revealed to her that she might not have the savvy skills to deal with situations like what had just unfolded. She was trying to ignore the urge to tell the two womenexactlywho she was.

But she knew that if she wanted more independence, she couldn’t fall back on her connection to her dad in order to get people to respect her.

The contradictory emotions were a bit wild. She didn’t want to be constrained by her dad’s wealth and political connections, and yet, the first time it might have given her the leg up on someone, she wanted to use it.

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