LITMIR.BIZ

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have you set a wedding date?”

      “How do you think this will affect your team?”

      “How long have you been dating your assistant?”

      The last question came from a thin woman who reached him first, her voice recorder shoved toward his face. One of the security guards warded her off easily enough, opening the door of the Land Rover so Dempsey could step up into the vehicle.

      “Does Valentina know?” the skinny reporter shouted, banging on the window of the SUV as Dempsey closed the door and locked it behind him.

      Adelaide scooted to the far end of the seat as he lowered himself beside her, the soft leather cushion shifting beneath her as the vehicle started into motion again.

      “Hello, Adelaide.” He made the greeting sound like so much more than it was, his deep voice tripping along her senses the way it sometimes did when he used her whole name.

      She hated that he could inspire those feelings even now. It was as if he’d sucked all the air out of the small space so she couldn’t catch her breath. She watched in silence as he tugged off his team jersey, tossing the Hurricanes gear onto the opposite seat and leaving him clad in a simple black silk T-shirt with his black pants. He looked like a very hot hit man.

      A hit man who’d targeted her business. Her future.

      All for his own selfish ends.

      “Can you call Evan and remind him my car is on the C level?” She glared at him, reminding herself with every breath not to get too emotional. Not to let all the anger fly, as much as she wanted to do just that.

      She’d seen him in action for years, knew him well enough to understand that no one won battles with him by acting on feelings. Dempsey ran right over adversaries who couldn’t negotiate with the benefit of cool reason.

      “It might not be wise to drive when you’re angry.” He set aside his phone and stretched an arm along the back of the seat.

      Almost touching her. Not quite.

      Not the way he had back in that vacant office before the press conference when she’d inserted herself between him and the door. When she’d felt the warmth of his hand on her hip. Brushed up against him chest to chest in a moment that had almost caused cardiac arrest. She swallowed hard and refused to think about all that wayward attraction, which had always been one-sided.

      “It might not be wise to kidnap the assistant you’re dating either.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

      “We’re not dating. We’re engaged.” He reached to tug a lock of her hair, as easily as if she still had pigtails. As if she would still follow him anywhere just because he said so. “I’ll send someone back for your car later. It will be safer to stick together.”

      “Safer for who exactly?” She tried not to wrench away from him, would not let him see how much this cavalier treatment got under her skin. Even now, despite the anger inside, another heat simmered right along with it. “And who made you lord of what I can and can’t do? Turn the damn car around.”

      Being trapped beside his powerful presence in the back of a private luxury vehicle only stirred to life those other potent feelings she’d tried so hard to stamp out long ago.

      “I don’t think either of us wants to create a firestorm around the team right now,” he reminded her.

      “Seriously? Which is why you chose to announce an engagement to the press when you knew I couldn’t contradict you.” She clenched her fingers tight and contained her temper as Evan drove the SUV out of the parking garage and into the early-evening traffic heading west, away from her home.

      Toward the Reynauds’ private compound in Metairie. She didn’t need to ask where they were headed, any more than Evan needed to ask. The world simply moved according to Dempsey’s wishes.

      “I realize you think I did this just for me. For the team. But I did it for you, too.” His golden-brown eyes remained on her even when the viewing screens built into the overhead console flipped to life with game updates from around the league.

      Being the focus of his undivided attention had the power to rattle any woman.

      “We’ve been friends for too long for you to trot out that kind of BS with me.” She folded her arms tight across her chest, her body reacting all kinds of erratically around him today. “Can we at least be honest with each other?”

      “I am being honest.” He shifted in his seat, turning toward her. Moving closer. “Adelaide, I don’t want to see you fail at anything. Ever. And I promise you, if you stick this out with me—just this one more season—I will ensure that your company gets off the ground with all the benefits of my connections.”

      It was a lot to promise her. Worth a heck of a lot more than those diamond bracelets he passed out like consolation prizes.

      “I don’t want a company that is a glorified Reynaud hand-off. I want the satisfaction of developing it myself.” There had been a time when he would have understood that. “Don’t you remember what it feels like to want to build something that is all your own? Without the benefit of—” she waved her arm to encompass his custom-detailed world in a vehicle that cost more than most people’s homes “—all this?”

      His phone rang before he could answer her. And worse?

      He held up a hand to indicate that he needed to take it.

      “Reynaud,” he growled into the device.

      Tuning him out, she fumed beside him. This was precisely why she needed to leave. She understood that he worked eighteen-hour days every day and that he took his business concerns as seriously as his team. But it had been too many years since he’d even pretended to make time for her or the friendship they’d once shared. He spoke to her as his assistant, not like the girl who had once been privy to all his secrets.

      He had no idea about the strides she’d made in her business over the past few weeks—the way she’d pulled off funding for a short run of her first clothing item. He hadn’t been there to applaud her unique efforts or otherwise acknowledge anything she did, and she was sick of it. Sick of his whole world that could never pause for one moment. Even for the conversation they’d been having.

      By the time Dempsey disconnected his call, she could barely hold on to her temper.

      Enough was enough.

      * * *

      Setting aside his phone after clearing up some problems in Singapore, where it was already Monday morning, Dempsey hoped the time-out from the confrontation with Adelaide had helped her to cool off and see his side. She sure had backed him into a corner by quitting out of the blue.

      What else was he supposed to have done when she’d forced his hand like that? The engagement was simply a countermove.

      “Adelaide,” he began again, only to have her swing around in the seat to glower at him.

      “How kind of you to remember we were in the middle of a conversation.” Her clipped words suggested her temper wasn’t anywhere close to cooling down. “Do you need a refresher on what we were discussing? One, our ridiculous engagement.” She ticked off items on her fingers. “Two, your sneak attack of having Evan lying in wait for me in the garage so I couldn’t make a clean break from the stadium today. Three, your inability to understand why I want to build my own company from the ground up, without the almighty Reynaud name behind me—”

      “How can you, of all people, suggest I don’t understand what it’s like to want to develop your own company? To build your own team?” His voice hit a rough note even as his volume went softer. “You know why I went into coaching. Why it means everything to me to win a championship for this town.”

      He remembered shared rides home that weren’t in the back of a Land Rover. Shared rides in a cramped bus full of bigger, stronger kids who amped up their street cred by converting new gang members or beating

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