couldn’t ignore this one, and she put it on speaker.
“Interesting,” a familiar male voice said. “Here I am sitting in my office waiting for a meeting that was supposed to start ten minutes ago, yet I’m still alone.”
“I’m stuck in traffic.” Before he could upbraid her, she went on the offensive. “If you hadn’t refused to give me your cell number, I would have called.”
“Stuck in traffic is not an excuse. It’s a sign of bad planning.”
“I’ll send that to Oprah as an inspirational quote.”
“I liked it better when you were pretending to be in love with me.”
“My meds kicked in.”
He snorted.
She gnawed at her bottom lip and looked at the clock on the dashboard. “If I’d had your cell number—”
“I told you. If you need me, call my agent.”
“I thought you were being sarcastic.”
“I’m never sarcastic.”
“Not exactly true, but . . . I’ll be there in thirty-five minutes.”
“At which time I’ll be at the gym.” The call went dead.
As Piper disconnected, Faiza spoke up, clearly incredulous. “You were talking to your employer, the American football player? So disrespectfully?”
“He annoyed me.”
“But surely you will be punished.”
Almost certainly. But not in the way Faiza meant. “Employers here can’t do anything but fire you.”
“This is a very strange, very wonderful country.” Faiza radiated goodness in a way Piper could only admire, and the wistfulness in her voice was heartwrenching.
They finally reached the hotel. Faiza touched Piper’s shoulder. “Thank you for what you have done, my friend. I shall pray for you every night.”
That seemed a little excessive, but Piper wasn’t one to turn down anyone’s prayers.
***
“When I said I’d be at the gym, it wasn’t an invitation for you to show up.” Coop had to shout over the scream of Norwegian black metal blaring through the speakers. A bead of sweat flew from his jaw as he delivered a violent left-right combination to the punching bag. Piper barely stopped herself from pointing out that it was not only bad form, but also counterproductive, to go after the bag with all that force.
Pro Title Gym was the smelly, windowless, hole-in-the-wall mecca of Chicago’s most elite athletes—a stripped-down space with cinder block walls, dented black rubber mats, and rusty squat racks lining a wall that held an American flag and a yellowed sign with a quote from Fight Club that read listen up, maggots. you are not special. The place reeked of sweat and rubber. No juice bars or trendy workout clothes. Pro Title was hard-core, expensive, and exclusive.
“How did you get in here?” Coop snarled like a Rottweiler.
“I slept with the dude at the front desk,” she retorted over the shrieking, distorted guitars.
“Bull.” An uppercut to the bag.
In fact, all she’d had to do was explain that she worked for Coop. Wearing her chauffeur’s uniform instead of being dressed like a football groupie gave her credibility, and the guy had let her in. “It’s my story, and I’ll tell it how I want.”
He delivered another punishing jab. “Go away.”
That was fine with her. She hadn’t expected to conduct their meeting here, merely to show him that she took her job seriously. But she didn’t immediately move. She couldn’t. Not when the muscles under Coop’s sweat-stained T-shirt rippled like wind over water every time he punched. She had to stop this. Right now. Because if she didn’t, she might start thinking about growing her fricking hair! She spun toward the door.
“Hold it!” Another Rottweiler bark. “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a mortician.”
She calmed herself down enough to tell him who she was driving for. “Only during the daytime,” she shouted over the music. “This is my chauffeur’s uniform.”
“It’s ugly.” Another annihilating punch at the bag.
“So’s your disposition.”
That bounced right off him. “Do you care at all how you look?”
“Not much.”
He stopped punishing the bag and regarded her critically. “You’ve worn the same dress every time you’ve been in the club.”
“Said the man in cowboy boots.”
“It’s my trademark,” he retorted. “Go buy some new clothes. You’re making the place look bad.”
She watched a rivulet of sweat roll down his neck. He smelled like good sweat, the healthy smell of a guy who always wore clean clothes to the gym. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized there was such a thing as a good sweat smell. Now she knew, and she wished she didn’t because thinking about anything that had to do with his body was a distraction she couldn’t afford. “New clothes aren’t in my budget.”
He returned to the bag. “Send