Happily Ever All-Star: A Secret Baby Romance - Sosie Frost Page 0,294

on the field.

I was starting my fourth season with the Rivets, and I’d never once gone boy-crazy. Most of the guys weren’t my type, some were already married, and the others were notorious bad boys. To protect my career, the closest I ever got to the players was through a four hundred millimeter lens.

Except this training camp was different.

It was like Lachlan stuffed a magnet down his jock strap. I’d tried to keep busy, but I crept further onto the field, parking my butt in the middle of the wide-receivers’ routes as I searched for him. I wasn’t very subtle. Even surreptitiously capturing pictures of the rookie tight-end twenty-yards away got me into trouble.

“You’re open, Elle!” Caleb shouted to me from across the field.

I peeked through the viewfinder in time to see three footballs spiraling through the air, aimed dead center for my forehead.

With a camera in hand, humiliation was always closer than it appeared.

I ducked, twisted, and collapsed to the grass before the balls plunked around me, much to the delight of the offensive line.

Jack and his two backups laughed. They reared back again, and, like some medieval general loading the catapults, Jack aimed for me.

“Fire!”

I pointed the camera and got the shot of Jack mid-release, his arm flexed and the ball just out of the frame. That gave me no time to hide. I spun. The ball spiraled right into my ass, and the dull thunk of pig-skin against my skin would entertain the men for the remainder of the day.

I could expect some great lunch-time conversation about the imbedded league logo that probably bruised my butt.

At least Jack’s photo would look good uploaded onto Instagram. He wagged another ball. Just fortunate it was regulation and not the Play-Maker’s special duo.

“Okay, okay!” I surrendered my spot. “I’m done.”

I lied. I snapped one more and hurried away. Uploading some of my morning pictures was a good excuse to duck back into the air-conditioned practice facility…if I didn’t melt on the way in first. The sun scorched the team. I chugged water, but the sweat poured off of me. I twisted my damp hair into a bun and surveyed the field for any other promising shots.

Peter, as head photographer, followed Coach Thompson for the morning. That was fine by me. I was still staying as far away from him as I could, even if Peter hadn’t said anything about the missing SD card.

Yet.

Maybe I had escaped without notice. That probably meant we desperately needed to clean the office. But if the clutter had hidden my tracks, I was ordering out for lunch today—the more styrofoam containers, the better.

But piling more trash on our disaster-area of a desk wouldn’t solve the problem. Sooner or later, Peter would realize the incriminating pictures were gone.

And I still couldn’t believe we had the photos. Every team we played had a folder. Offenses. Defenses. Special teams. Blitz installations. Trick plays. The images were from other teams’ practices, all date-marked before our biggest games of last season. I had no idea where they came from or how Peter got them, and I wasn’t about to Lois Lane this mess to find out.

If the league president, Frank Bennett, knew the intel we had?

Hell, if the loud-mouth Sports Nation reporter, Ainsley Ruport, thought something was suspicious?

There wouldn’t be an Ironfield Rivets anymore.

It wasn’t heroic of me to take the card, but I had to figure out what to do with it. Any, all, or none of the coaches might have been in on it. God only knew how long the team had been cheating and how many more photos they’d planned to take.

Until I had the full story and knew exactly who I could go to, the only way I could protect the players was if I kept my mouth shut.

And that was easy enough—for now.

I headed to the defense, but that crossed my path with the only douche on the team I tended to avoid. It was best to ignore him, but Bryon made it so damn hard. Sure, the team had trouble-makers—Jack had been the worst before he married Leah, though Lachlan would certainly fill his shoes. But men like Bryon were just trouble. He’d be one of the league’s greatest running backs…if he could stay out of jail.

Bryon whistled for me. “Hey, Elle. I’m ready for my close-up now.”

“Not without something slipped in my drink,” I said.

He posed, lifting the hem of his shirt to showcase his abs. “You sure? How ‘bout a picture, baby?