Page 28 of Ruff and Tumble

He turned to Hailey with the phone held out. “Anything you’d like to add?”

“What are you doing?”

“Building a roster. It’s only fair. You’ve spent the past few months assessing and getting to know the animals. If I’m going to have a chance at picking a winning team, I need basic stats from all of them. Philip has promise, but I’d like to see who else there is to choose from.”

As he hoped, this focus on football and puppies—the only two things that didn’t seem to fluster Hailey—worked in breaking down any of the barriers that remained between them. Stalking forward, she yanked the phone out of Cole’s hand and held it to her lips. “Cole the football player. Thirty-two years old andnotin charge of this project. Despite his years of being the center of attention, this is supposed to be about the animals, not him.”

Cole felt a laugh well up from somewhere deep within him. He also took his phone back and kept the recorder going. “Hailey the puppy lady. Twentysomething and adorable as all get-out. Doesn’t play well with others, but that’s okay. I’ve always liked a challenge.”

Somewhere in the middle of his assessment, Hailey’s eyes had grown wide. If Cole had to guess, he’d say the cause was that bit about being adorable, but he didn’t regret his words. Shewasadorable. Flushed with pleasure, squaring up for battle, more belligerent than his sister’s birth-room attendant—there was something seriously wrong with him to find the combination of those three things appealing, but that was no surprise. He’d been saying he was broken for years, and no one believed him.

Since he was holding the phone out of Hailey’s reach, she couldn’t snatch it back to list more of his faults, but that didn’t stop her. She drew so close that he could feel the heat radiating off her and got up on her tiptoes. As before, she didn’t take advantage of their proximity to touch him in any way, but that didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. The almost-but-not-quite touching, the way he could sense the shape of her body rather than feel it, was working much more powerfully on his blood flow than he could have anticipated.

“Cole the liar,” Hailey said, her voice carrying up to his phone. “Not going to get his way with empty compliments. Some of us have work to do today.”

“Hailey the disbelieving. Should probably back down, or she’s going to get kissed. Immediately.”

Her mouth fell open and stayed there, a look of surprise warring with something more—something that looked a lot like invitation.

Which was why he made good on his threat—not quite immediately but after a few more intoxicating seconds. The rules of fair play that had been instilled in him since he’d first touched a football meant he would give her an opportunity to decline. There was ample time for her to back down or relinquish her ground.

She did none of those things. With a defiant toss of her head, she tilted her lips so they were within easy reaching distance.

I dare you, she seemed to be saying.You don’t have the nerve.

He almost didn’t, but there was something about the soft part of her mouth that he couldn’t resist. Her full lower lip, the curve of a mocking smile, the quick, panting breath that escaped before he made contact—it would have taken a much stronger man than him to pull away at that juncture.

In terms of kisses, it wasn’t Cole’s most impressive performance. Over the years, he’d come to learn that women had certain expectations when it came to being kissed by a professional quarterback with a reputation like his. They wanted mastery and confidence—a man as powerful and in control as the one they saw every week on the TV. In this, as in all things, expectation weighed heavily on his shoulders.

But with Hailey, all he did was brush his mouth lightly against hers. It was a whisper of a kiss, more suggestion than reality, and all the more powerful because of it. He had just enough time to make out the outline of her lips and the taste of her breath, to enjoy a warm rush of anticipation that crept up from his toes, before he felt the sharp stab of teeth on his pinkie finger.

“What the—” He reared back and snatched his hand to his chest in a move that was mostly instinct. Glancing down, he found Philip smiling up at him, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. “Your puppy just bit me!”

It took Hailey a moment to respond. Out of the corner of his eye, Cole could see that she’d gone pink with embarrassment—that his kiss had, for all its brevity, unsettled her. One look at Cole standing there with his hand clutched against him, and that sentiment fled.

“Don’t be such a baby,” she scolded with a cluck of her tongue. She knelt next to the puppy, heedless of her knees on the soggy ground. “He was just trying to get your attention. Weren’t you, Philip? You haven’t had nearly enough love in your life.”

Now that the initial shock had worn off, Cole realized his reaction had been more surprise at those razor-sharp puppy teeth than actual pain. Instead of admitting as much, however, he doubled down.

“My finger will have to be surgically reattached,” he protested. “I’ll never throw a football again. What’ll your boss say now?”

“That you’re being dramatic.” Hailey nodded up at his hand, which was, to be fair, perfectly fine. “He didn’t even break the skin.”

“Not all trauma is visible on the outside,” he said.

Hailey’s eyes narrowed, and a look of steely determination took over. Once again, she was making it very easy for Cole to read her thoughts. Whatever positive feelings she’d been harboring toward him in the aftermath of that kiss were gone.

“You have no idea what trauma is,” she said. “Not the great Cole Bennett. Not a man with a contract like yours and a mom who carries around a scrapbook of his childhood injuries. Not a man who could buy a hundred of these shelters and give homes to every unwanted dog in the city.”

So that was the game they were going to play, was it? He held out a hand—his uninjured one—and pulled Hailey to her feet. In a move of pure perversity, he didn’t let go, either. He kept her warm, slightly muddied palm next to his, his grip strong and his determination stronger.

“You think I don’t know what trauma is?” he asked. “You think I haven’t felt pain?”

She faltered but didn’t lose her ground. “Physical pain, yes. But everyone’s felt that at some point in their lives—and most of them don’t have twelve doctors and physical therapists to help them get over it.”

“What about the sting of rejection?” he returned.

She released a disbelieving chuff of air. “Please. When have you ever been rejected?” It must have been a rhetorical question, because she yanked her hand away and put it on Philip’s head before Cole could answer. “This puppy was abandoned before he even knew the meaning of home. He was dropped off here, unwanted and neglected, with the assumption that someone else would make him their problem. But he’s not a popular breed, and the shelter doesn’t have the resources to give him the attention he requires, so he spends most of his nights curled in a ball on a concrete floor, crying for someone to love him.That’s rejection.That’s what it feels like to have nothing.”