Page 78 of Ruff and Tumble

Penny nudged Hailey with her hip and pointed to the opposite end of the warehouse, where a pair of double doors had been thrown open and light started streaming in. “Theonlyone?” she asked.

Hailey’s first instinct upon seeing those doors was to grab a headset and alert everyone on staff to make a dive for the nearest puppy. The last thing they needed right now was a stampede of canines making a break for it. All that stood outside the warehouse was an empty field, but it was amuddyempty field. She didn’t even want to think about how many baths they’d have to give before the puppies would be fit for filming again.

Before she could do more than squawk a red alert, however, the open doors filled with shadows.Massiveshadows, and a lot of them—all of them moving with a sense of purpose that couldn’t be denied.

Penny was the first to figure out what they were looking at, and she clutched at Hailey as though her life were on the line. “Don’t move,” she said, only this time, her voice wasn’t loud. It was barely above a whisper. “Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe.”

Hailey didn’t need the reminder. Moving and blinking and breathing were well outside her capabilities by this time.

Those were Lumberjacks.Allthe Lumberjacks.

It was around this time that the rest of the warehouse figured out what was happening—humans and canines alike. Most people were frozen into a kind of shocked immobility, but Philip showed nothing but joy. With a yap of pleasure that echoed through the sudden silence, he darted toward the figure leading the pack.

Cole. Dressed to kill in yet another too-tight shirt, his arm sling nowhere in sight, looking as though nothing could touch him. He was gorgeous and confident, and all Hailey longed to do was kick him.

“Are you kidding me right now?” She stormed across the empty space to where he’d fallen into a squat, accepting Philip’s enthusiastic greeting like a man coming home from war. “What are you doing here?”

“Upholding my end of the bargain,” he said, his face unreadable. He moved a little stiffly, his right arm held against his side in a way that was unmistakable, but showed no other signs of distress. “Hailey, I’d like to introduce you to the team. Team, this is the woman I was telling you about.”

It was, without a doubt, a dream come true. As Hailey stood there, bemused and bewildered, she found herself surrounded by thirty huge men, all of whom she knew by name and reputation and face. There was Johnson, the kicker. Marshall, the backup quarterback. Washington and Byrd and Aarons. Juarez and Evans and Hodges. Even Garrett Smith was there, looking apologetic and wearing a rueful smile.

She was taken by surprise when Garrett greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. “Take it easy on him, will you?” he said, his voice a low whisper next to her ear. “He’s had a rough couple of days.”

A snort escaped her before she could stop it. Garrett heard it, of course, but that was too bad. Let him know how incredulous she felt. Let them all know. She didn’t care how rough Cole’s days had been or what he was attempting to do here today. She had a show to film, and every Lumberjack in the world couldn’t stop her.

Well, technically, they could very easily stop her. There was enough manpower surrounding her right now to overthrow a small country, but that wasn’t the point. This wasn’t Cole Bennett’s show. It had never been Cole Bennett’s show.

He’d taken her heart and her dignity. He’d stolen the affection of her puppies and her coworkers. He wasn’t taking the Puppy Cup, too.

“Okay, listen up,” she called, clapping her hands once to pull the attention of the entire football team—not to mention the crowd of crewmembers who were rapidly gathering around them. “I don’t mind if you stay to watch the taping, but you have to stand out of the way of the cameras and the crew. And keep the activity to a minimum, if you please. The puppies are already overly excited. We don’t want them getting fatigued before we’re even halfway through.”

“Bennett wasn’t kidding about this one, was he?” she heard a male voice murmur. “She’s scary.”

Hailey felt the color starting to mount to her cheeks, but she ignored it. Cole had obviously been telling his teammates all kinds of lies about her in an attempt to gain the upper hand, but she wasn’t going to let that derail her. Jasmine trusted her to make this work, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

“Is it true you know all our stats by heart?” asked another voice. Hailey turned to see that it belonged to Jamal Hodges, a tight end who’d been on the team for almost as long as Cole and Garrett. “And you can tell us exactly what we did wrong in every game?”

Hailey cast Cole a fulminating glare, but he was impervious to it. He was too busy basking in Philip’s love and watching as Hailey faced down thirty men who clearly had been prepped ahead of time. He wanted them to embarrass her and throw her off her game. She wasn’t sure if it was a tactic to win the Puppy Cup—or if he just wasn’t done humiliating her yet—but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

“You’re a hell of a blocker, Hodges, and you can bulldoze your way through a crowd of hundreds, but until the day you learn to catch anything on the outlet pass route, you’ll never amount to much.”

The roar of appreciation that this commentary elicited caused Hailey to flame up. It also gave her the courage to keep going.

“Johnson, you tend to show off too much when the kick is within field-goal range. Byrd, you can hold a point of attack better than anyone, but you have a blind spot when it comes to the middle line of scrimmage. And don’t even get me started on Juarez’s inability to defend a deep pass if he has to play close to the line.”

None of the men seemed to take her criticism amiss. If anything, she seemed to grow in their estimation with each word. By the time she’d run out of things to say—and the breath with which to say them—the entire Lumberjacks team was laughing so much that she couldn’t help smiling with them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you did ask.”

“And that, guys, is exactly what I was talking about,” Cole said, drawing forward. He looked as though he wanted to take Hailey’s hand, but she was careful to keep herself out of his reach. She didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t want to be charmed. He could do both of those things and cause all her defenses to crumble away in an instant, but sheneededthem.

She had no way to fight him otherwise. No way to protect herself. No way to survive.

“Well,” he said as though there was nothing else to say. “Where do you want us?”

Hailey looked to Penny for support, but all her friend did was shrug. She looked even more lost than Hailey felt.

“Us?” Hailey echoed. “I can’t film your whole team. You wouldn’t fit on the turf.”