"That good, huh?"
Lifting my head, I glared at her over my shoulder. "You know what he looks like."
"Yeah." She sighed. "Sure as hell do. But seeing him in person, being stuck in an elevator with him, that's a whole different thing, and you know it, Molly. Give me the goods."
How did he look?
Oh my stars, I didn't want to think about how he looked.
Angry.
Big.
Beautiful.
More than likely, Noah would've hated that I called him beautiful, but he was. The symmetry in his features, the bold slash of his lips, the rock-hard angle of his jaw, the shock of dark hair, the icy color of his eyes … everything about that man's face was a gift of genetics, and it pissed me off on principle.
A face that perfect should be smiling. Kind. Warm.
And he'd been the exact opposite. He took me in, judged me, then decided I wasn't worth a single ounce of his kindness.
What a prick.
I sighed. "It was stupid how good he looked, Iz."
"What are you gonna do?"
I rolled my neck. "I'm not sure. I do not want to turn down the new job from Beatrice because of this. There's no guarantee that Noah will be involved anyway. More than likely, they'll follow one of the other new guys … maybe the new running back."
Isabel's eyebrows bent in. "The guy from the New England practice squad?"
I nodded. "It's not like Noah is the only new contract they signed this week."
"He's just the biggest name," she said gently.
"Thanks."
She held up her hands. "Just saying."
"It'll be fine, even if he is the one they want to highlight." I licked my lips as I thought about the rest of my day at work. "I'm going to go meet with Beatrice before we talk to Amazon, and they start filming at practice. Because I will not let him ruin this chance for me."
"And if they do choose him?"
My lip curled into an uncharacteristic snarl when I considered what that meant for me. It meant my single chance at proving myself to my boss would rest in the hands of the one person in the Wolves organization who hated me.
Awesome.
I bumped her shoulder with mine. "Maybe you can come beat him up for me if he's mean again."
Isabel stood with a grin, holding her hand out for me so she could tug me to my feet. "You got it."
After I'd dumped all my stuff into my gym bag, I slung it over my shoulder. Iz held out her fist to me, and I bumped it as I passed.
"Go get 'em, tiger," she said. "I'd bet on you any day of the week."
"Damn straight," I muttered. Noah Griffin didn't know me anymore either, but he was about to find out exactly what I was made of.
Chapter Five
Noah
My reputation as The Machine preceded me, that much was evident. The guys were polite in their greetings but nothing effusive. No violent, back-pounding hugs, nothing outside of reserved happiness that my football talents were now wearing black and red.
There was very little in any greeting about Noah Griffin as a person, and that suited me just fine. Until I got out on the practice field and saw Kareem Jones, outside linebacker and one of my former roommates from U Dub. Before he so much as opened his mouth, I braced myself for the attention I'd been actively avoiding.
He hooted loudly when I cleared the doors, drawing the attention of every damn person on the field. I laughed under my breath as he barreled toward me and lifted me in a massive hug with arms as big as tree trunks. He was two inches taller than me, so my feet cleared the ground for a second before he dropped me.
"Damn, boy, what they been feeding you in Miami?" he said around a wide, happy grin. "The Machine got fat."
I shoved at his shoulder. "You're delusional, Jones. I'd still kick your ass at the line every time, and you know it."
His booming laugh thawed a bit of the icy wall of distance I'd stood behind since arriving. But I still found myself glancing around to see if anyone was watching with suspicion or distrust.
It was ridiculous to think they would. Drama happened in the locker room of every team in the league, and the reason for my hasty departure out of Miami, made up or not, hadn’t been fed to mainstream media. What golden boy QB wanted to admit that one of his teammates—bigger, stronger, and more established on the team—had a chance with his Playboy Playmate wife? Not the QB I'd left behind, that's for sure.
But still, common knowledge or not, it rankled that anyone might look at me and think it was the truth. It made me wish I could go back and not offer her a ride, that I'd called her an Uber or called her husband or another one of the WAGs who'd been at the event. A drunk woman wasn't my responsibility, even if she'd felt like it at the moment as I came upon her swaying dangerously in the parking lot as she tried to find her keys.