Those eyes flicked down my body, an intentionally derisive motion that took my measure in no more time than a single thud of his icy chunk of a heart.
"Sweetheart," he drawled, "it wouldn't matter if you were."
Heat burned my cheeks, but I refused to drop my gaze. "Glad to hear it."
Noah's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't say anything else.
"If you're free after practice tomorrow, my office is two doors down on the right. We'll meet with Rick, he's the Amazon producer, and go over our filming schedule for the next couple of weeks. We'll need on-field and off-field access to you."
At that, he made a sound that could almost be confused for a laugh, if he wasn't a soulless robot with no emotions.
Scratch that.
Noah had emotions. They just seemed to be slight variations of irritation.
"Off-field access to me will be pretty boring," he admitted. "But they're welcome to film it all the same."
"Good." I held out my hand, but he didn't move closer. If he wanted to shake on it, he'd have to come to me, and based on the dangerous gleam that entered his eye, he knew it. "See you tomorrow?"
For a second, my hand was frozen in the air, and I worried that he'd let it stay there. But then he took two steps and enveloped my hand with his. My whole arm tingled, chills slipping up my skin at the dry, hard calluses on his fingers. It had been a minute since a man had touched me, and I hated that he was the one to elicit the reaction.
"Don't make me regret that I agreed to this," Noah said, still gripping my hand tightly in his.
I smiled, and for some reason, the sight of it made his face darken like a thundercloud. "Right back at ya."
Chapter Eight
Noah
"Hope this doesn't bite you in the ass."
I grimaced, tightening my grip on the weight ball under my palm, then lowered slowly toward the ground in a push-up until my muscles shook. When I straightened my arms again, I rolled the ball and caught it with the other hand, setting that on top of the rubber surface for another rep.
"It won't," I told him through clenched teeth as I did another one.
"I thought you wanted defensive player of the year again. It's been two years since you won it. Why split your focus on something unnecessary?"
That was my father for you. I couldn't see his face since we were on the phone, but I knew damn well what his facial expression was doing. Stern set of his wrinkled brow, hard slash of a mouth that rarely ever smiled.
He loved me, but he wasn't a warm man. But in his concern, and in the way he had always shown it, I'd learned to glean the words he wasn't saying.
I love you, and I'm worried about you.
Another push-up and I sat back on my haunches, rolling my shoulders as the light outside my apartment started dwindling to a bluish purple.
"Because the front offices don't see it as unnecessary," I told him.
"Yeah, well, they're not the ones who have to suit up every week, are they?"
I smiled unwittingly, wondering if the grumpiness he injected into his voice was a hereditary trait. If it was, I'd inherited it.
"No, they're not. But I don't think they're wrong either. In the end, I think it'll be a good thing." I couldn't believe I said it without choking on the words. More than that, I could almost believe that I meant them. "I met with the crew from Amazon today after practice. I like what they're trying to do. They're not sensationalizing what life is like for players or creating drama or fake story lines. It's just a clearer look at what it's like for us."
He harrumphed.
"You tell your mother yet?"
I lay back on the ground and stretched my body out as long as it could go. Something satisfying popped in my back, and I groaned. "Not yet. Haven't talked to her in a few weeks."
My parents divorced when I was in high school, old enough to decide that I'd rather live with him in Seattle than move with her and her new husband to where he was stationed in Germany. My relationship with her was … fine. Neither parent was overly effusive when it came to their emotions, and I was the byproduct of a lifetime of that reserve.
In high school and college, it had been my goal to be the opposite.
I'd be fun because my parents weren't.
I'd enjoy life because they sure as hell weren't.
I'd be able to do both of those things while succeeding at football because my dad hadn't been able to.
But in the end, whether through circumstances out of my control or the sheer force of my genetic makeup—probably a little bit of both—I was my father's son, through and through.