Page 27 of Her New Billionaire Bosshole (The Billionaire’s Bidding #2)
SOPHIE
I ’m in my office when Molly knocks on the door, once again looking like she’s out of breath.
It’s the middle of the day, and when I look up at her, my eyes are bleary from staring at the screen, from rewinding and playing the same clips again and again, looking for the tiniest competitive advantage we can use during the championship game.
“It’s Olivia,” Molly says, one hand on the doorway for support, her gray hair frizzing out around her face. She glances around my office, which has seen better days, and adds, “Again.”
I blink and look at the mess around me. I’m normally a very tidy person, but this week has been hard, to say the least. My phone is probably lost somewhere in here, under a pile of papers or tucked into the pocket of a random jacket.
I’ve been ignoring it after blocking Elliot’s number, in case I got the urge to unblock him, make contact again.
When I take Molly’s pink, bedazzled phone, Olivia stares angrily from the screen, her face blurry and her voice coming out in halting syllables. The service isn’t great in here.
“Why can’t you ever answer your damn phone?” she asks, her forehead so close I can basically make out her pores, her head jerking as she moves it side to side.
“In case you forgot, we just made it through the final round of the playoffs,” I fire back, glancing between the phone and Molly, who’s watching me with wide eyes. “I’m watching film. What in the world could be so important that you had to send?—”
“Soph-ie.” It cuts off, freezes her, then plays the rest back quick, “Turn on the local news stream.”
“ What ?”
“Go to the website, here—” There’s a ping on my computer, and I click over to see an email from Olivia with a link. “Open that, like, right now.”
“What’s going on—” I start, and stop when I open the link and pull up a video of Elliot.
This is the local news channel, so the footage isn’t terribly high quality. I see the papers around him, the setup, and know what it is immediately. A signing.
Why would Olivia tell me to watch this ?
But something is off about it — Elliot is sitting behind a table with a woman next to him. She’s pretty, with dark red hair that’s pulled back into a bun, and she’s staring at him like he’s gone completely off script.
“Oh, my…” Molly whispers, drifting over and standing behind me, her vanilla perfume filling the space as the sound kicks in, and Elliot’s rich voice comes out of the computer.
Elliot is staring directly into the camera, looking too handsome for the local news. His dark hair is mussed, like he’s been running his hands through it, and his brown eyes feel too real, like he’s here and not just visible on the screen.
The captions at the bottom of the screen taking a moment to catch up with what he’s saying, scrolling through a beat later than when he gets the words out.
“…this team is not for sale, and will not be for the foreseeable future. Soccer, and women’s sports in general, are about more than money. There is not an offer with enough zeros to convince me to give this up.”
I blink at the screen, my brain still playing catch-up. Elliot is… not selling the team? He went on the local news to announce that?
A cynical voice in the back of my head says, Once again, everyone else knows before you.
On the screen, Elliot stands up, sets the microphone on the table, and walks right out of the video. I only realize my mouth is open when the screen goes to commercial, a bear dancing around and telling me the benefits of great toilet paper.
“He’s not selling?” Molly asks, her gaze shifting to me, volume rising as she repeats it, “ He’s not selling ?”
“I guess… not.” I’m stunned, still staring at the screen as it changes over to a candy commercial.
“Sophie Kendall!” Olivia calls from the screen, waving her hand emphatically. “You need to wake up! Go and find that man!”
“Olivia,” I hiss, bringing the phone closer to my face like that will keep anyone from hearing her. I glance at Molly, but she’s looking at me with a coy expression, like she already knows exactly what Olivia is talking about.
Turning back to the phone, I say, “Just because he wants the team doesn’t mean he wants me. And it doesn’t mean I want him! He was going to sell without telling me, and he’s a grade-A asshole?—”
“You’re right.”
I actually gasp when I look up and see Elliot in the doorway, looking like he ran all the way here to get across town, his tie askew, his face flushed. Molly lets out a sound and steps back, and Olivia squeals from the phone.
“Oh my God , is that?—”
I tap the button to end the call and Molly takes the phone from my limp hand, sliding along the wall toward the door.
“I’ll just be going,” she whispers, but I can’t look at her.
I can only look at Elliot, who’s staring at me like I’m the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Sophie,” he says, taking a step into the room, his eyes never leaving mine. “I know I fucked up. Big time. I realize now that— well, I realize what a grade-A asshole I was being. Even if I wanted to sell the team, I should have talked to you about it.”
I cross my arms over my chest, defensiveness rising in me. “Why would you want to sell the team? I thought that you were coming around to it. To Dallas.”
My sentence conveniently leaves out the last, and most important part: to me.
“I was,” he says, taking another step toward me, and I smell a rush of his spicy cologne. “I am ,” he amends.
“So then why sell?” I hate the way my voice sounds choked. He’s already apologized for doing it behind my back, but I want to hammer the point, make him understand how much it hurt me.
“Because,” he says, voice low, gaze still locked on mine.
“I want to be with you, Sophie. And I thought that, with me owning the team, and you being the coach — I knew you wanted to keep things between us quiet. And I don’t want that.
I want to have you. Publicly. So I thought that selling might be the best thing for both of us. ”
“But what if the team went to an even worse person?” I ask, before realizing what that sounds like. “Well, not that?—”
“No,” he laughs, holding up his hand and letting out a breath. “I know what you’re saying. And you’re right — that’s almost exactly what was going to happen. It was… turns out it was my dad who made the offer.”
I suck in a breath, eyebrows shooting up. “Your dad… who you were trying to make proud?”
“Right.” Pink splashes over his cheeks, and my hands itch to press against those spots, see how warm they are to the touch.
“Well, yeah. Turns out, he would do anything to get me out of this business. I’m starting to think it has less to do with him hating sports and more to do with him having control. ”
“I’m sorry, Elliot.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” he says, finally rounding my desk and coming to face me. Reaching down, he takes my hands and pulls me up out of my chair, his eyes skipping back and forth between mine. “I’m here to apologize to you .”
“Right. I really don’t like that you went behind my back, Elliot.”
“It will never happen again. You have my word.”
“You said publicly… does that mean you don’t want to be friendly colleagues ?”
“Sophie,” he breathes, shaking his head.
“I never wanted to be your colleague. I’ve just…
I don’t have much experience with relationships.
I was so caught up in making money, in my businesses being the most important thing to me, that I thought I couldn’t make it work with you.
That it would be better to let you go before I got too deep. ”
He smells so good, and his palms are warm against mine, and it’s hard to think clearly when he’s this close to me. Without meaning to, I glance over at my desk, at the exact spot we were in two weeks ago.
“Sophie.” Elliot’s voice is low, and I realize his nose is close enough to mine that if I sway forward a bit, I could touch him.
From far away, his eyes are so dark brown they’re nearly black, but up close, you can make out the color better, see the fleck of gold strewn throughout them.
Like a nougat candy bar, or a glittering chocolate diamond.
When he leans forward, knocking his nose against mine, I don’t pull away. I suck in a breath, close my eyes, remember what it was like the first time he kissed me, the way my body felt light and full of life.
“Am I forgiven?” he rasps, his voice so quiet I wouldn’t be able to hear him if he wasn’t standing so close to me. I pull my hands from his and lift them, resting them against his chest, and he sucks in a breath at the contact.
“For now,” I finally say.
“Okay,” he says, “I can live with that.”
Then he reaches around, plants his hand in the small of my back, and pulls me into a kiss.