Page 5 of Her New Billionaire Bosshole (The Billionaire’s Bidding #2)

SOPHIE

B y the time the final whistle blows, we’re down two goals, and we’ve lost the game.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve lost a game. Obviously, I’ve lost plenty as a player on the field, and I’ve lost plenty as a coach. But this one has a particular sting to it, the knowledge that a lot more was riding on this than just the team’s record.

I didn’t even manage to win the first game after making that deal with Elliot Altman. I picture him in a fancy hotel room, his feet up on a leather footrest, popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate this loss.

He’s probably rejoicing, already making calls to start firing our people left and right.

I keep my face neutral as our players come back to the sidelines, knowing the cameras are swiveling around to take me in, get a close-up of my expression. As the coach, it’s my job to represent the team. And Dallas stays composed in the face of defeat — even when it’s more bitter than normal.

To my left, Lena growls and whips her warm-up onto the ground, stepping over it and barely missing stomping it with her sneakers. She’s not dressed to play today, wearing a pair of jeans with her jersey, her hair loose instead of pushed back into its normal game-day headband.

“ Fuck ,” she hisses, thrusting her hands into her short hair and stalking over to me. If we’d won, she might be okay. But I know she’s carrying the weight of this loss, taking it personally. Thinking, maybe with too much ego, that if she’d been in the game, things would have gone differently.

“You need to let me play again,” she says, getting a little too close to my face. I put my hand up, pinning her with a look I hope communicates that she should step back.

She does, but her scowl stays firmly in place.

“You’re not ready.”

“I am ,” she insists, her expression caught between pain and frustration. “If you had let me on the field tonight, we wouldn’t have lost.”

It’s pointless to argue with her about this, especially in this moment.

I could tell her that statement is insulting to her teammates.

I could point out, again, that I’m not risking her future to play a single game.

But if she’s not ready to hear it in my office, she’s definitely not ready to hear it here and now, angry after losing a game we could have won.

“Lena,” I say under my breath, hoping none of the cameras are focused on us right now. “Now is not the time.”

She huffs, turns on her heel, and stalks away as the rest of the women come over, huddling around me, their eyes on me. This is one of the most challenging parts of being a coach — finding the balance between accountability and understanding when we lose.

There’s no point in ripping into them right now, talking about how the defense was loose, our press wasn’t urgent enough, the communication on the field is clearly lacking. Right now, if I start telling them each thing they did wrong, they’re only going to deflate under the pressure of it.

“Good effort,” I finally say, catching their eyes. “The most important thing is that I could tell you were giving this your all until the end.”

I can see it reflected back in their eyes — yeah , and that’s what almost makes it worse. If they hadn’t been giving it their all, that might be something we could point to. A lack of effort might be much easier to fix than a lack of skill, the loss of a vital player.

Or that other thing that’s hovering just under the mesh of the team. An intangible element that needs fixed. Something about the way they work together, how they come together on the field.

Lena is at the fringe of the huddle now, and when I meet her eyes, I can see that she’s still upset about not making it into this game. That she blames me — and herself — for this loss.

Sighing, I finish up the short speech with, “We’ll watch film tomorrow, as always. Rest up tonight, take care of yourselves. Let’s start fresh in the morning.”

They disperse, each of them walking out, and I find myself thankful, at least, that it’s a home game.

If we were away right now, we’d have to clamor back onto the bus, smashed inside, all the high emotions from the loss bouncing around together until one player would inevitably snap at another, and I’d have to untangle the argument.

I’m at the bench, grabbing my jacket, hoping the journalists down here don’t corner me for an interview, when a figure appears at my side.

“Sophie.”

I straighten up at the sound of his voice, that smooth tenor, and meet his eyes, wishing my cheeks weren’t hot. Hopefully, he’ll chalk it up to the excitement of the game, and not the sight of him.

He’s in a suit, as always, but there’s something different about him — something a little undone. Right now, he’s not the same, totally composed man I met in the hallway before. His hair is tousled, and there’s the lightest smudge of?—

“Mr. Altman,” I return, as formally as I can, trying to hide my embarrassment under the straight set of my mouth. “Is that paint on your cheek?”

He raises his eyebrows, brings his hand to his cheek, and wipes the swipe of blue away, staring at his palm with a strange expression.

“Seems like it is,” he says, cracking a smile and raising his eyes to mine.

When he does, there’s something sparkling there.

Likely, the joy of seeing us lose the game. “And you can call me Elliot.”

Why does he have paint on his cheek? I glance up at the stands, which are quickly emptying, but which I know held our devout fans just ten minutes ago. Was he up there rubbing shoulders with them?

When I say nothing, just turn and head for the locker rooms, he clears his throat and falls into step beside me, where I catch the swing of his long legs from the corner of my eye. Frustration flashes in me at how easy it is for him to keep my pace.

“Well,” he says, finally. “It looks like our bet has come to a quick close.”

I work hard not to grit the words out through my teeth. “Looks like it has.”

Right now, I can’t even look at him. If I do, I might start to dissect his appearance even more, trying to figure it out. Because right now, he looks like a man who just watched a soccer match.

And one that enjoyed it, at that — his collar loosened, his jacket shrugged off and folded over one arm, his hair wild and windswept.

Part of me wants to piece him all back together.

Another part of me — one that I shove far, far to the back of my mind — wants to take him apart more, see how much further he can unravel.

“It’s too bad,” he says, which surprises me. I resist the urge to look at him as I pass the cleanup crew, waving at them as they drive by with water jugs and netted bags of soccer balls.

“Is it? Not for you, it seems?”

“They were doing so good at the start of the game,” he remarks, and I finally look at him again, raising an eyebrow. I’m confused. Obviously he was rooting for us to lose, so he would win his little wager and get to do things his way.

But now he’s trying to talk to me about the game like we’re footie buddies. Like he wanted us to win.

Sighing, I look down at my feet as we continue walking.

Above us, bugs flutter around the field lights.

Fans stream out of the stadium, a sea of disappointed faces in blue and orange.

The crew is working quickly, disassembling the game just as fast as the tide turned and we headed into losing territory.

That’s how soccer is — sometimes moving slowly, then fast enough that the game slips away without you having time to process it, to stop it.

I’d adjusted the defense in the first half, but it wasn’t enough.

All I want to do is mull over it, think about how I could have better prepared the players for this game, but I can’t do that with Elliot Altman walking beside me.

“Are you waiting for my explanation?” I finally ask, knowing there’s an obstinate tone in my voice and not doing anything to correct that. Lena gets to act out to me, maybe I get to act out to Altman. Maybe that’s the circle of life.

“Why did you lose?” he asks, and to my surprise, he sounds genuinely curious, not goading. He continues, “Was the other team just better? It didn’t seem that way to me.”

He’s right — Washington wasn’t better than us. Not technically, skill-wise, or even without Lena suiting up for us. In fact, without Lena, we were pretty evenly matched. And yet, they pulled ahead near the middle of the game anyway.

“I think… we ran out of energy,” I say, the words coming out on a single breath. Tomorrow, I’ll examine the game footage and take note of every mistake. Understand where I could have better prepared, and pinpoint the moments for each player where they could have made a different decision.

But now that I’ve said it out loud, I know without watching it that my first inclination is right. The crux of the loss was all about our energy.

“So, more conditioning?” Elliot stops when I finally reach my SUV, parked all the way at the back of the parking lot. I have my key in my hand, but I’m not unlocking it. Where is his car? Maybe there’s a limo about to come around the corner for him.

Frustrated, I narrow my eyes at him. “You care about this, suddenly? I thought you were just going to throw money at the problem.”

“Who said I’m not going to?” He tips his head down, raising his eyebrows. “And I do care. Fans up there had a lot of good things to say about you.”

In a moment, a hot flash of shame runs the length of my body, starting at my head and landing at my toes. I’d assumed that Elliot searched me up when he bought the team, but then it seemed like he didn’t know much about me.

But, if he was talking to Dallas fans? They might have told him everything I don’t want him to know.

My history flashes through my head, the sharp, specific grief of all that buildup just to end with a future lost. Coaching is my consolation prize. I’ve taken it gladly, just happy to stay in the world of soccer, but there’s not a single day I wake up and don’t feel the weight of what I’ve lost.

Shifting from foot to foot, I try to ignore the telltale aching in my hip, almost as though my body is remembering the moment everything went wrong.

“You were talking to fans,” I say, wanting to steer the conversation away as quickly as I can. “I’m surprised you watched the game, sat in the stands.”

“Those stands are atrocious,” he says. “We’ll need to look into a different stadium.”

Once again, his insistence on changing things hits at something in my chest, and I frown. “Dallas has been playing here for over forty years.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

I clench my fists at my side, sucking in a deep breath and willing myself to stay quiet before I say something I regret.

“It’s not conditioning.” I say.

He blinks, then seems to remember what we were talking about earlier, eyes locking on mine as I go on, “It’s a mental thing.

I’ve noticed it from last season. We get to the halfway point in the game, and it’s like the morale just…

starts to tank. I don’t know if it’s because we’re missing Lena or what.

But I have to find a way to rebalance things, fix it. ”

Elliot looks unconvinced, like he thinks there must be more to it than morale. Turning, I wave my hand at my car, gesturing like, I’m ready to go now .

“Was there something else you needed, Mr. Altman?”

His eyes flash in a challenge, clearly not liking that I continue to call him by his last name. But I don’t want to be buddy-buddy with the guy that’s going to move the team to some ultra-modern, indoor, Jumbotron-esque stadium, flushing the charm of our home field right down the toilet.

Elliot takes a step closer to me, and I’m surprised when a flutter dances through my chest. My eyes dart up to his as he leans in close and says, “Sure, Coach Kendall. Meet me early Monday morning, before film. We have a meeting to attend to, since we’re going to be doing things my way from now on. ”

I want to fight back, but he’s right — I lost our wager, fair and square.

Gripping my keys in my hand so tightly they cut into my skin, I say, “Fine. I’ll be there.”

He turns and walks away, and I stare at his back as I try to recover my breath. He’s a pompous asshole swaggering into a situation he knows nothing about, and I can’t wait for the moment he falls flat on his face.

I turn, beeping my fob and sliding into the well-worn leather seat. The inside of the SUV is hot, but for the first thirty seconds, it feels just like a warm hug, wrapping around me.

After a beat, my brain starts up again, thoughts turning right back to the man still making his way across the parking lot, jacket thrown over his shoulder.

I may have no choice but to give him a chance with this, so I will.

But I will never stop thinking about what’s right for the team, even if that means I have to go toe-to-toe with Elliot Altman.