Page 1 of Her Game Plan

Chapter 1

Charlotte

“I love fucking with pro athletes.”

“I’m pretty sure you mean you love fucking pro athletes,” my college roommate says, her face splitting into a grin on my phone screen.

Shaking my head, I walk across the lawn to the Fourth of July party I’m only attending because I heard rumors my friend and hockey coach extraordinaire was going to be here. “Nope. They are always depressingly underwhelming. Give me a brooding musician any day. Did I tell you the baseball player I slept with last month touched my clit exactly zero times?”

“Char!” Addie’s face flames bright red, a few shades off her strawberry-blonde locks.

“The southern-belle act does not become you, Adeline Grace,” I chastise. “Don’t forget I woke up to the sounds of you giving a guy a blowie in senior year.”

She peeks at me between the fingers of the hand she’s hiding behind. “I maintain the sucking noise was a plumbing issue.”

I step into the backyard. “Well, someone was getting their plumbing worked on,” I joke.

The tall, bearded man next to me does a double take when he hears me.

“Hey, Nate.” I offer my fist for a bump.

“Charlotte.” He grins. “Causing trouble again?”

“Never,” I lie. I definitely haven’t been scheming with my friend on how to best annoy the party’s host.

“Always!” Addie yells. “Let me talk to him, Charlotte. He needs to know the truth.” I refuse to turn the phone for her to see the blond lumberjack and starting forward for Colorado’s professional basketball team. I will not have those two ganging up on me.

Barely able to hear her now that I finally made it to the party, I say goodbye to Addie, begging her to come visit me next time she has a break in her refereeing schedule. Why must all my friends like sports?

I scan the crowd, not seeing the long dark hair of my friend or the hulking form of her boyfriend. “Nate-the-Great, have you seen Finley?” I finally ask, swiveling around to make eye contact with him. “And why do you insist on looking like you’ve been living off-grid, competing in Alone for the last ninety days?”

He runs his fingers through the thick beard he sports, even during the basketball season. “I like it.”

“You look like you have small animals living in your facial hair. Likely from sleeping in the woods.”

“No need. I have the cabin I built by hand on day fourteen.”

I reach out slowly, using one finger to touch his wiry beard. My whole body shakes at the contact. “It’s repulsive.”

Nate takes a large bite of the hot dog he’s been holding. “It’s good luck,” he mumbles around the mouthful.

“I’ll take my chances with fate over having a dead chipmunk on my face.”

“You’re fighting a losing battle,” a feminine voice says behind me.

“Sage!” I whirl around, pulling the blonde into a hug. “Tell this man he needs to shave his face. And cut his hair. What is this?” I point at the mop of hair falling almost to Nate’s shoulders.

Nate looks between Sage and me. “Nope. I’m out. Sage, good to see you.”

“Word on the street is that he’s the most superstitious athlete in all of Colorado,” Sage confides as he walks away.

As his tall, muscular frame moves through the crowd, I sigh. “It’s too bad I like him as a friend. That man is cute beneath all that hair.”

Sage and I wander into the kitchen, grabbing a couple of hard seltzers to drink while we catch up. As the GM for Colorado’s baseball team, the Denver Miners, Sage is right in the middle of her busy season, so I take any chance I can get for some quality time with her.

Not that my schedule running the entertainment arm of my dad’s company is any less busy. Luckily, I love my job more than anything else in the world, so constantly working is a benefit, not a weakness.

“So, has Big Daddy Langford announced his retirement yet?” Sage’s question isn’t a surprise. Her dad gave her control of the Miners for her thirtieth birthday, and she is well aware how desperately I’m ready to take control of the entertainment arm of the business. My dad and I agree on a lot of things, but having him constantly overseeing everything I do, butting in with unsolicited advice, is starting to grate.