Page 29 of Her Coach

He looked at me for a moment in that way he had, like he was deciding something. Then he pushed off the doorframe. "I'll let you get back to it."

"Hey—" I said before I could stop myself.

He paused.

I cast around for a reason I'd said that. "How's the first full week looking? Schedule wise."

He considered that for a second like he knew that wasn't what I'd almost said. "Manageable."

"Good." I nodded at nothing in particular. "Mom will want a full rundown when she's in."

"I know." He pushed off the doorframe fully. "She can have it."

He turned to go and I looked back at my screen and then heard myself say: "I looked you up last night."

He stopped.

"The Forbes list," I said. "You were on it. Not for hockey."

He studied me for a second the way he did when he was deciding something. Then he turned back around and nodded once. "Inherited. My grandfather built a real estate portfolio in the seventies that kept compounding long after he died. My father grew up with it and never knew anything else. Neither did I, for a while." He turned his coffee cup in his hands. "I went professional out of college and I remember thinking that the signing bonus was the most money I had ever seen. Took me about a week to realize it was nothing compared to what was already sitting in a trust with my name on it." He shrugged. "I never touched it. Not until my divorce, and even then, only enough to keep things clean. Hockey was always the thing I actually earned. The money just sat there." A pause. "It's not something I lead with."

I nodded slowly. Looked down at my coffee cup. Turned it once in my hands.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No." I looked back up. "I just — I grew up with money, too. My mother's money. And I made a decision a long time ago that I wasn't going to live inside it. I work at the bar because I wanted something that was mine. The community relations job, same thing. Mom offered to put me on salary from the stadium's operating budget the second I moved back, and I said no." I shrugged. "I wanted to earn the version of my life I was living. Not just inherit it."

Something shifted in his face. Not surprise exactly. More like recognition.

"That's why you tipped 18%," he said.

I blinked. "You noticed that?"

"I notice everything." His voice was easy, but his eyes weren't. They were doing that thing where they held on too long, like he was deciding whether to say something. "I told you to tip whatever you needed. You could've taken a hundred bucks and I never would've blinked."

"I know."

"But you didn't."

"No," I said. "I didn't."

He was quiet for a moment. Then the corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile, something quieter than that. "You know what the difference is between you and every other person who's ever had access to someone else's money?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Most people convince themselves they earned it," he said. "You're the first one I've met who actually wanted to."

The warmth that moved through my chest at that had nothing to do with the coffee.

I scoffed and placed my hand against my chest, feigning offense. "Coach, just because my mother makes money doesn't mean we're prone to slinging it around."

"Those red-bottomed shoes of your mother's say differently."

I waved my hand in the air and took another pull of my coffee through the straw. "Mom's always had a thing for shoes. I hear it's a woman thing."

His eyes tracked the movement of my lips before he spoke, his voice a bit gruffer than before. "Not a shoes gal?"

I snickered and rolled my eyes. "Not a fashion gal, much to my mother's dismay."