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“You’re not saying I’m your primary motivation for quitting the game, are you?” I asked, then gulped as a palatial two-story mansion came into view. It was so big, it made Champion’s house seem miniature. And this was only one of Simon’s estates?
“It’s not quitting.” Champion parked the Navigator by a rectangular fountain as big as his swimming pool. It had a derrick in the middle that gushed sparkling clear water rather than oil. “It’s retiring while I’m at the top of my game. You weren’t a factor in the decision process until I met you. But now ...” He looked at me, his eyes glittering like polished topaz. “You are the top factor in all my decisions.”
“But, Champion—”
“Electra,” he said and cut off the engine. “I found you. I’m keeping you. The debate about that is long over. I want to spend all my mornings in bed with you, all my evenings too. I want to make love to you whenever the mood strikes me, and with you, that mood strikes me a lot.”
“It does me too.” I smiled as he unlatched his seat belt. “But we can do that, and you can still play football.”
“I want to have children.” He dropped that bombshell and shifted to face me. “I want that right away, and I want it with you.”
Even gaping at him, I felt my chest warm. Having a baby with Champion? That would be a hell yes.
“I’d like that too.” I beamed happy vibes at him. “Someday.” This topic deserved more than one discussion. “But we can make that happen while you’re playing football.”
“Not for you and a family to be the priority that you would deserve to be. Preseason, I could manage it.” He tilted his head. “But the regular season is week after week of insanity. Practices, game film to study, work to take home. Meetings all the time. Media stuff. Travel. Games. And repeat.”
“And you wouldn’t like that?” I studied him closely. “Anything that takes away time from me and our potential family.”
“Hell no, I wouldn’t,” he said adamantly. “And we have a family already. You, me, and Ally.” His voice dropped. “I just want to add to it.”
“Between me and the game you love to play,” I said slowly, my tone reflecting my astonishment, “you would choose me.”
My heart skipped through a real-life fantasy, knowing he was right. We were new and unconventional, but we were a family.
“Easily.” His blue eyes shone bright like the cloudless Texas sky above us.
“That goes both ways,” I whispered. “You over dance.”
Dance was my solace, but he was more. Not just comfort and consolation to me, Champion was hope and happiness, a chance to have lasting love like my parents had shared. I would be a fool not to take him up on it.
“My grip isn’t as legendary as yours, but you should know that who I love, I hold on to tightly.”
“We’ll hold on to each other.” He took my hands, gathering them in his. “You don’t have anything to prove to me. I know you’re committed. Even if you’re slower to see what I do, you showed me how high I factor in your life when you agreed to do choreography at the club.”
I could show him he mattered in other ways too.
“I think you on a field doing what you do is magical,” I whispered. “I’m here for it.” For all of it. I was committed to him, to us. “Whatever you decide, whatever you need, playing ball or retiring, you can count on me to support you.”
Champion
I’D DRIVEN TO Simon’s place determined to do one thing, but after talking to Electra, I was contemplating another. Playing football with her supporting me, I liked that idea. With her in my life, I had someone to care about me, someone I loved beside me, someone whose opinion mattered, a team off the field to play for.
Her hand in mine, she glanced around wide-eyed inside Simon’s ostentatious foyer.
With soaring twenty-four-foot ceilings and gold-embossed crown molding, Simon’s twenty-eight thousand square foot house wasn’t a home. It was a hotel, another part of his empire meant to intimidate, much like the man himself. Only he didn’t intimidate me.
“Right this way, Mr. Valentine.”
His butler appeared. This one I didn’t know. The footfalls from his shiny black shoes echoed in the cavernous and cold space he led us through.
“Mr. Morris is in the gathering room with his brother and Miss Timmons. My orders are to take you to them.”
Orders, fucking hell.
Down a long, wide corridor, we followed the butler. We crossed over another wide corridor. I knew from parties that turning right down that hallway led to the kitchen, and that turning in the opposite direction led to an office and a six-car garage beyond that.
“Mr. Valentine, sir,” the butler announced when he stepped into yet another cavernous space with lots of leather and Charles Marion Russell original paintings on the walls. “And Miss Miller.”
