James, Julie - Love Irresistibly

Brooke watched as Huxley, clearly having overheard the comment, shot Cade a look and said something she couldn’t pick up over the phone.

“Well, I would really hate for Agent Huxley to suffer,” she said. “Especially since I happen to have a few extra seats in this skybox.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Good.” Cade’s voice dropped lower, adding one last thing before hanging up. “And tell your friend in the striped shirt that he’s in my seat.”

“ARE YOU GOING to tell us anything about this mystery man before he shows up?” Ford winked at Brooke. “If you want, I can give him the lowdown on your new approach to relationships. That the only gifts you’re accepting these days are sex toys and massage oils.”

“You mention those rules, and I’ll have the Wrigley Field security team haul you out of this skybox so fast your head will spin.”

“It would almost be worth it,” Ford said with a chuckle. “Except then I’d miss the dessert cart.”

“When is that coming, anyway? I love the dessert cart,” Tucker chimed in from the back row.

“Hey now, we can’t be wasting our time talking about dessert,” Charlie said. “We need to start planning all the questions we want to ask the mystery man. Gotta grill the guy to make sure he’s good enough for Brooke.”

Brooke realized she needed to cut them off at the pass. Ford, Charlie, and Tucker tended to get a little weirdly protective of her whenever she brought a new guy around—which was bad enough when she was actually dating the man in question. But Cade was just a friend. Of sorts. Friend-ish. “I appreciate it, guys. But I think you can skip the interrogation this time. I haven’t even had dinner with him yet.”

“I want to play the part of the hard-ass friend today,” Tucker said. “You know, just sit in the corner and glare at him the whole time. See if he crumbles.”

“I’ve seen your hard-ass face, Tuck,” Charlie said. “Mostly, you just look constipated. Ford, you’d better do the glaring.”

“No glaring, and no hard-ass routines.” Brooke said definitively. “No offense, but I doubt it would work, anyway. He’s a prosecutor. He works with the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service all the time.”

“Great,” Ford said, rolling his eyes. “Now he’s some hotshot lawyer type.”

“Hey. I am a hotshot lawyer type,” Brooke said.

“Yeah, but it’s different since you’re a girl. It’s cute.”

She threw him a look. “You did not just say that.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this guy,” Tucker declared, out of the blue.

Brooke threw up her hands in exasperation. “You haven’t even met him. Besides, you three don’t like any of the men I introduce you to. You didn’t even like the Hot OB.”

“The Hot OB was a douche,” Charlie said.

“This mystery man better not be another douche, Brooke,” Ford warned. “I can’t spend six innings trapped in a skybox with a douche.”

Truly, she was losing brain cells just listening to this crap. “Seriously, if I were here with girlfriends, right now I’d be drinking daiquiris and talking about which of the players has the cutest butt.”

Ford chuckled. “All right, we’ll play nice. What’s the mystery man’s name, anyway?”

“Cade Morgan,” she said.

“Get out of here,” Charlie said in shock.

Ford pulled back in surprise. “Cade Morgan?” He looked her over for a moment, and then grinned approvingly. “Well done, you.”

Okay . . . that was kind of an odd reaction. “You boys have a thing for assistant U.S. attorneys I never knew about?”

They all looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head.

“Cade Morgan used to play football,” Ford said. “Quarterback for Northwestern. Won the Rose Bowl in 2001. How do you not know this? You deal with people in the sports industry all the time.”

“Not back in 2001,” she retorted. She’d been a sophomore in college back then. “Are you sure this is the same guy? Tall, looks delicious in a three-piece suit, annoyingly adept at taking a woman right to the edge of frustration and then—bam—sneaking in with a surprisingly sweet word or two?”

The three of them stared at her.

“Um . . . I would’ve gone with ‘brown hair, six-foot-four, two hundred and ten pounds, but we can use your description if you like,” Ford said.

Hmm. It sounded suspiciously like the same man. Brooke couldn’t decide if she was irked that she’d never known this about Cade, felt foolish, or was intrigued. Perhaps all three. “He mentioned something about a shoulder injury. Is that a football thing?”

“My God, woman. It’s only one of the most famous moments in college football history,” Ford said.

Charlie jumped in. “See, Northwestern was down by four points.”

“Which is a big deal to start with, because Northwestern barely ever makes it to the Rose Bowl,” Tucker added.

“Right. But Morgan was awesome that year—everyone was saying he would go pro,” Charlie said.

Ford picked up at this point. “So there’s fifteen seconds left on the clock, and it’s like, third and nine or something.” He stood up and pantomimed, reenacting the scene. “And Morgan pulls back out of the pocket just as this huge linebacker charges at him full speed as he goes for the sack, and then he throws this perfect sixty-five-yard pass right into the hands of a wide receiver in the end zone. The whole stadium went absolutely crazy.”

Charlie actually looked a little teary-eyed. “It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

Brooke was impatient to hear the rest. Screw the game. “What happened to Cade?”

Ford grimaced. “Took a bad hit from the linebacker and landed the wrong way, I guess. Northwestern was so busy celebrating, they didn’t even realize at first that he was hurt.”

“He broke his collarbone, and totally messed up his shoulder,” Tucker said. “He never stepped on a football field again.”

Brooke sat there, finding it hard to believe that they were talking about Cade Morgan, the successful assistant U.S. attorney who’d made a name for himself prosecuting corrupt politicians and other high-profile white-collar criminals. “I never knew that about him.”

Just then, the door from the suite opened. Speak of the devil.

Cade stepped onto the skybox terrace, followed by Huxley and Vaughn. His eyes landed immediately on Brooke. Seeing his lips curve in amusement, she naturally opened her mouth to get in the first quip and—

—was cut off by a loud cheer from Ford, Charlie, and Tucker.

“Cade Morgan! Dude, we were just talking about you,” Tucker said enthusiastically.

So much for the hard-ass routine.

Ford reached out to shake Cade’s hand. “I was telling Brooke about your Rose Bowl victory.”

“You’ve been keeping secrets,” she said to Cade.

“Wait a second.” Vaughn looked at Cade in mock surprise. “You played football in college? Get out of here.” With a wink, he and Huxley joined Brooke at the railing, as Brooke’s three friends circled eagerly around Cade, bombarding him with questions.

“We’ve heard the Rose Bowl story before,” Huxley explained to her.

“I take it Cade likes to reminisce about the good old days,” Brooke said.

Huxley thought about that. “Actually, he never brings it up. Everyone else does.”

Brooke was surprised to hear that. Cade Morgan, being modest? Inconceivable.

She looked over at him, wondering if there was some kind of story there. She watched as he nonchalantly brushed off an effusive compliment from Tucker, something about how he’d put up great numbers at Northwestern despite not having an elite receiver.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to get a word in edgewise with him right then, seeing how her friends were fawning over him like twelve-year-old girls who’d scored backstage passes to a Justin Bieber concert. So instead, Brooke fell into an easy conversation with Huxley and Vaughn, talking a little about work, and then about the game.

At one point, she peeked over just as Cade said something that made the group laugh. She watched as Ford grinned and spoke animatedly, clearly into the conversation, and she couldn’t deny that it was a little heartwarming to see her best friend getting along so well with a guy she’d introduced him to. Maybe a lot heartwarming.

Luckily, Charlie’s voice rose above the fray before that line of thought went any further. “Probably, we should all hate you,” he was saying to Cade. “Illinois played against Northwestern that year for our homecoming, and you totally slaughtered us—” He broke off at the sound of a knock on the interior door to the suite.

A woman in her early twenties, dressed in a skirt and a black T-shirt with “Sterling Restaurants” in red letters, walked into the suite pushing a three-tiered dessert cart.

“Sweet Jesus, it’s here,” Charlie whispered reverently.

Brooke fought back a smile. The dessert cart was something Sterling Restaurants had introduced a year ago, as a perk for all of the skyboxes and luxury suites at the sports arenas they collaborated with. Needless to say, it had been a huge success. Four kinds of cake (chocolate with toffee glaze, carrot cake, traditional cheesecake, and a pineapple-raspberry tart), three types of cookies (chocolate chip, M&M, and oatmeal raisin), blond brownies, dark chocolate brownies, lemon squares, peach cobbler, four kinds of dessert liquors, taffy apples, and, on the third tier, a make-your-own sundae bar with all the fixings.

“Wow. That is some spread,” Vaughn said, wide-eyed.

Simultaneously, the men sprang forward, bulldozed their way through the suite door, and attacked the cart like a pack of starving Survivor contestants.

All except for one.

Cade stayed right there, on the terrace. He leaned back against the railing, stretching out his tall, broad-shouldered frame. “Whew. I thought they’d never leave.”

Brooke walked over, joining him. There was something she was very curious about. “Why didn’t you ever mention that you’d played football?”

“It didn’t come up,” he said with a casual shrug. He saw that she wasn’t satisfied with that answer and conceded. “It’s nice, sometimes, not to have it be the first thing people ask about.”

She supposed she could understand that. Her eyes traveled over him, easily able to picture him in a football uniform, especially given the way his T-shirt showed off his toned chest and defined, seemingly very strong arm muscles.

She gently touched her hand to his right shoulder. “Was it this shoulder?”

“Yes.”

Brooke looked up and saw the undisguised warmth in his eyes from her touch. When she moved her hand to the railing, he covered it with his own, lightly brushing his thumb over her knuckles.

“How many innings do we have to stay before grabbing that dinner?” he asked.

She felt sparks of excitement in her stomach at the husky tone to his voice. “Leave the Crosstown Classic early?” she said teasingly. “Never.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be tonight, is it?” His eyes held hers boldly. “Good.”

“I REALIZED SOMETHING,” Brooke said, in between bites of the chocolate chip cookie she’d snagged off the dessert cart. “I’ve seen you play football.”

After the game had ended, they’d hung out in the skybox with the other guys while waiting for the crowd to dissipate. Cade had suggested the two of them walk to a casual sushi lounge just around the corner from his apartment—a restaurant not owned by Sterling where, as he put it, “no one would be hopping around like jackrabbits on crack trying to keep Brooke Parker happy.”

She thought that sounded perfect.

It was a warm July evening, the air filled with the scent of backyard barbeques. Reveling in the Cubs’ victory over the Sox—a bigger cause for celebration on the north side of the city than the Fourth of July—people sat outside on front porches, balconies, and back decks, and played cornhole on the sidewalks and in the alleys while drinking wine, beer, and mixed drinks from plastic cups.

A far cry from the Gold Coast neighborhood she lived in. Brooke smiled, thinking about the likelihood of her Prada-clad neighbors ever getting together to drink beer and a play a round of cornhole on the rooftop deck of their high-rise building. Although, in fairness, they probably thought the exact same thing about her.