A running back’s career was one of the shortest in the NFL; it had to be. No matter how much conditioning it went through, there was only so much the human body could endure. But his body still had years to give to this game. Not playing wasn’t an option.
Payton resumed her seat on the other side of the table, clutching another cup of steaming coffee. Cedric couldn’t help but notice how smooth her skin looked.
Focus,
he chastised himself, but it was damn hard to do when faced with a woman who looked like an angel and had the body of a swimsuit model. God, what he wouldn’t give to see her in a swimsuit. Or, even better, out of one.
Cedric squelched a groan.
“So, do we have a deal?” she asked.
He snapped out of his daze, her question reminding him of just why they were sitting here. “You still haven’t told me how it is you plan to score me a new contract.”
“Yes, I did. You’re going to have an image make-over.”
“What does that entail, exactly?”
“Making sure the only section of the paper your face is seen is the sports section. Putting an end to those drama-filled extracurricular activities you seem so fond of. In other words, you, Cedric Reeves, have got to become the model NFL player both on and off the field.
“There are twelve regular games left in this season, which is more than enough to prove yourself on the field. We get a little more time to work on your off-the-field image, since negotiations won’t take place until the off-season.” “And you think that’s enough time to turn things around?”
“Only if you stick with the plan,” she said.
“And that plan?”
“Is well thought out and ready to be put into motion. But you’ve got to sign on the dotted line first.”
“What?” Cedric laughed. “You expect me to take you on as my agent without knowing what it is you plan to do for me? You think I’m stupid or something?”
“Do you think
I’m
stupid?” she returned. “Am I supposed to just hand over this strategy I’ve devised so you can take it to some other, more ‘experienced’ agent, who just so happens to have testicles? I was born in the summer of seventy-nine, Cedric, not yesterday.”
She sipped her coffee, sat back in her chair and lanced him with a piercing stare. “I know how female agents are viewed in this league,” she continued. “You all think just because a woman can’t play football, she couldn’t possibly understand the game enough to be a competent agent.”
“You’ve already proven that you know football,” Cedric said.
“To you, but what about to your teammates? And all those reporters who cover the Sabers games? The moment they find out I’m your new agent they’re going to rag on you like a bunch of kids on a playground, but you’ve got to promise that you’ll stand up to the criticism. If we become partners, you’ve got to show them you’re serious about me, Cedric. No cute jokes about the girl agent. Are we clear on that?”
Any inclination to make a joke about her being female had been washed away by another, stronger inclination. Though it, too, had everything to do with her being female. The color in her smooth brown cheeks had heightened and her chest rose and fell with her escalated breaths. Cedric reined in the urge to reach across the table and tuck back the strand of hair that had gone astray during her impassioned speech.
“So, do we have a deal?” Payton asked.
She unclasped the black handbag she’d hung on the back of the chair and retrieved a tri-folded sheaf of papers. She unfolded what Cedric realized was a contract. The woman came prepared.
“This contract states that you agree to be represented by Mosely Sports Management for the rest of this football season, including the free-agency period. At the end of that time, if either of us is dissatisfied with the relationship, we can end it.” She held out a pen. “This season, Cedric. Give me this one season to turn your career around. I promise you won’t be sorry.”
Cedric stared at her across the table. His brain told him to take the contract back to his place, read it, think it over. Then, after careful deliberation, make his decision.
But his gut told him Payton Mosely was the real deal. And it wasn’t as if he had agents lined up at the door, begging to represent him. He was about to move to his C-list, and in the span of a half hour Payton had impressed him more than any of those guys. Hell, she was sharper than half the agents on his B-list. Her lack of experience was the only knock against her, but every agent had to start somewhere. He could either throw caution to the wind and become her guinea pig or walk away and hope he could convince another agent to sign him.
Forget that. Why should he go begging for their scraps? Payton was ready to take a chance on him. It was only right that he return the favor.
Relying on his gut instinct that told him Payton Mosely was legit, Cedric picked up the pen she’d placed on the table and flipped to the last page of the three-page contract. He scrawled his signature on the line above his typed name.
“When do we start making me into the new Cedric Reeves?”
Chapter 3
P
ayton stood against the back wall of the press room, her nerves in knots. Dave Foster, the head coach of the Sabers, was still fielding endless questions from reporters. He sat at a table centered on a three-foot-high platform, the wall behind him speckled with pictures of the Sabers roaring mascot.
Cedric would be out here any minute, sitting at the same table, answering some of the same questions. But Payton knew there would be an additional question for Cedric, one the reporters had asked him at every postgame press conference since he’d been released from Gus Houseman’s client roster. This time, Cedric would have a different answer for them.
She and Cedric had decided to wait until the Sunday postgame interviews to announce their new partnership. The way Payton saw it, today was the beginning of the career she’d dreamed of for so long. She had spent the entire week fine-tuning her strategy for the next three months. She had Cedric’s schedule detailed to the very minute. The busier she kept him, the less likely he was to find himself in some sort of trouble.
The Sabers head coach answered one last question. A minute later, Cedric, along with fellow running back Thomas Grayson, sat before the microphones at the table the coach had just vacated.
His eyes locked with hers and a jolt of sensation shot through Payton’s body. It was that feeling she got whenever he was near. It made her skin tingle and her stomach knot with a desire that threatened her quest to remain professional around him. His mouth tipped up in a secret grin that Payton was too nervous to interpret at the moment.
The thumping in her chest escalated with each question directed at Cedric. The one she’d been anticipating came from a reporter only a few feet away from her.
“Cedric, any luck with the agent hunt?” the reporter called.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he answered, straightening his shoulders and lifting his chin with such confidence, he had Payton thinking he meant it. “I’ve decided to sign with Mosely Sports Management.”
There was a split second of silence, followed by a flurry of whispers and murmuring around the room. Finally, the reporter who had asked the initial question followed up with the query that was likely on the tip of everyone else’s tongue. “Who?”
“My new agent is Payton Mosely, president of what will soon be the most sought-after outfit in professional sports management. She happens to be here today. Payton?” He pointed to the back of the room and a hundred heads turned her way.
Payton nodded to the room of reporters and fought the urge to fidget. Instead, she took her cue from Cedric and straightened her shoulders and raised her chin a notch.
“Ms. Mosely and I have some exciting things planned. I’m looking forward to working with her,” Cedric finished.
He lied with aplomb. He didn’t know what she had planned, and Payton wasn’t so sure he would be happy when he learned of what she had in store for him.
A man juggling a small voice recorder, camera and cell phone approached. “I’m Neil Cameron from
The Examiner.
Would you mind answering a few questions?”
“It would be my pleasure,” she said.
Payton fed the reporter answers she’d already rehearsed to his very predictable questions. Why did you become a sports agent? Has it been hard breaking into the business as a woman?
The reporter switched the voice recorder to his other hand. “So, how did you land Cedric Reeves as a client?”
Payton wasn’t prepared for
that
question. She still wasn’t sure how she’d accomplished that feat.
“Persistence and keen negotiating skills,” was her answer.
The reporter thanked her and turned his attention back to the front of the room, where two of the players who made up the Sabers defensive line—nicknamed the Wall of Destruction—had taken seats at the table.
“Hope you didn’t mind my calling you out like that.”
Payton jumped at Cedric’s voice behind her. “No, of course not,” she answered, turning to him. “Are you done here?”
“Until tomorrow when I have to be back to watch hours of tape.”
“Are we meeting at the Starbucks again?” Payton asked.
“Would you mind coming over to my place?”
His request caught her off guard. “Uh, what’s wrong with the Starbucks?”
Okay, so she could admit a coffee shop wasn’t the most ideal place to conduct meetings, but she couldn’t afford office space in New York for her one-woman operation. She could barely afford her seven-hundred-square-foot apartment in Weehawken, New Jersey.
But she wasn’t sure she was comfortable enough with Cedric to be alone with him in his apartment. Though she wasn’t certain who she had a harder time trusting, Cedric or herself.
God, she had to get past this insanely intense attraction. Her focus should be on landing her client a stellar deal, not on the way his uniform had outlined his sinewy thighs.
“I recorded today’s game on my DVR,” Cedric continued. “I want to get a jump start on analyzing my plays from today. I thought we could go over there, order takeout and go over things while I watch the game. I’ve got plans for later tonight so I need to get this done early.”
His statement had the effect of a bucket of ice water being emptied over her head.
Of course
he had plans for tonight. Tales of Cedric’s play on the football field were trumped only by stories of his player status
off
the field. In the four years since he’d entered the league, he had been linked to at least a half-dozen starlets. How could she blame them? He was a young, rich, incredibly sexy football player. What woman wouldn’t kill to be on his arm?
No, she didn’t have to worry about Cedric ravishing her in his apartment; he probably had a dozen women lined up and all too willing to be ravished.
He produced a cell phone from his pocket. “You can follow in your car, but I’ll text you my address just in case we get separated.”
“Don’t worry about it. I already know where you live.”
He stopped with his fingers on the keys. “You do know stalking is a crime, right?”
Payton felt her cheeks heat. “I no longer have to stalk you, so why don’t we just put that all behind us? Come on, I’ll pick up some Chinese from that little place around the corner from your building.”
His brows rose. “Do you know what my usual order is, too?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far yet.” Payton laughed.
Cedric had a condo in a high-rise steps away from the Hudson on Manhattan’s west side. If she stood on the roof of her five-story walk-up across the river in Weehawken, she could see the last few floors of the sleek, fifty-plus-story ultramodern skyscraper where he lived.
As they pulled up to his block, her cell phone trilled on the seat next to her. Before she could utter a hello, Cedric said, “The code for the parking garage is one one seven five. My parking spots are on the third level, slots thirty-six and thirty-seven.”
“What’s your apartment number?”
“You mean you don’t know it?”
Payton’s eyes rolled at his sarcasm. “I may have stalked you a little but not to the extent you think. Sorry to bruise your ego, Mr. Reeves, but you’re not all that.”
His deep chuckle resonated through the phone. “As my agent, you’re supposed to pump up my ego. Didn’t they teach you that in agent school?”
“What’s the apartment number?” Payton asked again.
He provided it as he turned into an entryway to an underground garage. The metal gate rose for him, then lowered seconds after he entered. Payton punched the code he’d given her into the keypad. When the gate rose, she saw Cedric’s SUV waiting just inside the garage.
Her heart melted at his thoughtfulness.
“So he’s hot and considerate. Get over it, he’s a client,” Payton said aloud. Her head whipped to the cell phone on her seat, her stomach tanking in the seconds before she saw that the phone was indeed off. If by some stupid technological glitch her phone had remained connected to Cedric’s and he’d heard her muttered words, she would never have been able to face him.
Cedric pulled into a parking slot and Payton pulled in next to him.
She got out of her car and rounded it. Cedric was leaning into the back of his SUV. He came out with the alligator duffel bag that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe.
“What happened to my Chinese food?” Cedric asked. Payton winced. “I’m only teasing you,” he continued with a chuckle. “I called in the order on our drive over. It’ll be here any minute. Come on.” He tipped his head toward the bank of elevators.
When the elevator doors closed, Payton said, “I’m trying to figure out if that’s allowed.”
“Chinese food?” Cedric asked, hefting the bag over his shoulder.
“No. Teasing.”
“Last time I checked it wasn’t against the law.”
“We’ll need to establish some boundaries, Cedric. I don’t know how close you were with Gus Houseman—”
He cut her off. “There was no teasing with Gus.”
“So there shouldn’t be any with me.”
He stared at her across the mirrored elevator, and the space seemed to shrink to half its size. He conceded with a simple nod. “Fine. This is a strictly professional partnership, right?”