Melissa laughed at that, her initial businesslike demeanor quickly giving way to friendliness. She leaned over to Anna as if she were sharing a secret. "Actually, the truth is that the team had to hire Julie as Ty's personal PR rep."

Julie shrugged. "He's a bad boy. But he's my bad boy. Besides, you should know that Melissa met her husband, Dominic, when he hired her to be his agent." She waggled her eyebrows. "I've never seen an agent that interested in her client."

Anna had to bite her lip so she wouldn't laugh at the way the two women were ribbing each other. At the same time, she'd noticed they both seemed to have a glow about them, especially when they were talking about their husbands. A little pang of envy caught her in the chest, similar to the way she sometimes felt when she watched her sisters with their husbands.

"So." With unsettling abruptness, Julie and Melissa stopped teasing each other and turned their laser focus on Anna. "Tell us about yourself. What do you do for a living? How did you meet Cole? When did you know he was your forever?"

Oh God, what was with people and the word forever?

"I teach first grade." She paused, readying herself to lie to these two nice women. Just one more lie to add to the heaping pile. But she couldn't quite do it, not when they'd been so nice to her. "We met in Las Vegas. One of my sisters was getting married and he was visiting his grandmother."

She would have stopped there, but she already knew neither of these women was going to let her get away with leaving the "forever" question unanswered.

Dropping her voice, she lowered her gaze to her lap. "I knew it was forever the first time he looked at me."

Julie's soft gasp echoed Anna's own private reaction to what she'd just said.

To what she'd just admitted...to herself.

Oh God, had everything she was starting to feel for him already been there in that first glance, when he'd looked into her eyes and told her they were beautiful?

"It's clearly mutual."

Julie's surprising statement was quite possibly the only thing that could have pulled Anna out of her shocked self-examination.

"Cole is usually pretty even-keeled, but he almost bit my head off in the hall before we came in here."

Anna didn't understand. "Why? What happened?"

"I told him I wanted to give the press our version of your story, rather than whatever random misinformation they'll splash onto the Internet and the newspapers. I thought he was going to tackle me when he told me that your relationship is private. And that there wasn't any story."

Melissa agreed. "I've never seen Cole act like that about any other woman. I honestly never thought he'd find anyone he really, truly could care about. Not until you."

Anna couldn't believe how wrong these women were about Cole. He'd bit off Julie's head because he was trying to keep their lies from being revealed, not because he cared about his new wife.

"I still can't believe he managed to keep you a secret," Julie said. "When did you say the two of you met?"

Anna knew she wasn't a good liar. Not only did she preach to her first graders day in and day out about the value of honesty, but she simply didn't like the way lying made her feel, like gears were grinding together in her gut, pulling and tugging at her insides.

Thankfully, before she could answer, the game began and everyone's attention turned to the field. She peered out at the men in their uniforms. She wanted to ask which one was Cole, but it would be way too suspicious if she did. Fortunately, he wasn't hard to pick out. Not when she already knew how he moved, the broad set of his shoulders, his tight hips. He looked up at the VIP box between plays and she couldn't stop her body from reacting. From wanting.

Needing.

As she watched the players move on the field, she was glad to find herself quickly picking up on the rules. Time passed and she had almost started to feel comfortable, when suddenly Cole thundered into a player from the other team, knocking the huge man to the ground without even breaking stride.

"Oh, my God."

She was too stunned by what she'd seen, by the brutal way he'd stopped the other team from advancing down the field, by what she now realized was his job, to keep the words from leaving her mouth, to keep what she was sure was a clear expression of shock from her face. He was paid to be violent, given so much money for being huge and hard and unstoppable that he could pay for a mansion on the hill in San Francisco, for an expensive sports car, for a penthouse in Las Vegas, for the jewels he'd offered to buy her.

But bigger than her shock at what she'd just seen her husband do, was her shock at herself.

Because instead of being horrified at the violence, instead of wanting nothing more to do with Cole as the other man was helped, limping, off the field, her body had heated up...and she wanted her husband now more than ever.

She wanted all of that barely leashed violence unleashed over her. On her.

In her.

Realizing that both Julie and Melissa were staring at her, questions in their eyes, she shot to her feet. She had to get out of here, had to go somewhere she could be alone and pull herself together.

Somehow, she had to figure out a way to stop reacting with such pleasure every time she saw Cole, or said his name aloud, or even thought about him, about little things like how good he'd been with her family, especially her mother. He'd been perceptive enough to realize that her mother was upset and he hadn't pushed, hadn't tried to get Jackie to like him. He'd just been himself, been easy with all of them, telling them football stories he'd had to know they would like, and by the end of the night, Anna had caught her mother smiling at him despite herself.

"I have to go--" She paused awkwardly.

"The restroom is just out the door and down the hall to the left," Melissa said, concern lacing her brows.

"Thanks."

Splashing her face with cold water in the bathroom, taking the time to repair her light makeup, Anna stepped outside a sliding door into the cool air off the Bay and tried to breathe deeply. But she didn't have enough time to figure out a way to deal with her response to Cole, to tamp down on it and contain it in a little box, one she would only let herself open for the sensual pleasures he'd promised her.

Still, no matter how hard it was going to be to hold firm, she couldn't give up the fight.

Not when she knew with utter certainty that if she gave in to the insidiously soft emotions growing by the second behind her breastbone, she was going to be in a whole lot more trouble than just being caught telling a couple of lies.

If she deviated from their agreement to simply stick it out through his grandmother's illness, she was going to get caught wanting more. So much more that she could already feel herself drinking in every single one of Cole's touches, his kisses, his gazes.