“Perfect.” He pulled his cell from his pocket.
“Then I’ll just leave you…” She grimaced, blew air from her cheeks, and walked back to the door. “…to go let the committee know you didn’t agree to this.”
“Anna.” His throat was thick with her name.
She turned.
He futzed around with the cell in his hand. “We need to talk once I sort this out.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He pulled up the contact for his agent and pushed the call button. No signal.
Shit.
He turned to ask Anna if he could borrow her phone, but she was pushing and pulling at the door. It wasn’t opening.
Four strides and he was beside her. She glanced at him, eyes wide. “It’s jammed. It won’t open.”
No. He did not accept that.
He turned the handle and put his weight behind his effort to pull the door open. It didn’t budge.
“We’ll just call the front desk. They’ll send someone right over.” Anna wiped a whisp of hair from her forehead. “Where’s your phone?”
“No signal.” He held up his no-signal phone in illustration.
“What?” she asked, as though she had never heard of a phone not having any signal.
“I don’t have service in here—” which was totally okay, because “—if we’re locked in here, they can’t sell me out there.”
Logic was totally his friend in this situation. Besides, if they were locked in a room, then perhaps they could hash out the future without the guests’ constant attempts to get autographs or his attention.
Anna held three fingers over her lips and shook her head. Despite the pink makeup highlighting her cheeks, she was totally pale. “That’s not true. They can still sell you. But if we’re locked in here, I can’t buy you. If I can’t buy you, then Babushka will probably buy you and then there will be a scene”—Anna scanned the empty room with her gaze as if she were searching for an escape route—“and then she’ll have stipulations. Stipulations and a scene. And then she’ll shove us together and then we’ll have all of this resentment toward each other.”
Being shoved together didn’t sound so bad. “I won’t resent you if your babushka purchases me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Anna.”
“I mean, how can you know that?” she asked.
“Anna. The scene I can live without. But the other part is going to be fine. No matter what, it’s going to be fine. Because I have every intention of showing you why we’re great together for as long as you’ll let me.”
“We’re great together?” Anna asked, her expression pure shock.
“We are.” He was firm on this.
“We are great together.” She sighed. “I’ve missed you.”
“Whoever buys me? It’ll be fine. It’ll probably be your grandmother and she’ll just give me to you.” That’s the outcome he was rooting for.
“That’s your first mistake. You can’t trust her. Gah, I can’t even tell my friends to buy you,” she continued. “Which means we don’t know who will buy you. Babushka is sort of cheap and you’re a total catch, so if your price gets too high, she’ll find a reason to stop bidding and then she’ll hook me up with one of the barely-not-a-teenager valet guys. I just know it.”
Bad. Yes, that was the feeling. This was not a good feeling. Definitely a bad one. He didn’t particularly want to think about Anna hooking up with anyone who wasn’t him.
“Do you have a signal?” he asked, refusing to sound too desperate, but they might as well be in overtime during the Super Bowl, on the final play, with the coach calling for a two-point conversion.
“A what?” she asked, eyebrows creased.
“Signal. Phone.” He pointed to the signal-less device he held in his hand.
“I don’t…” Anna shook her head. “I don’t have my phone.”
She had her purse. He tilted his forehead toward it. “Isn’t it in your— “
She bit at her top lip, which in any other circumstance would totally be a turn-on for him. “It’s not in there. It was confiscated.”
Say… “What?”
“Long story.” She banged at the closed door with her fist. “C’mon, somebody hear us.”
He tried the handle once more. Nothing. Tried again. Nope. He wished he were a linebacker so he could crash through the thing.
Making a fist, he pounded on the door next to Anna.
The noise from the gala must’ve drowned them out because even after a full five minutes of pounding, no one came.
Anna leaned against the door. “We’re stuck.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Yes, they were.
“I have this friend. You haven’t met her yet, but she’s great. Really smart and perpetually happy,” Anna said, as though that had anything to do with anything.
He raised his eyebrows. May as well see where she was going with this one.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“And she would say that when you find yourself in a situation that isn’t ideal, you should find some bright spots in it.”
She was definitely a bright spot in a locked room. “What bright spots are you finding here?” he asked.
“Well, I mean, we’re stuck in here together and…I’ve missed you. That’s a bright spot, right?” She glanced up at him from under her lashes.
Best bright spot of all.
“You miss me?” he asked, something inside him needing that confirmation.
“Of course, I do, you lug nut.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Answer?”
“Yeah.” He nodded.
“Because my feelings were hurt.”
“Hear me out. Since we’re stuck here…” He’d just embrace the opportunity to explain things. “The reason I didn’t want— “
She held up her hands, her cheeks turning a festive shade of red. “You don’t need to explain. I get it. You don’t want to be serious. Career importance. All that. I just…” Her voice was progressively cracking more and her speech was getting faster. “I don’t want to be with you when you come back to Denver on the off weeks. I want a real grown-up relationship where I live in the same town as the guy I’m with.”
Last time he’d checked, they’d been doing some pretty grown-up stuff together.
A better job of explaining, that’s what he needed to manage. “There’s a reason I have my team—”
“Because it’s your job,” she finished for him.
“Not my teammates.” His personal team—the people who handled the rest of it all. “My team. My agent. Manager. The lady who picks out my clothes.”
She squinted adorably at him. “You have a stylist?”
Of course, he had a stylist. If he picked out his own clothes, he’d always be in his favorite pair of worn-out jeans. He’d live in the football tees that were always given to him in enormous gift baskets from sponsors.
“I know what I’m doing on the field,” he said.