Cocky Score (The Hawkeyes Hockey Series)

My nerves are on edge as I park my car and climb out of the vehicle. This is the restaurant where my PR team and The Hawkeyes management agreed that we would stage Briggs and me getting lunch as a couple.

Erika has already tipped off a couple of media outlets about Briggs Conley having a secret girlfriend that he’s been hiding away. There is no doubt that they’ll want the exclusive photos.

The photos aren’t what has my stomach in knots, though. It’s not even the fact that I’m on a date, or rather, a fake date, with Briggs Conley. It’s that after Sam Roberts announced me as Briggs’s new fake girlfriend, Briggs stormed out of the office, Sam right on his heels.

I have no idea how the conversation went after that. The last thing I heard was that Sam’s assistant Penelope called Erika yesterday and told her that Briggs is ‘coming around’ to the idea and that Phil wants us to go full steam ahead. Then I received a package from our courier yesterday with my new apartment keys. Erika suggested that we go public immediately. Or, I guess, public in the social media sense, once the paparazzi taking these photos go viral with them.

A text comes through as I start walking toward the packed restaurant. Erika picked the restaurant for the number of eyes we would have on us.

Thanks for the added pressure, boss.

Perfect, keep stacking the pressure on. That should serve as useful. Not.

I take a deep, cleansing inhale, but the second I round the corner, I see Briggs standing by the front entrance in a pair of jeans and a jacket, with a bouquet of flowers hanging lazily by his side. If I wasn’t over-analyzing things, I wouldn’t be wondering if he’s actually using his large glutes to hide the bouquet from the view of passersby.

Briggs finally sees me walking toward him, and his lip upticks just a smidge. I’ve seen Briggs’s true smile, and that is definitely not even close. The barely-there smile he has on now is forced and guarded. It’s for show. For the fans already waving hello to him as they pass in and out of the restaurant, it’s for show for the media photographers that could be hiding out in any bush, but the one that kills me is the fake smile he’s sporting is also for me.

I dial back my disappointment. He has a right not to be happy about this arrangement. His boss is forcing him to fake date a woman he has no interest in for a few months, and his GM has him swearing sobriety during this time as well. Not to mention, Briggs is the one who faces the consequences once my brother finds out about this. Now that Isaac is a titled MMA fighter after getting injured on the ice and his dream of the NHL faded, my brother isn’t the man you want to take a punch to the face from. He still has an unhealthy amount of pent-up anger about losing his dreams of a hockey career.

I laid up all night wondering if I should call Isaac and warn him about what he might find on his social media reels later today. But I swore secrecy to my boss and to our client. I can’t break that trust. Although, I’m not sure coming clean to my brother would spare Briggs’s already slightly crooked nose. After a decade of playing ice hockey, you can’t expect any of your facial bones to retire in the same position they were when you started playing the game. Briggs is no stranger to broken bones or cracked eye sockets. He lives for the fight on the ice. Shoot, he starts them half the time.

Still, I hope a broken nose is the worst of it because Isaac can be overly protective of the people he cares about. Especially when it comes to me. Our saving grace will be if he’s busy training for his title weight fight coming up. He usually ghosts everyone and sleeps at the gym for weeks, cutting out all the noise to prepare.

I look to my left and see a red jeep parked across the street with the driver still inside. They have a camera up to their face, and they’re already snapping photos of Briggs standing in front of the restaurant with flowers. It’s showtime.

I remember Erika’s text, and I know I have to do something…

“Break the internet…”

I still have so many questions about Briggs. Like, why does he think talking to Dixie could fix things? Why does he act as though what she’s doing is out of character, like he knows her? Why did it seem like he paid for a lap dance he didn’t intend to use?

As of right now, I don’t have time to ask him these questions, and they’re irrelevant to my ultimate goal. If I want this promotion, I have to make a splash and make The Hawkeyes overwhelmingly happy with the product of this scheme.

“Briggs!” I yell.

His eyes widen as he sees me running down the sidewalk toward him. When he realizes that I do not intend on stopping, he takes a step back with his left leg and braces for impact. I jump into his arms, happy to be in a pair of jeans and a jacket. I considered dressing in something a little fancier for this ‘accidental’ photo shoot, but then Seattle started spitting rain, and I changed before I left my apartment.

I wrap my legs around his waist and lay a demanding kiss against his warm mouth, pulling his face closer as I wrap my arms around his neck, my chest pressing against his. This is completely out of character for me, and I’d never do this; jump into the arms of a guy I’m seeing and kiss him in front of snapping cameras, but Erika wants a splash… and I want a corner office.

Briggs takes another step back. Not because I overtook this bear size of a man but because I took him off guard. I begin to slip a little, but he catches me, wrapping his free hand under my bum, while the other hand holding onto the flowers I’m assuming he bought me, pulls me tighter against him to stabilize me so that I don’t fall.

A man with his kind of power doesn’t need both arms to hold me up, and the thought of his corded muscles sends a little shiver down my spine. Or maybe that was just from the cold, wet Washington weather.

He doesn’t pull his mouth off mine like I half expect him to, and I need to make sure this stunt works so that they get the photos they need. I throw caution to the wind, hoping Briggs doesn’t drop me, and I go in for a second time, and this time, he applies pressure against my lips as well.

I can’t ignore how soft his lips are, how plush and supple they feel against mine. I can taste a hint of sour green apple against his mouth as if he had just been sucking on a Jolly Rancher or chewing gum, and he smells like the same subtle cologne he wore in high school.

I can’t even believe that I still remember his smell after all these years.

After a few heartbeats, it seems that the paparazzi should have gotten their photo, and I pull back even though I’m curious where this is going, and when I do, I get a one-second glimpse of Briggs with his eyes closed.

He closed his eyes to kiss me?

Does he do that with every girl he kisses?

I only get a split second to admire him like this before he opens his eyes.

His long lashes lay against his tan skin and the little speckles of those freckles I’ve always loved. His lips are now redder than they were before from the pressure of our kiss. The knowledge that his lips are red because of me lets loose a thousand butterflies low in my belly.

When his eyes open, he looks up at me with an inquisitive brow and then sets me down.

“What the hell was that?” he asks with a lopsided grin, his thumb brushing over his lower lip.

“We have to get the people talking if we want this to work,” I tell him in a hushed tone, pulling down on my jacket to cover up the sliver of skin that was exposed to the cold elements when I was wrapped around Briggs’s waist. Yep, the shiver must have been from the cold, definitely not from Briggs.

“I think you nailed it then.” He smirks.

I try my hardest not to blush at his compliment… or at least I think it was a compliment. Maybe he was just teasing me?

I want to ask if he enjoyed the kiss, even a little bit but, of course, I won’t.

Then he offers up the flowers in his hand. “These are for you.”

They are for me!

They’re beautiful, and the bouquet is definitely the biggest one anyone’s ever given me, with pink and red roses with white flowers mixed in.

The little girl in me, with a huge crush on him, gets giddy from the thoughtful gesture. But I’d bet money that Penelope told him not to show up without flowers. We need to make this look like a date. We need to look like this relationship is real and serious.

“Hungry?” I ask.

“I just got done with training this morning… I’m starving.”

“Good. Let’s go,” I tell him, taking his huge hand in mine and then spin around and head for the door.

It’s rather comical how much smaller my hand is in his. It’s almost like his hand ate my hand for a snack.

I glance down quickly to see our joined hands, and I can’t believe how brave and forward I am with him. I’d never dare grab Briggs’s hand if we were in any other situation, but a promotion and the pressure on my shoulders to land this account has me doing things I’d never considered before.

At first, his hand doesn’t want to meld together with mine, shaking the little confidence I have in trying to be the dominant one in our twosome to make sure the paparazzi get their photos, but within seconds he grips tighter, and his long legs pass me quickly. Now he’s the one leading me inside, and I laugh to myself at the competitive alpha male who has to always be in the lead.

Taking the lead may not normally be in my comfort zone, but I’m not the little five-year-old in pigtails that used to follow him around begging for table scraps of his and Isaac’s attention. Begging my mom to help me bake chocolate oatmeal cookies (Briggs’s favorite) to bribe them for a chance to play in the tree house with them. I’m the PR superstar that’s about to save his dumbass from career ruin, and in three months’ time, I’ll have a promotion to prove it, and he can go back to chasing women and passing out on random strip club couches.

Yuck… that couch. It still haunts my dreams. Maybe during our short fake love stint, I can convince him to get a tetanus shot.

Maybe if I’m going to be in this close proximity, I should get one too.

His and hers tetanus shots. I wonder if Tessa Tomlin would think that was a great photo opportunity for The Hawkeyes’s social account. Cute.

…Not.