I'll Catch You (22 page)

Right now, she had a meeting with the Sabers starting quarterback, Mark Landon, who was rethinking his plans to retire now that the Sabers season was over.

Payton entered the same Starbucks where she’d convinced Cedric to sign with Mosely Sports Management and greeted Mark with a smile. An hour later, she walked out without having signed the quarterback to her roster.

As soon as she learned of the multiple concussions the Sabers had managed to keep under wraps, Payton knew Mark Landon would never play another game of professional football. He’d called her because his current agent, a man Payton knew only by reputation, refused Mark’s request to negotiate another one-year deal with the Sabers. Mark wanted a ring, but after five concussions over his eleven years in the league, the risk was just too high.

Another agent probably would have taken him on, collected a percentage of the eight-figure salary a quarterback with Mark Landon’s experience would fetch and then hoped he didn’t take another blow to the head. But Payton refused to be just another agent. Her clients’ well-beings would always come before money.

She reached in her purse for BlackBerry number one, intending to call Percy, but the phone rang. Payton paused as she stared at the familiar name and number that lit up the screen. At first she wasn’t sure she should answer it, but she tossed the thought out of her head. She was through running away.

“Hello, Cedric,” she answered, walking to her car.

“Hi,” he replied. “Congratulations on signing Percy Johnson and Luke Davenport,” he said, referring to the kicker she’d signed last week.

“Thank you,” Payton said. Not too keen on beating around the bush, she came right out and asked, “What do you want, Cedric?”

He was silent for a moment, uncertainty buzzing across the phone line.

“I want my agent to meet me at the Sabers facility tomorrow to negotiate my contract,” he answered.

Payton paused with her hand on her car door.

“What does that have to do with me?”

“You’re still my agent,” he said. “You never signed anything dissolving our contract, did you?”

“I…” No, she hadn’t. In the weeks that had passed since she’d learned of his talks with Marvin Hayes, she’d acquired three new clients and had been too busy to realize she had never received the papers from Cedric exercising the exit clause of their contract.

“You’re a lawyer,” he continued. “You should know that both parties have to sign the papers agreeing to end the relationship.”

“Of course, I know that,” Payton said. What she didn’t know is why he had never sent the papers. “Cedric, what’s going on here? Why isn’t Hayes negotiating your contract?”

“Because he’s not my agent,” he answered. “I couldn’t do it, Payton. You took a chance on me when no one else would.”

“But you were right. I can never get you the kind of deal Marvin Hayes will. Call him back and beg him to reconsider. You would be crazy not to.”

“Some things are more important than money,” he answered. “Loyalty being one of them.” He paused. “Love being another.”

Payton slumped against the side of her car, clutching the phone to her ear as if it were a lifeline. Her heart swelled until it ached.

“I love you, too, Cedric.”

“Then meet me tomorrow. Eleven a.m. at the Sabers’s front offices.”

“I’ll be there.”

Cedric turned to his brother, the smile on his face uncontainable. He bounced his phone from one hand to the other, exhilaration rushing through his veins.

“Did you…fix…what was…broken?” Derek managed to get out.

“I did,” Cedric nodded. “I don’t know how but I think I fixed it.”

He patted his knee and motioned for Derek, who lay prone on the floor, to lift his leg. “Up here,” Cedric directed. In subtle, incremental movements, he edged his brother’s bent knee toward his chest, then eased it back into resting position.

“You like it here at Marshall’s Place, right?” Cedric asked.

“Yes,” Derek answered.

“Good, because I think you’re going to be here for a while. And the best thing is I’ll only be an hour away for a long time to come. Next week, I’m going to bring someone here for you to meet. You’ll like her.”

“Is she…your girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” Cedric answered. “She is.”

“I…have a…girlfriend,” Derek proclaimed.

“You do?”

“Yes. I’m…gonna…gonna marry her.”

“That right?” Cedric chuckled. He leaned over and lifted his brother’s other leg up. “Guess what? I’m going to marry my girlfriend, too. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

Cedric sat behind the wheel of his SUV, watching the winding driveway that led to the Sabers’s front offices the way a hawk eyed his dinner. It was ten forty-five a.m. and Payton had yet to show. Every time his brain tried to conjure the thought that she’d stood him up, he put a stop to it. She would never do that. If there was anything he’d learned about Payton over these months, it was that she was a professional. She’d agreed to negotiate his contract. She wouldn’t let him down.

Just then Cedric spotted her sedan coming down the drive at a much higher rate of speed than the posted fifteen mph speed limit. She found an open spot three slots down from where he’d parked. Cedric met her at the rear of her car.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Someone ran into a fire hydrant right outside of my building. Traffic was a nightmare.”

“The important thing is that you made it with—” he looked at his watch “—nine minutes to spare.”

“Oh, God. We need to get in there.” She started walking, then stopped. Took a breath. “Okay, I need to calm down.”

The transformation was stunning. With a few deep breaths, she went from harried to completely composed. The ultimate professional. Payton looked him in the eye, a small smile perched on her lips.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah, baby.” Cedric rubbed his hands together. “Let’s do this.”

Over the past several months, Cedric had tried to imagine how Payton would handle the forces of nature also known as Sabers upper management. It had taken less than ten minutes of negotiation to realize his worries had been unwarranted. Milton Crawford was a rain shower compared to Typhoon Payton. She didn’t try the usual tactics, the strong-arming, the hostility and shouting Gus was prone to do.

Payton’s method was much more effective. She’d turned the tables on Crawford and the rest of Sabers management. Instead of her trying to convince them that Cedric was good for the team, Crawford was listing all the reasons Cedric should stay with the Sabers.

She sat at the conference table with her fingers crossed, those sexy shoulders squared. She was strength and power and knowledge all wrapped up in a smoking-hot business suit that Cedric couldn’t wait to peel from her body. She waited for Tom Rutledge, the team’s general manager, to finish his diatribe about where the Sabers were headed as a franchise and how Cedric was an integral part of it. Then she went in for the kill.

“We all know what Cedric means to this team,” she said. “We also know that after the season he just had, teams around the league have been ringing my phone night and day.”

They had?

“However, Cedric wants to remain a Saber,” she continued. “He’s a part of this community and has embraced the fans just as much as they have embraced him. But he also wants to win a ring,” she stated.

“We all want that,” Rutledge said.

“But you’ve come up short for the past four years. Cedric has done his part. In fact, he went above and beyond this year. Yet, once again, the Sabers started their off-season early.”

Payton lifted the teal coffee mug with the roaring Sabers logo and took a slow sip.

“So, here’s what we’re willing to do,” she announced after a stretch of silence Cedric knew was deliberate. The woman was good at her job. “We’re willing to leave some money on the table, and not ask for the seventy million we’d originally planned to demand,
if
the Sabers are willing to bring in talent to help take this team to the next level.”

Cedric tried to keep the surprise from showing on his face. Where had she gotten that number? The most he’d expected was forty million, tops, for the four-year extension deal the Sabers had offered.

“Some things are more important to Cedric than money.” She glanced over at him and gave him a slight nod. “Cedric wants to give these fans the championship they deserve, and if that means a smaller contract for him, so be it.”

She was brilliant. Cedric had to fight the urge to jump out of his chair and wrap his arms around her.

“My client is willing to settle for fifty-two million for the next four years,” Payton said. “Along with the performance incentives, of course.”

Cedric sat in awe as Sabers upper management pounced on the offer. Just like that, Payton had gotten him an additional twelve million dollars and convinced two of the toughest negotiators in the National Football League that they’d somehow gotten a steal. How could he not love this woman?

The meeting ended with a round of handshakes—much better than the bloodshed Cedric had been anticipating. He held the door open for Payton and followed her out of the conference room, staring at how the fitted jacket hugged her curves. She looked just as good from the back as she did from the front.

When they exited the building’s front doors, Payton grabbed hold of his hand and squeezed hard, her purposeful strides taking them to his SUV. When they arrived at the vehicle, she turned to him and let out a yelp.

“Did I really just do that?” she asked after a deep breath.

“Yes, you did. You were freaking amazing in there.”

“I know,” she said, her expressive eyes wide with wonder and pride. “It felt so natural. God, Cedric, it felt so
right.
”

“When you’re doing what you’re meant to do, it usually does feel right.”

She pulled him close and surrounded him with her arms, holding tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “I never would have gotten through that without you by my side.”

Cedric pulled back and stared into her eyes. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t need me back there. You were in control from the minute you walked into that conference room.”

“Only because you were there to encourage me. You and my dad,” she said, closing her eyes tight. When she opened them they glistened with tears. “I felt him with me the entire time.”

“He’s going to be with you always, Payton.” Cedric took her hand and dropped down to one knee. “And if you’ll have me, so will I. Marry me, Payton.”

Her chest expanded and the tears began to flow in earnest. She tried to speak, but being coherent apparently wasn’t high on her priority list at the moment. It didn’t matter. The love shining through her eyes was all the answer he needed.

But then with a teary laugh she spoke the words that changed his life forever.

“Yes, Cedric. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Chapter 17

P
ayton’s back bowed as delicious pleasure coursed throughout her bloodstream. Cedric’s strong hands slid down to grip her hips before snaking to the small of her back, then over her butt. His fingers sank into her flesh, clutching her to him, guiding the erotic rhythm of their lovemaking as he pumped harder and harder.

She came again in a rush of skin-tingling pleasure, satisfaction radiating from every fiber of her being. She collapsed atop Cedric, relishing the warmth of his sweat-slicked skin against her breasts. He rubbed his hands up and down her back, settling once again on her rear end. He held her in place, his body still hard inside of her.

Payton found the strength to open her eyes. She tilted her head to the side, and spoke into the curve of his jaw. “I can stand to do that every night for the next fifty years. How about you?”

“Fifty? You plan on tiring out on me that soon?”

Payton nipped his skin with a playful bite, then rolled off of him. She settled her back against his chest and brought his arms across her stomach. Ribbons of contentment twisted around her heart. No one should be so lucky, but somehow she was.

“I’m nervous about meeting your brother tomorrow,” Payton admitted after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “What if he doesn’t like me?”

“You don’t have to worry about that. He likes pretty women. We are twins, after all.”

“That’s cause for concern right there.” She laughed. “I’m not sure the world can handle more than one of you.”

He chuckled and tightened his hold, running his palm up and down her arm.

“I don’t want you to feel anxious. Derek is going to love you and so will the rest of my family. I can’t wait to take you to Philadelphia to meet my mom. She’s excited about meeting you.”

“You sound so confident.”

“I am. For the first time in a long time, I’m not worried about anything.”

He rolled her onto her back and began to move inside her again.

Twenty minutes later, Payton lay prone on Cedric’s king-size bed, fairly certain she would not be able to walk for at least a full twenty-four hours. She needed several minutes of rest before she could gather the strength to turn onto her side and prop her chin on her upturned palm.

“Who knew such a wild woman was hiding underneath those business suits?” Cedric’s devilish grin made her entire body blush.

“Be honest,” Payton said. “Did you think we would end up here when you agreed to take me on as your agent?”

“Did I
think
it would happen? No. Did I
want
it to happen?” He leaned over and placed a gentle peck on the tip of her nose. “Absolutely.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I thought getting involved with you would be the worst thing for my career.”

“But now you see that you had nothing to worry about, right?”

She nodded. “Who knew I was getting such a sweet deal when I signed you to Mosely Sports Management?”

“You may think your deal was sweet, but I got the best thing out of all of this,” he said.

A single brow quirked up. “And just what is that?” Payton asked.

He melted her heart with a single word.