“I’ve heard that’s the ideal, yes. Trent’s is nine and a half.”
“Do you know what mine is?” When he didn’t guess, I told him, “Six point three. I measured it.”
Collin chuckled. “Only you would do that. It’s one of the things I like about you. Never change.”
Distracting myself, I shoved a handful of buttery goodness into my mouth and moaned. “So yummy,” I murmured through tight lips.
He ate some too. Like a weirdo, I stared at the movement of his jaw. Damn, he made eating look sexy. How did he do that? Blinking my thoughts away, I shoved more kernels into my mouth. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk about before I unpause this?”
Taking a bit of time to swallow and gather my thoughts, I asked, “Did you mean what you said about the meeting of our lips?”
Our eyes locked, and I cursed myself for not taking more psyche courses. If only I could read his body language.
He smirked. “Meeting of our lips?”
“Can’t really call it a kiss, can you?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Never mind. Let’s talk about something else.”
For the twenty or so minutes, we talked about my soccer club, school, and how much I loved it, then sadly to the women who fall all over him.
“You’re definitely popular, but you always were, I suppose.”
Collin shrugged. “It’s not all that it seems. If it weren’t for my sister, I wouldn’t see half of the stories that are written about me—most of which are false, by the way.”
Not bothering to ask which ones, I merely shook my head. “That’s horrible that people would make up stories. Tell me one. The most outlandish.”
“Like I said, I stay away from most of it. But the one that had Sally in a tizzy was when someone on a social media platform claimed they were pregnant with my child.”
My mouth hung open. Apparently I’d been living under a rock, or maybe a book, because it was news to me. I never heard anything like that. Nor had Sally told me. I wasn’t on social media. According to Collin, some platforms could crush you as quickly as they made you a star.
“It sounds horrible. What did you do?”
“My PR team handled it. Easy to refute her claim since we never met. When my team threatened to sue her for slander, she retracted her statement. Was there anything else?”
He didn’t look the least bit bothered by all he’d just said. Rather than talk about anything else, I shook my head, and Collin started up our program. For the rest of the night, we sat there and watched a princess get courted by a duke.
###
Sunday rolled around, and after our morning run, we had breakfast, and Collin started cruising through his tablet. “Oh, Reese’s press conference is today. Seems the word is getting out about you.”
“What?”
He flipped the tablet around, and there was a picture of me wearing a jersey. I grabbed my phone off the charging base on the counter and noticed a text message from Reese.
Reese:Charlie. I wanted to give you a heads-up that the press conference is this morning. I’m sorry for the short notice, but I want to get in front of any miscued stories. It will air at 9:00 a.m. I let Sam know.
When I glanced at the clock, my nerves spiked. “It’s going to air in five minutes,” I nervously said. “She let my agent, Sam, know.”
“Sam?”
“Yes, Sam Jasper. After I met with Reese, she gave me a list of names. He reps one of my dad’s favorite golfers, so I figured he had to be good. Probably dumb to use that as rationale. Again, this is all new to me.”
“Sam Jasper is very honest. One of the best. I recently switched to him.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”