Irresistibly Yours (Oxford #1)(35)

Although, surprisingly, that memory didn’t sting as sharply as it usually did. She’d wanted that job with Sportiva, certainly. Had she gotten it, she was sure she’d be loving it. She’d be going to Cubs games with the friendly, likable Caleb.

But maybe it had worked out for the better. She was loving New York. Loving Oxford. Loving the friends she was making, thanks to Cole bringing her into his group of friends.

And then there was Cole himself…

But Penelope wasn’t ready to talk about Cole. Not to her prying mother or her mischievous sister. If anyone was capable of taking a simple kiss and turning it into wedding planning, it was her family.

Instead she changed the subject to another of her mother’s favorites: Facebook.

By the end of the phone call, she had her mother’s promise that she wouldn’t post any naked pictures of Penelope in which she was over the age of eight.

Hanging up with her mother, Penelope forced her attention back to golf stats.

Despite her lukewarm feelings on the thought, she supposed its rise in popularity was refreshing.

There was something very human about a sport that anyone could pick up, at any age. Baseball fans were limited to amateur softball leagues, basketball fans to picking up a random game after work at the gym. Football? Definitely not a layman’s sport.

But golf was a level playing field. Kids. Women. Retirees. Anyone could play.

And thanks to guys like Adam Bailey, it was now every bit as cool as it was approachable.

Penelope still thought the man was a slimebucket, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t slightly giddy about getting to meet him at the photo shoot next week. For some reason, when she’d decided to pursue the Oxford job, the potential perk of getting to meet professional athletes in person hadn’t occurred to her.

It was just one of the many perks about the job she hadn’t seen coming. The other unexpected perk?

She enjoyed working with a partner.

Working with Cole was…

Well, it was right. She didn’t know how else to put it.

It was early in their partnership, true, but other than the occasional squabble, they seemed to see eye to eye on most everything.

He challenged her when she got too attached to a pet project, and he was always open to her challenging him. Which she did. Often.

Penelope’s stomach did one of those grinding, growling things, and a glance at the clock showed her why.

It was nearly one-thirty. Way past lunchtime.

She pushed her chair back and stood, trying to muster enthusiasm for the turkey sandwich that awaited her, when Cole came strolling in the door.

“Looking for this?” he asked, holding up a brown paper lunch sack.

“Oh! Yeah, I was, actually,” she said, smiling in thanks as he set the bag in front of her on the desk.

He tapped the front of the bag where she’d written her name, first and last, in black marker.

“Really?” he asked.

“What?”

“This is so third grade.”

“Well, how else am I going to know it’s mine?”

“Maybe because nobody else literally brown-bags their lunch?”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a little foolish.

“Don’t fret,” he said. “It’s cute.”

Before she could register what that meant, he dropped something else on her desk. A white Styrofoam box.

She looked up in question, but he merely lifted his eyebrows.

Opening it, she breathed a sigh of delight when she saw the onion rings. “You brought me leftovers.”

“Nope,” he said, plopping in her chair and putting his shoes up on the desk as he made himself comfortable. “Ordered them special, with instructions not to cook them until we were paying our bill so they’d still be hot.”

Penelope paused in chewing the greasy, oniony goodness and looked at him in surprise, but he was busy typing something on his phone and didn’t notice her curious glance.

She chewed thoughtfully as she studied him, wondering, not for the first time, if there were depths to Cole Sharpe that he kept carefully hidden from the world.

Sure, it was common knowledge that he was nice. Friendly. Charming.

But did people see beneath that to the kindness?

“Quit looking at me like that, Tiny,” he said, not glancing up from his phone.

“Like what?”

“Like I just threw myself in front of a truck to save a toddler. They’re onion rings, not flowers.”

“I don’t like flowers.”

He glanced up at that. “What do you mean, you don’t like flowers?”

She shrugged and dunked another onion ring into the spicy mayo that came in a little side container. “I mean, I like flowers. But I don’t like to receive them.”

Not that she’d been on the receiving end of a lot of flowers.

“What do you have against a bunch of nice roses?”

“Don’t get me wrong, they’re beautiful,” she said, polishing off the onion ring and looking in dismay at her now completely greasy fingers.

Cole shifted his weight and reached into his pocket, pulling out a bunch of napkins.

It was her turn to lift her eyebrows, and he just shrugged. “Figured you’d need them. But back to the flowers thing—how can you both think they’re beautiful and not like them?”