Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney #4)(38)
“Is that an invitation?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Good.” Cade’s voice dropped lower, adding one last thing before hanging up. “And tell your friend in the striped shirt that he’s in my seat.”
Fourteen
“ARE YOU GOING to tell us anything about this mystery man before he shows up?” Ford winked at Brooke. “If you want, I can give him the lowdown on your new approach to relationships. That the only gifts you’re accepting these days are sex toys and massage oils.”
“You mention those rules, and I’ll have the Wrigley Field security team haul you out of this skybox so fast your head will spin.”
“It would almost be worth it,” Ford said with a chuckle. “Except then I’d miss the dessert cart.”
“When is that coming, anyway? I love the dessert cart,” Tucker chimed in from the back row.
“Hey now, we can’t be wasting our time talking about dessert,” Charlie said. “We need to start planning all the questions we want to ask the mystery man. Gotta grill the guy to make sure he’s good enough for Brooke.”
Brooke realized she needed to cut them off at the pass. Ford, Charlie, and Tucker tended to get a little weirdly protective of her whenever she brought a new guy around—which was bad enough when she was actually dating the man in question. But Cade was just a friend. Of sorts. Friend-ish. “I appreciate it, guys. But I think you can skip the interrogation this time. I haven’t even had dinner with him yet.”
“I want to play the part of the hard-ass friend today,” Tucker said. “You know, just sit in the corner and glare at him the whole time. See if he crumbles.”
“I’ve seen your hard-ass face, Tuck,” Charlie said. “Mostly, you just look constipated. Ford, you’d better do the glaring.”
“No glaring, and no hard-ass routines.” Brooke said definitively. “No offense, but I doubt it would work, anyway. He’s a prosecutor. He works with the FBI, DEA, and Secret Service all the time.”
“Great,” Ford said, rolling his eyes. “Now he’s some hotshot lawyer type.”
“Hey. I am a hotshot lawyer type,” Brooke said.
“Yeah, but it’s different since you’re a girl. It’s cute.”
She threw him a look. “You did not just say that.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of this guy,” Tucker declared, out of the blue.
Brooke threw up her hands in exasperation. “You haven’t even met him. Besides, you three don’t like any of the men I introduce you to. You didn’t even like the Hot OB.”
“The Hot OB was a douche,” Charlie said.
“This mystery man better not be another douche, Brooke,” Ford warned. “I can’t spend six innings trapped in a skybox with a douche.”
Truly, she was losing brain cells just listening to this crap. “Seriously, if I were here with girlfriends, right now I’d be drinking daiquiris and talking about which of the players has the cutest butt.”
Ford chuckled. “All right, we’ll play nice. What’s the mystery man’s name, anyway?”
“Cade Morgan,” she said.
“Get out of here,” Charlie said in shock.
Ford pulled back in surprise. “Cade Morgan?” He looked her over for a moment, and then grinned approvingly. “Well done, you.”
Okay . . . that was kind of an odd reaction. “You boys have a thing for assistant U.S. attorneys I never knew about?”
They all looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head.
“Cade Morgan used to play football,” Ford said. “Quarterback for Northwestern. Won the Rose Bowl in 2001. How do you not know this? You deal with people in the sports industry all the time.”
“Not back in 2001,” she retorted. She’d been a sophomore in college back then. “Are you sure this is the same guy? Tall, looks delicious in a three-piece suit, annoyingly adept at taking a woman right to the edge of frustration and then—bam—sneaking in with a surprisingly sweet word or two?”
The three of them stared at her.
“Um . . . I would’ve gone with ‘brown hair, six-foot-four, two hundred and ten pounds, but we can use your description if you like,” Ford said.
Hmm. It sounded suspiciously like the same man. Brooke couldn’t decide if she was irked that she’d never known this about Cade, felt foolish, or was intrigued. Perhaps all three. “He mentioned something about a shoulder injury. Is that a football thing?”
“My God, woman. It’s only one of the most famous moments in college football history,” Ford said.
Charlie jumped in. “See, Northwestern was down by four points.”
“Which is a big deal to start with, because Northwestern barely ever makes it to the Rose Bowl,” Tucker added.
“Right. But Morgan was awesome that year—everyone was saying he would go pro,” Charlie said.
Ford picked up at this point. “So there’s fifteen seconds left on the clock, and it’s like, third and nine or something.” He stood up and pantomimed, reenacting the scene. “And Morgan pulls back out of the pocket just as this huge linebacker charges at him full speed as he goes for the sack, and then he throws this perfect sixty-five-yard pass right into the hands of a wide receiver in the end zone. The whole stadium went absolutely crazy.”