“Yeah, you did.” His jaw set in that way he had when he was furious. “Here’s the most challenging part of being a leader. Understanding you may not always know what’s best for the team.”

“Right now, all I know is I have a client—or I used to have one—who’s being threatened, and I don’ have any idea who’s behind it.”

That wasn’t a great way to try to salvage her job—a job she didn’t deserve to hold on to—and he didn’t reassure her. Instead, he pushed back his chair. “You’re going back to the hotel.”

***

He had to get rid of her. Coop knew exactly how it felt to call an audible and have it backfire, but Pipe had thrown out the whole damned playbook, and that meant she was out.

The wheels of the 747 hit the tarmac at O’Hare, but she slept through it. She was impulsive, but she wasn’t stupid, and she had to know what was coming—had to know he couldn’t keep her around. He had no room for a blue-eyed badass who went off half-cocked doing whatever she damn well pleased.

Yet, despite the fact that he couldn’t trust her judgment, he also trusted her more than anyone he’d ever known. No person he’d ever worked with had cared more about his welfare. Sure, his teammates and coaches had cared, but they’d had ulterior motives. Piper, on the other hand, would protect him in her own screwball way even if he weren’t paying her a dime. Because that’s the way she was made. Loyal to the end. And that’s what this was. The end.

The plane pulled up to the gate, and she began to stir. Being her lover made this more complicated than it should be. He’d known the affair was a mistake, but he’d gone ahead and done it anyway. Now he had to break it off and fire her.

He’d made tough calls before, but none as tough as this.

***

WHAT’S BUGGING COOPER GRAHAM?

Cockroaches! Thousands of them are swarming the former Stars quarterback’s hot new nightspot, Spiral. “They’re everywhere,” an associate who asked to remain anonymous says. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The club is closed while exterminators try to eradicate the vermin, but whether the party crowd will return is the big question. Maybe Spiral should be renamed Death Spiral?

The news was all over the Internet. Piper sat at her office desk and buried her still-throbbing head in her hands. She only vaguely remembered collapsing on the hotel room couch last night, but she definitely remembered the strain between them at the airport. They’d barely spoken.