Like the other bouncers, he wore dark pants and a white dress shirt that must have been specially tailored to fit the thick neck that marked both him and his fellow goons as former football players. “You have to come with me.”

Other than offering Miller Lite Boy some much-needed advice on improving his pickup game, she hadn’t done anything to draw attention to herself, and she didn’t like this. Rearing back on her unwieldy heels, she brought out her fake accent. “Oh, gawd. Why?”

“ID check.”

“Crikey! I already showed it at the bloody door. And I very much appreciate the compliment, but I’m thirty-three years old.”

“Spot-check.”

This was no spot-check. Something was up. She was about to refuse more forcefully when he jerked his big head toward the steps that led to the mezzanine, inadvertently giving her the chance she’d been waiting for to get closer to the VIP lounge. She gave him a blazing smile. “Right, then. Let’s move along and settle this.”

He grunted.

At the top of the mezzanine steps, a pair of bronzed pillars marked the entrance to VIP, but as they got close, he grabbed her arm and herded her around a corner and through a plain door off to the left.

It was an unimpressive office where folding wooden shutters covered the lower half of a pair of windows, and a wall-mounted television silently broadcast ESPN. An iMac sat on a streamlined desk across from a two-cushion couch. Above it was a framed Chicago Stars jersey with the name Graham on the back. The Stars aqua-and-gold team colors had always looked girly to her in comparison to her beloved Chicago Bears no-nonsense navy blue and orange.

“Wait here.” The goon stepped out and closed the door behind him.

VIP was only a few steps away. She counted to twenty and reached for the doorknob.

The door swung open in her face. She tripped backward, focusing so hard on keeping her balance that the door shut again before she realized who’d walked in. A whoosh roared through her ears.

Cooper Graham himself.

She felt as if she’d been struck by a supernova, and she hated that. After following him for six days, she should have been better prepared. But seeing him from a distance and being ten feet away were completely different experiences.

He’d sucked up all the air in the room, and the good ol’ boy grin he turned on his customers was nowhere in sight. This was his face at the line of scrimmage. One thing was certain. If Graham wanted to see her, this wasn’t about a simple ID check.

She mentally ticked off the possible reasons she’d been detained and decided she hated every one of them. But she told herself Graham wasn’t the only one in the room who knew how to fake a play, and unlike him, she had everything at stake.