A skinny guy with waxed hair and a bottle of Miller Lite stepped in front of her and blocked her view. “I’m not feeling good. I think I’m missing some vitamin U.”

“Get lost.”

He looked so hurt.

“Hold on,” she said with a sigh.

His expression was pathetically hopeful. She adjusted her glasses and said, more kindly, “Most of the pickup lines you find on the Internet are cheesy. You’d do better if you’d just say hi.”

“You for real?”

“Only a suggestion.”

He curled his lip at her. “Bitch.”

So much for trying to be nice.

The guy went off in search of easier prey. She took a sip of Sprite. Torpedo Head had exchanged his door manager position for bouncer duty. His specialty seemed to be chatting up leggy blondes.

The club’s VIP lounge was located in an open mezzanine. She scanned what she could see of it for her quarry, but he wasn’t visible among the guests sitting near the bronze railing. She needed to get up there, but a blond bulldog of a bouncer had been stationed at the bottom to keep out the riffraff, which, unfortunately, included her. Frustrated, she worked her way through the well-heeled throng to the other side. And that’s when she spotted him.

Even in a crowd, Cooper Graham stood out like a beacon in a candle factory. He was ridiculously masculine. Beyond ridiculous. He was the Holy Grail of men, with thick brown hair the color of burnt toast drizzled in honey. He had a square jaw, broad shoulders, and a cleft in his chin that was such a cliché he should have been embarrassed. He wore his customary uniform: perfectly fitted button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. On most people, cowboy boots in Chicago were an affectation, but he’d been born and raised on an Oklahoma ranch. Still, she didn’t like the boots; the long, muscular legs rising above them; or—as a lifelong Chicago Bears fan—the team he’d played for. Piper had to work hard for every penny, unlike this arrogant, egotistical, overly privileged ex-Stars quarterback and his stable of movie star girlfriends.

She’d been following him for nearly a week, and he’d been on the floor of his nightclub every night it was open, but she doubted that would last for long. Celebrity nightclub owners tended to fade away under the grind of real work.

Graham was doing the rounds—slapping men on the back and flirting with the women who were lined up around him like jets on the runways at O’Hare. She didn’t like judging other members of her sex, but that was part of her job now, and none of these girls looked as though they were future CEOs—too much hair swinging, eye batting, and boob thrusting. Watching them made her grateful that she had zero desire to hook up with anyone right now. All she cared about was her job.

The crowd surrounding him was growing. She looked around for a bouncer, but the only ones she spotted were busily engaged in deep conversations with the female guests. So far, no client had hired her as a bodyguard, but she’d taken a lengthy training course, and she could see that Graham’s lack of security was irresponsible, although it might let her get closer to him.

Graham seemed at ease despite the crush, but she noticed him occasionally scanning the crowd, as if he were looking for a pass receiver. His gaze flicked in her direction, then moved on.

As the crowd around him approached a dangerous level, he somehow managed to work himself free and head up the stairs toward the mezzanine and the VIP lounge. Now that she was inside the club, her inability to follow him there was maddening.

She made her way to the ladies’ room, where she heard nothing more interesting than gossip about who’d made it as far as the fur-covered bed he reportedly kept in his office. Someone touched her shoulder as she came out. Torpedo Head.

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.