His Seduction Game Plan by Katherine Garbera

I’d come to California for four weeks in the summer and my dad would just leave me be. I think I’m projecting some of that resentment onto you,” she admitted. Actually she knew she was doing it. He was one of her father’s favorites. It was hard not to want what he had gotten from her dad. Respect. Attention.
    â€œI haven’t felt anything like that. It seems more to me that you’re afraid to trust yourself. To just let go and be comfortable with me.”
    â€œMaybe,” she admitted. “But then I don’t believe for one second that you are being yourself with me.”
    He shrugged.
    She was starting to notice he did that a lot. Perhaps he thought it was a nice neutral response. But she saw it as a shield. His way of not answering when a subject cut a little too close to the truth. And she got that. Really she did. She wanted to run away from things that made her feel too much. But running had never worked.
    â€œHow about this? You stop shrugging and answer me and I’ll try to let go so we can have some fun today.”
    â€œI have been having fun. You make me feel again, Ferrin. It’s not lust—because that’s easy and hormone-driven—but something more. I never thought I’d feel this way around a woman again.”
    She arched her eyebrow at him. “Am I expected to believe that?”
    He gave her a sheepish grin. “Yes, you are. It’s true. I want you, I’m not going to deny that, but there is more to it. This isn’t a simple conquest.”
    â€œI should hope not,” she said, but there was lightness in his tone that made her want to smile.
    â€œWhich part are you talking about—the simple or the conquest?”
    â€œI guess you’ll have to stick around to find out,” she said.
    â€œOh, I intend to,” he said.
    He put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. The sea breeze wrapped around them as they stood facing the horizon and she stopped worrying.
    He tipped her chin back against his shoulder and lowered his head to kiss her. His lips moved over hers, taking her mouth slowly—completely.
    When they got back on the road, he didn’t take her back to her car but on a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. They took turns picking songs on the digital radio station and quizzing each other to see who knew the artist singing. They talked about the best food they’d ever eaten—steak in Argentina for him, strawberry shortcake in Plant City, Florida, for her. And for a while she forgot about her father and football and all the things in life that she’d never been able to find peace with.
    She forgot that she wasn’t sure she could trust Hunter—in fact, somehow in the midst of laughter and confessions about things that seemed small and inconsequential she realized that she had started to trust him. She’d started to show him the real Ferrin Gainer, and unless she was very much mistaken she thought she was seeing Hunter the man, not the NFL player plagued by past scandal.

Five
    I t had been a little over a week since her day with Hunter. True to his word, he’d left her free to make her decision. It was as if he’d disappeared from her life. She wanted him back. The past week she’d spent a lot of time in this house with Coach. And she still wasn’t any closer to a decision.
    She stood in the hallway outside his in-home study. The door was solid hardwood and the handle polished brass. It was cold under her hand. Maybe it was her imagination but she sensed her father wouldn’t want her in his office.
    She opened the door, stepped inside and then quickly closed it behind her.
    Ferrin quietly entered the room that she’d avoided since returning to California. She stood there in the doorway remembering when she’d tried to come in here as a teen and her father had simply gestured for her to leave.
    A part of her thought maybe that was why she