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fall for a pretty face without seeing what was
inside.
    “ Sorry,” he said. Again
with that drawn-out Canadian O sound. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Can I help you
with those?” He came over and grinned once he got a better look at
me. “You’re Rachel Shaw, aren’t you? Soupy told me about
you.”
    “ Soupy?” I found myself
asking, kind of numb as he deftly stacked my boxes.
    “ Sorry,” he said again.
“Brenden Campbell. The boys all call him Soupy…you know, Campbell’s
Soup?” He picked up the stack, all three boxes, and the top one
barely came to his chin. “I’m Jamie Babcock. How about you push the
buttons and get the doors? I’ll do the heavy lifting.” He said that
last part with a wink.
    I had just been wishing for someone to
be around in the middle of the day to help me with doors, hadn’t I?
And here he was. An answer to a prayer, not that I believed God
answered prayers. Not anymore. But that didn’t change the fact that
Jamie Babcock was ready and willing to carry a few boxes upstairs
to my new apartment. I should be grateful, not instantaneously
suspicious.
    “ Okay. Thanks,” I finally
said, nodding. I held the door open for him, and he went through.
The thought that Brenden Campbell, a stranger who I’d only known
long enough to shoot down his attempts to get me to date him—well,
long enough for that and to make me feel tingles of awareness
because he’d been flirting with me—had mentioned me to one of his
teammates was unnerving. When we got onto the elevator, I couldn’t
stop myself from asking, “What exactly did he tell you about
me?”
    He blushed again. “Just that you’re
going to work for Jim, take Martha’s position when she retires.”
Somehow, he managed to pull one hand out from under the boxes to
brush his hair back behind his ear. “Oh, and that you’re a real
pretty redhead with kids moving in across the hall from us. He said
to look out for you while he’s gone.”
    The elevator stopped at our floor. I
hurried off ahead of him because I didn’t want him to see how
flustered I was. Why on earth would Brenden Campbell care if anyone
was looking out for me? And he thought I was pretty? I’d never
believed I was pretty. The whole short-redhead-with-freckles thing
had always made me feel awkward, not pretty.
    I unlocked my door, and Jamie followed
me inside.
    “ Where should I put these?”
he asked, his head on a swivel as he took in the massive state of
disarray before him.
    The delivery guys who’d brought my
furniture this morning had just dropped it all off. They hadn’t
helped me put any of it together or set it where it belonged. I’d
only managed to deal with the beds before heading to the hotel for
our boxes, and that had been more than enough to leave me too
exhausted to do any of the rest. I still wasn’t sure how I had
found the energy to load my trunk full of boxes.
    There was too much in the way for me
to send him down the hall to Tuck’s room with the stack he was
holding. “Just set them over there by the bar in the kitchen,” I
said.
    At least going that way, he wasn’t
likely to kill himself by tripping over something he couldn’t see.
The last thing I needed was for one of the Storm’s players to get
injured while helping me before I even started my new
job.
    He set the boxes down where I’d
directed.
    When he straightened up, I said,
“Thanks so much for helping me.”
    “ Sure, no
problem.”
    I was all ready to usher him out the
door, but his eyes were wandering through the maze of boxes and
un-put-together furniture. “Why don’t we tackle the sofa next?” he
said. “You need somewhere to sit.”
    I really wasn’t prepared to let him
help me with more than what he had already. Even that had been more
help than I’d wanted. I shook my head. “You really don’t have to do
that. I can—”
    “ I don’t mind,” he
interrupted. “I don’t have anything I have to do. We’ve already
finished practice, and