Текст книги "Game for Love "

Автор книги: Bella Andre

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GAME FOR LOVE

Bad Boys of Football 3

copyright 2010 Bella Andre

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Chapter One

“All I’ve ever wanted for you is true love, Cole. And family. The family you should have had all along. But most of all, I wish I could leave this earth knowing someone special is looking after you.”

Eugenia Taylor’s hand was small and cold in Cole Taylor’s large palm. The pale, fragile woman lying in the hospital bed was so much more than just his grandmother. She’d been his mother and father too, after his parents had died when he was five.

He couldn’t believe she was dying. Refused to believe it, even after a long—and painful

–talk with her doctor.

Stage four melanoma. There was nothing they could do.

Damn it. Cole gently stroked the soft skin on the back of his grandmother’s hand. There had to be something. He’d spent the past ten years as a middle linebacker for the San Francisco Outlaws fighting like hell for his team, taking any and every hit that came his way. Now, he wanted to fight for his grandmother, wanted to take the hits dragging her under, wanted to protect her the way she’d always protected him. He would have traded places with his grandmother in a heartbeat.

Wanting to comfort her, he said, “Don’t worry about me, Grandma. I can look after myself.”

“You’re a good boy, Cole. You’ve always been a good boy, even though I know you’re no saint.”

Jesus, if his grandmother knew what he did with the groupies when he was on the road with the team....

“I’ve been waiting for you to finish sowing your wild oats. I’ve been waiting for you to find a woman who will give your life true meaning.” She shook her head. “Promise me you’ll find her, honey. Promise me you’ll find her soon.”

The lump in his throat was so big he could barely swallow past it. Without thinking it through, without even really knowing what he was about to declare, he said, “I’ve already found her, Grandma.”

His grandmother’s face lit up and for a moment she actually looked like she used to.

Before she got sick. If only he’d had more time to deal with his grandmother’s illness—if only she’d been to the doctor before last week.

If only he’d spent more time with his grandmother and less time with whatever woman he’d been screwing, then maybe he would have seen the signs earlier. Back when there was still something the doctors could do to cure her.

“Oh honey, that’s wonderful. Why didn’t you tell me about her before now?”

Oh crap. He should back out now, admit that he was kidding, say that he was freaking out about losing her and had told the lie because he didn’t want her to be disappointed in him.

Instead, channeling the last chick flick he’d been forced to sit through, he said, “She wanted to take it slow, even though she knows how much I love her.”

He waited for his grandmother to call his bluff. She’d always seen through him. There was no way she wouldn’t see through him now.

“Bring her here, Cole. I want to meet the woman who has stolen my baby’s heart.”

Cole lied when he needed to, but not to his grandmother. Never to her. All he’d wanted was to make her feel better. Clearly, she wanted a wife and children for him so badly that she was willing to believe anything at this point.

Now what could he say? He sure as hell wasn’t going to bring one of the women he’d slept with recently to meet his grandmother. Not when none of them qualified as “nice” girls.

Still, somehow the words, “Tomorrow, Grandma. I’ll bring her tomorrow,” came out of his mouth, if only because he knew how happy they would make her.

She couldn’t stop beaming at him. “I can’t wait.” She closed her eyes and relaxed back against the pillows.

Forcing himself to get up before she realized that he hadn’t given her a name or any other pertinent information about “the woman he loved,” Cole leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek, then walked out into the hospital corridor.

Somehow, somewhere, he needed to find a nice girl. Stat.

Where the hell was a guy like him going to find a nice girl in Las Vegas?

* * *

“Jeannie’s wedding was such a tear-jerker, wasn’t it?”

Anna Davis smiled at her Aunt Lena. “It was beautiful. They’re obviously very much in love.”

How was it that her cheeks actually hurt? Sure, all weekend she’d been smiling, but she’d been through this three times already, having planned all four of her sisters’ weddings in the past two years.

“You know, dear, we all thought you’d be the first to get married. Do you remember how you used to dress up as a bride when you were a little girl?”

It wasn’t easy to keep smiling while she was gritting her teeth, but somehow Anna managed it. “You know how little girls are. They love to play dress-up.”

As a first-grade teacher, Anna was reminded of this every day. There was nothing children liked more than using their imaginations. At what point were they taught to stop doing that?

But Aunt Lena was shaking her head. “Actually, if I remember correctly, your sisters never played dress-up. They were too busy with sports and winning academic prizes. You were the only one focused on wearing white and walking down an aisle. How strange that you’re the only one still waiting for your Prince Charming.”

“Maybe I should grab the nearest available guy and pop into one of those quickie wedding parlors.”

Anna didn’t know who was more shocked by her response—her aunt or herself.

Finally, her aunt said, “Oh Anna, you would never do something like that.”

Anna was about to agree, when she suddenly realized what was behind her aunt’s—completely true—statement.

She doesn’t think I have any guts.

Taking a glass of champagne off the tray of a circulating waiter, Anna shrugged. “You never know. There is something about weddings, after all. And this is Las Vegas. Anything can happen here.”

But she got small satisfaction out of walking away from her aunt’s open mouth. Because at the end of the day, Anna was still not only the only Davis girl who hadn’t dressed in white and said “I do,” she was also the only one without someone to love.

* * *

“Cole! Right here. Looking good, man. You crushed the Jaguars last Sunday.”

Cole looked up into the paps’ flashbulbs. What kind of crazy was he, looking in the Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino for a nice girl? But he’d just wasted an entire day looking in the places he’d assumed she’d be—the library, an animal shelter, even a knitting store, for fuck’s sake—and had come up empty.

The chicks in the library wouldn’t let him talk long enough to try to ask them out.

The animal shelter had been full of nauseatingly happy couples and kids. Not to mention the fact that one of the mutts had taken a strange—and overpowering—liking to him. The shelter manager had shoved fifteen pounds of squirming, licking, sniffing black and brown fur into his arms. Cole didn’t do pets—too much responsibility, knowing something would be waiting for him every day at home, depending on him. Still, those big brown eyes had almost done their job on him and he’d barely gotten out of the building mutt-free.

Strangely, the knitting shop was where he’d felt the most comfortable. His grandmother had always been knitting something during her breaks at the casino when he was a kid and the clickety-clack of her needles was the backdrop to his childhood. Which was why he hadn’t had it in him to pick a girl up in the yarn store. It would have felt like he was betraying his grandmother...even though he was already a lying son of a bitch.

Daylight had come and gone and Cole wasn’t any closer to bringing his “true love” to his grandmother’s hospital room than he had been that morning.

He’d gone up to his suite at the Wynn to wash away the stink of failure. He was good at two things: football and one-night stands with women who didn’t expect anything more. Not

“true love.”

If anyone was a magnet for huge tits in low-cut tops and skirts so short they should be illegal, it was Cole. Not that he’d ever thought to complain about that, of course. Not until now.

Not until his grandmother had told him her dying wish.

A wish that he was going to grant, even if it killed him.

Getting out of the shower, Cole wrapped a towel around his waist and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his wraparound suite. Looking out at the flat stretch of casinos, he didn’t see flashing lights and tourists walking the strip. He saw home.

His grandmother had been one of the greatest poker dealers on the circuit. He’d learned so much from her. How to deal straight—and crooked. How to work hard. And most of all, how to stick with something.

Giving up had never been an option. Not for her, not even after her son and daughter-in-law died in a private plane crash, leaving her with a five-year-old who had more energy than sense. And not for Cole.

Sure, he was athletic, but his grandmother was the reason he’d made it into the pros, when it would have been easier to quit and get a “real” job at least a hundred times.

He dropped his towel to the floor and yanked open the closet. It was time to stop crying like a baby over his day. He was going to get dressed and find himself a good girl, damn it.

If there was someone looking down on him from up above—and Cole had more reasons than most people to think that there was, after some of the pileups he’d walked away from on the field—he was pretty damn sure that He was laughing right now, saying to anyone who would listen, “Do you believe that dick wad actually thinks he’s going to find a good girl to bring to his grandmother in the next eight hours? I’ve saved his ass too many times before. This time, I think I’ll let him fry.”

But Cole didn’t care. He’d made a promise to his grandmother, and by God he was going to keep it.

* * *

Anna stuck out in the night club like a sore thumb.

And she had only herself to blame.

After Jeannie and Dave had left for their honeymoon, Anna’s three remaining sisters and spouses decided they weren’t ready for the party to end.

“You’ve been so busy that you probably want to go back to your room and soak in the tub, don’t you?” Jane said when they told her their plans to go out dancing at the Wynn Las Vegas.

Her sister was right. She was dying to kick off her shoes and veg out in front of some brainless TV. But, again, Anna was struck by the inadvertent subtext of her sister’s sentence: We all know how boring you are. The whirlpool tub is going to be the highlight of your day, isn’t it?

For the second time in one day, Anna bristled at what her family thought about her.

Evidently she was not only gutless, but boring, too.

And here all this time, she’d thought she was perfectly normal.

Nice.

But as she looked at her sisters and brothers-in-law happily paired off all around her while she stood solo, Anna made a split-second decision. “Actually, I’m in the mood to dance.”

Six sets of eyebrows went up. Finally, her oldest sister, Jill, said, “But you didn’t even dance at Jeannie’s reception.”

Of course she hadn’t. She didn’t dance. Ever. But the pity in her siblings’ eyes cracked something inside Anna’s chest wide open.

She was sick and tired of always standing on the sidelines, watching everyone else have fun. Especially when all it had ever gotten her was the prospect of a quiet night in her hotel room.

Alone.

“You know we’d love to spend more time with you,” Joanne said with gentle understanding in her eyes, “but we understand if you’re tired.”

“I was saving my energy for tonight,” she’d told her stupefied siblings as she’d swept out of the reception hall, her head held high, her shoulders thrown back in what she hoped was a confident, ready-to-have-lots-of-fun way.

She’d show her family. Not only was she going to dance, but she was going to find the most dangerously sexy man in the room to be her partner.

Oh yes, she’d have them all gaping at her as she did the bump and grind—or whatever it was called—with a hot hunk.

The only thing was, she thought as she all but gulped down another glass of Chardonnay the cute bartender at the Tryst nightclub in Wynn Las Vegas had handed her, it was one thing to make a silent vow in the heat of the moment ... and it was another entirely to actually make good on it.

Thirty minutes after her reckless declaration at Jeannie’s reception, Anna had to admit that she was way beyond her comfort zone. She wasn’t used to such loud music, or being around half-naked people who all seemed to like being smashed against each other like sweaty, drunk sardines.

What had made her think she could come to a casino nightclub and not just fit in, but own it?

The only things she owned were pink bunny slippers and a library card that had been used so many times the numbers were almost all smudged off.

Glad that her sisters and their husbands were all too busy dancing—or too drunk—to notice her slinking out of the nightclub with her tail between her legs, Anna was about to put her empty glass down on the bar when a low, rough voice said, “I noticed your glass was empty. I hope champagne is okay.”

Anna looked up into the darkest eyes she’d ever seen as a heat that had nothing to do with the crowd infused her, head to toe.

She’d vowed to look for sinfully dangerous.

Looked like she’d found him.

Chapter Two

As the small brunette took the glass from his hand, her fingertips barely brushing against his knuckles, Cole was surprised to feel his cock immediately growing thick. Hard.

He’d always had a strong sex drive, strong enough that if he didn’t get his rocks off at least a couple of times a week, he’d hit too hard during practice from sheer sexual frustration.

He’d gotten the call from his grandmother right after Sunday’s game and had headed straight to Vegas. Usually within a couple of hours of landing in his old hometown, Cole had at least one woman under him. This time, though, he’d gone without. The only thing that had mattered was taking care of his grandmother.

And fulfilling her dying wish.

“I love champagne. Thank you.”

Cole stared down at the woman, who was holding the glass in a death grip. Jesus, was her hand actually trembling? If he wasn’t careful, the first available good girl he’d seen all day would run and he’d have to go to his grandmother’s room alone in the morning.

Okay. First he needed to stop breathing in the woman’s sweetly scented hair, something he’d never, ever noticed on anyone. Second, he needed to think past the heavy throbbing in his cock for three seconds. Long enough to figure out what to say or do to make her feel safe with him.

The problem was, he’d never been with a girl like this. Didn’t know the first thing about making a nice girl feel safe and comfortable.

Not when he’d spend the past fifteen years perfecting wicked.

Finally, he decided on, “I couldn’t help but notice you from across the room.”

And it was true; she’d been the only square peg in a room full of round holes. Hell, she might as well have been wearing a halo for all the innocence pouring off her. Now that he was close, he realized she even smelled innocent, like fresh strawberries in a sunny field, or some shit like that.

At first, he’d been too busy congratulating himself on his reverse psychology of finding a sweet girl in a club to think about how this was actually going to go down. But now that she was staring up at him like a doe caught in the middle of a busy freeway—and he was as hard as he’d ever been without touching more than her fingertips—he realized this was going to be a first for him: He was going to have to work for it.

Or else risk losing the one woman he needed.

“You noticed me? ” Champagne sloshed out of her glass and splashed across her chest as she gestured at herself in clear surprise.

Cole looked down—even further down that he was already looking just to see her eyes—and realized she had a pretty good body. Maybe even great. It was hard to tell with the pink, shiny dress she had on, but from his vantage point her cleavage was pretty awesome. Awesome enough that his cock was begging to come out and play.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he began, but then, figuring she might buy his lie if he pulled his gaze back up to her face, he forced himself to stop ogling her tits and actually did look into her eyes.

Cole was stopped cold by eyelashes so long that when she blinked, the curling tips brushed against the tops of her cheekbones. Her eye color was unlike any he’d ever seen, a combination of blue and green that had him thinking of cool mountain lakes and perfect summer days.

She blinked, smiled, and the way her eyes lit up stopped his breath for a second.

“No, not beautiful,” he said, almost to himself. “Stunning.”

Her eyes got even bigger, along with her smile—and his cock. “They are?”

He moved closer, those big eyes of her acting like a magnet on him. A lock of her hair fell in front of one of them and he reached out to slide it to the side, his fingertip barely grazing her skin.

He felt her tremble beneath his touch, even as something shook inside him.

What the hell was going on here?

He’d come looking for a good girl. Not another one-night stand.

But he couldn’t think straight anymore. Not when all he wanted was this woman beneath him, naked and panting, her blue-green eyes flashing with ecstasy as she came in his arms. Not when all he could think of was relieving the heaviness in his groin with the woman who had put it there.

Stop drooling and woo her, asshole.

“Dance with me.”

He had her hand in his and was halfway to the dance floor, borderline desperate thoughts of pressing his thick erection against her belly riding him with every step, when he felt her tug at his arm.

It was a surprisingly strong tug for such a little thing.

“I don’t even know your name.”

She hadn’t said anything to him about football yet, so he’d already guessed that she was one of the few people who weren’t fans, thank God. A chick looking for fame would only complicate things further. Still, he didn’t want to risk anything by giving her his full name, just in case she recognized it from the papers and got ideas.

“Cole.”

She cocked her head to one side, managing to look cute and sexy at the same time, and his erection pressed hard enough into his zipper he wouldn’t be surprised if it marked his skin.

“You know,” she said, “I think I could have guessed that. You look like a Cole.”

“And you look like an angel.”

Her lips turned up in another smile and knocked the wind out of him. Again. He’d already thought she was pretty. But when she smiled, she was breathtaking.

“Almost.” Her smile trembled and she looked shy again. “My name is Anna.”

He couldn’t wait another second to touch her, to know whether her curves felt as soft as they looked, and tugged her closer, pulling her as close to him as they could get in a public bar with their clothes on.

Lord, but he wanted to get even closer. No clothes between them, no other music than the sound of her passion as he made her come with his hands. His mouth. His cock. Jesus, he could feel the pre-come rushing already. Just from holding her.

“Dance with me, Anna.”

Her name was soft on his tongue, just as soft as he knew her skin would be when he finally got her clothes off.

She didn’t push him away, but she did shake her head and bite her lip before saying, “I don’t really dance.”

He had to laugh at that, appreciating the flash of irritation in her eyes at his response.

“Are you saying I’m going to be your first?”

His question hung in the air between them, heavy and pulsing with double meanings.

Jesus, he’d never been with a virgin in his life. Never wanted to be. Not when he appreciated a woman’s experience so that it was wasn’t up to him to do all the work. But the things he wanted to do to this woman—right fucking here, right fucking now—were crazy.

Batshit crazy.

Her flush—and lowered eyes—answered his question. “No. Of course you’re not my first.”

“Are we still talking dancing, Anna?”

Her gaze shot up to meet his again and she opened her mouth, but no words came out.

She looked so cute, standing there trying to figure out how to respond to his very forward question. He knew he wasn’t being fair, playing with her like this, but it was so much fun.

He was having fun.

Cole Taylor didn’t have fun. He was all business, all about crushing the competition.

Sure, he partied as much as the next rich, single, pro-football player, and of course he took the best-looking women in the world to bed, but it wasn’t so much about having a good time as it was about taking his due.

And yet, standing in the middle of a Las Vegas nightclub with a woman whose name he’d only just learned—but whom he wanted more than any woman he’d ever met—Cole felt completely off his game.

The truth was, he was tired. It had been a long, frustrating day looking for a nice girl to take to his grandmother.

His dying grandmother.

“Cole? Are you okay?”

He blinked and looked into Anna’s clearly concerned ocean eyes, felt something soft and warm on his forearm and realized she’d reached out to touch him.

Women looked at him in lots of ways—with dollar signs in their eyes, with lust, with anxiety when he was about to dump them—but never with concern.

Never like they actually cared about him.

“My grandmother is sick.”

Shit, where had those words come from?

She moved even closer, put her other hand on him. “I’m so sorry.”

He worked to swallow past the lump in his throat. “I am, too.”

Together they stood like that for several moments, her comfort flushing through his veins, heading straight for his heart.

“Are you sure you’d still like to dance? Maybe we could find a quieter place and we could talk instead.”

She was right. He didn’t want to dance. But he didn’t want to talk, either.

He wanted to kiss her.

He put his hands on her face, brushing his thumb against her lower lip. She went completely still, not blinking or even breathing as he lowered his face to hers. He didn’t want to scare her and tried to go slow, even though all he wanted was to shove her against the nearest wall and wrap her legs around his waist as he sank into her wet heat.

Her breath was a sweet puff of heat against his mouth as he moved in to kiss her, her lips as red and tempting as plump berries in summertime. Cole liked kissing, always had, happy to spend plenty of time at first base even when most guys were already going for the home run. It was a bonus that kissing made chicks hotter, hornier.

But holy hell, no kiss had ever been like this. No kiss could have prepared him for Anna.

Her mouth was soft and so damn sweet, he lost track of his plans—forgot all about taking it slow and not scaring her. He had to taste her, had to run his tongue along the seam between her lips, from the center then out to first one corner and then the next. Hunger like he’d never known took him over, made him forget everything but the promise of pleasure.

A groan escaped as she opened up for him, her tongue tentatively finding his, a small stroke of sweetness that had him burning up head to toe. His hands slid up into her hair—so damn soft, he couldn’t believe it—and his fingers tightened on her, pulling her closer.

She whimpered her pleasure into his mouth, the soft press of her curves against his hard muscles driving him crazy. His erection throbbed against her belly as he deepened their kiss, no longer able to be gentle, to worry about boundaries.

And then, suddenly, everything turned and she was the one kissing him.

Devouring him.

Her arms moved around his torso, her hands and fingertips all but scratching at him. Her tongue battled with his, her lips sucking at him, her teeth nipping and feasting on his mouth.

His kitten had turned into a lioness.

The club, the music, the overpowering scents of booze and sweat and perfume, all fell away as they made out in the middle of it all. She was heat and curves and pure sex in his arms and he knew if they’d been alone he’d be a heartbeat away from sinking into her, from taking everything she offered and giving her everything she demanded.

Something flashed in the back of his head, something he was supposed to remember, something he was supposed to do, but he couldn’t follow it, not when he was utterly, hopelessly lost in Anna.

Sweet Anna.

Finally, she pulled away from him, gasping, her tongue coming out to lick at her swollen lips as if she were still trying to taste him.

“I’ve never done anything this crazy.”

Her words trembled with confusion—and so much desire—that his mouth found hers again a moment later and she was so sweet he knew it would kill him when he finally had to stop tasting.

Instinctively, Cole knew it wasn’t the champagne that made her taste like sugar. The sweetness was all her.

Grandma would love her.

The thought came at him blindside. He’d almost forgotten why he was here in the first place, why he’d picked her out of the crowd.

He didn’t know anything about Anna other than how good her body felt against his, how right her kisses were, how much he liked her scent, how hard she made him—and how perfectly she embodied the “nice girl” he was sure his grandmother wanted to see with him.

He hadn’t thought beyond finding someone to play the role he needed her to play, but now that he had, he was surprised to find guilt dogging his heels. He didn’t know Anna well enough to not want to hurt her.

And yet...his gut twisted at the thought of what he needed to do.

And he did need to do it.

Because he owed his grandmother everything.

It was that vision—of his grandmother, pale and frail in her hospital bed—that had him leaning into Anna, brushing her earlobe with his lips.

“Let’s do something really crazy, Anna.”

She shivered as his lips made contact with her lobe. Even though he knew he needed to be holding focus, that his goal was the most important thing here, not how much he wanted pretty Anna, he had to pull her earlobe between his teeth and nip at it.

So perfectly, incredibly responsive to his every touch, Anna arched into him, her full, hard-tipped breasts practically searing him through her dress and his shirt, another whimper of need, of desire sounding from her lips.

“So sweet,” Cole murmured against her soft skin as he ran his mouth down her neck, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her shoulder bone. Her breasts, full with arousal, pressed up and out toward his mouth from the neckline of her pink dress. He was half a breath away from unzipping her dress right then and there so that he could swirl her nipples against his tongue, when the crash of a glass at the bar pulled him back into the here and now.

Her eyes were cloudy with desire, only partially focusing as she said, “What could be crazier than this?”

Jesus, he’d completely forgotten about his question, about where he was going with it.

Again.

How was one tiny woman—a woman who wasn’t even his type, for fuck’s sake—turning his brain, and body, completely inside out?

Needing space, needing air to get his brain to function again, he made himself move back an inch from her curves, from her warmth. But all that did was make it easier for him to look at her. She was so pretty—and so damn pure despite the way she’d been kissing him like a wildcat in heat—that his stomach twisted even as he said, “What’s the craziest thing you can think of doing with me tonight?”

The club was dark, but not dark enough that he could miss the flush across her cheeks, or the way the heated vee between her thighs shifted closer to his rock-hard erection in an dance as old as time.

The smile curved his lips before he realized it. “Don’t worry, baby, we’re definitely going to be doing that, regardless of your answer.”

She licked her lips. Her sweet, plump, cherry-red lips. “I don’t—” She shook her head, her shoulder-length brown hair moving across her shoulders. “I wasn’t going to say—”

“You do,” he countered, “and you were.” Dropping his lips back down over hers, he said,

“But since that’s a given, what other kind of crazy have you got for me?”

Her fingertips tightened on his shoulders. “You and me doing ... it’s a given?”

“Yup.”

“But we just met.”

“Lucky us.”

He was glad to hear a surprised little giggle escape her lips, but then, too soon, she was back to her arguments.“I don’t do things like this.”

“I know you don’t.”

She frowned and, without thinking, he reached up to brush away the lines between her eyes. He wanted to see her smile, not frown.

“How?”

Her soft skin against his fingertips had him losing his train of thought. Hell, how could he possibly think without any blood left in his brain? Not even close to knowing what she was asking, all he could do was echo, “How what?”

“How do you know I don’t do things like this?”

“I just do.”

Her full lips pressed together. Shit, that wasn’t the right answer.

“Because I look boring.”

“Hell, no.” A little bit of spark came back into her eyes, enough to tell him that he was heading in the right direction again. Thank God. “You’ve been anything but boring.”

She cocked her pretty head to one side, the hair brushing against her shoulder blades, making him wonder what it would feel like brushing over his dick as she blew him, sixty-nine position.

“But you’re surprised by that, aren’t you?”

Jesus, he thought as he corralled his brain back to the conversation, what was this?

Twenty-fucking-questions?

A lie lay on his tongue, whatever she wanted to hear, but what came out instead was, “A little, yeah.”

“I knew it.” Her victorious expression disappeared as quickly as it came. “Tell me why you’re so surprised.”

The first words that came into his head were, “You were wearing a halo.”