Then there are the women.

Universally young, buxom, and beautiful, they’re draped over him in photo after photo. At parties, news events, the sidelines of a game, he’s almost always covered in women like he’s a glue trap and they’re flies.

It makes me a little ill, until I realize that he’s not smiling in any of those photos, either. And he’s never photographed with the same woman twice.

One and done, huh, prancer? I browse thoughtfully through the pictures, becoming more certain with each passing minute that I’m viewing a montage of a profoundly unhappy life. Even when surrounded by an adoring crowd, he looks angry and alone. Our conversation in my kitchen comes back to haunt me.

Is life easier, being beautiful?

My life has never been easy.

For you the world is just one big banquet of choices.

Is it?

If I were going on all the photographs as evidence, I’d have to concede what I think is a banquet seems to him like a wake.

I click on his Wikipedia page and read through his list of career achievements and awards and honors, then skip down to the section titled Early Life.

Born into poverty to a teenage single mother in Edinburgh, Scotland, Cameron Christopher McGregor faced grave odds from the start. Nine weeks premature due to a savage beating his mother suffered at the hands of his father, Duncan, he weighed only three pounds, six ounces at birth. As his lungs were immature, he required supplemental oxygen but quickly developed retrolental fibroplasia from the oxygen therapy, resulting in retinal detachment and subsequent surgery to correct the condition.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, horrified, my hand to my throat. I read on, growing more upset with every word.

Sentenced to eight years in prison for the attack on his pregnant girlfriend, Duncan McGregor hung himself in his cell after serving only ten days. For the first few years of Cameron’s life, his mother subsisted on only £180 per month from the government. Due to his premature birth and his mother’s drug use during pregnancy, Cameron was plagued by health problems during childhood, including slow physical development, difficulty learning and communicating, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (also called ADHD).

In interviews he has described how viciously he was bullied at school for his small size and learning disability. One such event landed him in the hospital with a broken jaw and severe internal bleeding after being beaten into unconsciousness by a gang of older boys.

I start blinking hard to clear the water from my vision. It doesn’t work, so I take a few of the napkins from my top drawer and dab at the corners of my eyes until I can see again.

When he was twelve, Cameron’s mother found a job through a government program aimed at putting able-bodied citizens on the dole back to work. She obtained a position as a live-in housekeeper for Sir Francis Gladstone, a member of Parliament. Sir Gladstone had three sons between the ages of fifteen and twenty, all of whom were highly regarded amateur rugby players. It was through their influence that Cameron was first introduced to the sport.

Cameron and his mother lived with Sir Gladstone until her suicide when Cameron was eighteen, the same year he was recruited to the Red Devils. Sir Gladstone and Catherine McGregor were rumored to be romantically involved at the time of her death, but he denied the reports.

I stare at the screen in shock.

Both his parents killed themselves. He was an orphan by the age of eighteen. He was poor, weak, beaten, and bullied, utterly disadvantaged, yet somehow managed to find the strength to become one of the world’s foremost athletes.

I feel as if I’ve been flattened by a steamroller. Everything I assumed about Cameron McGregor is wrong.

“Joellen.”

I start at the sound of Cam’s voice, thinking I must be going insane. But when I swing around, he’s standing there in the entrance to my cubicle, the receptionist hovering nervously a few feet behind him.

“This gentleman said you were expecting him, Joellen?” says the receptionist, Kim, a sweet girl with a nervous tic in her left eyelid. She always looks like she’s sending a conspiratorial wink.

“Don’t tell me you forgot our lunch date,” Cam drawls when I sit frozen, mystified by his presence.

“Lunch date?” I repeat blankly. When I see Kim’s eyes widen in alarm, I quickly backtrack. “Oh! Yes! Sorry, I was just so absorbed in work I lost track of time!”

Cam’s gaze cuts to my computer screen.

I leap to my feet like my chair is on fire and hit the power button so hard I almost knock the screen over. Then I turn breathlessly to Cam and Kim. I’m grinning maniacally like a circus clown. “Okay! All set!”

Kim drifts away with a confused smile, while Cam just stands there, taking up all the space in the room.

From my peripheral vision, I see the top of Shasta’s head begin to creep over the cubicle wall. Whispers are starting up all around us because Cameron McGregor is huge, handsome, and impossible not to notice. His shoulders are almost as wide as my desk.

With my crazed smile plastered firmly in place, I say between my teeth, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, lass.” His smile is almost as absurd as mine, but while mine is hysterical, his is smug.

He totally caught me googling him. Life as I know it is over.

He’s more dressed up than I’ve ever seen him, which only means he put on a black sport jacket over his jeans and T-shirt. Paired with his scruffy jaw and boots, the overall effect is one of effortless cool. He looks great, and he knows it.

So do all the females on the floor, who are collectively soiling their panties. Shasta’s eyes above the lip of the cubicle wall are like saucers.

Then the worst thing that could possibly happen, does.

“Well, this is certainly a surprise. I recognize you from the tabloids. Cameron McGregor, am I correct?”

Cam and I turn our attention to Michael, who’s stopped in the hallway a few feet away. He’s gazing at Cam like he’s a bug he’d like to smash under the sole of his calfskin Hermès loafer.

Cam jerks his chin at Michael and sends him one of his signature shit-eating grins. “Aye. You’ll be wantin’ an autograph, I’m sure, but you’ll have to excuse me, mate. I’m just’ leavin’ for lunch with Joellen.”

Michael—resplendent in a couture Brioni suit the color of Cam’s eyes when he’s particularly mad—sets his shoulders. “I wasn’t asking for an autograph.”

They gaze at each other as I fight the urge to dive under my desk and curl into a ball until all the chest beating is over. I can tell Cam recognizes Michael, too, but he’s pretending like he has no clue who he is—just another fan dazzled by his presence.

If he wanted to piss Michael off, he picked the perfect way to do it. Michael’s neck has flushed a deep, angry red.

I know exactly what makes pretty rich boys tick, Cam told me. Here’s an unmistakable bit of proof.

Things take a turn toward the melodramatic when Portia appears behind Michael, slinking up like a fox past the henhouse door. She looks Cam up and down, her foxy nose twitching at the scent of fresh meat. “Oh. Pardon me,” she purrs. “Am I interrupting?”

God, between the three of them I feel like I’m in the Bermuda Triangle. I blurt nervously, “We were just leaving for lunch!”

Portia’s gaze slides toward me. I’m surprised to see curiosity in her eyes, not the usual hostility. She looks at Michael, then at Cam, then back at me, but doesn’t respond.