by Lisa Childs
“Oh, Priscilla, I’m so sorry….”
She shook her head and fought back the emotions rushing up to choke her. “It happened a long time ago.”
“But you still hurt. I’ve seen it so many times in your eyes.”
She was sick of hurting. Sick of living in the past and planning for the future. She wanted only the present. Only Brooks. She hooked her arms behind his neck and pulled his head down for her kiss. As perceptive as ever, he must have understood how badly she needed him. His mouth pressed hard against hers, parting her lips. His tongue slid inside, driving deep, while his hands fisted in her dress.
Priscilla moaned. She lifted her legs and wrapped them tight around his waist. He carried her the few paces across the small living room to her bedroom, where he laid her on the bed and followed her down.
His erection pressed against her hips, and she arched into him. He groaned and pulled his mouth from hers. “It’s been killing me. Wanting you like this again.”
“Me, too.”
“We can keep this fun,” he said, but no glint of mischief brightened his serious gaze. “We can keep this light.”
She nodded in agreement because she couldn’t speak the lie aloud. She was not the type who could make love with a man without having deeper feelings for him than friendship. And she was definitely falling for Brooks.
But as his fingers moved over her, sliding down the straps of her homecoming dress and caressing her shoulders, she didn’t care. She reached up and undid the tie she’d knotted for him earlier that evening.
“I imagined you doing this, taking off my tie,” he said, his voice gruff with passion, “after the dance.”
“Me, too,” she admitted. She pulled the silk free of his collar and dropped it next to the bed. Then she fumbled with the buttons of his shirt to bare the hard muscles of his chest. She arched up and skimmed her lips across him, feeling his heart rate kick up. If only she could affect his heart that easily…
But he wasn’t staying in Trout Creek. Even without his brother’s warning, she’d known that. So she had to make the most of the time they had.
She pressed her palms against his chest, gliding them over the muscles there. And she shifted closer, sliding her leg over his thighs. Beneath the fly of his dress pants, his erection hardened and pulsed, and she rubbed against him. Her dress rode up around her waist, so she felt him through the thin material of her panties. She moved against him again, heat pooling between her legs.
He groaned. “Priscilla…”
She kissed him quickly, intimately, then pulled back. “What do you see in my eyes now?”
“Need.”
The revelation shook her. She’d expected him to say desire, or passion. But he was right. She needed him. “Make love to me.”
“With you,” he corrected, as he reached behind her and tugged down her zipper.
The dress dropped to her waist, her breasts spilling over the strapless bra. Then it was gone, too. And his mouth was there, sliding over the curve of her breasts, dipping between them before his lips closed around a nipple. With his tongue he teased the sensitive point.
She arched her back, and pressure began to build inside her, tightening her muscles. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she clutched him to her breast.
He pulled back to strip off her dress and silk panties, and his mouth moved down her body, from her breast to her navel and the place where the tension wound tightest. He kissed her there, as intimately as he’d kissed her lips, and his tongue slid inside her.
She gasped and lifted off the bed, meeting the thrusts of his tongue…until the pressure broke and an orgasm shuddered through her. She cried out. The rasp of his zipper echoed the sound as he dropped his pants. A crinkling of foil, and he was sheathed in latex and then her body.
“You’re so big,” she murmured.
But then he rolled so she was on top. She took him deeper and he grasped her hips, helping her move up and down, backward and forward. All the while thrusting deeper inside her.
His hands moved back up her body, cupping her breasts. His thumbs rubbed across the sensitive points and he took one in his mouth.
The pressure, which had built again, broke free as another powerful orgasm shattered Priscilla. Brooks kept pushing her down and pulling her up until he tensed and shouted her name. His body, so muscular and strong, shuddered beneath her. “Damn…”
“Damn,” she echoed.
“I let you distract me,” he said, breathing hard.
“That’s what that was?” she asked with a smile. “A distraction?”
“I want to talk.”
“Why do I suspect that’s something you’ve never said to a naked woman before?” she teased.
She was right, Brooks acknowledged. But Priscilla was different. He lifted her off him so she wouldn’t distract him again, since he was already hardening inside her wet heat.
“We’re going to talk,” he insisted. But when he came back from the bathroom, the bedroom was empty. He picked up his clothes from the floor, pulled on his pants and shrugged into his shirt, not bothering with the buttons. He found her in the living room, in a robe, standing before the windows.
“Do you think they’re out there?” she asked.
“The boys?” He shrugged. “I doubt it. They know I’ll make them clean up whatever they do.”
“That does kind of take the fun out of it,” she agreed, and turned to him with a pointed look.
He understood what she was really saying. “Like talking would take the fun out of…”
“This,” she said. “We don’t need to talk about anything. It’s not like we have a future.”
He should have been relieved that she didn’t want more from him than he was sure he could offer, but instead he sucked in a breath as if she’d jabbed an elbow in his ribs. “We’re friends, though, right?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “That was something I never thought I’d say twelve years ago.”
“I was a jerk back then. But I’m trying now. I want to be a friend. So talk to me. Tell me about your marriage,” he urged.
She looked hesitant. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He stepped closer and skimmed his thumb along her jaw. “Liar.”
“I had just graduated college and started my first job when I discovered I was a pregnant.”
“You weren’t married?” he asked, with surprise but no condemnation. He was the last person who could judge someone.
“Owen and I had dated all through college.”
“So you were serious?”
“I was,” she said. “I don’t think he was—at least not as much as me. He probably wouldn’t have married me if I hadn’t gotten pregnant. But he wanted to do the right thing, so he proposed.” Her voice sounded shaky.
The son of a bitch had really hurt her, made her feel unloved and undeserving. “He was an idiot,” Brooks said.
“For doing the right thing?”
“For not marrying you for you.”
She shrugged. “In the end it didn’t matter. Once we lost Courtney, we had no reason to stay married.”
Brooks pulled her back into his arms. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” she repeated, but tears penetrated his shirt. She dashed them away and stepped back. “I’m okay, friend.”
“Friend,” he repeated with resignation.
“That’s really all we can be,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed with a sigh.
She had already been hurt by one man who hadn’t known what he wanted. Until he figured out his own life, Brooks had nothing to offer her.
Chapter Fifteen
Months had passed, the holidays coming and going, and still Brooks had not left Trout Creek. Priscilla didn’t kid herself into thinking he had stuck around for her. It was his love of the game.
Instead of TPing her trees that night after the homecoming dance, his brothers had talked Debbie into playi
ng again. And with a complete team to coach, Brooks had taken his new responsibilities seriously. She could barely hear her own thoughts over the roar of the cheering crowd in the ice arena.
Fingers clutched her arm, digging through the down of her heavy jacket to shake her. “They’re winning!” Maureen screamed. “They’re amazing!”
After sitting out a month’s suspension, Adam was playing again, passing the puck back to Brad. Maureen had come along as a chaperone for the away game, as well as to cheer her son.
The Trout Creek team was playing in a tournament downstate, just an hour north of the city where Brooks had played before he’d been injured. Most of his teammates, even the goalie who’d fought with him, had come out to support him despite having a game of their own that evening. They stood behind the glass, close to the bench where Brooks’s high schoolers sat. Maybe the presence of his former teammates motivated the kids to play so hard, to do their coach proud. But then, they’d been playing this hard every game, winning all of them except the first one.
Another hand gripped Priscilla’s shoulder and squeezed. When she turned on the bleachers to see who sat behind her, she was surprised to find Coach Cook. His eyes were bright with pride and excitement. “He’s a damn good coach,” he declared.
With no help from the cane hooked around his elbow, the older man stood up to cheer his granddaughter’s save. The physical therapy was finally showing results.
After Priscilla sat back down, she leaned close to Maureen and asked, “Why did he tell me that Brooks is doing a good job?”
Did everyone know about the two of them? Probably. In Trout Creek everyone knew everyone else’s business. But they’d tried to keep it quiet. Out in public they’d acted more like friends than lovers. Priscilla had insisted on that because she didn’t want everyone feeling sorry for her when he left.
“You’re his boss,” her sister reminded her.
Heat rushed to Priscilla’s face. “Of course. Yeah.”
Coach Cook had just been letting her know she’d found a good replacement for him. Did he consider the position temporary? He was recovering from his stroke so quickly, he could likely return next season. And one season was really all Brooks had committed to. For now.
She couldn’t accept Coach Cook’s kudos for hiring Brooks, because she hadn’t. If not for Sheriff Hoover’s interference, Brooks would not be coach. Without him, she doubted the team would have made it to this tournament. She had been wrong about his coaching skills. Had she been wrong about him in regards to a relationship?
“You’re not just his boss anymore, are you?” Maureen asked, her brow furrowed.
“No,” she admitted, her voice pitched low enough that none of the other Trout Creek residents who’d traveled to the game could hear her. “We’ve taken things to a different level.”
“How serious?”
“We’re just having fun.” She nearly choked on the last word. It was totally inadequate to describe the mind-blowing passion she felt whenever he touched her.
Her sister squeezed her arm again. “Oh, Priscilla…”
“I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“I would be,” Maureen said, “if I believed you were just having fun. But I know you, and I’m worried that you’re going to get hurt.”
“Maybe I won’t this time,” she said, but she heard the hollow ring of doubt in her own voice.
“It’s not that he’s a bad guy. In fact, I think he’s too good.”
Priscilla flinched at her sister’s honesty. “Thanks.”
“No, he’s not too good for you,” she hastened to explain. “I don’t think there’ll ever be a man good enough for you.”
“Am I that hard to please?” It had never taken Brooks much to bring her pleasure. Just a kiss, a caress…
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just that Brooks Hoover is different,” Maureen said, gesturing to where he stood with the benched members of his team.
As he spoke to them, they stared up at him with awe and adoration. But the kids weren’t the only ones watching him. Cameras flashed, and it wasn’t just parents taking pictures. The press had come, too—not to watch the kids play but to watch Brooks. His team’s turnaround had renewed their interest in him. Just as his baby brother had promised, he was coaching his former team to glory.
“He’s always been better than Trout Creek,” Maureen explained. “Bigger.”
Unable to argue, Priscilla nodded. He was talented and charming, but Brooks had greater depth than most people, including her, had realized.
“I always thought you were bigger than Trout Creek, too,” her sister said with pride and perhaps some disappointment. “But you came back home a different person than the determined young woman who’d left.”
She had come back wounded.
“I like my life in Trout Creek,” she said defensively. She wasn’t hiding. “It’s home to me. Living somewhere else just convinced me that I belong there.”
“Do you really think that Brooks does?” Maureen asked quietly.
“He’s a good coach.” But she remembered what Ryan had told her at the homecoming dance and what she had observed herself. “But he’s a great player.”
Next season he would return to his own team and the life he’d led before her or Faith. He would be training and playing long hours in different cities, with no time for the family Priscilla wanted. She deserved more—a man who’d love her and the children she now wanted more than anything else.
“He won’t stay,” her sister said bluntly.
“I know. That’s why we’re not serious. We’re just having fun.”
Shouts of joy and applause reverberated throughout the stands as Ryan assisted Brad to a goal, the winning goal as the last few seconds ran out on the clock. That clock was like her time with Brooks, running out all too fast.
OUTSIDE THE LOCKER ROOM, Graham slapped Brooks on the back. “You did a real good job with all those little smart-asses.”
Bursting with pride, he grinned. “The little smart-asses are easier to work with than the big ones.”
Graham had met Ryan and Brad, who hadn’t been as forgiving as Brooks that Graham knocked their brother to the ice. But they couldn’t have beaten up the man as much as he’d been beating up himself.
“I screwed up big-time,” Graham said. “That girl was after whatever she could get. When I broke up with her, she sold that video she took with her cell phone to the highest bidder. I should have listened to you. Women can’t be trusted.”
Brooks had believed that once, because of his mom. But not since Priscilla. “I don’t know about that.”
“What?” Graham shook his head. “You told me some chick dropped a baby on your doorstep, and you’re willing to trust another female?”
“Shh.” Brooks glanced around to see if anyone had overheard. He’d told Graham a couple of months ago about Faith, in case the goalie had heard any rumors about a pregnant ex. But he’d sworn the man to secrecy, a secret Graham would take to his grave, after hurting Brooks as he had.
“We aren’t playing half as good as these kids are,” Graham remarked. “We can’t without you. I’ve got no defense. No help at all out there.”
Brooks gave a weary sigh. He wanted to celebrate with his new team. He appreciated his old teammates coming to the tournament in support, but he needed to let the kids know how great they’d played. So he was blunt with Graham. “I told you. I’m out this season.” Then he turned back toward the locker room, but the goalie caught his shoulder.
“I didn’t come here just to watch these kids show us up,” Graham said. “I found out something you’re gonna want to hear, Brooks.”
His breath shuddered out with relief. He’d been waiting so long for this. “You figured out who Faith’s mom is.”
“Faith?” The confusion only increased.
“Faith is my daughter,” Brooks reminded him.
“Seriously, man, are you sure she’s yours? If you’d gotten some chick pr
egnant, she would have been all over you for child support.”
He hadn’t seen the results himself, but his dad had assured him that they’d come back and proved Faith was a Hoover. Brooks hadn’t had to read a lab report to know she was his daughter. He’d felt it the first time he’d picked her up in his arms. “Yes, she’s mine.”
“Then you’d better get back to the league, so you can make some money to support her,” Graham said.
Brooks had actually paid attention to his dad’s lectures and hadn’t blown the money he’d made over the years. He’d saved quite a bit, until a recent purchase. “Maybe next season…”
Graham shook his head. “Coach Stein’s been calling you. He had a neurologist look at your scans. He thinks you could finish up this season.”
“Stein never talked to me.” Brooks had taken his coach’s silence to mean that he didn’t want him back on the team.
“He talked to your dad—several times.” Graham snorted. “I figured you never got the message.”
And apparently neither had his father when Brooks had told him he and his brothers needed to be responsible for their own lives. “Damn…”
“I need you back on the ice, protecting my ass. And there’s no reason you can’t come back.”
Through the locker room door behind him, voices rose in celebration. And Priscilla would still be in the bleachers. He’d known exactly where she’d been sitting the entire game. Instead of her usual gray, she’d worn a red down jacket and a beautiful smile of pride and happiness. Was his dad really the only reason he hadn’t been playing?
PRISCILLA DRAGGED A BREATH deep into her lungs and then lifted her fist to knock at the hotel room door. After a few seconds, Brooks opened it. His curls were disheveled, as if he’d been running his hands through them, and dark circles rimmed his brown eyes.
She pushed past him and walked inside, glad now that the school had rewarded the coach with a private room. She would have had one, too, if not for Maureen assuming they’d share.
Knocking hadn’t been the hard part—making this admission was. But she forced the words from her lips. “I was wrong…maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you are the man for me…if you want to be.”
