Dr. Jeffries paused. I knew what was coming. I wasn’t going to bait myself by offering to help. If they were short on football support, the soccer student core should have been the next source of help, then basketball, track and field, cross country, volleyball, maybe even golf. But not baseball, and not me.
“They’re going to need some more help.”
“I’m sure he does, if he’s as talented as they say he is.”
The doctor laughed. “You don’t know?”
“Do you mean how talented he is? No, not personally. I’ve never seen them play.”
He was silent, then asked, “You’re kidding me, right?”
I genuinely laughed at his reaction. “Is that so hard to believe, Dr. Jeffries?”
“I was under the impression that every student at this school made it a habit to attend every football game, is all.”
“There may be a few of us abstainers around. You’re not wrong, though. The campus is eerily quiet on Saturday afternoons in the fall. Everyone makes the mass exodus and ends up at the stadium for home games. Most everyone.” I laughed again. That was my nerves about the direction this conversation was taking.
“I’m sure it is. Anyway, like I said, he needs the best support on his rehabilitation and recovery team.” I heard the deep breath he took through the phone’s speaker. I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming. “You’re the best I have.”
“No way,” I said. It fell out of my mouth before I could stop myself.
“What?” he snapped.
“I’m so very sorry, Dr. Jeffries, but I really can’t. I don’t mean to come off as rude, but you’ve just assigned me to the baseball team. I can’t manage the athletic therapy for that team while doing a gig for a football player. I can’t do both. I need time to sleep and eat. Oh, and to study, of course.” I chuckled nervously. He didn’t join me.
“Samantha, this isn’t a request. And I’ll have to postpone your assignment to the baseball team until Marshall is back off the injured list.”
Oh no, he didn’t.
Did he just…?
He couldn’t have.
My heart sank down to my shoes. I didn’t believe it.
“Is this a mistake, Dr. Jeffries? I mean, are you sure? This doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“You’re right. It’s not, but things like this happen all the time. I’m sorry, Samantha. I understand this isn’t the assignment you were hoping for. I’m sure it’s not the way Evan Marshall saw things going, either. Sometimes we have to make the best of a situation even if we wish it wasn’t so.”
“I understand that part. Honestly I do, but you have to know I’ve worked so hard to get the baseball assignment. To have it taken away now…gosh, please don’t do this. It’s what I’ve been working for since I started as a freshman. There has to be someone else in the class or from the staff who can take this on?”
“There isn’t anyone else, and to be clear, I’m not taking anything away from you.” His tone became more curt. I was pushing the boundaries in this power dynamic, but I had to try.
“But sir—”
“Samantha, I’m only removing you from the baseball crew until Evan is off the injured list. You can go back to baseball when he’s better.”
“But…but…who knows how long that will take?” I asked, searching desperately for a way out. I squeezed my pen so hard, I thought I might snap it in two.
“You have six weeks.”
I nearly fell out of my desk chair. “Six weeks? That long? Why such a specific deadline?”
“Because the combine is in seven. You do know what the NFL’s National Scouting Combine is, right?”
My heart hardened, and I scowled. Years of hard work on my part meant nothing when compared to a football player’s potential career. “This…I can’t…I wish I could explain…oh my God…”
“Now there’s no need to panic over this. Take it for the opportunity that it is.”
“I just thought I’d have more of a say for such a big move. This change can affect my opportunities in the baseball world, Dr. Jeffries.”
He sighed. “I think it can only help demonstrate your versatility. Look, my decision is final. I expect you in my office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, where you’ll meet with the lead certified trainer and later on, the two of you will meet with Evan at his dorm or wherever he lives. His address is on file. In the meantime, I want you to prepare by drafting a plan for his treatment and rehab, to demonstrate to the team lead what you’re bringing to the table. Remember, it’s a grade two strain. Left leg. I’ll have more information for you once the remaining results come in from the head physician. See you tomorrow, Samantha.”
Then he hung up.
I sat there for a solid minute with the phone to my ear. Just like that, my plans were toast. Everything I had worked toward was going down the tube and I had no say in the matter. I had to temporarily wave my assignment goodbye. The one I had earned was going to fall to someone else.
I dropped my phone to the bed and buried my head in my hands. I was crying by the time Kristy walked in.
“Oh sweetie…what’s wrong?” She rushed over to me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Talk to me. What is it?”
“I h—hate football!” I sobbed.
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. Is it your dad again?”
“No, not this time.” I sat up, wiping my cheeks with my hands. I gave her the brief rundown of my conversation with Dr. Jeffries. She clicked her tongue sympathetically, then got up for some tissues and a bottle of water.
“You poor thing. I’m so sorry he’s screwing you over like this.” She sat beside me on my bed and put her arm over my shoulder. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I tried. I told him I didn’t have the time, I reminded him how hard I worked to get this assignment. It didn’t matter. He wants me to drop everything to help out this Evan Marshall jerk face.” I blew my nose and took a long drink of water, trying to get myself back in order.
“Back up a second. Did you just say you’ll be working with Evan Marshall?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Whoa, momma.” Kristy fanned herself. I shot her a withering look.
“You’re not helping, friend.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t help myself,” she answered and gave me a shrug. Kristy crossed our tiny dorm room to find her phone in her bag. “You could do worse, you know. He’s a football God. Six feet four inches tall, gorgeous face, wavy brown hair, dark chocolate brown eyes and a scorching hot body. His ink is so hot I’m sure the ladies line up to lick it. He’s sexy as hell with a devilish reputation. Haven’t you seen him before?”
“Maybe, but I don’t care. I’m tired of having to put everything aside for football! First at home with Dad, and now my career is out the door, just like that. Why do they get everything? More funding, the best therapists, perks up the ass around campus, even the best uniforms.”
“We live in the south, honey. It’s football country. We are all about football. You know that.” She frowned sympathetically. “You know that better than anybody else.”
“Don’t I, though?” I wanted to scream.
“Hey. I need to tell you something.” She sat beside me again with an urgent expression on her face. “You don’t make it your business to keep up on the guys on the football team in particular, so I think I should tell you. Watch yourself around him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s a total dog. Half the girls on the campus sororities have slept with him.”
“You’re exaggerating, aren’t you?” My tears were forgotten now. I listened carefully.
She nodded. “Maybe a little, but not with this part. He’s into all sorts of kinky stuff, and everyone says he’s a control freak. Like one of the girls down the hall was blabbering on that she was with him a few nights ago.”
“With him, how?”
“Like up in his room getting screwed out of her mind at some party the frat house th
rew to welcome students back.” Kristy rolled her eyes, pulling her long blonde hair back in a ponytail. To some, she looked the part of the typical sorority member who would adorn those jock’s mattresses. She was a member of a sorority, but had vowed never to live in one of their houses on campus after junior year.
Dorm life wasn’t that much better, but the pressures of keeping up with the insane fashion and social norms of a Southern sorority was over the top for most sane, grounded women. Kristy was the most grounded of them all, no matter what people thought. That blonde mane, those long legs, big boobs and all the makeup she wore on her already stunning face made people on campus jump to the wrong conclusions. At heart, my best friend was a force to be reckoned with, which was why we got along.
“What did she say?”
“According to her, he pretty much ordered her to go down on him, then he spanked her and they did the nasty. After he was finished he told her to put her clothes on and get back down to the party.”
“That’s harsh.” I put a hand over my mouth, although it did sound pretty hot, getting spanked like that. I kept that part to myself. “Hold on. Are you talking about Tina?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“No one else on this floor would do something like that. There’s only four of us up here who are single, for starters. You and I wouldn’t give this Evan dude the time of day. So that leaves Tina and Brandy. And everyone knows Brandy is into Tre, but she’d never step inside that frat house or any other ‘den of iniquity’, as she likes to call it.”
“Well okay. I guess I’m not great at keeping her secret. Just don’t tell her I said anything. Anyhow, she said she never saw him again that night, except toward the end of the party when he was making out with another girl in some corner, then took that girl to her room.”
“Ew! That’s low. He dropped her like that?”
“Like yesterday’s news…like a used, no-good snatch.” She shook her head. “Yet another reason why I don’t live in the sorority house, and don’t go to a lot of those parties. That’s all it is.”
“But to drop her like that? At the same party? You’re right. He’s a pig.”
“I know. Believe me, he’s gonna try to work his charm on you, girlfriend. You’d better be careful.”
I blushed and looked at my hands. “You know he won’t have much luck there.” Kristy was one of the less than five people in the world who knew with a hundred percent certainty that I was still a virgin.
“Honey, you’ve gotta lose it sometime. All I’m saying is, don’t lose it to him. He’s not worth it. And don’t let your prof get you down. He’s just another shining example of men thinking they can tell women what to do. They’d never just up and reassign one of the guys like that, not unless they were already chomping at the bit to be assigned to the football team. Bastard.”
Kristy was a diehard feminist—another aspect of her personality that most people would never guess in a million years. In her world, everything boiled down to gender, and women were naturally getting the short end of the deal, so she took it upon herself to speak up for all women, whether there was inequity or not.
“I just hope this doesn’t screw up my chances of getting hired by a baseball team after I graduate. Who am I kidding? Of course it will. He wants me to work with this Evan guy for six weeks.”
“Try a full semester tutoring one of those meatheads. Mind you, he’s a cute meathead.”
“Wait, what? You’re tutoring one of them?”
“Yeah. My teaching gig got fucked up at the last minute because of some union contract negotiations going on at the private high school I was assigned to.”
“Awww crap. I’m sorry. I know you were looking forward to it.”
“I was. Mom and Dad are livid.”
“Can’t they put in a good word somewhere for you?”
“Not this time. It’s too late. So I get to work with Mo Grant…a running back who happens to be on academic probation this semester…and he’s a senior, so they’re bringing out the big guns to help him graduate. The one good thing he has going for him is he doesn’t live in the frat house with the rest of those guys on the football team. He’s at home, somewhere off campus. Well, that’s not the only good thing…”
“Wait, you’re… into him?”
“Uh, that may be jumping the gun, but hell, he’s a big blond sexy giant. Six feet seven inches, almost white blond hair, piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders, rippling muscles, ink…I’ve got my work cut out for me with this assignment.”
“Sounds like you plan on jumping in with both feet. Does he have a crappy reputation like Evan?”
“Not that I’ve heard about, but who knows? He’s a football player with NFL potential…if he doesn’t screw up on the academics this semester.”
“I can’t believe we’re kind of in the same boat, except this assignment will kill my chances of getting on a major league baseball team. Six weeks with this Evan character means half the semester will be gone. It’s a disaster!” I was ready to start crying and pounding my fists on the bed again.
“Don’t worry about it, hun. You’re still the best, or they wouldn’t be assigning you to Evan. He and Slade are the school’s two best chances of having alumnae in the draft this year. Maybe Mo too. They’ll do anything to get Evan through, including giving him the best athletic training hopefuls around.” She grinned. “Which means you, as if you didn’t already know.”
That helped, but only a bit. “He’d better be worth all this trouble,” I muttered.
“He will be. And I’m sure Dr. Jeffries will be happy to help you score whatever job you want when you graduate. You scratch his back, he scratches yours.” She stood and stretched, baring her slim waist and flat tummy under the gray and white varsity top she had on with baby blue skinny jeans and a blush pink long-sleeved cardigan. “It’s the way the world works.”
I looked over at my desk, at the plans and research scattered over top of it. I wanted to get back to this work, not set it aside for some beefed up jock. In spite of the urge to throw a tantrum, Kristy was right that it was the way of the world. I had to learn to roll with it.
My search engine was still waiting for me to enter another keyword. I cursed under my breath as I entered Evan Marshall in the bar. Now I wanted to know as much as possible about the guy whose injury screwed me over. From what Kristy had already said, he was either going to be an enormous jerk or a walking, talking STD. I wanted to be ready for him in either case. He had to know from the get-go that I wasn’t going to be a pushover and I wasn’t on his recovery team for his enjoyment.
I had never been that girl for anyone, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to start for him.
5
Evan
I was up way too early. The bright morning sun pored through the half-closed vertical blinds of the bay window. That sunny cheery look outside was the exact opposite of the mood I was in when I reached for my crutches to get out of bed and start the day. I was in my temporary bedroom on the main floor of the frat house.
The room was a small space at the front of the house that could be accessed from the porch or the living room. We normally used it as a study den when everyone was cramming around exam time. Last night, Slade and Chad cleared it out to move my bed and a few of my clothes down here. The sports physician instructed me not to take stairs for at least ten days.
Today, the only thing on my agenda was to meet a few people from the athletic training staff to discuss my rehab plan. I couldn’t even start the physical therapy for at least five days. Rest was doctor’s orders, along with no walking around, mandatory crutches for boy’s room visits, no driving a car, no operating heavy equipment, no riding a bicycle or motorcycle, no jogging, no stretching, and no exercise of any kind, until they give the all-clear.
And no sex.
Well fuck me.
Actually, don’t.
Because I couldn’t fuck anyone right now, not with this godawful groin pain.
&
nbsp; I took the pain medication the sport doctor prescribed yesterday and limped through the main floor of the frat house on crutches, taking my time to get ready. Using the bathroom closest to my makeshift bedroom was a waste of energy. It had a large bathtub that I wouldn’t dare try to climb into. I ended up going to the small standing shower on near the back of the house. The only way I could manage to stand under the hot water was by going in there with one crutch under my right arm for support. Good thing they gave me these aluminum ones. Hopefully they were waterproof too.
This whole getting in the shower to start my day was unlike me, but so was being injured. I usually kicked off my mornings with a quick workout in my room—push-ups, crunches, pull-ups on a bar I installed in my closet doorway, more crunches, lunges, jumping jacks, squats and burpees. It felt weird not doing any of that. I never realized until today how much I relied on my workout to set my energy level for the rest of the day. My body craved it, too. Fuck, I was not looking forward to the next few weeks.
I got myself cleaned up and dressed. What used to take me fifteen minutes took me an hour, mostly because of the agonizing pain, but also because getting around on crutches was a real bitch. I made it to the kitchen because someone put coffee on. As I sat there with my mug of dark roast, a few of the frat guys who weren’t on the football team came in. I hated the looks on their faces. Everyone in the house already knew, and they were acting like they pitied me.
Assholes. I’d show them what they could do with their pity.
“Hey, man, how you feeling?” Tre came around and asked, looking concerned.
“How the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I barked, still grumbling as I took a sip of the steaming coffee.
He took a step back with his hand raised. “Jeez, man. I’m just checking in on you. You don’t need to be a dick about it.”
“Am I being a dick? I didn’t know. Sorry. Just don’t ask me that shit again or I’ll have your scrawny neck in a headlock before you can say ‘Bob’s your uncle’.” I glared at him and the kid backed off. I didn’t want anyone’s fucking pity. I would rather have them all hate me than give me that annoying as fuck compassionate look, like my life was ending or someone just killed my cat.
Win Big: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Page 4
