On the Line

by Liz Lincoln

  The girl’s expression was hard, same as it had been after the other four nanny interviews they’d conducted.

  “Nope.” Maddie turned and flounced back to the living room. She flopped onto the couch and banged her feet onto the coffee table.

  She’d been in the same surly mood since the day she insisted he get rid of Carrie. Which was perfect, because so was he. Even getting to the divisional round of the playoffs and playing well enough to give his agent serious leverage for negotiating a one-year contract extension with the Dragons hadn’t been enough to put Seth in a good mood.

  He missed Carrie.

  On the plus side, being in a perpetually foul mood had made last week’s season-ending two-point loss to Pittsburgh less painful. It had simply brought the rest of the team down to his level.

  “What the hell is wrong this time?” Seth snapped as he stalked after Maddie. Even though the season was over and he wouldn’t be traveling as much didn’t mean he didn’t need help. He still had commitments, and Mike had secured him a new endorsement deal that would involve some evening hours.

  Without Carrie, Seth had struggled with juggling Maddie’s care and the end of the season. His mom had visited for a few weeks, and Maddie spent her winter break in Houston, but now that football was done for the year, they needed a reliable routine.

  But the lack of childcare was far from the cause of Seth’s perpetually foul mood. He didn’t miss Carrie because she took Maddie to swim practice or did his laundry. He missed her. Her smile, her ability to get Maddie excited about school, her laugh, her passion for science, her kisses. The way she felt curled up on the couch next to him. The lazy, sexy look she got in her eyes when she wanted him.

  Most of all, he missed the way he felt around her. Like he’d finally come home.

  But the fact was, Maddie was his life. Maddie and football.

  “She’s like the rest of them. Boooooor-ing.”

  Maddie might be his life, but she was pissing him off. “Well, I’m sorry you kicked out the only possibility you deemed interesting enough to pick you up from school and oversee your homework,” he snapped.

  She jerked her feet off the table and sat up straight, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “Hey, I’m not the one who banged the babysitter and ruined everything.”

  Hot fury shot through Seth, and it took everything he had to remain in his seat on the couch. “First of all, that is none of your business. Second…” He didn’t have a second. But Maddie had the wrong idea about him and Carrie. Even if she was gone, he didn’t want Maddie thinking it had been casual between them.

  “You made it my business when you screwed my nanny. Like you can’t get a million other chicks who throw themselves at football players. I’m not stupid. I know how things work.”

  She certainly thought she did. But she didn’t know the half of it. “You think I was with Carrie just to have a little fun? You really think that little of me?” No sense asking about Carrie, since he knew Maddie thought Carrie was worse than school cafeteria meals.

  Maddie crossed her arms and glared at him. “I know you’ve hooked up with jersey chasers before. But no, you couldn’t stick to them. Why not, when Carrie was so convenient?”

  “That’s enough!” he yelled, no longer able to contain his anger.

  To her credit, Maddie shrank back and almost looked sorry she’d pushed him so far.

  “We’ll discuss another time that you’re too young to be talking about hooking up and banging.” She wasn’t, not really. But no dad wanted to think of his little girl as old enough to know about hookups. “And I don’t care how mad you are at her, you will stop talking about Carrie like what we had was some cheap fling and I didn’t care about anything but sex.” He nearly choked on the last word. He so did not want to be having this conversation with his daughter.

  “Oh, what, like you were in love with her or something?” Maddie scoffed.

  “Yes, I was in love with her. I still am in love with her.”

  Weighty silence fell over them. Seth closed his eyes and scrubbed a hand over his beard. He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t go ten minutes without thinking about Carrie. And every time he did, it hurt. The sharp feeling, like his chest was cracking apart, was starting to get a little better, but it would be a long time yet before he could picture her face without wanting to both punch something and sob.

  He opened his eyes to find Maddie watching him, her expression puzzled.

  “Really? You love her?”

  His chest was too tight to speak, so he nodded.

  “Then why did you make her leave?”

  Seth swallowed a groan of frustration. “Because you didn’t want her here anymore.”

  “And you did that…for me?”

  “Everything I do is for you, Mads. Nothing is more important.”

  “I—” Her mouth worked up and down, like she wanted to say something else but didn’t know what.

  “How can I be with a woman you hate? It doesn’t matter how much I love her.” Even if it sucked the joy out of his life. He would get that back, slowly, as he got over Carrie.

  “I don’t hate Carrie. Why would you think that?”

  He wanted to shake her. He loved his daughter more than anything, but in that moment, he wanted to smack her or do something to jumpstart her common sense.

  “You said you hated her,” he bit out. “Used that actual word.”

  Maddie stared down at her knees and picked at a thread on her leggings. “Oh, well, I guess…”

  “You ran away, Madison. Of course I was going to do anything I needed to do to fix things for you.” Had he fucked up again?

  Seth moved from the loveseat to the couch to sit next to Maddie. He took her hand and waited until she looked up at him. “Do you understand that everything I do is for you? I know it doesn’t always seem like it, but every decision I make is because it’s the best choice for you, at least in the long run.”

  “How was leaving our home the best thing for me?”

  He knew that would be the first one she asked about. “If we’d stayed in Houston, I would have had to retire. Yes, we have money. But I still have a few more good years before I can’t play anymore. And I have to work. We don’t have enough money for us to live on for the rest of our lives. So moving was a long-term plan that allows me to keep earning money so you don’t have to worry about taking care of me when I get old. And so I have enough to send you to college. Wouldn’t want to use your college fund to cover our lavish lifestyle.”

  “I’m getting a swimming scholarship, so that doesn’t matter.”

  Despite the tense mood, Seth chuckled. “Then we’ll use your college fund for something else. Like our lavish lifestyle.”

  She giggled.

  “Mike has had offers from three other teams who wanted me to work out for them,” Seth said.

  Her shoulders immediately tensed, her face getting surly.

  “I told him I’m not playing anywhere but Milwaukee. Even if the money isn’t as good, he’s going to negotiate the best deal he can with the Dragons, and take it. I like this team, I like Milwaukee, and most important, I’m not dragging you to another city to start over again. I’m sorry we had to this year, but I promise, until you finish high school, we’re staying right here.”

  A hesitant smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Really?”

  “Really. I don’t know how else to tell you. You’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

  She caught him off guard by throwing herself at his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. He held her tightly, rocking her a little, like she was still his little girl. Because in some part of his heart, she always would be.

  Chapter 19

  “You know you don’t have to make everything about me all the time,” Maddie said as the AFC Championship game cut to commercial at the two-minute warning.

  Pittsburgh was trailing Kansas City by a field goal, and Seth couldn’t help rooting fo
r it to stay that way. He always harbored a small resentment toward whatever team knocked him out of the playoffs.

  “We’re watching the game, aren’t we?” he teased. She’d wanted to watch the latest superhero movie.

  She threw a piece of popcorn at him. “I’m talking about Carrie.”

  His chest squeezed at the mention of her name.

  “We need to get her back.”

  “She already found another job.” He’d talked to Jason the other day, and learned she was staying at his place until she could find her own. And Jason mentioned she would be teaching a comics class at Milwaukee U.

  “I don’t mean as my nanny.” Maddie rolled her eyes. “I mean as your girlfriend. Boy, you must have taken a lot of hits to the head this season.”

  “Haha.” He couldn’t get her back now. She’d moved on, going after what she really wanted.

  Without him.

  Except the reason they’d ended things was so she wouldn’t come between him and Maddie. And now Maddie was apparently on board with them dating.

  It couldn’t be as easy as calling her up and asking her out, could it?

  “You’re gonna have to do some serious groveling,” Maddie said, answering his unspoken question.

  “Excuse me?” For the second time that day, he was entering a conversation he wasn’t prepared to have with his seventh grader. At least this one was about romance, not sex.

  “You basically told her that she’s second-best. Since it’s second-best to your child, that’s forgivable. But only with the proper amount of begging for that forgiveness.”

  Was this true? What the hell did Maddie know about dating and winning over women, anyway?

  “And you need a grand gesture,” Maddie added. “There’s always a grand gesture.”

  Seth tried to puzzle through what she was saying as the game returned on TV. He watched the two teams line up, Pittsburgh with the ball. They had two minutes to score and secure a spot in the Super Bowl. They at least needed a field goal to force overtime. They were already to the Chiefs’ forty-yard line; it seemed likely they could get to the end zone.

  “What do you mean, ‘there’s always a grand gesture’? Where is there always one?”

  “In movies.”

  Of course that was where she got her notions about romance. “I don’t think I’m up for saving the planet this week, so maybe a less-than-grand gesture.”

  “It doesn’t have to be saving the planet. You could stand in her driveway with a boombox.”

  Seth chuckled at the image she conjured. “She’s staying with her brother in his condo. Plus, it’s negative fifteen wind chill right now.”

  “Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

  We. She was in this with him. Giving him her stamp of approval on trying to win Carrie back.

  “And ya know, Dad, I’m not a little kid anymore. Maybe stop doing everything for me. Instead do, like, most things. But occasionally do things for yourself too. Take what you want.”

  Seth glanced over at the young woman who was still the center of his universe, and probably always would be. But maybe she was right; maybe it was time to add a few other things in that center with her and football.

  Maybe that’s what he’d been trying to do with Carrie. And he’d let her get away. He needed to do exactly like he’d told her to do, exactly like his daughter was telling him to do. Hell, even his coaches told him to go out and go after what he wanted. They just meant a good tackle or a sack or an interception.

  On the TV, from the twelve-yard line, the Steelers’ quarterback let loose a perfect spiral. It sailed down the field toward a wide receiver waiting at the one-yard line. No defenders were close enough to stop him from making the catch, then turning into the end zone. It was Pittsburgh’s ball game.

  Out of nowhere, from the corner of the screen, a player in a red shirt dove in front of the receiver. The Kansas City cornerback plucked the ball out of the air, cradling it against his chest as he crashed to the turf.

  Interception. Chiefs’ ball on the two-yard line. With twenty-six seconds left, they’d be able to kneel it out and go to the Super Bowl.

  With one unexpected move, that cornerback had seen something he wanted and was about to lose—the Super Bowl—and done what he had to do to seize control of the outcome.

  Seth needed to be that cornerback. For the sake of the metaphor, he could ignore that he played linebacker and focus on making an interception to change the outcome. Did that make Carrie the football?

  Well, it was an imperfect metaphor. But the point remained. He needed to fight for what he wanted, and he wanted Carrie.

  He sat up and leaned toward Maddie. Clearly his creative thinking was lacking. He needed his daughter’s help.

  “OK, no saving the world, no boomboxes. So how do I get Carrie back?”

  Maddie grabbed her laptop off the coffee table. “Think we can get you a Batman costume overnight?”

  *

  —

  Carrie tried to focus on her lecture notes for tomorrow, but she was so tired, her eyes kept drooping shut. Jason’s air mattress was uncomfortable, plus it made a weird rubbery friction noise every time she rolled over, which often woke her up. After a month of sleeping on it, she was perpetually exhausted. Not to mention she had a chronic ache in her shoulders.

  The ping of a new text message jerked her awake, and she grabbed her phone from where it rested on the couch next to her.

  Maddie: I’m sorry I was so awful. I miss you. Please come back?

  Tears welled in Carrie’s eyes, blurring the words on her phone screen. Seconds ticked by as her thumbs hovered over the screen, prepared to type a reply. But she didn’t know what to say. That she already had a new job? That Seth had been the one to end it? That maybe Maddie missed her, but Seth had given no indication he did?

  Instead of typing any of those things, she set the phone down and swiped at the tears that had escaped. No, just because Maddie missed her didn’t mean she’d be welcomed back to their home. He hadn’t fought for her, for their relationship. He’d let her walk away.

  Except she hadn’t fought for them either. The thought unsettled Carrie, enough that she had to set aside her laptop and get off the couch. She suddenly felt restless, like she needed to do something.

  She hadn’t fought for Seth, even though she loved him. She’d simply accepted he had to put Maddie first.

  Not good enough. He’d been the one who’d inspired her to go after what she wanted. She had the job; now it was time to get the other thing she wanted.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she dug her Poison Ivy corset out of her suitcase. As she adjusted the laces and hooked the snaps, she let herself remember the way Seth had looked at her when she put it on for the first time. His eyes had shone with more than lust. The present itself was an indication that his feelings for her had been more than casual.

  Carrie smoothed her hands over the rich silk. Maybe his feelings had started to fade in the month they’d been apart. But they couldn’t have disappeared completely. She had to hold on to that. He had to still care.

  The rest of the Ivy costume was a no-go. Shorts, even with tights, weren’t happening in subzero weather.

  She shrugged into a black cardigan, because as sexy as she wanted to be, it was still Wisconsin in January. Plus, late on a Sunday afternoon, there was a good chance Maddie was at home.

  A knock on the door interrupted her hunt for her keys. She stared at it, frowning. Who would be at Jason’s? He was out of town, and he never had people over. Only her parents and Amy knew where she was staying, and they would call or text before coming over.

  Another knock, louder this time. Like the person had pounded with his fist.

  “Carrie?”

  Her stomach hollowed at the sound of Seth’s voice. Her hand went to her chest, as if she needed to keep her pounding heart from bursting out.

  On unsteady legs, she went to the door and twisted the d
eadbolt. Her fingers shook as she slid the chain. Why did Jason need so many locks? The building had a security buzzer to get in.

  Speaking of, how had Seth gotten past it?

  She yanked open the door, the question on the tip of her tongue, but froze when she saw him.

  He was decked out head-to-toe in a Batman costume. Her mouth hung open as she stared at him.

  Batman?

  “Wh…wha…I…” She couldn’t even find words.

  He looked up and down the hall, then back at her. “Can I come in?”

  She stepped back, still in shock. “Sure.”

  He came in, movements stiff, presumably because of the costume. His mask obscured most of his face, only his beard and mouth showing. Batman with a blond beard was an odd look.

  They stood in Jason’s entryway, watching each other. Through the eyeholes, she met his gaze, and she couldn’t look away. Her whole body flushed, her skin tingling from awareness.

  His mouth twitched. “You look good.” He gestured to her corset and sweater. “Going out?”

  Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he sounded as though he didn’t like that idea.

  “I was, um…” She bit her lip and inhaled deeply. She could do this. “I was actually going to your house.”

  “Oh?”

  “Why are you here?”

  He took a step toward her, lifted his hand as if he were going to reach for her, then dropped it back to his side. “To say I’m an idiot.”

  How was she supposed to interpret that? “Excuse me?”

  He lifted his hand again, then made a frustrated sound. He ripped off the gloves, leaving his arms bare to his elbows. Stepping into her space, he slid his hand around the back of her neck. “I miss you. The way things ended with us, I was an idiot.”

  Carrie set her palms against his chest, instantly hating the fake foam muscles keeping her from feeling his real muscles. His heat.

  Him.

  So she slid her arms around him and laid her hands against his back. Thankfully the costume was no more than a piece of fabric. “I miss you too.” She could barely push the words past the tightness in her throat. “I was coming over to tell you that. And to make it harder for you to walk away.”