“Oh, God. I’m terrified of motorcycles, so we’ll see.”
The night was considerably cooler than it’d been during the day, now that they were nearing September, but thankfully neither he nor Zoe had mentioned her moving back to her place when the heat wave died down. He couldn’t wait to feel the tiniest bit of fall in the air, so he could drive with the top down. He wouldn’t do it now—no way would he ruin Georgia Peach’s hair.
In the car, he asked her if she’d ever worked with another professional athlete, and to his surprise she named a few pro football players.
“They didn’t keep you on?”
She shook her head. “They used me mainly for rehab, but then they got better and…” She shrugged and looked out the window before turning back to him with a weary smile. “Most guys have a hard time justifying working with a female trainer when it’s so outside the norm. But you know all about that, right?”
She clearly meant to say it teasingly, but guilt still stabbed at him. “Well, you proved me wrong. Murph was right when she said you were the best, and if others have had a hard time seeing that, you’ll prove them wrong, too.”
She just hummed.
“You said you got into training to be close to your dad, but did you always work out yourself?”
She burst into laughter. “God, no. I was chubby until my last year in high school. My parents never made a big deal about it though. They’d been satisfied so long as Pete and I were active and playing outside. Still, I can’t see BBQ food or pizza without wanting to stuff my face with it.”
“That’s good, though,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a little carb feast every so often.”
“Yeah, but it’s always on my mind,” she said. He looked over to see her staring ahead at the road, as he drove. “It’s not something you ever get over. I feel like I’ll always struggle with food if I’m not careful.”
“Hey,” he said and waited for her to look at him. Her jeweled eyes reflected the light from the road. “You’re perfect however you are. At any weight. Pizza or kale, doesn’t matter. Okay?”
She didn’t respond, just looked at him with curiosity—probably because his tone had been a little harsher than he’d intended. “Sorry,” he said, gripping the steering wheel. In high school, Gabe’s girlfriend his junior year, Alyssa, had a perfect, natural body—big breasts, wide hips, small waist, and thick thighs. Whereas Zoe’s shape was more athletic, Alyssa’s was more pinup girl, each attractive in their own way. Alyssa’s asshole father, however, insisted that she eat salads and lose weight or else she’d be fat when she got older, and no guy would want to fuck her. He told her just like that, too. “I just…I knew someone once who thought she wasn’t perfect the way she was, and it was tough.”
Alyssa ended up moving away to Maine that year, and he hadn’t heard from her since. Sometimes he wondered if she still struggled with self-esteem thanks to her dickhead dad.
“A friend?” she asked.
“A former girlfriend. You’re lucky your dad’s a nice guy. Makes me even more glad he’s one of my heroes.” Zoe was quiet after that. Every time they talked about her father, she got this way. Was it because he’d been so devoted to football that he hadn’t always been there for his kids, or was it something more? “I’d love to meet him one day, if he’s available,” he added.
Zoe sucked in a long, deep breath. “Sure. I’ll see what he says. He’s really busy most of the time. Doesn’t meet fans much anymore.”
Gabe pulled into Patricia’s parking lot, mostly full already, and motored up to the valet. He handed the guy a twenty-dollar bill and shuffled around to open the passenger door for Zoe. When she stepped out and took his arm, Gabe felt like he was entering the party with a queen.
As they made their way into a huge private room with a bar, dance floor and fancy banquet tables, everybody watched them—the restaurant patrons, the maître-d’ his coaches, and all the guys on the team. Even the ones there with their girlfriends and wives seemed to take minimal glances, at the very least, at Zoe Reynolds. With her bright smile and her natural, easygoing looks, she commanded attention.
“Would you like wine or something else?” Gabe asked.
“Sure, a glass of red wine would be great.”
As he went to get the drink, Zoe buzzed from person to person, shaking hands and chatting, and everyone she spoke to laughed and couldn’t take their eyes off her. The woman was a social butterfly, something Gabe was not.
In public, Zoe blossomed.
Gabe did his best to blend into the walls.
But every so often, he’d find her glancing around the room, as if looking for someone in particular. When their eyes would meet, and she’d see he was still in line for a drink, she’d smile and go back to chatting. He appreciated the fact he wasn’t far from her mind, even when she was surrounded by others.
When Gabe brought Zoe her glass of wine, she was sitting at a table chatting to several football players, including Todd Stevenson, a tight end she’d apparently trained with briefly last season. The guy seemed nice, but based on Gabe’s conversation with Zoe in the car, Gabe couldn’t help glaring at him at little.
“Zoe’s the best trainer I’ve ever had,” he announced for the benefit of Stevenson and anyone else within earshot. “Only a fool would let her go.”
At his words, Stevenson looked at him funny, and Zoe blushed and bit her lip.
For the next half hour, Gabe introduced Zoe to as many teammates as he could, extolling her prowess as a trainer whenever the opportunity presented itself, and he kept it up during dinner, too. At one point, Zoe leaned over and whispered, “You can just enjoy your evening, Gabe. I think everyone gets you think I’m a good trainer by now.”
“You’re here with me, Zoe. Believe me, I’m enjoying my evening,” he said with a wink, before calling to a man passing by, “Hey LeBrun, you met my trainer, Zoe Reynolds?”
Next to him, she shook her head, but he noticed the smile she couldn’t quite hide.
After dinner, the servers were clearing the table in preparation for dessert when Kyle Young came by their table to introduce them to his wife, Arabella. For a princess, she was damn down to Earth.
She smiled at Gabe, then at Zoe. “Kyle and I are heading to the dance floor. Anyone else feel like taking a whirl?”
Stevenson, Zoe’s former client, immediately perked up and glanced at her, and Gabe stiffened. No way was he letting another man dance with Zoe while he watched.
“I’d love to dance. Zoe?” The words spilled out of his mouth before he could stop them.
Zoe turned to him in surprise. “Are you sure?" she whispered for his ears only as her eyes drifted to the small dance floor in front of the live band.
He stood. “Very,” he said, holding out his hand. As soon as she took it, he led her to the dance floor and took her in his arms. Zoe’s cheeks burned a bright pink and there was a fire in her blue eyes that sparked a flame inside his heart.
God, she was beautiful.
And he wanted her.
It frightened him how much.
Because sometimes, like now, he wondered if he wanted her more than Coach's approval.
More than a target number of reps on the field.
Even more than a Super Bowl ring or a MVP award, or the fame and success he'd chased his entire life.
Anxiety filled his chest, but at that moment, Zoe smiled up at him, and he felt himself relaxing and surrendering to the moment.
A client could dance with his trainer; there was no problem with that. And they had developed a friendship after all, so what was so wrong with two friends sharing a dance or two?
Nothing.
The fact remained, however: Gabe didn’t think of Zoe as just his trainer. Or just his friend.
She was starting to mean everything to him.
Chapter 12
As Zoe walked into Savannah Oaks, she wasn’t feeling as anxious as she normally did. Maybe it was because the last few visits with Dad ha
d been better than usual, or maybe it was because of her night out with Gabe. Either way, she was grateful. She’d visit with her dad, then head over to Iron Maiden later to catch up on some paperwork. Afterward, maybe she’d stop by Gabe’s practice. She loved watching him play but even more, she’d love to see whether dinner last night with his team would make him more willing to make connections with them today.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as Zoe expected.
The first thing she did was give her father the lemon cake she’d brought him as a surprise. It was his favorite. But things went downhill from there.
Not only did her father complain about it, claiming to never have liked lemon cake in the first place, he also told Zoe that the nurses were trying to poison him and ended up flipping the box containing the lemon cake onto the floor. On her hands and knees, Zoe helped clean up splattered merengue and yellow lemony filling, as the on-duty nurse helped and told her maybe she should come back tomorrow.
“I love you, Dad,” she’d forced herself to say despite her sadness.
“I don’t even know who you are,” her father had replied. “Why do you say that when I don’t even know who you are?” he repeated. His neck had looked so wrinkled, his hands shaking with uncontrollable confusion.
Afterward, in the parking lot, Zoe leaned against her car under a light rain and let the tears fall. Why did this have to happen to her father? Alzheimer’s could happen to anyone, and God didn’t have it out for her or her family, but sometimes it was hard not to let the pity parade take over.
* * *
From the memory care facility, Zoe went to Iron Maiden—not to work as she’d planned but to work out. After what had happened, she needed to exhaust herself, body and mind, so she didn’t go easy on herself. She ran and lunged and lifted and pushed until she was sweating and sucking in air like a locomotive. Then after a long shower and changing back into her street clothes, she changed her mind about going to Gabe’s practice. Instead, she did something she rarely did—she gave herself a big heaping serving of TLC. She went to the movies, treated herself to a manicure and pedicure, and ate at a new restaurant she’d been wanting to try. Mostly, she tried to put her worries out of her mind, but mostly it didn’t work. Despite her best efforts, she felt a feeling of hopelessness settle into her chest. Soon, she was overcome by the urge to barricade herself in her bedroom, climb into bed, and simply hide. For the first time since moving in with the Murphys, she wished for more privacy, because the last thing she wanted was for Gabe or Murph to see her in a depressed state and start asking questions.
Not professional. And not what she felt she could deal with at the moment, anyway.
It was past six o’clock by the time she headed back to Gabe’s house.
She shouldn’t have worried about the Murphys seeing her in a depressed state because both Murph and Gabe appeared gone for the night.
Zoe ended up climbing into her bed and hibernating, after all. But as she fell asleep, she thought of her father and how much she wished things could be different. Then she thought of Gabe and how much she’d rather have climbed into his bed, not for sex, but to be held and to hold him in return.
* * *
The next morning was like déjà vu, with Zoe and Gabe jumping right into their training session, not acting abnormally exactly, but definitely not with the level of ease they’d managed to attain in the last few weeks either. To his credit, Gabe tried to keep the conversation going, asking about what she did on her day off and explaining that after practice, several guys had asked him to join them for drinks, and he’d decided on the spur of the moment to do it.
“In addition to Kyle Young, I spent some time with Heath Dawson and Alec LeBrun. At the end of the night, Heath called his wife. Her name is Camille, but he called her Waterboy. When he told me the story behind the nickname, I laughed my ass off.”
Zoe smiled weakly and nodded. “I’m glad you went out with them.”
That’s it. She didn’t ask him to repeat the story about the nickname. Instead she moved to the pull-up bar. “Give me forty one-handed, alternating arms in between. I’ll spot the bad shoulder.”
Gabe’s grin vanished but for once he didn’t voice a protest over her choice of words. She knew how much it annoyed him for her to keep calling it his bad shoulder, but it was, and there was no point in denying the truth.
“Zo, you okay?”
She pressed her lips together, knowing there was an obvious reason he was asking the questions. She wasn’t okay, and she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it, either. Her visit with her father had hit her hard. It was understandable, but she hated it. She shouldn’t be letting her personal life affect her time with Gabe. It was her problem, not his. “Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“You seem upset. Did something happen yesterday?”
He looked genuinely concerned. God, he was beautiful. Not just gorgeous physically, but as she was learning more and more, a truly good man.
She wanted to tell him everything then. About her father. Her financial problems. She even opened her mouth to do so, but then her phone began ringing on the bench next to her. Her brother, Pete. Normally she would ignore the call given she was right in the middle of a session, but with the way she was feeling, combined with Gabe’s confusion and concern, it was all too much for her to handle. She just needed a minute alone to get her composure back.
“I have to take this. I’ll be right back,” she told Gabe.
She took the call outside in the garden. The hot sunshine and butterflies worked together to ease her mind. “Hey.”
“What’s wrong?” her brother asked. Did he have a sixth sense?
“What do you mean?”
“Zoe, I know you visited Dad yesterday and I can tell by the sound of your voice you’re feeling the affects of that. Or did something else happen that I should know about?”
She plopped onto a stone bench, keeping her eye on the French doors in case Gabe should follow her outside. “Nothing else happened. Like you said, it was just a hard visit.”
“He was doing bad?”
“Yes. He got angry. Threw some cake I brought him. And he didn’t remember me.”
She heard her brother’s sigh and knew he got it. “It was the same when I visited him three days ago. But instead of cake, he threw a framed family picture I’d brought him. It’s tough, Zoe. But you’re not alone. I’m here for Dad and for you.”
“I know, Pete. Thank you.”
“So what’s going on with Gabe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Zoe. It was you who called me weeks ago and told me you’d kissed your client and weren’t sure if you should still stay in the same house with him because you wanted to jump his bones, wasn’t it?”
Zoe winced. “Yeah, well…no worries.” She told him about how they’d talked things out and gotten closer over the past few weeks. “Just as friends. I even attended a Bootleggers party with him Friday night, but nothing more has happened between us.” Even though it had definitely felt like something when they’d been on the dance floor. “We’re keeping things professional. Friendly, but professional.”
“Yeah. Well maybe you should rethink that.”
“Really? That’s not what you were saying before.”
“Well, even from the little you’ve told me, I can tell he clearly cares about you and you care about him. And you’ve had a bad day, and you have a lot of bad days because of Dad, Zoe, and because of the cost of his care. We both do…. But you work too hard, take too much on. You deserve some damn fun. Something for yourself. If Gabe can give you that, I’m all for it.”
Just then, Gabe appeared on the other side of the French doors, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked for her. He opened one door and stepped outside but hesitated when he saw she was still on the phone.
She swallowed hard and averted her gaze so that he wouldn’t see that she’d been crying. “Hey, I have to go,” she told her brother. “
I’ll call you later.”
“Okay, we’ll talk then,” Pete said. “And Zoe? Go easy on yourself, babe.”
She thanked him, hung up, then forced a smile on her face before walking toward the doorway where Gabe stood running a hand through his sweaty hair. “Hey, listen,” she said. “I’m sorry if I was off in there. The truth is, you’re right. I was feeling a little sad today, but I’m fine now.”
Gabe studied her intently before tucking a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to apologize. I just wanted to see if you were okay. I care about you, peach. I mean, Zo.”
Wow, he must be really worried about her if he was catching himself calling her peach, something he’d never bothered holding back from before. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
But he still didn’t look convinced, so she suddenly held up her phone. “And just so you know, the nickname ‘Peach’ has grown on me. I even changed my phone code to PCHY. So feel free to use it, er, if you want to. The nickname I mean. Not my phone code.” She laughed awkwardly. Maybe she shouldn’t have revealed how much she liked his nickname for her, but it was too late now.
He looked at her phone then nodded, his shoulders relaxing somewhat. “Okay, I will. And just so you know, if you ever want to talk about what’s making you sad, or anything, Zoe, I’m here. You’ve been a good friend to me, and I can be the same to you.”
She nodded and pressed her lips together. Then, after only a brief hesitation, she took another risk. Because Gabe had become her friend. “Thank you, Gabe. But if you’re available now, what I’d really love is a big hug. Would you be up for that?”
He immediately enfolded her in his arms. “Nothing I’d rather do, peach.”
Chapter 13
Gabe continued to train with Zoe until he could almost forget what his life was like before she entered it. When Cut Day came and went and Gabe hadn’t been cut, it elevated his confidence, especially given that he was playing better than he ever had before. He would steal this season, prove to the Noise that they’d made a huge mistake by trading him, and impress his new coaches and teammates, who he was steadily opening up to.
Going Deep Boxed Set (Books 1-4) Page 59
