The Bachelor's Sweetheart

by Jean C. Gordon

  Josh spotted Tessa handing out the kids’ Hornet shirts and socks and waved. She was dressed in fitted soccer shorts and her official coach T-shirt with a Geneseo State hoodie over it. Her long, wavy hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung through the hole in the back of her baseball cap. He was still in his business-casual work clothes.

  “Well, is she?” Hope demanded.

  “Is who, what?” He’d lost track of what Hope had been saying.

  She huffed. “Is Tessa your best friend?”

  What was it with Hope and him and Tessa being friends? “I guess, except for Jared and Connor.”

  Or maybe ahead of his brothers considering all she put up with from him. “I’ve never thought about it.” Tessa was Tessa, someone he liked being around and didn’t have to impress.

  “You don’t have to think about it, you’re just best friends, like me and Sophia,” Hope said, using nine-year-old logic. “I don’t think you’re really best friends. You’d know.”

  But he didn’t know and somehow that made him feel empty.

  “Race you to the field,” he said, giving her a twenty-yard lead before going all out to clear his head. Ten feet from the white line delineating the soccer field, Josh slowed his pace so Hope crossed a second before he did.

  “And, here making a grand entrance is Coach Josh.” With a flourish, Tessa motioned toward him. “Glad you could join us,” she added for his ears only, as she handed him his clipboard with the team roster.

  “I got tied up at work and had to pick up Hope. Jared’s out of town and Becca’s carting one of the other kids somewhere.”

  “I’m teasing.” Tessa buddy-slapped him on the back.

  The jolt that shot through him raised an awareness of the warmth, then coolness of the spot where her hand had touched him. He flexed his fingers, Hope’s I don’t think you’re really best friends ringing in his head. If he and Tessa weren’t friends, what were they?

  “Most of the team played last year,” Tessa said, “so I thought we’d scrimmage to see the kids’ skills.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. Tessa certainly had everything organized. He clapped his hands to get the kids’ attention. “Okay, everyone line up.” He watched as the twelve kids who’d showed up for practice scrambled to form a line in front of him and Tessa. “Now count off by fours.”

  Tessa tilted her head in question, making her ponytail flop over her shoulder. She so rarely wore her hair down, he’d forgotten how long it was. A picture of her at Connor’s wedding filled his mind. How pretty she’d looked with her hair curling around her face and down her back.

  He cleared his throat. “You’ll see. To mix up the teams.”

  Tessa nodded.

  “Three, four,” Hope and her friend Sophia finished the count off.

  “All of the ones and fours, put on your Hornets T-shirts. You’ll be on Tessa’s ‘shirts’ team.”

  “Put them on over the shirt you have on,” Tessa said. Most of the kids had on long-sleeved T-shirts or sweatshirts.

  “Twos and threes are on my ‘flags’ team,” Josh said, automatically thinking of the pickup soccer games he and his high school friends played and the group of girls who used to come watch them. Had Tessa done that, watched her male classmates “perform” for the girls?

  Hope skipped over. “What do you mean by our team being flags?”

  “I’ll give you guys bandannas to tuck in your back pocket or waistband and hang down.”

  Tessa handed him a package of bandannas she’d brought with the shirts.

  He ripped the package open to shake off the irrational irritation that had come with the thought of Tessa watching other guys play soccer or anything else. Get real, that would have been twelve or thirteen years ago. Long before Josh had met her. He couldn’t figure what was wrong with him. Tessa and other men had never bothered him, not that she dated much. The other day he’d encouraged her to go to the concert with Claire’s friend.

  “All right,” he said. “When I point to you, tell me your name, if you played soccer last year and what position if you did.” Josh went down the roster familiarizing himself with the kids’ names and experience and assigning them positions for the scrimmage. Since only twelve of the fourteen kids on the roster had showed up, he had no problem getting everyone in.

  “You ready over there?” Tessa asked, her hands-on-hips stance emphasizing her trim build.

  He tore his gaze away. “More than ready.”

  “Then let’s get this game going.” Tessa blew the whistle around her neck and the teams took their positions.

  As he and Tessa raced up and down the sidelines refereeing and giving their teams directions, he found his attention jumping from the kids to Tessa, watching her move with unconscious athletic grace. He’d never noticed it before. He knew she liked sports, at least watching them with him on TV, and that she ran, but lots of women did to stay trim. How had he missed that she was an athlete? The better he thought he knew Tessa, the more she surprised him with new facets.

  With his team one point behind, one of the players passed the ball to Hope near their goal. “That’s it,” he said, “aim.”

  The ball went flying over the net, just as the parent timekeeper yelled time.

  “Yay!” Tessa’s team shouted in victory and ran to her.

  Ignoring Tessa’s motion to the kids to join her on the other side of the field where their parents were sitting, Hope dragged herself over to Josh. “Sorry.”

  He put his arm around his sister’s shoulders. “For what?”

  “For making us lose the game. I could have tied it.”

  Josh squatted in front of her. “It was a practice, and you didn’t make us lose. There were five other players for your team on the field.”

  “But I had the ball and I could have made a goal if I didn’t kick it so hard.”

  “So now you know how hard to kick the ball when we’re playing a real game. That’s what practices are for.”

  “I guess.”

  He stood and squeezed her shoulder. “That’s my girl. Come on. We need to hear what Tessa is saying or we won’t know what’s going on.”

  “Don’t you already know? You’re the coach, too.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “You’re funny, Josh.” Hope pulled him across the field.

  “So, we’ll see you all Wednesday at five-thirty,” Tessa said. “Only one more practice before opening day on Saturday.”

  The kids and their parents streamed off toward the parking lot, except for Jack Hill and a boy kicking a soccer ball down the sideline. Had to be Jack and Suzi’s new foster child.

  “I don’t see Becca,” Hope said, an anxious note creeping into her voice.

  “She must be running late. I’ll text her. She can pick you up at my place.” Josh sent the text and grimaced. Although Hope had come a long way since she’d lost her maternal grandmother who’d cared for her most of her life, and come to live with Jared and Becca, she still had abandonment issues. But then, didn’t all the Donnelly kids?

  “Not bad coaching, old man,” Jack said when Josh and Hope reached them. “Bring back memories?”

  “Who are you calling old man? I seem to remember us playing on the same team, me showing you rookies the ropes.”

  “More like a senior lording over us underclassmen,” Jack said.

  “That I can see,” Tessa said. “You do like to take charge.”

  Josh tensed, taking Tessa’s words as a dig for missing their pre-practice meeting. He relaxed. Tessa teased. She didn’t criticize. “Hey, my senior year when I was captain, I took us to a sectional championship. Jack was one of my minions. You were, what, in eighth grade?”

  “Ninth,” he said. “The only first-string freshman.”

  “I groomed
him to take my position.”

  Tessa rolled her eyes.

  “Right. You, coach and a lot of hard work on my part,” Jack said. “We took the sectional championship the year after you graduated, too.”

  “Josh, excuse me,” Hope interrupted. “Becca’s here.”

  He looked over his shoulder to see Becca and his father walking toward them. He didn’t want to know why he was here. If it was to see Hope practice, he’d missed it, as he missed most of Josh’s games, except one. His mind shut down. He wasn’t about to replay the embarrassment of that game. Josh waved at Becca and pointed to Hope. His sister-in-law and father stopped and he released the breath he’d unconsciously been holding.

  “Grab your stuff and go meet Becca so she doesn’t have to walk all the way out here. Let me know if you need a ride to practice on Wednesday.”

  “Sure thing, Josh.” She raced across the grass.

  “Bye, Hope,” the boy with the soccer ball shouted.

  Hope waved her hand behind her.

  The boy trotted over to Josh. “Remember me?” he asked.

  “Owen, from Hope’s class.”

  “Yep. My brother and I are staying with the Hills now until our mother gets better.”

  Josh’s gaze fixed on the fading bruise that covered the whole right side of Owen’s face. Refocusing, his eyes locked with Tessa’s, the compassion in them making him wonder how much the bruise had to do with Child Protective Services placing the boys with Jack and Suzi.

  “Did you talk to my Scout leader about the Pinewood Derby?” Owen asked. “We’re supposed to order the kits pretty soon.”

  “Sorry, pal, I was busy with work.” He shifted his weight back and forth on his feet. He wasn’t cut out for kid stuff. Everything was so important to them. It was too easy to disappoint them. In that way, he’d admit he was like his father.

  “I told you I’d help,” Jack said, throwing Josh a lifeline.

  “I’d still like you to, Coach Josh, if you can. You’re more like my daddy.” Owen’s voice trailed off.

  Lord, give me some direction. If he was like a convicted felon and his own father, he certainly didn’t have it in him to be a role model for a young boy.

  “My daddy has black hair like you and me.”

  A well-buried memory flickered in his mind. His dad’s dark head bent over Jared’s old bike, fixing it up and painting it to make the bike like new for Josh. At that moment, he’d wanted to be able to fix things, just like his dad. Josh’s resistance crumbled. “Yes, I’ll call Mr. Hazard. Tomorrow. Tessa, remind me in case I forget again.”

  “Will do.” A smile played with the corners of her lips.

  “We’d better get going,” Jack said.

  As he watched the guys leave, Josh attempted to recalculate the equation that was his life—the theater renovation, his family and his father’s all-too-intrusive presence, coaching Hope’s soccer team, helping Owen. Those factors all tied him to Paradox Lake when the final answer was supposed to be him getting a promotion and leaving. He closed his eyes and jiggered the pieces. They were all temporary situations, except for his father, and he had no good reason to stay for his father. He was good. He had everything under control.

  “You’re a good guy, Josh Donnelly.” Tessa reached up and threw her arm around his shoulder.

  The warmth that pulsed through him shot his neat and tidy recalculation to bits. He’d left Tessa and whatever weirdness he was experiencing about her out of the equation.

  * * *

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, fine. We need to collect and stow the equipment.” He picked up the duffel bag she’d used to carry the equipment and uniforms and stuffed in the ball Owen had been kicking around.

  Tessa touched his arm. “Hey, this is me.” He gave her the same strangled look he’d given her when she’d flung her arm around his shoulder.

  He grabbed her hand as she jerked away. She hadn’t noticed the drop in temperature sunset had brought with it until his warm fingers closed around hers.

  “Ignore me,” he said. “Bad day.”

  If only she could. He dropped her hand and a chill ran through her at the loss of his warmth. She folded her open hoodie around her.

  “One of the engineers gave me some rush modifications to do right at quitting time, so I didn’t get to go home and change as I’d planned before I had to pick up Hope. And we were late anyway.” He closed the duffel and threw it over his shoulder. “I missed our strategy meeting completely. You had to run the whole practice.”

  “You can only control work so much.” She knew as frustrated as he may have been, Josh wouldn’t have hurried through the revisions. Nor would he have thought for a moment about saying he couldn’t stay to do them.

  “Then Dad showed up at the end of practice. You saw him?”

  “Yeah, with Becca.”

  “Once he falls back into his old habits, the parents aren’t going to want him at games, around the kids.”

  As futile as the effort might be, she had to try to soften his heart. “Maybe he won’t. You could take things one day at a time with him like he’s doing.”

  He rocked back on his heels, dismissing his father. “Then Owen threw me with the Pinewood Derby. I’d forgotten all about helping him with his car.”

  Tessa knew Josh didn’t forget things, and he prided himself on keeping his word. The stress from his dad coming back was eating at him.

  “Owen asked me that day I talked to Hope’s class about my job. The expectation on his face today. I blew it.” Josh fingered the duffel rope. “Did you walk over with all of this stuff? I didn’t see your car.”

  She stepped in line with him, going with his subject change. “My grandmother dropped me off. Her car is in the shop, and she’d planned to go to the new Monday night Bible study at church. I figured I could catch a ride home with you.”

  “I’ll consider it if you’ll have a cup of coffee with me. I need to unwind.”

  “And coffee is going to help you unwind?”

  “That and your company.”

  One corner of his mouth turned up in what she teased him was his killer smile, the smile she prided herself on being immune to. She straightened when she realized she’d leaned into his shoulder. Immune until right now.

  “It’s sad about Owen,” she said, avoiding a direct answer to Josh’s invitation.

  “His mother did that?” Josh touched his cheek and repositioned his grip on the duffel bag, yanking it up on his shoulder.

  “You don’t know? Hope or the guys at the firehouse didn’t tell you?”

  “No, I haven’t talked with them. I’ve been working overtime.”

  “The accident last week on Route 9—that was Owen’s family.”

  A muscle twitched in Josh’s jaw. “I saw the emergency squad carry him out. I didn’t know it was him.”

  Tessa pressed her arm to her side to resist touching him again. Before tonight, she wouldn’t have given it a thought.

  “How is his mom? And Owen’s brother? I heard the squad say there was another child in the car.”

  “Owen’s little brother is fine, back at school like Owen. They were both in their booster seats. But Suzi told me their mother is still in critical condition. She’s been in a coma since they airlifted her to Albany Medical Center, and her organs are shutting down. They don’t expect her to live.”

  Josh blinked twice. “Another victim of alcohol. I’ll keep her and the boys in my prayers.”

  “Her name is Gwen. Apparently, there’s no family. The boys’ father grew up in the foster system, and their mother’s parents disowned her when she married their father.”

  “Who’s in Dannemora? Owen told me.” His expression hardened. “I don’t understand how a parent can disown a child or
a grandchild.”

  Tessa bit her tongue to avoid voicing her first thought: The same way a child can disown or try to disown a parent.

  “I’m going to call Ted Hazard tonight and get the details about the Pinewood Derby.” Josh arced the duffel bag into the bed of his truck and dug in his pocket for his keys.

  Tessa pulled the passenger-side door as soon as she heard the lock click and settled in the cushy captain chair. The seat began warming as soon as Josh turned the ignition. He punched the truck into Reverse and circled back in a sharp curve.

  Tessa squeezed the armrests. “I’d decided to take you up on that cup of coffee, but I might be safer walking in the dark.”

  “What?” He braked hard.

  “Coffee. You wanted me to have a cup with you to wind down.”

  He blew out a breath and put the truck in Drive. “It fries me. Another family torn apart by a drunk. What’s wrong with those people?”

  Tessa cringed at the vehemence in the words those people. She was one of them.

  She reached inside herself to forgive Josh his judgmental attitude. As far as she knew, he’d never even been a social drinker. He’d been strong enough to go against the crowd, stand up to anyone who called him out about having a Coke instead of a beer. While Josh would hotly deny the fact, in a roundabout way, his father was responsible for that strength—a strength that carried over to other parts of his life. His protective feelings toward his mother and Connor. His long recovery from the wounds he suffered in Afghanistan. His faith, even though he kept that more private.

  “Sometimes it takes something big like an accident or the accumulation of a whole lot of small somethings, as with your dad, to stop drinking.”

  He slapped the steering wheel. “Dad. A good example of What’s wrong with those people? He knew he drank too much, saw what it was doing to us and did it anyway. Mom, Pastor Joel, Gram and Harry tried to help him stop.”

  “Sobriety is something you have to want yourself, do for yourself. No one else can do it for you.”

  “What makes you such an expert?”

  “I... I’m a...” Tell him, her inner self said, repeating what her sponsor had told her the last time they’d talked. You’re only as sick as your secrets. But she didn’t want to put more on Josh’s plate with everything else he had. She would tell him. Just not now.