Earning It

by Angela Quarles

  Romy flicks the wadded straw wrapper my way, and I dodge.

  “We’re going to make this right. I looked up what’s technically required in a PPE—”

  “A PPE?” This from Eamonn.

  “A Pre-participation Physician Examination. Some of the tests are optional, and those are the ones that operate in a gray zone. Lots left up to the doctor’s interpretation. I say we do the minimum required for a PPE, sign the medical release, and not get talkative about our health. We’re all healthy, so we have nothing to hide. Our past files will show that, but no need to give her ammo that she can twist or misinterpret in her report.”

  Eamonn crosses his arms, his gaze resentful. “She wouldn’t even be on our asses if you hadn’t gone after a sponsorship.”

  I grit my teeth. No good deed goes unpunished, right? Jesus. “And we’d not be going to the playoffs without that sponsorship. You want to go, right?”

  “More than anything,” Eamonn says fervently. Nods all around the table too.

  “Then this is the price, guys. Suck it up. We need to concentrate on being ready for our game with Galway New York. It’s our last chance to play against another team before the playoffs.”

  New York is in a whole ’nother league literally and figuratively. The North American Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is composed of all the teams in the US except those in New York. They’re considered a league all their own, and they compete along with London in the Connacht Senior Hurling Championship in Ireland. Yep, they’re that good. This team’s captain grew up with Conor in Galway and is doing this as a favor. It’s hard not to see it as them humoring us, though. The tone of their emails has all been infused with their belief that they’re expecting to come down to the GAA sticks and hand us our asses.

  Basically, it feels like a pity fuck.

  Aiden slaps his hands onto the table. “Sounds like a plan to me, man. Any aches and pains are part of the sport, right?”

  “What she doesn’t know can’t hurt us?” Paolo smiles around.

  But everyone looks to Conor, cuz he’s our captain, and we’ll do what he says. I’m in this club for other reasons than it makes me feel alive to play—it’s the closest to the band of brothers feeling I had in the service. We all respect Conor.

  He takes a long pull from his water and nods.

  That’s it then.

  “One last piece of business—I’m moving forward with the assumption we’ll get the sponsorship and ordering our jerseys. We’re definitely decided on the Sarasota Wolfe Tones?”

  “Fuck yeah,” says Aiden. “The Wolfe Tones are only just the best Irish rebel band.”

  Conor nods, and Aiden starts singing the lyrics to “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” in a full-throated tenor.

  I know fuck-all about Irish history, but if it makes the team happy, I’m in.

  Luke

  We’re back out on the pitch today to do some final drills and exercises before our match against Galway New York on Saturday. Conor is riding our asses hard, and while this kind of endurance drilling is nothing compared to what I went through during the third week of BUD/S training, known as Hell Week, the demands are testing the others. Just as then, it’s as much about mental toughness and teamwork as it is strength, and I assist and prod the others where needed. I even share the mantra that helped a lot of us in BUD/S—focus on making it to the next meal.

  But I’m relying on my SEAL training to keep focused for a completely different reason—Pepper is here to have us redo our health evals.

  Pepper

  I divide the hair in my ponytail and give it a tug to tighten the elastic. Not counting the first day with the team—what I now call Luke’s Day of Reckoning—this is now my second full session with these players. The first session, they’d been super-friendly. Charming even. Including Luke, damn him.

  I prop my hands on my hips and squint at them as they sprawl on the various picnic tables and fill out their health evals. For a second time.

  The first ones were too suspiciously perfect. It happens occasionally—more so with top-form athletes like these—but all of them?

  Luke stood by me each time as if he were my damn personal mascot, bending over backward to facilitate my examination of the team. It was all a bit too…accommodating.

  And suspicious.

  And doing a number on my resolve to resist him. I’d successfully corralled my emotions and locked them away after talking with Tricia. In their place, I donned my cool professional manner. It’s never failed me.

  Though one of the players doesn’t fit the pattern. The large blond—Eamonn—bounces his leg up and down. He glances my way but darts his gaze back down when he catches me looking. I make a note to scrutinize his eval. Especially since I don’t have his medical records yet. Typically I’d already have all medical records at my electronic fingertips—all patient info, including physicals, are now required to be online in the United States. But this team has several green card players and expats from Ireland, and it’s that bunch who have been slow to hand in their medical release forms. They’ve feigned forgetfulness, but I get the vibe they don’t like the paperwork and intrusion into their privacy.

  One by one, they bring me their forms when they finish. Eamonn hops up right after Conor, as if he’d been waiting for the sign for when he could be done. His report is just as sparse as the last time. All of them are.

  Of course Luke is the last one. He saunters up, crowding my space. I stand my ground and give him a polite smile, but my body betrays me by leaning forward slightly and surreptitiously inhaling his scent. He hands his form over and lifts his brow, but he couldn’t have possibly noticed my discreet sniff.

  I don’t think.

  “I’ll walk you back to your car.” He nods toward the lot.

  Oh. “You don’t have to. I’m fine, thanks.” I shuffle the papers as if it’s super-duper important. I don’t need more time in his personal space. It’s eroding my resolve.

  “I know I don’t have to,” he says, his voice low. “But I want to.”

  It’s pointless to make a stink about it, as well as unprofessional, so I nod and start walking. It’s also hard for me to emotionally sort out the man who revs me up more than anyone ever has, including Phil—who was not an inattentive lover—and the scrawny jerk I knew in high school. The jerk thing seems to carry over.

  He does the dribbling thing I’ve seen him and the others do—bouncing the ball, the sliotar, on the end of their stick. “Look. I know you’re still upset about what happened earlier this week, but there’s one thing I should have told you, though I doubt it matters now.”

  I brace myself for what might be coming. Who knows with this guy, right?

  “It was Tad.”

  I stop and stare. Because…what? “I’m not following.”

  He looks off toward the parking lot, and his jaw flexes. “Who poured Diet Coke on your project.”

  He’s right. It seems like a silly thing to bring up now. High school was so long ago. Even so, a part of me feels a little vindicated that my assessment of him at the café wasn’t so far off. “But you took the blame. Why?”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “Care to share them?”

  We resume walking, and now he’s simply balancing the ball on his stick. Finally, he says, “It was the right thing to do.” And the way he says that, with finality, I know I’m not getting any more out of him. Not today.

  Why’s he telling me this now, though? But then it hits me—he’s softening me up. “You guys are stonewalling me. I can tell.”

  He glances over, but he doesn’t seem alarmed. “Are we?”

  “There’s no way all of you are this fit.”

  He strokes a hand down his T-shirt covered abs. “Are you sure?” He lifts a brow.

  I snigger despite myself, even though the rest of me has jumped to attention. “It’s not going to work. All you’re doing is making me suspicious. Especially since some of you keep ‘forgetting’ your medica
l releases. Now I know you’re hiding something. I will find out.”

  He stops short and bats the ball into his hand and grips it. “Who?” His ridiculously handsome face is now set in a scowl.

  “Conor, Eamonn, and Patrick.”

  “I’ll talk to them. But it’ll all turn out fine—there’s nothing to find out, Pepper.” He says this with complete sincerity, and I wonder if I judged the whole situation wrong. But even if I weren’t trying to make my position at the practice permanent, I believe in being thorough, so I won’t stop now.

  “So you said your friend Tricia is a lawyer? The guys and I are looking for a good lawyer to go over the sponsorship contract.”

  “Sure, but you might know her. She went to Sarasota High too.” I fill him in and pass along her contact info. “She’s a prosecutor, but she can probably recommend an appropriate contract lawyer.”

  His faded, tomato red, topless SUV is parked next to me again, and I try not to read anything into it. It’s an unusual type of car, and I was intrigued enough to Google it—it’s a mouthful of a name—an International Harvester Scout. He stashes his gear in the open back, and I click the unlock button on my fob. But like some ninja, he’s at my door and opening it for me. He leans onto the window frame from the outer side, and I slip into the gap, grateful to have the car door as a shield between me and this…this very inconvenient attraction still simmering between us, despite my continued annoyance with the man.

  I don’t know what to do with that attraction, so I choose to ignore it.

  Seems safer that way.

  But the devil scoots around so that he’s got one hand on the window frame, one hand on the roof, caging me in. I look up into his eyes and catch them flicking down my body and back up. A low hum of heat builds in my belly.

  “Pepper.” He steps closer.

  “Luke.”

  Jesus Christ, we sound like we’re back in high school. Or at least my mocking lilt did. His wasn’t mocking—it was sensual, licking at me with promise, and I had to defuse it like some bomb.

  “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  He says it like a command, but I ignore his compelling tone. I open my mouth to say, “Hell no,” but I pause. “Okay.”

  He looks surprised—almost like someone holding a prize they hadn’t expected to get so easily.

  But I figure this might be exactly what I need—inoculate myself to him. Familiarity breeds contempt, right? Because I feel as if I’ve finally understood my parents. After all, I am their biological offspring, so we must share some traits.

  I’d resented Phil calling me cold because I’d fooled myself for so long that my no-nonsense, driven attitude was not coldness. I was not them. But maybe that’s really who I am—or what I need to be to be successful. Maybe that was how my parents learned to survive in their high-powered attorney worlds. After all, they couldn’t have always been that way—they’d named me “Pepper” of all things.

  I almost choke on a sob as I finally—and fully—realize that my need to avoid the messy shoals of emotion, to not only maintain my integrity but also to be successful, will cast me as cold in everyone else’s eyes. So be it.

  He holds my gaze, and his hand stretches to my temple. He strokes the skin there, as if he’s brushing away a bit of dirt or an errant hair. My face flushes. “That’s a beauty mark.”

  His eyes glint with humor, but his lips don’t budge. “I know.” He bends down and brushes his lips there, and now a different kind of heat coils through my stomach. “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he whispers in my ear, and my stupid body shudders.

  He turns away, and my knees buckle a smidge, but I make my spine into a rod of steel and watch him get in his car and leave.

  Idiot.

  He doesn’t even know where I live.

  Chapter 8

  Luke

  I tool down Highway 41 toward my apartment and glance at my watch. I know we’re all fit to play, but Pepper’s suspicions are starting to rub off.

  And I don’t like surprises. The margin for error seems to be widening.

  I engage my Bluetooth handset. When the call connects to Aiden, I just say, “Call a meeting for six with Conor. War Room.”

  It’s five o’clock now, which gives me just enough time to squeeze in some CrossFit and walk down to the Butt.

  It’s time to do an assessment of my own.

  Exactly an hour later, I’m ducking through the beads into the War Room. The three of us sit down, and Conor nods to me to hand off control of the meeting.

  I fold my hands. “Look. I’ll make this quick because I know we all have full schedules.” I fill them in and wrap up with, “Bottom line. We need to know if Dr. Rodgers can find anything. Conor, is there a reason you and the other Irish guys haven’t signed your releases?”

  Conor shakes his head. “Work’s been keeping me busy. I’ll get it to her ASAP. I don’t know about the other two, but we need to ride their asses. We need this sponsorship.”

  “We also can’t lose a player one month out from nationals,” Aiden says.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I say, but Aiden just flips me off.

  It had been hard enough to scrape up the requisite fifteen needed to form a team—fifteen who are into playing such an obscure sport as hurling, have the money to outfit themselves, and would make the necessary time commitment. On top of that, we required a professional attitude—no sense in wasting our time training if we weren’t going to be competitive. No way could we find a skilled replacement in time and forge the hard-won trust we’ve gained.

  Next year will be even harder. We’re losing one because he’s expecting a new baby, another is moving across the country for a job as soon as the season’s over, and another is leaving for grad school. This doesn’t even count the loss of one of our best players—an Irishman whose Visa is expiring.

  No, it has to be this year.

  We’d even gone as far as paying the travel, room, and board for the GAA trainer from Ireland to put the final finesse on the team. He’s arriving two weeks before the playoffs.

  The playoffs mean everything to this team, and because they’re my team, it’s important to me as well. When I left the SEALs, it was like being amputated—and I don’t mean like having a limb cut off. No. It’s like I was the limb being severed from the whole—the tight-knit group we’d become.

  People have the wrong idea of what it means to be a SEAL. We’re not lone wolves operating behind enemy lines like some Jason Bourne character. Our units are not called “teams” for shits and giggles. I only left because I’d grown complacent about my skills—which signaled to me that I was in danger of being a liability to my team members.

  But leaving it? I felt like a highly skilled limb without purpose. Sure, I’m under-utilizing my expensive skill set doing the bodyguard work and playing as a defensive back in an Irish sport, but fuck it feels…good…to channel my energy into something safe and innocuous like hurling. Where the stakes are getting to playoffs instead of saving the Western way of life.

  I pull out my Samsung and type out a text message to Eamonn and Patrick.

  sign your damn release forms

  Pepper

  It’s 6:55 p.m., and against my better judgment, I’m ready for my date with Luke, in case he magically learns where I live. I straighten some decorative boxes on the side table by the leather couch on the off-chance he not only shows up but comes inside.

  Wow, I’m being ridiculous. Like he’d notice. Like it even matters.

  But I’m stupidly glad that everything is unpacked and all my wall decorations are hung. I can’t rest easy in a new place until I’m surrounded by my stuff again. It’s a ritual each time I move. In the corner by the door are stacked the boxes I finally unearthed to bring to my new office—my first office. All gifts from my parents, family, and mentors for making it through my medical training. I know it sounds weird, but getting those set up in my office will finally make it all real.

  My phone din
gs, and I dive for it. I’m filled with part dread, part hope that it’s Luke telling me he’s canceling. Until I remember he also doesn’t have my number.

  It’s Tricia, whom I’ve told about my possible date:

  Susan says to, and I quote, Let Go

  I frown. What the hell does that mean?

  Let go of the old incident from high school, especially since it wasn’t him? I hadn’t really been holding onto it.

  Let go of his deception earlier this week? That is another matter.

  Let go and have fun?

  Every passing day since our encounter, my anger has fizzled away more and more. For one thing, I should have recognized him, though even now I still can’t really see it. Like, not even a little.

  Also, I’d been the one to initiate—caught up in the maelstrom of our obvious attraction. Maybe he’d been caught up in it too, just as he’d said.

  My door buzzer rings, and I jump. The clock on my oven reads 7:00. Goose bumps dance across my skin and converge in my stomach to swirl around.

  Luke.

  It has to be.

  I stand on tiptoe and look through the peephole with that same sense of dread and hope I felt when my phone chirped.

  Throwing the door wide, I take him in from head to toe. And then back up. The man is poured into a fitted, striped dress shirt tucked into black jeans with no belt. And there’s no hiding every dip and curve of his biceps, his pecs. The cotton must be super-strength.

  I swallow. “How did you know where I live?”

  He smirks. “Sweetheart, I’m a former Navy SEAL.”

  What the—what? A SEAL? I don’t know a lot about the military, but I do know that’s elite forces stuff. I’m in awe. And a little intimidated. But since he’s all casual—as if he doesn’t want to make a big deal about it—I don’t call attention to this huge nugget he just dropped about himself.

  “You called Tricia, didn’t you?”