Passionate Kisses 2 Boxed Set: Love in Bloom

by Magda Alexander

  Damn if he wasn’t right.

  Because he came to pick her up dressed in a football uniform. His own football uniform. He might not have had on his shoulder pads, but the name Kettering was spelled out clearly across his broad shoulders. A Warriors ball cap took the place of his helmet, football eye black had been applied under his eyes, two days’ worth of beard was on his face, and he held a pair of dark sunglasses in his hand. He looked crazy hot and old enough to play in the NFL. As her eyes moved lower, she noticed his uniform pants did have the pads stuffed inside, so his lower body looked exactly like it did when he ran for all those touchdowns.

  Vivi’s woozy factor hit high and hit hard.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going dressed like that?” she asked.

  “Sleeping Beauty,” he said, eyeing her short, sexy version of the Disney princess’s gown. “Do you think the real Lane Kettering would be foolish enough to show his face in Henderson during an undefeated season? I might get a few beers thrown at me, but I guareen-damn-tee ya nobody is going to think you’re dating ‘that running back from the devil’s team.’”

  Vivi blinked. Then started to laugh. He was right. Probably. Maybe. Oh hell, she didn’t care because he looked so damn hot in that uniform, and she had never had the chance to put her hands on him while he was wearing it. Never even got close enough to drool over him like she was doing now.

  At Henderson’s local hangout, The Situation, there was a packed house where it turned out Lane became an unlikely hero. Once the rumor started that he’d stolen Kettering’s jersey so the “goddamn-son-of-a-bitch” wouldn’t have it for the upcoming game against Henderson, everybody wanted to buy him a beer. He turned them all down-for her he told Vivi as he backed her up into a dark corner. Wouldn’t do to be caught drinking underage and kissing his beautiful statistics teacher.

  Which he did. Kiss her. A lot. Out by the lake, late that night. And not like he’d kiss his grandmother. For the first time, Vivi was tempted to call Principal Levendusky from her cell and quit.

  Miraculously, that “son of a bitch Kettering” managed to find his jersey in time for the Henderson game the following weekend. This was an away game for Wilson, putting Vivi in a whole lot of hot water since she was surrounded by family and friends while wearing the black and red of the Warriors. She had to remind everyone that she was now a teacher at Wilson and was supporting her students. That explanation didn’t sit well with anybody. Except her father who kissed her cheek.

  Lane did not have his best game. The defense was gunning for him and him alone. He was tripped, pushed, held, and had his helmet ripped off twice. Henderson lost more yards on penalties trying to stop Lane than they would have if they’d just let him run the ball. And while all the focus was on Lane, the Warrior’s quarterback was left to throw long for three touchdowns and carry the ball in for two. It seemed Henderson’s defense had forgotten that there were other players on the field.

  The Warriors finished their regular season undefeated.

  Three shells now sat on Vivi’s desk. November brought with it the home field advantage for the first two playoff games and the Warriors put that to good use. The opposing teams weren’t pushovers. In both games, the score was tied or close to it going into the fourth quarter. Vivi’s stomach was a jumble of nerves, not only because the games were so close, but because her parents were now sitting in the stands with her, right in front of the Ketterings. Cheering for Lane and the devil’s team. It was a surreal experience.

  Her father drew a surprising amount of attention. His paving company did a lot of business in Oxford so he was well known for that. Apparently, he was just as well known for his high school antics back when he was a Henderson football player. Vivi was amazed and appalled to learn that her father was the one, in every game he played against Wilson, to throw the first punch which inevitably cleared the benches. She was even more amazed and appalled that he seemed proud of that fact.

  When asked why the hell Jeb DuVal was sitting in the Warriors’ stands, he almost outed Lane and Vivi in his pride over Lane’s football prowess. Thank goodness, Vivi’s mother was paying attention and spoke right over Jeb as he started talking about his daughter’s boyfriend, claiming a long-standing friendship with the Kettering family, indicating them seated behind the DuVals.

  Vivi breathed a sigh of relief over that and the final score of both games.

  Although Vivi had confided in her older sister, Jacey, that she was dating Lane Kettering, none of their DuVal cousins, aunts, or uncles had been allowed in on the secret. With so many relatives, it was too much of a risk. If word leaked out into the gossip stream in Henderson, it would surely work its way over to Oxford. So Lane wasn’t able to attend the huge DuVal family Thanksgiving Hale and Genevra Evans hosted at their palatial estate, but he did pick Vivi up bright and early the next morning and drove the two of them out of town.

  They were sitting in a booth, enjoying an early lunch in downtown Raleigh when Lane asked Vivi how she was enjoying living her dream.

  “My dream?” She blinked. “Oh, you mean, teaching.”

  “Unless you’ve been secretly harboring a dream about abstinence.”

  “No, no. Abstinence I could do without. Of course, secretly dating the star running back of the Warriors is like a dream come true. Turns out I’m pretty good at living my dreams.”

  Lane smiled before taking a bite of his bacon cheeseburger. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and asked, “What about your dream of graduate school?”

  “For some reason, I’ve been solely focused on the date May sixteenth. Haven’t thought too much beyond that.”

  “Apparently The University of Notre Dame has a highly rated Masters in Education program.”

  Vivi sat back. Shocked. “Notre Dame?”

  Lane nodded his head.

  “Notre Dame in Indiana?”

  Lane nodded his head again.

  “In the middle of nowhere, Indiana where it snows and is cold and miserable all winter?”

  Lane laughed. “Yeah. Notre Dame.”

  Vivi slammed her palms down on the table. “Why the hell would I want to go to-” She stopped herself abruptly. “Football,” she breathed. “Lane? What are you saying? Is this about football? Is Notre Dame recruiting you? Are you going to Notre Dame?”

  Lane’s smile was full of excitement and pride and hope and eagerness when he said, “That’s my dream.”

  Vivi immediately burst into tears. “Oh my God. I’m horrible,” she sobbed. “I have never once asked you about your dream. I have never once asked you about your dream school. And you’ve done nothing but support my dream from that first night we met.” She shook her head sadly. “Lane, I am not worthy of you. I thought you wanted to play football in North Carolina. Please,” she said, reaching over, sniffing, pulling his hand into both of hers, “start from the beginning and tell me all about your dream.”

  So he did.

  Lane had a big dream, and it poured out of him. Easy, happy, excited. He told Vivi how he didn’t mention Notre Dame on purpose. How he didn’t mention it to anyone except his dad. She found out he’d been a Notre Dame fan for years. It started when he was eight, because he liked the mascot-the leprechaun-and they had worn green jerseys the first time he’d seen them play. He became a die-hard fan when he researched all their football lore. Had seen the movie Rudy a dozen times at least. But Notre Dame recruited the nation’s best, so he never anticipated one of their recruiting coaches showing up, wanting to meet Lane Kettering in Oxford, NC.

  “I asked him how my name came across his desk, and he told me that Josh McCourt, a computer-science teacher at Henderson, had sent them a video tape. Very professionally done, with all my highlights from past years and the seven-touchdown game that started this season.”

  “Josh McCourt? I think he’s dating my cousin, Molly.”

  “So the plot thickens, right? Because I don’t know this Josh McCourt. But my brother does. Apparently,
Josh is from Oxford and was a few years ahead of Tray at Wilson. He’s now part of the football coaching staff over in Henderson, but that still didn’t explain how or why he put together a video of me and sent it to Notre Dame.”

  Vivi was wide-eyed. “Oh my gosh. Did you call Josh and ask him?”

  “I did. Well, my father did. He called Josh to thank him on my behalf and came to find out that one Jeb DuVal, head of the Henderson High Booster Club, mentioned me to Josh in an effort to get him to help the defense defend against me. So Josh gathered film and started looking at what I could do. He liked what he saw, and being as he felt a little badly he was helping Wilson’s arch rival try to defeat his alma mater, he decided to ease his conscience by making a recruiting tape of me and sending it out to the top twenty football programs in the country.”

  “You are kidding!”

  “I am not,” Lane laughed. “S.B., your father had a hand in making my dream come true. I signed a letter of intent yesterday at the Thanksgiving table.”

  “Oh my goodness, Lane. Lane! This is…amazing. I’m so happy for you.”

  “I’m happy for me too. Even if I’m going to the middle of nowhere Indiana where it snows and is freezing all winter.”

  “Ahhhh,” Vivi groaned, hanging her head and laughing. “I’m sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just, I didn’t know. Forgive me.”

  “Sleeping Beauty, you can make it up to me by at least looking into their graduate programs. Because as much as I’m getting used to you being my statistics teacher, I’ve got a big fantasy in my head that goes right along with my football dream. One where you and I are finally on equal footing-students together on the same campus.”

  Vivi tipped her head to the side and sighed, looking at the gorgeous, rugged, sexy, beard-scruffled man in front of her. “If you stay healthy, I could have a masters and a doctorate by the time you graduate.”

  “Always good to have a dream,” Lane said with a smile.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Annual Devine-Kampmueller New Year’s Eve Ball held at the Henderson Country Club was the premier social event of the season. Vivi didn’t want to miss it, but she didn’t want to go without Lane either. So she asked “her attorney,” the newly married Piper Beaumont Evans, to ask her husband, Vance, to ask his buddy at Henderson Country Club-one cute-cute Harry the Bartender-to hire Lane to work that night.

  With all the gossip being bandied around Henderson about Darcy Bennett’s wedding, Annabelle Devine’s engagement, and her Aunt Genevra’s enormous baby bump, Vivi mistakenly thought that no one would notice Lane Kettering. It turned out he was the biggest celebrity of the night.

  Everyone had seen him play and heard he’d signed with Notre Dame. The fact that he was no longer a threat to Henderson’s team made him embraceable, one of their own, even. The boy next door, so to speak. Vivi was disgusted. Sort of. She really didn’t mind all the men shaking his hand and wanting to hear his stories, but the girls-oh my. You’d think they’d never seen a gorgeous, sandy-haired, green-eyed, gifted athlete before. Where Lane seemed to be old hat when he walked the halls of Wilson, he was the hot new guy in Henderson. And there was competition from women way older than Vivi lining up to get his attention. Not to mention the screaming, giggly, totally annoying, high school girls who did not stop knocking each other out of the way to order a non-alcoholic drink from Lane. Because that’s where Harry had put him. Right behind the teenagers’ bar.

  Thank you, Harry.

  Vivi huffed and puffed and left the bar area so she wouldn’t be caught staring at Lane. She sighed, wishing she’d had the forethought to realize that while all of Henderson was here at the moment, she and Lane could have been anywhere else in town, together, and no one would have been the wiser.

  In an effort to make the best of a bad situation-one that she herself had created-she danced, had pictures taken with friends and family, and then circled up with Lolly and all of her DuVal cousins to dish the latest gossip.

  Vivi was dying to tell them about Lane and had drifted off into a fantasy of finally being able to share that news with them come May when her youngest cousin Tinley-a senior at Henderson High-arrived in their midst and announced that Lane Kettering would be giving her a ride home that night.

  Not. Likely.

  Annnd over my dead body, Vivi thought.

  But the rest of the DuVal cousins thought this was the best idea ev-vver. Oh, they gushed, what an adorable couple the two of them would make. And wouldn’t it just be fabulous if Tinley started dating the gorgeous rock-star quarterback from across town?

  Across town? When did Oxford become “across town?” And Lane wasn’t the damn quarterback for God’s sake.

  They went on, saying Tinley would then be bringing Lane to all the DuVal family functions. And wouldn’t that be fun to have him there where they could all drool over him, and feel his bulging biceps, and…

  No. No, that would not be fun.

  At. All.

  Vivi needed to derail this. Fast. She couldn’t let her cousins get excited about Tinley and Lane when she wanted them to eventually be thrilled about Vivi and Lane. But the thought of telling seven women between the ages of seventeen and thirty her biggest secret and then expecting the news to be kept quiet-she didn’t trust it could happen. Didn’t trust that it wouldn’t unintentionally derail everything she and Lane had sacrificed to keep their relationship under wraps. So she kept her mouth shut. When one of them began to ask the inevitable question of, “Vivi, you teach at his school. Do you know Lane?” she backed away pretending she hadn’t heard.

  Vivi strolled out of the ballroom, into the spacious hallway separating it from the bar and grill area, deciding she needed a few moments of quiet. She headed to the right and down a set of stairs toward the locker rooms located on the lower level. At the end of the stairs she sat down, feeling defeated.

  Her beautiful new ball gown was green. Like the Irish leprechaun Lane loved. Her hair was down and curled because he loved that too. She fingered the pretty gold and green-enamel shamrock pendant he’d given her for Christmas.

  They were fine, she told herself. Another four months, give or take a few days, and it would be over. This pretending. Pretending she wasn’t crazy about one of her students-pretending she wasn’t committing the ultimate taboo. Just the thought of it made her head hurt. She tried to be a good person. Lane was the ultimate good person. The two of them didn’t deserve to be tangled up in semantics, with the possibility of inadvertently tying everyone else around them up in semantics.

  Tinley.

  Of course, she’d be interested in Lane. Hadn’t she heard that Tinley had been caught running around the boys’ locker room at Henderson High before the school year even started? Tinley was no better or worse than some of her boy-crazy cheerleaders.

  She’s just like me, Vivi thought. She couldn’t blame her seventeen-year-old cousin for finding nineteen-year-old Lane desirable. He was very desirable.

  But to Vivi, he was so much more.

  She heard pounding on the steps behind her. Startled, she jumped to her feet and turned just as Lane leaped down the last four steps and looked her over head to toe, surprised, concerned, worried even.

  “What?” she said, trying not to notice how gorgeous he was in his rented tuxedo shirt with the shirt sleeves all rolled up. His bow tie was askew and his hair was unkempt, but perfectly so. His eyes were glistening, his heart pounding by the pulse of the vein in his neck. He looked around them, listening up and down the hallway, licking his lips.

  “Harry told me there was an emergency down here.”

  “An emergency? What kind of emergency? I haven’t seen anything. No smoke. No fire. No burst pipes.”

  Lane cocked his head and fastened his gaze onto hers. “But you’re here. At the bottom of the steps. Right where Harry told me to look. Are you the emergency?”

  “I’m hardly an emergency,” she said, flustered.

  “But you’re here. Alone. In the dark
.”

  “It’s not that dark.”

  “Vivi, the party is upstairs. And you’re not. What gives?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned to wander farther down the hallway. Lane followed behind. “I just…I just needed a little space. I…” She turned and told him the truth. “My cousin, Tinley, announced to all of us that you are driving her home from the party tonight.”

  “Who’s Tinley?” Lane looked confused.

  Vivi smiled. “My cousin. She’s a senior at Henderson. Apparently the newest member of the Lane Kettering Fan Club, and I’m guessing she’s plotting a way to get you to drive her home.”

  “Fat chance,” Lane said. “I’m here solely to intercept whoever tries to kiss you at midnight.”

  “Is that why you agreed to do this?”

  “Why else?” he laughed.

  “I don’t know. I guess in my head I pictured this all differently. But the truth is I just wished it could go differently. I wish we could be here, together. Dancing.”

  “Hmm,” he said, tilting his head toward the side. “Maybe I can make that wish come true.” He pulled a key from his pocket and held it up. “Harry said this might come in handy.” He took Vivi’s hand and led her down a corridor, where the music from the band got louder and clearer. He pushed the key into a lock and opened the door leading into a small exercise room. He turned on the light, looked around at the treadmills and weights and then looked up at the ceiling. “Hold on.” He dragged over one of the weight benches, stood on the top of it and opened a vent in the ceiling. The music from above flowed through. He smiled down at Vivi. “Emergency thwarted.”

  “I’m not the emergency.”

  “I’m pretty sure you are.” Lane jumped down, walked over, and hit the lights. Then he locked the door from the inside.

  Vivi’s heart stuttered. “Lane,” she whispered. His name came out full of emotion. And she realized it right then. She, indeed, was the emergency.

  “We’re just going to dance,” he said quietly, moving in her direction. “You don’t have to worry. We aren’t going to break any rules. Just…dance. And I might kiss you,” he said, taking her into his arms. “You know, the kind of kiss I’d give my grandmother.”