“How are your parents?” Coach asked as they pulled out chairs to sit in front of the pie slices his wife set on the table.
“Good.” He flailed around in his head, trying to come up with more to say. “They’re good.”
“And your sister?” Mrs. McDonnell added. “Kathleen, right?”
“Kathy’s good, too. She and her husband own a secondhand furniture store and have three daughters.”
“No kids for you yet?”
Chase shrugged. “Not yet. Almost had a wife, but it didn’t work out.”
They caught up a little over his mother’s pie, all of them going a little heavy on the milk to wash it down, and Chase noticed that not only did he skirt around the issue of his company’s woes, but Coach didn’t seem too inclined to delve into the town’s problems, either, or his own.
After pie, he grabbed his bag and followed Mrs. McDonnell up the stairs to the small bedroom at the back of the house. No pink, thankfully, or boy band posters on the wall. The room was mostly creams and whites, with a funky, homemade-looking quilt on the twin bed and a rag rug in the middle of the hardwood floor. Either Kelly had been a neat freak in her teens, or most of her childhood history had been boxed up.
A few hours later, when he’d gone to bed simply because it was obvious the McDonnells were already up past their bedtime, he stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about Kelly McDonnell. Actually, thinking about Kelly wasn’t the problem. It was trying not to think about her handcuffs that was causing him problems. He couldn’t figure out what it was about her that had him tossing and turning, so he chalked it up to his body looking for some stress relief. He wasn’t comfortable with relieving that stress by hand, so to speak, under Coach’s roof, so he gritted his teeth and suffered.
Chase woke up the next morning, disoriented and with a heaviness in his gut he suspected might be his mother’s pie. Light on the breakfast, he told himself as he pulled on some clothes to walk down the hall to the bathroom. When he got downstairs, Mrs. McDonnell shoved a full coffee mug into his hand, and he struggled to wake up while his hosts went through their morning routine.
“I’m heading to O’Rourke’s in a few minutes,” Coach told him. “The missus doesn’t make breakfast on days I go there, so if you’re hungry, you’d best come along.”
Not nearly enough minutes later, and still suffering a caffeine shortage, Chase slid into a booth across from Coach and tried to decide what his stomach was up to dealing with. He would have thought the laminated menu was the same one he’d looked at the last time he’d been in O’Rourke’s, except the prices were higher.
Don and Cassandra Jones had opened the restaurant in 1984 and, according to the anecdotal history of Stewart Mills, they were going to use their own last name. After half the town got sucked into a two-week-long battle over apostrophe placement, Cassandra had gotten mad and ordered a sign with her maiden name, so O’Rourke’s Family Restaurant was born in a town that didn’t have a single O’Rourke in the telephone book.
Coach ran his finger down the menu, making sounds of indecision as he read. “I usually have the hash and cheese omelet since the wife won’t let me have them after my cholesterol check, but I’m not that hungry this morning.”
“Me neither, to tell you the truth.”
Amusement crinkled the corners of Coach’s eyes. “Make sure you tell your mom we said thanks for the pie.”
“The gift that keeps on giving,” Chase muttered, but his mood brightened considerably when their waitress set an oversized mug of coffee in front of him. No dainty teacups for O’Rourke’s.
Then he looked toward the door and saw Kelly McDonnell walking toward them. Either the caffeine chose that second to hit his bloodstream, or he had a serious, previously undiscovered thing for women in uniform.
Or maybe just this woman in uniform. She still had those killer legs, and the rest of her wasn’t bad, either. The hat was left somewhere, probably in the cruiser, and her hair was braided so tightly he was surprised she wasn’t squinting.
There were a few seconds of awkwardness because Chase and Coach were both sitting in the center of their booth seats, but Coach took care of that. “Slide over, Chase, and let my daughter sit.”
Kelly smelled as good as her legs looked in the navy pants, and Chase lifted his mug to his mouth so the coffee aroma could block out the surprisingly sweet and slightly fruity cop smell.
“Glad you could make it,” Coach told her.
“It’s pretty quiet this morning.”
Chase chuckled. “Like Stewart Mills becomes a hotbed of crime in the afternoon. New Hampshire’s very own Gotham City.”
When neither of his breakfast companions laughed, he realized he may have stepped in it. Rather than sink further into the conversational muck trying to talk his way out of it, he gulped some more coffee.
“You’ve been gone a long time,” Kelly said as she stirred cream and sugar into her coffee. “And the worse things get for people financially, the more desperate they get. Shoplifting, burglary, domestic violence. All of it sees an increase.”
He knew all about things getting tight, and Seth had shown him how good people did shitty things when they got desperate. But Chase knew, as bad as it was, he was luckier than many. Not only did it look like he’d be able to tread water, but he also didn’t have a wife and kids to worry about dragging down with him if he sank.
“And the kids are acting out?” he asked.
Coach nodded. “Yeah. And some of them only walked the straight and narrow because they knew I’d kick their butts off the team if they didn’t. If they know there won’t be tryouts come August—”
“There will be,” Kelly interrupted. Her voice was low and firm, and Chase wondered if she used that voice while handcuffing miscreants, which led him to wonder if she’d use that voice being bossy in bed. Then he wondered if she’d notice if he squirmed in his seat. “Stewart Mills is coming together to save the team. They’ll dig deep.”
“Digging deep doesn’t do much good if all you’ve got in your pockets is lint. School spirit and good intentions won’t pay the bills.”
The man sounded defeated, and that started an ache in Chase’s chest. The coach who had changed his life had been inspiring and tough, and he’d refused to give up on anything. Not on his unlikely dream of a state championship. Not on a group of misfit boys who weren’t an easy bunch to wrangle. But it sounded like the fight was going out of him.
The waitress showed up to take their order and then stopped back to top off their coffees. Kelly shifted on the hard bench seat, and her knee bumped his leg.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
He didn’t mind at all. He didn’t mind when her leg brushed his ten minutes later, either, or when they both reached for the salt at the same time and almost ended up holding hands.
What he did mind, though, was sitting across from the man he respected more than any other in the world, thinking increasingly inappropriate thoughts about that man’s only child.
Coach’s daughter was so off-limits for a rebound fling she might as well get a roll of police tape out of her trunk and wrap herself in it. And a rebound fling was all he had to offer any woman. Even though he hadn’t been ready to put a ring on Rina’s finger, Chase had been with her a long time, and it still stung pretty badly that she’d left him for another guy when the going got a little rough. Whether it stung his heart or his pride more, Chase couldn’t quite say, but he knew one thing—he had to clean up his own life before he even thought about another relationship. He had to at least have something to offer.
If Coach caught a whiff of Chase’s attraction to Kelly and asked what his intentions were, the only answer would be nothing honorable. Chase had to stop looking at Kelly McDonnell like a smoking-hot police officer with the sexy voice and the really sexy handcuffs, and start looking at her as Coach’s daughter.
> That fruity scent of hers was the smell of forbidden fruit, and Chase Sanders wasn’t going to bite. No matter how strong the temptation.
—
Organized chaos Kelly could deal with, but the Eagles Fest meeting was the chaos without the organization. The teens, who were supposed to be doing the bulk of the work, were huddled in the back of the high school art room, giggling and talking and in general trying to look cool.
At least they’d shown up. Half the adults on her list either weren’t going to show up, or they were going to be late and claim they were stuck in the first random traffic jam in Stewart Mills history. Now, mere days before the festival kickoff, wasn’t the time for volunteers to run out of steam.
When she nodded at Coach, he put two fingers in his mouth and gave a whistle that put the silver kind hanging around his neck at practices to shame. The teenage boys in the room snapped to attention, with the others at least falling silent. “Let’s get started.”
They’d all finally settled in the metal chairs they had permission to use in the music room, and she was opening her mouth to start the meeting, when the door opened and Chase walked in. It was a good thing everybody turned to look at him because her train of thought ran right off the rails.
In the weeks between her phone call to Chase and his running the stop sign, she’d thought a little bit about what it might be like to see him, but in her mind, he’d looked like the teen she’d daydreamed about, with maybe a little of that computer-generated aging process applied. Her imagination had underestimated him.
Whether it was the years, the construction or both, something had definitely made the boy a man. A ruggedly handsome man in jeans and a T-shirt that drew attention to his tanned, leanly muscled arms, with that smile hinting he could still get up to no good from time to time.
She’d felt like getting up to no good herself when they kept accidentally touching at breakfast. It was a sign she’d been neglecting certain needs when a man’s leg bumping hers or his hand almost brushing hers was enough to trigger a tingly hot flash.
Coach’s voice boomed over the murmuring crowd, breaking into her thoughts. “Everybody, this is Chase Sanders, one of the greatest running backs to ever play for the Eagles and a member of our first championship team!”
As they all clapped and Chase waved, Kelly didn’t miss the way Hunter Cass’s mouth twisted into what was more grimace than smile. The current Eagles running back didn’t look thrilled to see one of the school’s legends in the flesh. Whether Hunter didn’t like sharing the limelight or Coach’s attention, she couldn’t tell, but she’d be keeping an eye on the boy. He needed to grasp the fact that Chase and the other guys were there to help save the football program.
“Kelly?”
She realized Coach had been prompting her and shoved the two running backs out of her mind so she could focus on the business at hand. “Thank you for coming, everybody. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.”
Chase couldn’t sit off to the side somewhere where she could ignore him. No, he had to find a seat toward the back, directly in her line of sight, and every time she looked up, he was watching her. They were all watching her, of course, since she was doing the talking, but there was something about the way he was doing it that made her wonder if his mind was on the agenda at hand.
“Saturday and Sunday we’re kicking things off with the town yard sale,” she said, keeping her gaze on the paper in front of her. “Gretchen Walker and her grandmother have been accepting donations at the farm for the last month, and some of Mrs. Walker’s friends have been helping them sort and tag the items. I still need volunteers to get up at the butt-crack of dawn Saturday morning and move the boxes to the town square. We decided to have it there instead of at the farm because it’s on the main road, and we’re hoping to nab some tourists on their way home Sunday.”
Chase raised his hand and she nodded at him. “Chase?”
“I have a truck, so if you tell the boys on the team what time to show up, I’ll handle getting everything moved.”
Everybody heard Hunter’s snort. “Butt-crack of dawn? No thanks.”
Before Coach could say anything, Chase pinned the boy with a hard stare. “Then turn your jersey in and whichever guy who shows up at the Walker farm and runs the fastest gets to be running back come August.”
Kelly wasn’t surprised when Hunter sneered. “Screw you, man. Just because you won a few games like forever ago don’t make you shit now.”
“Hunter,” Jen, who was sitting close to the boy, snapped.
“Sorry, Ms. Cooper,” Hunter told his guidance counselor. Then he looked back at Chase. “Doesn’t make you shit now.”
His teen cohorts snickered, but they quit when Coach crossed the room to stand in front of Hunter. “You want to keep playing ball for me, son, you’ll watch your language. And you’ll be at the Walker farm at the butt-crack of dawn on Saturday morning.”
“I can’t be there that early, Coach.”
“If the folks putting themselves out to help raise money for the team can be there, so can you.”
A red flush spread over Hunter’s face, and Kelly stepped out from behind the podium just in case he was about to lose his temper. She hadn’t had time to change out of her uniform before the meeting, so hopefully being reminded there was a police officer in the room would be enough to keep him in line. But he didn’t raise his voice. Instead, it was so low she could barely hear him. “Since my dad isn’t working, my parents don’t get up early and we only have the one car. I have to walk and it’s a dangerous road to walk in the dark.”
Kelly knew Tony Cass had been drowning his unemployment sorrows in cheap beer, and she guessed he wouldn’t react well to his son’s trying to drag him out of bed at dawn. Not that it excused Hunter’s behavior, but she tried to keep in mind every day that the attitude and hostility they were seeing more and more of in the kids were coping mechanisms.
“I’ll come and get you,” Coach said. “Be ready at six.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Coach returned to his spot beside her, Kelly turned her attention back to the paper. “Tomorrow evening we’ll finish painting the signs. The art classes have made some great banners for the street fair next weekend. And Jen’s idea to have a contest for the best Eagles Fest display was brilliant. You’ve probably seen the homemade signs popping up all over town. We’ll announce the winner before the alumni game, I think, though we’re taking photos as they go up in case some of them aren’t weatherproof.”
She went down the items on her agenda—the status of different vendors for the street fair, details on the spaghetti dinner in the works, the bake sale, the tollbooths, the parade—talking for what seemed like forever. And every time she looked up, she looked right into Chase Sanders’s eyes.
When the meeting finally ended, Kelly wished she could be the first out the door, but she had to stay. Jen, who had the key, would be last out, and Kelly wouldn’t leave her to lock up alone.
Maybe she’d get lucky and Chase wouldn’t linger. This weird attraction of hers annoyed the hell out of her. She didn’t trust guys with charming smiles and cheesy lines. Men who easily had their way with the ladies tended to find that a hard habit to break, in her experience. Derek certainly hadn’t been able to break it, even with a wedding band inscribed with Kelly’s name on his finger.
“Your mother’s holding dinner for me and Chase.” Coach draped his arm around her shoulder. “You gonna come over?”
As tempting as her mom’s cooking was, she was exhausted and, truth be told, she wanted to soak in the tub, pop in a DVD and not think about the Stewart Mills Eagles for at least ten hours. Twelve if she was lucky. “Not tonight, but dibs on any leftovers.”
After Coach headed for the door, she turned toward the coffee urn to start cleaning up, but almost ran smack into Chase.
“Officer McDonne
ll,” he said in a low voice not meant to be overheard.
“I think you can call me Kelly.”
“I think I like calling you Officer McDonnell.” The smile that went with the words was so naughty it should have its own police radio code. “So I’m not going to see you at dinner tonight?”
The last thing she needed right now was more of her body parts brushing against his body parts under the table. Her parents’ table, no less. “Nope, but I’ll see you Saturday morning if not tomorrow. Thanks for volunteering, by the way.”
She stepped around him before he could say anything else, even though she knew she was being rude. He’d put himself out coming back to Stewart Mills to help her dad, so she should be schmoozing him or something. Unfortunately, it wasn’t schmoozing she felt like doing to him, and that was a problem.
Wearing a badge in the town you grew up in, especially as Coach’s daughter, meant fighting every day to be respected as an officer of the law. Giving a speeding ticket to a woman who gave you half her sandwich in first grade wasn’t easy, but she did it, and Stewart Mills eventually came to respect her and the badge she wore. Sleeping with the prodigal golden boy was not only a bad idea personally, it could be ugly professionally, too. Whispers and wink-wink nudge-nudges while on the job, she could do without.
And that meant doing without lusting after her parents’ houseguest. Once Eagles Fest was over, she’d wave good-bye and he’d go back to being nothing but a memory.
03
Chase walked down the stairs the following morning to find the house empty and a note from Mrs. McDonnell propped next to the coffeemaker. Smart woman. He wouldn’t miss it there, for sure.
We’re off to work this morning, but we’ll probably be home by early afternoon. Make yourself at home, and there are fresh blueberry muffins in the basket with the blue towel over it. Helen.
Under the Lights Page 3
