“Jem?” she yelled loudly and dropped her phone.
“Lacey’s home!” Levi’s voice was strong and sure. “She’s back, Dad. Look!”
She was probably dreaming, but she ran for the new sliding glass door she’d never seen before that night and pulled on the handle.
It didn’t budge.
“Flip the latch.” Jem’s muffled voice came through the door.
She couldn’t find the latch, so she pushed against the black metal frame, then pulled the door. She even pounded on it for a second.
Then her gaze met Jem’s. She calmed. He stared at her, and a smile broke out all over his face. And hers, too. He pointed down, where she saw the thin piece of metal sticking out from the handle, and she pushed it down with one finger.
The door slid open and she fell forward. Jem’s body broke her fall, his arms closing around her.
“We’ve been doing drive-bys all afternoon” were the first words he said. Followed immediately by “I love you and want to marry you.” There might have been more. She wasn’t sure about anything but the feel of her man’s body against hers. Her man’s arms around her.
And then a smaller, but equally dear, version of her man was wrapping his arms around her knees. They had her in their grasp. Making her their world. As they were hers.
First, last and always.
In the room that they’d built for her.
The room where all of her dreams had just come true.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488006661
His First Choice
Copyright © 2016 by Tara Taylor Quinn
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
This is more than just a game...to her
Sports broadcaster Brooks Smith has always been more involved with the game than the players. But after she shares the spotlight at an awards ceremony with tabloid sensation Jonas Nash, one night of letting her guard down around the infamous quarterback spirals into many heated days and nights together when she gets assigned to the story of the year...
The hottest player in professional football is hiding a secret that could end his career for good. Now Brooks is caught on the sidelines between the job she loves and the man she is falling in love with.
“Maybe it’s just me that keeps throwing you off balance, Brook...”
Jonas walked away, and this time Brooks let him because if she didn’t she’d... Well, she might just scratch his eyes out. The man was impossible.
She flexed her fingers.
“It’s Brooks,” she emphasized the s, but he didn’t look back. She raised her voice. “B-R-O-O-K-S, which every other person in the sports world seems to know but which you can’t seem to remember.”
Who was she kidding? She didn’t really want to scratch his eyes out. As obstinate and annoying as he was Jonas was also satisfyingly distracting. He slipped inside the field house, taking his gluteus maximus out of her view. Distracting and energizing and...
She’d rather rake her fingernails down his spine than scratch out his eyes, and that was bad. Very, very bad. Because she was a journalist with a story to tell and a reputation to fix.
Jonas Nash needed to stay off-limits.
Dear Reader,
I’ve been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. Baseball, basketball, volleyball...but there has always been a special place in my heart for football. I like the intricacies of the plays, I like the beauty of a perfectly thrown football, and when that wide receiver reaches into the sky to pull down an uncatchable ball I cheer.
When I started to write Protecting the Quarterback, I wanted to convey not only my love for the game, but also my love for the players. Because there are some amazing men who take the field every Sunday, Monday and Thursday, who wear their colors with pride and who never give up on the game. Jonas, the hero in this book, has lost his way a bit, and has even lost a little of his love for the game. Brooks has a deep and abiding connection with the game and its players, and she helps him find not only that connection to the game, but also himself within the game. I hope you enjoy reading their football love story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
You can find me online on Twitter, @authorkristina, or on Facebook or Instagram...stop in and say hi!
Kristina Knight
Protecting the Quarterback
KRISTINA KNIGHT
Kristina Knight decided she wanted to be a writer, like her favorite soap opera heroine, Felicia Gallant, one cold day when she was home sick from school. She took a detour into radio and television journalism but never forgot her first love of romance novels, or her favorite character from her favorite soap. In 2012 she got The Call from an editor who wanted to buy her book. Kristina lives in Ohio with her handsome husband, incredibly cute daughter and two dogs.
Books by Kristina Knight
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
The Daughter He Wanted
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My deep thanks go out to Dr. Matt and the team at Northern Ohio Medical Specialists; your love of the game, for athletes, and your love of medicine were evident in all of our conversations. Any medical mistakes in this book are my own.
Fo
r all the girls out there who love football...
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
JONAS NASH SAT back in the high chair, watching the bustling backstage area. Mandi, a model he’d known for a few years, came up behind him and planted a kiss on his neck. The makeup artist swiped the mark away with a tissue and glared at the model. Mandi rolled her eyes.
“So, what’s the plan after your presentation?”
The plan was to go back to his hotel, pack a bag and get back to Kentucky as quickly as possible. As if the model cared.
The makeup artist swiped more powder over Jonas’s forehead and then leaned back to observe her handiwork. The lights flashed.
“You’re ready,” she said, and Jonas stood while another presenter slid into the now empty chair.
He straightened his bow tie and smoothed his hand over his close-cropped hair. It still felt a little weird to have basically no hair on his head. He’d kept his dark hair long nearly as long as he’d been playing football.
Mandi linked her arm with his, pulling him to a darkened corner of the stage. Jonas winced and withdrew from the contact. Mandi didn’t know the extent of his injury. Very few people did. He intended to keep it that way. By the time the next season started he would be back on the field. Back in control.
“I thought we could hit one of the clubs downtown,” she was saying. “A little dancing, have some fun. I can’t remember the last time you were in town.”
Jonas could. It was last November, when his team played the Gladiators. They’d lost by twenty points, his star running back had gone out with a pulled hamstring, and Jonas had missed the team flight back to Louisville in favor of spending a night wrapped up in Mandi’s sheets.
Instead of spending the night in her bed, though, he’d spent it in lockup while she scavenged for cash after instigating a fight between him and a tattooed giant wearing a dog collar. By the time he finally made it back to Kentucky, all the newspapers and sports talk shows were talking about how out of control Jonas Nash was, and what a blemish he was to the sport of football.
And he hadn’t cared. He’d gone back to his condo, taken a few of the other players out to a favorite club and thrown for two hundred yards—and a win—the following week.
“So what do you say? Dinner and dancing and we’ll see what happens next?”
A pretty blonde across the room caught Jonas’s attention. She was a sportscaster, he thought, and she hadn’t looked his way all night. He’d been watching her, though, from the moment she walked out of the dressing room in those screw-me heels.
He didn’t want to go out with Mandi tonight. Hadn’t wanted to go out with women like her for almost a year. What he did want was a little peace and quiet. To get back on the football field with his teammates and not worry about whether or not his shoulder would hold up.
But there was an awards show to put on, so Jonas pushed the bleak thoughts away and refocused his attention on Mandi.
“Dinner and dancing, huh?”
She smiled and ran her hand up his arm. A year ago that move would have turned every hormone in his body on. Tonight, he felt nothing.
“And whatever else might come up,” she said.
Jonas sighed. He didn’t feel a damn thing.
The stage manager motioned him over, and the pretty blonde from the makeup tables caught his eye again. A spark of something hit his belly.
Weird.
“You’ll present with Miss Smith, entrance here at stage right. After the presentation, you’ll exit stage left together,” the man was saying.
Mandi tugged on his tuxedo jacket and he glanced her way. She made some kind of motion with her hand, but he didn’t quite catch it because the pretty blonde stood and smoothed her hands over the tight dress.
Navy and sparkles shimmered before his eyes, and his mouth went dry. She ran her hand over her hair and something hot began to crawl around his stomach. There. There was something normal. A normal reaction of man to woman.
Something he hadn’t felt in...too long for mental math.
Not that it mattered. He didn’t go chasing after every woman he met anymore. Mandi made another gesture from the side of the stage. He didn’t even chase after women he knew wanted to be chased. That was part of his past. Part of the Jonas he didn’t want to be any longer.
Still, it was nice to know all the equipment still worked.
He watched the blonde for another long moment. Definitely nice to know the equipment still worked.
* * *
THE LIGHTS FLASHED, signaling two minutes to go. Two minutes until she could return to her hotel to get out of this ridiculous dress. Brooks Smith tottered on four-inch heels toward the stage manager, who held a gilded envelope. She’d accepted the hosting gig at the International Sports Awards before she knew she had also been nominated in a completely new category: Hottest Female Sportscaster. Had she known about that award, she would never have agreed. And to have won it... God, another reason for the boy’s club of professional sports broadcasting not to take her seriously.
“No peeking,” the balding man said, and she could practically hear the “tsk tsk” in his voice. “Either of you.” He looked pointedly from Brooks to her presentation partner, Jonas Nash, star of the Louisville Kentuckians, one of the worst professional teams in the North American Football Federation. Which made it odd that he was up for not only Athletic Performance of the Year, but also Player of the Year.
Just went to show what a good PR team could do, she supposed. That and the fact the man looked like Hollywood’s version of a football player, from the reckless gleam in his chocolate-brown gaze to the muscles clearly outlined under the smoothly tailored lines of his Hugo Boss suit.
Brooks plucked the envelope from the manager’s hand. “You might want me to carry it, then.” She shot a pointed look to the man beside her. Six feet five inches of muscle and bad-boy reputation. Six feet five inches of charisma.
Six feet five inches of ball hog.
Which partially explained the Performance of the Year nomination.
“I don’t peek.” Jonas held a hand to his chest and his full lips spread into a wicked smile. “Much.”
The bleach blonde standing beside him near the entrance to the stage offered a finger wave and an air kiss. “See you in the limo,” she practically purred before turning on her heel and disappearing in the hubbub of the backstage area.
“I can make this presentation without you if there is somewhere more important you need to be,” Brooks said.
“No place I’d rather be,” Jonas said, as if the bottle blonde hadn’t just offered herself as his backseat entertainment for the evening.
Why the thought of Jonas with the woman bothered her Brooks couldn’t say. It wasn’t as if she really knew the man. It also was no secret that he’d left a bevy of blondes, brunettes and redheads in his wake for most of his football career. But it did bother her. Brooks pushed the image of the woman from her mind. She needed to focus on the presentation.
The manager ushered them onto the stage as the host for the International Sports Awards introduced them as “Kentucky Football Royalty,” whatever the heck that meant. Brooks rolled her shoulders and pasted a bright smile on her face as they walked into the spotlights. Jo
nas took the stage with his palm against her lower back, seeming to burn a hole through the silk and sequins of her navy dress.
“Slow down there, Slugger, we stop at the podium, not the next curtain.”
As if.
She didn’t run. Well, except when she ate her weight in salted caramel ice cream.
“I know how to work a stage,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, making sure she kept her smile in place. The problem was being center stage wearing sky-high heels and with nothing to do with her hands. Standing before a single camera in her ballet flats and with a microphone in her hands was so much...simpler.
Jonas waved to the crowd, a big grin splitting his handsome face. “Then try actually smiling for the cameras and waving to the crowd.”
“I am smiling—”
And then her feet betrayed her. Brooks’s left foot slid on the smooth marble floor in the middle of the stage. She tried to grip with her right but she wasn’t used to more than a kitten heel. With sickening clarity Brooks saw the headlines and internet memes and goddamned internet gifs in her mind. Ridiculous hair, ridiculous makeup, ridiculous Brooks sliding across the stage at the International Sports Awards while perfectly dressed, never-out-of-sync Jonas Nash looked on.
Then the strong arm at her lower back seemed to turn to steel as it slid around her abdomen, steadying her. Her face warmed and she couldn’t catch her breath. Heat seemed to envelop her, sizzling across her lower back, dangerously close to where Jonas Nash’s arm held her so tightly, making her stomach clench. And she knew why she made that catty comment to Jonas.
She was attracted to him. God, she’d thought she was over this part of her life. Past being attracted to the men she worked with on a daily basis. She arrived at the station house or the stadium, did her job and went home to her empty apartment to get ready for the next game.
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 78
