She raised an eyebrow and looked him slowly up and down. Which made him go from slightly interested to fully motivated. Finally, her gaze returned to his.
“Like I said, Muscles, nothing there I haven’t seen before. I’ll just schedule our sit-down for tomorrow morning.” She turned away and then glanced back over her shoulder. “The coach already mentioned you were free from nine to nine-thirty.”
With that she stepped over another bench and made her way over the carpeted floor to the door leading to the weight room and out to the field.
Jonas looked down, holding his hands out to the side. “Now you have to go all Magic Mike? The woman doesn’t like us, buddy. The woman could hurt us.” As her scent faded into the familiar locker room smell of Bengay and sweat, his member slowly returned to normal. “That’s better, and don’t even think about doing that tomorrow, got it?”
* * *
THERE WAS SOMETHING about the green of the Kentucky countryside in early June, Brooks thought, as she rolled down the window of her car. A breeze blew through the window and for a moment she wished she still had the convertible Mustang her parents had surprised her with at her college graduation. Why had she ever thought the sedan was a more grown-up car than the Mustang? She closed her eyes for a second and breathed deep. Didn’t matter. She’d made her choices. Maybe she would buy a new Mustang. Or a new-to-her ’Stang. In the mean time she could still enjoy the Kentucky breeze blowing through her windows and the scent of...home was the best way she could describe it. As she continued down the highway the annoyance at Jonas Nash and his continued mutilation of her name melted away into something different.
Something a little more powerful than the story she knew he was hiding. She saw right through the heavy-handed flirting and beneath he seemed just a little bit broken. And she was a sucker for broken.
Brooks turned off the main highway onto the quiet lane that led to her parents’ two-story home outside Louisville. This was as good a place as any to start her tour with the Kentuckians, especially since training camp was held just down the road at a local college.
Her dad’s familiar truck was gone, as was her mom’s classic Thunderbird. She checked her watch. Dad would be at the high school for at least another hour and her mother was likely at the church or picking up groceries. When Brooks had arrived her mother said something about needing extra supplies—as if the addition of Brooks’s one-hundred-thirty-pound body meant the Smith family now needed to shop at the bulk food store or buy an entire cow to get them through the summer. Brooks chuckled as she turned off the engine and gathered her things. She used the key she’d never removed from her ring to enter the back door into the kitchen. A pecan pie sat on the table with a note from Heidi. “Save a little for Dad. The last day of school always makes him crave sweets.”
Smiling, Brooks put the note back on the pie topper and then pulled a bottle of water from the fridge before climbing the stairs to settle in at the small desk where she’d done her homework as a teen. Posters of the Backstreet Boys still lined the walls and she made a note to redecorate—or at least remove them—as soon as possible. She made a few notes about the injury and then pulled the coverage of the hit up on her tablet and watched in real time and slow motion how Jonas’s body reacted when the defender drove him into the ground. His body seemed to collapse in on itself—a trick of the camera and the protective pads he wore, she knew—and then bounce back. For a long moment he was perfectly still, then he slowly got up and lumbered off the field. Holding his right arm close to his body.
Maybe she did need pie.
A moment later, with a generous slice of pie on a plate, she returned upstairs and watched the coverage again, making more notes. She watched the interviews about the “minor surgery” and twisted her mouth to the side. Minor surgery didn’t explain the shaking hands she’d seen or the fact Jonas had been in Kentucky all winter when he’d normally be at his house in Texas or sailing the ocean with one Hollywood starlet or another.
“Even during the off-season, you’re watching film,” her father, Jimmy Smith, said from the doorway.
Brooks put her hand to her chest. “Don’t startle me like that! And I could say the same for you. I can’t remember a Saturday morning you didn’t spend looking over game film.” Her father pushed a chair to the desk and sat beside her. “Speaking of, shouldn’t you be reminding your players not to get into too much trouble over the summer break right about now?”
He shook his head and his shaggy, silver hair fluttered around his head. “I’ll have ’em in camps most of the summer. Don’t remember you minding all those Saturday mornings. You’d be nose-deep in film, too, telling me my tight end was too slow or my strong-side tackle was holding.” He eyed the half-eaten pie as he sat on the edge of her bed. “I see you found your mom’s pecan pie.”
“Plain sight on the counter.” Brooks grabbed the pie and held it close to her chest. “You can get your own.”
“Maybe later.” He nodded toward her tablet. “What’cha got cooking?”
“I’m not sure.” She rolled her chair beside him, reset the video and played it for her dad.
He watched it through a couple of times and whistled low. “I remember seeing that as it happened. Bad way to dislocate a shoulder. I know your job is to report on the Kentuckians year-round, but this is old news, kiddo.”
“I’m interviewing him tomorrow. Something’s off.”
“’Course it’s off. He dislocated his shoulder.” Jimmy started the video again. “See how he’s not moving at all? Sign it’s a bad dislocation. He had surgery, another bad sign.”
“His hands shook. At the awards show a few months ago. He only held the trophy for a moment or so, but his hands shook. The thing couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds.”
“Joint injuries are funny things.”
“He’s also been dodging me since the show.”
“And you’re like a dog with a bone when you think something is going on.” Jimmy slid an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Sometimes an injury is just an injury.”
“Sometimes it’s more.”
He nodded and stood. “It’s good to have you home, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Brooks furrowed her brow as she watched the clip once more. “It’s good to be home.” But he was already gone, probably down to the kitchen to nab a slice of pecan pie.
Brooks finished her slice, savoring the crunch of the pecans and the sweetness of Karo syrup and sugar. As sweet as Jonas probably thought he’d been when he more or less propositioned her in the middle of the Kentuckians’ locker room. As sweet as it had been the past few days to wake up in her old room, bad decor and all.
What is it I can do for you? The quarterback’s voice echoed in her mind.
Oh, she’d been tempted. For a split second, she wondered if she should break her rule about dating athletes. He only wanted to distract her, though, he wasn’t serious. Brooks was a serious-minded woman. She didn’t expect every guy she dated to be the marrying kind, but she had a picture in her mind of how her life should look in a few years and there was definitely a guy and a few kids.
The guy suddenly looked a lot like Jonas Nash.
She shook her head. Jonas Nash wasn’t part of her future, not anymore than any of the Backstreet Boys had ever been, and she was too old for star-struck daydreaming. He was an interview. He was layers and layers of story, but that was that.
Her tablet buzzed in her hands, signaling an incoming video chat.
“I’m staying in Louisville,” Trisha Lamott, Brooks’s best friend since high school, said gleefully as soon as the video window connected. She raised her wineglass toward the screen and then tapped it against the glass. “Me. In Louisville and on track to make partner by the time I’m thirty-five.” She drank the glass of wine, picked a bottle off the cabinet nearby and refilled he
r glass.
Trisha’s shoulder-length, brown hair was perfectly arranged and she wore a sparkly camisole under her white lab coat. Leave it to Trisha to look like a model for business casual after a day treating torn ligaments and setting fractures. Brooks checked her watch. Just after eleven in the morning, she hadn’t lost an entire day watching the old clip of Jonas.
“You said you wanted Chicago.”
“I didn’t want to jinx it. I love Chicago.” Trisha drank more wine. “There are restaurants and museums and—”
“And Kentucky has the Derby and Louisville Sluggers and Southern Comfort. Not to mention the Kentuckians.”
“Exactly. Kentucky is perfection. To everyone except the girl living in beautiful, sunny Miami.”
Brooks chuckled. “You mean the girl who just got a promotion that landed her in Louisville for at least the next year.” At least, she thought it was a promotion. Technically, she was still a reporter, but she was a network reporter, in charge of an entire bureau. Well, team. Still.
“You’re coming back home?”
“I arrived last night,” Brooks said as she pulled her hair from the elastic band, smoothed it through her hands and then reset the ponytail. “The network gave me all of three days to get here so I spent it packing and making moving arrangements. I was going to tell you all about it this weekend.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t call me immediately to celebrate. You were my first call.”
“Your job offer doesn’t come with a thousand mile move attached.” Brooks chuckled and then tapped the screen separating them. “Should you really be celebrating with wine before noon?”
“Yep. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”
The chuckle turned into a full blown laugh. On her side of the screen, Trisha rinsed her wineglass before putting it in the sink.
“So have you caught up with the Captain Quarterback yet? You know, it’s kind of weird that Mr. Always-A-Tabloid-Headline doesn’t want to talk to an actual reporter.”
“Interviewing him tomorrow morning, actually,” Brooks said. Although, Jonas certainly didn’t seem like a media whore now. She couldn’t remember the last time his picture had been in the paper for anything.
Brooks finished her pie. “We should celebrate both our new jobs in style.”
“How about Thursday night, at Mendocino’s? We’ll celebrate your new job and me being the new doc at Bone Creek, Louisville.” Trisha stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled so loudly Brooks thought her tablet screen might crack. “We’ll break out the good stuff. Champagne for me. Tequila for you.” Trisha signed out of the chat window.
Brooks looked around her childhood room. Old wallpaper, old posters. The same lumpy mattress, same prom dress in the back of her closet. Same ribbons and trophies on her bookshelves.
God, she never expected football to lead her back to Louisville. Back to the shadow of her famous father. Somehow, though, she didn’t experience the same strangled feeling she’d felt so many times as a kid. Instead the room felt familiar. Not completely comfortable, but not alien, either. Maybe, though, it would be a good idea to look for her own apartment. Something closer to the affiliate and stadium.
A cool, Kentucky breeze slipped through her open window. Brooks put her tablet away and then stood before the open window, looking out over the rolling, green hills. A lawn mower rumbled to life outside and the crisp scent of clipped grass tickled her nose.
For the next year, Louisville was home again. She had an interview with Jonas Nash in the morning. Good luck was definitely on her side.
CHAPTER THREE
AT EXACTLY EIGHT FIFTY-FIVE the next morning Brooks was outside the office of the new head coach of the Kentuckians, Earl Highland. The walls of the reception area were covered with team memorabilia and signed pictures, and the wood floors gleamed in the bright morning sun. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the practice field, the field turf there a brilliant green. She could see a few players running laps around the field, but knew most of the team were still at their off-season homes. At ten minutes after nine, a ponytailed secretary wearing a Kentuckians tee and faded jeans ushered Brooks through the office door.
The coach wore an old tracksuit with a whistle around his neck, and his light brown hair was cropped close to his head. Not like any other professional coach she’d met, he was more like her father. Earl had coached Jonas through college to two national championships and a number one draft pick position, and the football world had been surprised when he’d stepped into the coach’s office here a few weeks before. She’d met him once, when she tagged along with her dad on a college visit with one of his players, and remembered how he’d brought her into the conversation a few times. Most big-time coaches didn’t pay any attention to her. Earl was part of the reason she followed her father into football.
Every flat surface was piled high with notebooks, DVD boxes and T-shirts. Whistles littered a side table and spilled over to a box between the low table and the desk. A few pairs of old tennis shoes sat under a window and Earl’s trademark bright red hoodie lay in a pool at the feet of a brass coatrack. The room was so much like her dad’s office at the high school and the den he’d made into a second office at the house that she had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t somehow sitting in the little room.
If it were her father’s office the quarterback wouldn’t be six feet five inches of sexuality. The man sitting across from Earl definitely smoldered.
Jonas sat in a worn leather chair, wearing old cargo shorts, black flip-flops and a ragged tee that had “NAVY” written on it. He might have been a kid on a college campus, albeit not the college she’d attended. Somehow the guys Brooks remembered from her school days paled in comparison to the giant sitting to the side of Earl Highland’s desk, ankle crossed over his knee and his long fingers beating a furious tattoo against his well-muscled thigh.
“Brooks Smith, Jonas Nash,” Earl said, his voice gravelly and loud in the quiet room. “Although I hear you’ve already met.” His gray gaze was filled with mirth as he motioned between them. “How’ve you been, kid?”
“Good. Dad sends his regards,” she said.
Earl smiled and his eyes seemed to brighten. “Tell Jimmy we need to shoot the breeze sometime soon, would you?”
“Sure.” Brooks took the seat opposite Jonas and said, “We have met, twice, actually.” And he still doesn’t know my name, a petty voice in her head reminded her. He didn’t know her name, and yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Great, just great.
“The second was a little more fun than the first,” Jonas said, “for Brook, anyway.”
Brooks beetled her brows, but before she could offer a retort, Earl cut in. “In any case, you’re probably wondering why I’ve brought you both in this morning.”
“I assumed for the interview, are we going to the field?”
“I’m not doing any damned interview—”
“Jonas.” Earl’s voice was soft but there was no mistaking the command in it. “I had another idea.”
Brooks crossed one leg over the other and sat forward. Whatever this was had to be good. “I’m all ears.”
“Coach—”
“We talked about this,” he said to his player. Then turned his attention back to Brooks. Watching the looks passing between player and coach was fascinating. Brooks didn’t need telepathic abilities to know Jonas didn’t like whatever was about to be said one bit. Which made her like it even more. The coach continued speaking. “Jonas is heading up a youth football camp for the next couple of weeks—”
“Isn’t he still rehabbing the shoulder?”
Earl continued as if Brooks hadn’t said anything. “This is important to him. It’s a program for underprivileged kids. They’ll come in from Louisville, of course, but as far south as Memphis and as far east as Ra
leigh. Learn some fundamentals, practice drills, and along the way have some real team-building experiences.” Earl looked from Jonas to Brooks and back again. When he skewered her with his gray gaze, Brooks wanted to be anywhere but inside the small office with piles of folders and loose-leaf papers scattered about.
“I’m not sure what that has to do with my interview,” she finally said, her voice little more than a squeak. What was it about the direct gaze of football coaches that left her quavering in her boots? Well, ballet flats, but, still.
“Maybe everything. Jonas and I were just talking about how the program could use a media push. You have network pull, and you’re assigned to the Kentuckians through to the end of the season, so it makes sense.”
“I’m assigned to the Kentuckians, not to one player.” Brooks sat up straighter in her chair. Hard gaze or not, these two were not going to derail her assignment. With the veritable all-access pass she had with the team, she could create real buzz. Maybe land a spot at the network sports desk or maybe even in the booth during games. “I can’t report on the other players if I’m all the way in—” she looked from man to man.
“Hyde Park,” Jonas said, reluctantly. The neighborhood was a ten-minute drive from the training camp facility. Not so far away she couldn’t report on what was going on, but something was off about this request.
“And several team staffers will be on hand, talking to the boys about nutrition and proper training as well as the sport fundamentals,” Earl added. “Think of it as a team training camp, but with an emphasis on kids, not professional athletes.”
With the right angle, this could be something the network would be interested in. There were several initiatives the league was involved in to get kids more active, and this camp sounded like a way to bridge league and team programs. But it could just as easily be covered by the local affiliate. They didn’t need her, and she did need an interview with Jonas. “Why me?”
Earl studied her for a long moment, which was odd because Jonas seemed to be making a point of not looking at her. Not even a sideways glance. His chocolate-brown eyes were focused on the corner wall seam as if something magical might appear at any moment. Weird. He’d had no problem giving her a hard time in the locker room yesterday. He might not like her reporter side, but he liked other parts of her. After yesterday’s locker room incident, Brooks knew where she stood on the personal like-o-meter of Jonas Nash.
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 81
