Kickoff

by Jami Davenport

  “You give their opinion too much credence.” A muscle twitched in her father’s jaw. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does, Dad. This is your reputation. Your future. By them not saying anything, the press found you guilty.” She leveled him with her most serious look. “If you don’t care about yourself, think of how this affects Mitch and me.”

  His head jerked in her direction, more alert than she’d seen him in a long while. “What are you talking about?”

  “They seem to believe like father like daughter.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They had a permanent position available, but they only offered me a temporary one.”

  His face fell. He aged twenty years in a split second. “I hope that’s not true. I never wanted this scandal to affect either of you.”

  “I don’t think it’s the only reason, but it might have contributed. I had a hard time getting even an interview until my old boss pulled some strings, and Mitch barely held on to his coaching job. Dad, clear your name.”

  Her father shook his head. “Sorry, honey, can’t.”

  “Then I’ll fix it.” Rachel glared at him, irritated at his lack of interest in fixing his problems.

  Her father threw back his head and laughed. Actually laughed. Almost hysterical. If a six-foot-two bear of a man could be hysterical. She stared at him. Her mouth dropped open. His maniacal laughter continued until he wheezed for breath, panting like he’d run a marathon.

  “I fail to see what’s so funny.”

  “Now you sound like your mother. Damn, I needed that.” A sad smile crossed his face. Her mother had been a force to reckon with right up until the day she’d died in a car accident just before Rachel’s senior year of college. Thinking about it still hurt like it’d happened yesterday.

  “You can’t fix this. You couldn’t two years ago, and you can’t now.” He popped the top off a beer from a six-pack on the table. Rachel grabbed it from his hand and poured it down the sink.

  “You need help.” She met his gaze and wondered when she’d become the parent. He’d promised to go to counseling for months, but he never went. She didn’t know his finances, but he had to be living on fumes. There couldn’t be much left in his bank account.

  “Mind your own business.”

  She bit her tongue. Her father was her business, but she couldn’t make him change. No one could do that but him. If only he could get another coaching job. Coaching had been his all-consuming passion, and without it, he had nothing. Not even his kids could fill that void.

  After they ate dinner in silence, he fell into a deep sleep in his chair, and she let herself out.

  Driving away, Rachel stared at the road through tear-filled eyes.

  Her father’s fate had been determined when the state of California charged Vince Rizzoli with sports bribery and racketeering, citing several incidents of point-shaving at two major California colleges. Rizzoli had listed her father and several other coaches as clients who gambled big money on football games, even against their own teams.

  Through it all, Dave McCormick refused to defend himself other than insisting he was innocent. While he had never been formally charged nor was absolute evidence found to charge him, the allegations had ruined his reputation. High school players avoided signing with his team, which made for a dismal recruiting season. Backed into a corner, her father stepped down as football coach, though most people believed the college’s administration insisted on his resignation. The scandal discouraged other teams from considering him for open positions. Derek and Tyler knew her father. He’d coached them in high school and been close to them.

  A few well-placed words here and there would pave the way for him to get a new coaching position, but they’d refused to help. She’d never considered them the types not to get involved, but she didn’t know them that well anymore.

  There was more to this story, and somehow, those two were the keys to the truth.

  A truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  Chapter 3—Broken Plays

  Derek tossed his duffel bag into the trunk of Tyler’s sports car and heaved his tired body into the passenger seat. Grumpy and irritated, he stifled a yawn and strapped himself in for takeoff. “You’re forty-five minutes late.”

  “So?” Tyler slammed his car into gear and tore down the driveway, gravel flying and wheels skidding.

  Derek didn’t give a shit. He was too tired to pay attention to his cousin’s crappy driving. “We’re gonna be late.”

  They had a thirty-minute drive to the practice facility and only fifteen minutes to make it to the team meeting.

  “Not the way I drive.” Tyler took a long gulp of his coffee.

  He had a point. Zeroing in on the coffee, Derek rubbed his half-closed eyes in an attempt to get out the grit. “Did you get me one?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “I could use some coffee, you asshole. Didn’t sleep well last night.” Derek sighed and leaned his head against the cool window. Tyler ran the stop sign at the driveway entrance and tore onto the county road. Mailboxes sped by at an alarming rate. They’d be on I-405 in no time if they survived.

  “Thinking about Rachel?” Tyler grinned at him.

  “No,” Derek said too quickly and too adamantly. Tyler smelled blood.

  “You’re fucked, dude.” The jerk cast a wicked grin at him, turned up the rap song on his satellite radio, and tapped out the beat on his steering wheel.

  Derek reached over and turned it down. “Fuck you.”

  “I’d prefer to leave that to the ladies.”

  “You’re too damn cheerful for seven a.m.”

  “I got an extra forty-five minutes of sleep.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Besides, Cass woke me up with a present I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Great. Spare me the details.” Derek laid his head back against the leather headrest and closed his eyes.

  “You should try it. Maybe you wouldn’t be so fucking cranky.”

  “No, I’d be obnoxiously cheerful like you.” The worst thing about it was Tyler was right. He did need sexual release. It’d been too fucking long, which explained his current obsession with Rachel. He had tossed and turned all night as visions of that incredible weekend played over and over in his head.

  Not good.

  He should be thinking about football. Which was exactly why he didn’t need a distraction like her.

  Derek had to live and breathe football, absorb it into his bloodstream with no room for anything or anyone else. He had to think of Rachel as a former buddy and nothing more.

  Which was the only way he could endure seeing her every day.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Rachel lay in the brass bed and stared out the open window. A cool breeze ruffled the curtains. Frogs croaked in a nearby pond. The stars twinkled cheerfully in the early-morning sky, oblivious to her inner turmoil. She rubbed her hip where she’d bruised it on the doorjamb during a midnight trip to the bathroom.

  She studied the dark sky, looking for a sign of some kind, wondering if her mother watched from above. She wished she felt her presence, some kind of reassurance that she had a person on her side.

  Mom had been the only one in the family who’d understood her, supported her, and didn’t think less of her because she had zero athletic ability. Sports had been a big part of her mother’s life, just like the men in the family. Regardless, she’d accepted her daughter’s ineptitude toward athletics. Her brothers and father had prodded her to try harder, practice more, work at it. Mom had understood. Her mother had encouraged her to find a way to leverage her love of sports into a career that didn’t involve being an athlete.

  It’d been tough. Life and fate placed a heck of a lot of roadblocks in her path.

  By a tragic twist of fate, her mother had survived cancer only to die in a car accident. Life just wasn’t fair.

  Through it all, Derek had hovered in the background, a quiet yet supportive fixture in
their family. They’d hung out together. She’d leaned on him through high school as her mother fought cancer, told him her fears, her hopes, her dreams. He’d done the same. They’d forged a connection not easily forgotten.

  After her mother died, they’d had one more thing in common: his mother had abandoned him when he was eight years old. Growing up as kids, she’d wondered how he’d felt not having his mother around. Then she’d found out. It felt like hell.

  Even after all these years, it still hurt, like nothing she’d experienced before. Hardly a day went by that something didn’t remind her of her mother. She still reached for the phone to call her and share something, only to stare numbly at the receiver with an empty hole in her heart.

  Rachel swiped at the tears rolling down her cheeks and choked back a sob. She hadn’t caved then; she wouldn’t now. She was a woman in a male-dominated sport and hoping to get a coaching job. She had to be twice as good as any male coach on that field. She couldn’t make mistakes, couldn’t let old hurts affect her ability to do a good job. Her almost impossible task was made more difficult by having to see Derek Ramsey every single day. She hadn’t gotten over him, as much as she’d like to believe she had. Seeing him had driven home that point, but no one needed to know but her, most of all not Derek.

  Sighing, she sat up and got out of bed. Charlie, her cat, cast an annoyed look over his shoulder and shifted from his spot where he’d nestled next to her.

  After throwing on a robe, she padded to the kitchen to make coffee. She paused to gaze at the neat and tidy little home she’d rented thanks to a longtime friend of her mother’s. It was only five minutes from the practice facility in a quiet, old neighborhood, and she had already fallen in love with the newly remodeled cottage with its tidy garden of colorful flowers. Rachel didn’t garden, but her landlady lived next door and took care of everything.

  Downing a cup of coffee, she threw on some clothes, splashed water on her face, and headed to the door. Her neighbor’s demon dog, Simon, waited by the fence. His tail slapped on the wooden rungs of the railing. Instead of his ever-present ball stuffed in his mouth, he had one of her rain boots she’d left on the porch last night. Sighing, she dived for it, but Simon was faster. He evaded her like a good running back evading tacklers and barreled back over the fence into his own yard. She didn’t have time to go after him.

  The damn dog needed an intervention—or rehab. He was a serial thief of anything not bolted down.

  And she needed to get to work and prove her worth. So much for her rain boots.

  With a resigned sigh, she got into her car and backed out of her driveway and drove down the tree-lined street. Her phone rang, and she pressed the button on her dash to use it hands-free.

  “Hi, Mitch.”

  “How’s my favorite sister?”

  “On her way to work as we speak.”

  “Is the team treating you well?”

  “Considering this is my first day, they’re treating me great.”

  Her brother chuckled.

  “I saw Dad yesterday.”

  “How is he?”

  “You know how he is. Why didn’t you warn me that he’d gone so far downhill?”

  Mitch was silent for a long while. “Sorry, I guess I should’ve. Maybe I thought not talking about it would make it go away.”

  “Make it go away? He’s living in squalor and drinking his meals.”

  “We have to find a way to fix this.” Anger and frustration reverberated in his voice.

  Rachel pulled into the employee lot at the Steelheads practice facility and put her car in park. She had a few minutes to finish this conversation. “I agree. He’s the only parent we have left. We can’t let him die while he’s living. He’s innocent, but he refuses to defend himself. He won’t try to get another job or do anything positive. It’s like he’s paying penance.”

  “Yeah, I know. We have to clear his name. If Harris and Ramsey had spoken up when the shit hit the fan, the rumors Dad was involved might’ve been squelched.”

  “I know. We talked about this several times over the past couple years,” Rachel conceded.

  “You’re working with those two. Get tight with them, and maybe they’ll do something.”

  “I’m not going to be their buddy. I’m trying to get a job as their coach.” Rachel gripped the steering wheel and closed her eyes. She had enough going on without her brother putting pressure on her.

  “Ramsey’s got to make something happen this year, or he’s done.”

  She couldn’t argue that point. An exceptional athlete from birth, Derek had long legs that had given him the speed of a world-class sprinter. In college his lightning-fast reflexes eluded tacklers. His large hands and long fingers caught any football thrown in his vicinity. His blazing speed left defenders in the dust. Yet all the talent in the world hadn’t gotten him any further than a disappointing third-string wide receiver in the pros. She knew. She’d followed every step of his career.

  He’d gained twenty to thirty pounds on his lean body, all in muscle, courtesy of professional football. But being a pro had changed something else too, something not so easily defined. She’d read it in his stance, in his demeanor, and definitely in his eyes.

  The last time she’d seen him up close, he’d been an eager college senior. His quiet confidence had announced the world was his for the taking.

  She didn’t see that confidence now. Instead, he looked as if life had beaten him down too many times, and he didn’t quite trust it anymore.

  He’d changed, but then, so had she.

  Rachel ended the call with her brother, got out of her car, squared her shoulders, and walked toward the door of the facility. Shelving her personal problems, she was a professional first and foremost, ready to take on this male-dominated sport, or ready to fake it like she was.

  ~ ~ ~ ~

  Rachel’s first assignment was shadowing the offensive coordinator, Frank Carter. Frank was a gregarious guy with a ready smile and made her feel welcome.

  “We just want you to become comfortable with the offensive scheme we’re running here. Observe, make notes, and be ready to share anything of interest when necessary. You came highly recommended as having an eye for little details that make a big difference in a player’s performance.”

  Rachel thanked him and did as she was told. She watched, listened, learned, and evaluated their talent. Training camp was where the cream rose to the top, and everyone vied for a coveted spot on the team. Derek was one of the players not currently under contract. He could be cut as soon as the next guy. In football, there were very few guarantees. Rachel’s gaze kept slipping to him despite her best efforts.

  Head coach HughJack glanced down at his clipboard and turned to Coach Carter. “Is this a mistake?” He jabbed his index finger at the numbers on a chart he’d just been handed. Rachel’s gaze flicked downward, noting the times each player had finished sprinting drills. HughJack’s finger was on Derek’s time.

  Coach Carter shook his head. “The kid ran world-class times until he blew out his knee.”

  “I realize that, but it was before his surgery.”

  Frank looked down his own clipboard as if he expected the numbers to change. “Well, believe it.”

  “I remember watching him play in the Rose Bowl several years ago. Every pro coach from here to the East Coast salivated at the sight of him. He had the total package.”

  Derek had had it all—blazing speed, great hands, guts, and incredible instincts, not to mention brains and a work ethic.

  “Had is the operative word.”

  “Unfortunately it is. The word on the street is he’s lost his nerve.” HughJack frowned and scratched his head. “What a shame. The kid possesses all the physical attributes of an All-Pro.”

  “A wide receiver with a fear of being hit is worthless.”

  “Pretty much, especially when a dozen more are waiting to take his place.” HughJack rubbed his chin, while Derek ran his patterns with perfection se
veral yards away. “The kid did his homework.”

  “Do you think he’s salvageable?” Coach Carter asked.

  HughJack shrugged.

  Rachel stepped forward, surprising even herself. “I think he is.”

  She refused to cringe under the heat of their stares. She should’ve kept her mouth shut, but she hadn’t.

  “Enlighten us.” HughJack was almost smiling, as if he was looking forward to hearing what she had to say.

  “I know Derek. My dad coached him in high school, and I’ve known him all through college. He has crazy good talent. He’s a hard worker. His problems are in his head. Fix that, and you’ll fix him.”

  HughJack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He and Carter exchanged one of those looks that conveyed a message without words but left her in the dark. He addressed Rachel. “Good. He’ll be your first project. Watch him. Figure out what his issues are and report back to us.”

  Oh, Lord, no. Rachel swallowed back the protest rising in her throat. “You want me to work one-on-one with him?”

  HughJack assessed her as if considering his options. “Not yet. For now, I want you to observe and report. That’s all.” The head coach turned to Carter. “Test him. Put him up against our best DBs. Then in the preseason games, make sure he’s matched with the meanest, fastest, biggest badasses the game has to offer.”

  “I’ll put him on first string,” Carter said.

  “The kid has first-string ability. Does he have first-string heart? Let’s figure it out before we waste more time on him.”

  “He’s Harris’s cousin. Did you realize that?”

  “Seems I heard that somewhere. Now there’s a loose cannon if there ever was one. That guy is a first-class jerk. Cocky bastard.” HughJack’s gaze followed the play being run on the field. “Cocky confidence is a good thing.”