Protecting The Quarterback. Kristina Knight

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СКАЧАТЬ had escaped her fancy hairdo would feel against his skin.

      “...so I’m going to be in Texas next week to do a sit-down with the Bulls for the network, I’d love to chat with you, too.”

      “About how I played Prince Charming to your clumsy Belle at the awards tonight?” he asked, trying to throw her off balance.

      “Prince Charming ends up with Snow White, not Belle—”

      “But the Beast would have let you fall right into the floodlights. Prince Charming always rides to the rescue.” Probably he shouldn’t have mentioned the Beast, not because now she would equate him with the fairy-tale character, but because men like him weren’t supposed to know about fairy tales. He was beer and football and Vin Diesel movies, wasn’t that the basis of a three-week tell-all his last girlfriend sold to the tabloids? Jonas frowned at the phone.

      “The Beast would have swept me into a waltz and danced me straight to the podium,” she said, and there was what could only be described as starch in her voice. “After this year you’ll have free agent status and can go anywhere. Fans all over the world want to know if you’ll stay a Kentuckian or find a football home somewhere else.”

      Everyone wanted to know. Hell, he wanted to know. Unlike many of his football brethren, Jonas had joined the league with the intention of being a one-team star. He liked the money that came with football, but a strong team was more important. Then he’d been drafted by the Kentuckians and for the past five years he’d only been playing for the money.

      Now, if his shoulder was really junked, no other teams would even look.

      Then he’d be an athlete without a team. The mere thought made his heel tap against the carpeted floor of the limo.

      “Free agency could totally change your career, unless there was more to that injury than the team let on.” She waited a beat. “Jonas?”

      He had no skills outside of football.

      “Mr. Nash?”

      His degree was in freaking Hospitality, for crying out loud, because it gave him more time to concentrate on football. He was goddamned Mr. Football to fans all over the world. He was not, repeat not, sitting down with Brook Smith to chat about his career plans, the injury to his shoulder or whatever else was on her greedy, reporter mind. Not until he was sure he was over football. Right now all he was sure of was that he wanted one more season calling the plays.

      It might already be too late, the sly voice in his head said. The voice that sounded a lot like his mother.

      “I can make myself available. Whatever works for you, I’ll work into my schedule.” Her voice was cool, at odds with the rising temperature in the limo.

      Unsaid questions peppered his mind. What if the rest of rehab went by with as little improvement as he’d seen in the past weeks? What if the Kentuckians didn’t want him? What the hell kind of life could a man have if he was washed up before the age of thirty-two?

      “I’ll be in Kentucky, but maybe next time.”

CHAPTER TWO

      THE VIDEO PACKAGE rolled across the screen, and Brooks glanced at her phone as her text alert buzzed. It was the assignment editor for the sports department. Nash says no interview. Again.

      Damn it. Two months had passed since the awards show, and the man continued to dodge her requests for a sit-down.

      “What are the ramifications for the college program now?” The sports anchor in the studio asked, his voice sounding hollow through her earwig.

      Brooks refocused. She would get Jonas Nash to sit down with her, but she would not let the promise of a story with him jeopardize this one.

      “In the immediate, they’ve lost Bobby McCord, the head coach, and this is only a week after a Spring Game in which the offense looked off-balance and the defense couldn’t seem to make a play,” Brooks said to the sports anchor on the other side of the television screen. “My sources tell me a job search is in the works, but finding a coach willing to take on a program that has lost its star running back and defensive end because of a doping scandal, and before the collegiate authorities have handed down their sanctions, is going to be tough.”

      “Thanks, Brooks. We’ll have more on this breaking story as it hap—”

      “Was it hard turning your own boyfriend in as the head of the steroid ring?” The news anchor, a man Brooks had never liked, butted into the conversation between her and the sports anchor. Brooks blinked.

      “Bobby McCord was not my boy—”

      “But you’d been dating.”

      “No,” Brooks drew out the word. “We had dinner—twice—but that was months ago—”

      “Did you give him any warning about what you were about to do?”

      Brooks tried to separate the boiling anger she felt for the anchor from her job to report the facts about one of the biggest sports scandals so far this year. She’d done nothing wrong. Three weeks of serious investigation had led her to discovering Bobby headed up the steroid ring within his program. Three weeks of paperwork and following leads and working with the authorities. Still, the questions the anchor had asked made her clench her fists.

      “We asked Coach McCord for an interview after he’d been arrested, but he declined. Of course we will keep in contact through his legal team, and will bring you the latest on this story as it develops,” Brooks said, smile pasted on her face until the director turned off her camera. Then she heaved a sigh of relief and closed her eyes.

      Where had all that come from? She knew Alan Gentry didn’t like her, but she never imagined he would try to implicate her in a story like this.

      One of the other reporters clapped a hand over her shoulder. “Nice work on the McCord piece,” he said as he passed.

      “Thanks.” Brooks unclipped her microphone, leaving it on the high stool where reporters sat during newsroom live shots. She pulled the earwig from her ear and let it dangle over her shoulder, picked up her phone and began paging through her emails as she walked slowly back to her desk, trying to figure out what Alan was up to. It didn’t make sense.

      Their station was the first to break the story about steroid use in the program.

      “You done for the day?”

      Brooks drummed her fingers against her desk. She could make a few more calls, maybe try Jonas’s agent for the hundredth time, since going straight to the quarterback was getting her nowhere. She could confront Alan, but that would accomplish nothing. Or she could go home, have a glass of wine and celebrate being the first sports reporter to break this story. It was another feather in her cap.

      “Yeah,” she told the other reporter, who she knew was on until the eleven o’clock news. “I’m going to call this a day.”

      She gathered her things, put her earwig into the box in her desk and then slung her backpack over her shoulder.

      A definitely good day. And tomorrow, she would go back to her journalistic pursuit of Jonas Nash.

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