Protecting The Quarterback. Kristina Knight

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СКАЧАТЬ a fine line of freckles danced across her nose. Jonas wanted to run his fingers over those freckles, but that would be yet another bad idea, so he stepped over the low bench and into the main walkway, into her personal space. He saw her pupils dilate, and smiled.

      “Now that I’ve helped you save face before millions of viewers around the globe, what exactly is it that I can do for you?”

      Then his towel betrayed him by slithering down his legs. Jonas wanted to snatch it off the floor, but stopped himself. Athletes just didn’t go grabbing for towels and tees in the locker room.

      “You can sit down with me for that little chat we talked about after the awards show.”

      Jonas casually pulled up the towel and settled it back over his hips. “Sweetheart, if you just wanted to chat you should have told my agent.”

      “About your future,” she said, teeth clenched. “What happens after this season? You’ll be a free agent, but with your old college coach now leading the team, will you stay?”

      “I never said I was leaving.”

      “No one has said anything, which usually means something is up.”

      Jonas had to derail this conversation and he had to do it fast. He couldn’t just turn down the offer; the coaching staff had made it clear to him this morning that the sideline reporter from the network had full access.

      Jonas had never met a reporter who didn’t have an agenda where he was concerned.

      And in this case it was a woman, which made her naturally curious and, in his opinion, worse than most.

      “Something’s about to come up, all right, but I don’t think it’s what you want to know about.” He leaned in, getting a whiff of her lily-and-vanilla scent. The same scent that kept him up nights through the spring he spent busting his ass to get his shoulder back under control. Something was coming up, all right, and it was nothing he should be sharing with a reporter. Especially not a reporter like her. “Or maybe that’s the something that had you calling everyone from my agent to my college coach and the secretary here over the spring.”

      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 СКАЧАТЬ