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“I just...why her? Why this reporter?”
“Because she’s the one sniffing around and I don’t think she’s got her eyes set on becoming the next Miss Thang Dating Jonas. This girl could not give a fig about what you have to offer off the field, but you’ve got the chance to make her care.”
“I don’t want to make her care.” Jonas folded his arms over his chest as he leaned his good shoulder against the wall. He didn’t, he insisted to himself. What Brook Smith thought of him was completely and totally beside the point. She was after a story, his story, and he hadn’t told anyone his story since Earl sat him down more than ten years ago and asked what he wanted out of life.
Jonas had wanted the hell out of Texas, that was what he wanted. Away from constantly falling short of what his mother expected of him. Away from the boring prep-school life he’d been leading. To be anyone and anything other than Jonas Nash, son of renowned particle physicist Beverly Nash. The woman who did everything absolutely right: she chose the paper-perfect candidate to be his father, she swore off caffeine and alcohol and even chocolate while she was pregnant and didn’t even inhale if someone had fish nearby. She vaccinated him according to the rules, never did the baby-talk thing and enrolled him in a fancy preschool by the time he was two. She didn’t cuddle. She read to him from her textbooks.
Only to find out before he even hit the fourth grade that he would never be a scientist. His brain didn’t work that way. Build a replica of New York City from LEGO bricks? No problem. Set him up to discover the secrets of string theory or dark matter and his brain shut down.
Named for a brilliant scientist, she would tell him, and you can’t even get the dosage for Tylenol right.
At seventeen, he’d been a wreck drinking Maalox by the carton diagnosed with his second bleeding ulcer. On a whim he followed the other guys in his class to the football field where he met Earl. From the moment he stepped onto the field he’d felt calm. As if football was something he could control, maybe even excel at. He’d excelled, all right, straight into the headlines of everything from fashion magazines to sports weeklies. Now his shoulder was a visit to the doctor away from junk, and the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about wanted the story that could ruin the one thing that made sense in his life.
God, his life was so freaking messed up right now.
“I don’t want her here. Not on campus and not with the kids, I just want all of this to go away.”
Earl was quiet for a long moment and when he finally spoke, Jonas knew he understood. “It’s this way or have her digging through every last second of your life. Do you remember what I told you that day at the college clinic?”
Jonas shook his head. One more lie couldn’t hurt anything.
“Bullshit. I told you that you have the tools. You can be great with the talents you’ve been given or you can wreck your whole life trying to be something you’re not.”
“And I chose football—my talent—and look where it landed me.”
“Boy, you’re more hardheaded than a mule.” Earl shook his head and threw his pen down on the desk. “You let all the cameras and girls and fluff stories about how hot you are change your focus. You got an agent talking you up to Hollywood instead of figuring out a decent football slot, and a handful of teammates who want to ride your coattails to the next Sexiest Athlete Alive cover story. Women break into your house on a weekly basis because they’re convinced you’re the bad boy their momma always warned them about.” Earl took a breath. “And until I got here three weeks ago, the Kentuckians’ management were so wrapped up in your college legend that they kept drafting for defense, thinking your ability to see and run the field will win them games. We can fix the football, and I’ve seen the X-rays. Your shoulder will come back. But, buddy, if you want the whole package, your image is the next item up for bid.”
His image. Jonas snorted. His image was parties in the Caribbean, mansions in Dallas and Los Angeles and anything else superficial that kept people at a distance. Until five months ago, he had been mostly content with the image. Sure, it chafed now and then, but what image didn’t? Now, though, it felt as if he was wearing shoes that were two sizes too small. “I don’t like people poking around in my business.”
“Didn’t say you had to like it. Said you had to run with it.”
Run with it. Jonas sighed. Hadn’t he tried that? Drafted to a badly managed team and he’d figured out a way to keep the players’ morale high. Of course, high morale didn’t lead to championships.
“Think she’s still waiting downstairs?”
“I’d bet your next paycheck on it.”
Jonas paused at the door. “Maybe I should just give it up.” He rubbed his shoulder, and while the touch didn’t hurt, it still felt off. “I gave it a good run. I’ve got more money in the bank than I can ever spend. I don’t want to be one of those old players who can’t walk because of bad knees or who can’t shower themselves because of shoulder pain.”
Earl was quiet for so long that Jonas had to turn around. The coach stared at him for a long minute. “Is that what you really want?” His voice was quiet in the room, but Jonas could still hear the censure.
“No.” God help him, he wanted more than to live off the millions in his bank account. Wanted more than to be an asterisk in some football trivia book.
“What is it that you want?”
“I want the championships.”
“Because you want more headlines? More fluff stories about the fabulous life of Jonas Nash?”
Jonas shook his head. “Because I want to leave a legacy. I don’t want to be the asterisk.” Earl had made him great in college. Maybe the coach could work that magic again in the pros.
“I can’t make the legacy thing happen, you have to do that. It starts on the field, but what you do off the field is just as important.”
* * *
“WHY ARE YOU doing this?”
Brooks wasn’t one to look a proverbial gift horse in the mouth, but she was still caught up on the why of this whole arrangement. Especially after Jonas let her cameraman, Kent, shoot him from every possible angle, but refused to be hooked up with a mic for even a quick “this is what we do here” interview. Instead he pawned her off on the head groundskeeper and a scintillating ten-minute interview about the benefits of field turf.
Most of the athletes Brooks had come in contact with couldn’t wait to crow about who they helped and why. Most because they were so excited to give back to the communities that raised them; a few because of the status their charities offered.
Jonas looked along the football field at the vinyl-covered Styrofoam numbers marking the yard lines on the grass. He studied the area they’d been walking for a long moment. Finally she was going to get a real answer. Brooks’s fingers itched for her notebook and pen. The same notebook and pen Jonas insisted she leave in the truck along with every other piece of equipment save the actual camera and a single tape.
“Well, from four o’clock this afternoon through noon next Friday, we’ll have fifty ten-and eleven-year-olds on this field. If the work isn’t finished this morning, I have to do it in the afternoon heat. We princes melt in ninety-degree weather,” he added with a waggle to his brows and laughter in his voice.
“You’re no prince,” Brooks muttered.
“And you’re no princess, Princess,” Jonas retorted.
“Because I don’t wave my pom-poms in your face?”
“I wouldn’t mind your pom-poms in my face, come to think of it.”
Brooks blushed, glad Kent had taken the camera back to the truck a few minutes before. “Why do you keep bringing up princess movies? I thought boys were all about SpongeBob and Transformers and things.”
He watched her for a long moment. “You don’t remind me of a square yellow sponge, and your curves are way more enticing than even the sleekest of metal robots,” he said, and the expression in his deep brown eyes made her swallow. Hard.
There was a bit too much honesty in his gaze for her to shrug this off as another attempt to keep her off balance.
“Besides, I like old movies.” Jonas shrugged. “The westerns, the romantic comedies, animated stuff. I’ve watched it all at one time or another.”
“A connoisseur of film?”
He half smiled, but she had a feeling the expression was more self-deprecating than fond memory. “Something like that.”
“My dad and I used to watch old football films—not the game-tape variety.” She followed him down the line as he adjusted first one and then another line marker, seeming to ignore her. “I think my favorite was Knute Rockne-All American.”
“And I’m the Gipp to your Rockne? I’m not dead or dying, Princess,” he said, his voice flat. But his spine was straight and sparks of anger flew from his gaze.
Brooks blinked. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. She just liked the movie. Mostly she liked that she’d watched it eating popcorn and drinking soda with her father on a sultry summer night when she was too young to really understand why Gipp was sick and what that meant. “No, I—” she took a breath “—I just like the movie, watching it with my dad. You like movies, and—”
“And you thought we’d bond over an old black-and-white about a dying football player? Dream on, Princess.” He turned his back on her to adjust another line marker. Brooks hurried to keep up with him.
“If you don’t want me here why did you invite me?”
“I didn’t, remember?”
“You didn’t object.” He raised an eyebrow. “Too much. You didn’t have to go along, but you did. Why?” she asked, hating the fact that she needed to know the answer so badly. Hating even more the fear that he would say he didn’t want her here because he didn’t like her. Physical reactions couldn’t be faked, but people were physically attracted all the time and couldn’t stand the people they were attracted to.
“Why are you so focused on ruining...never mind,” he said as he adjusted the last marker. Jonas positioned it just so in the grass, still not looking at her.
“You think I’m here to ruin your little side project?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” he said and the flatness of his voice was like the scrape of fingernails over a chalkboard. She would never hurt a child, and she had a feeling Jonas knew that and was needling her. Trying to make her walk out so he’d be alone. Well, damned if she would do that.
“It was your coach who came up with this idea. All I wanted was an interview.”
“So you could report on what big, bad Jonas got up to during the off-season.”
“So I could ask big, bad Jonas if he completely dislocated his shoulder on that last play. And, if he did dislocate it, did that lead to a complete labral tear or only a partial?”
Jonas whirled on the field. “Who told you I dislocated my shoulder?”
“I watched the video tape. Even we princesses know how to operate Play and Rewind on our own. Also, the team held a press conference, which you didn’t attend, and the old coach mentioned surgery.”
“Yeah, well, he was mad about being replaced by Highland.”
“He didn’t lie, though, did he?” She put her hand on his arm, ignoring the flare of heat that coursed along her fingertips as she did so. “Fifteen million people saw you get hit. At least ten football analysts have gone on record with shoulder dislocation as the reason for your surgery. I’m one more, but I’m not just asking about the injury. I want to know what happens next.”
“And if I don’t know?” Was it her imagination or was there a rawness to his voice?
“A lot of people don’t know what happens next.”
“You seem to have that all mapped out. Weren’t you in the spotlight a month or so ago because of your relationship with a steroid supplier?” Imagination, she decided, because his Texas drawl was decidedly pompous.
Brooks blushed. “No, I broke the story of steroid abuse at a program.”
“A program that was headed up by an ex-boyfriend.”
“Wrong. But I can see you’ve been doing your research on me. Funny, I thought I was the reporter.”
“So you weren’t dating him?”
“I don’t date football players. Or coaches. Or team executives. I have very strict rules about that. But, we did go to dinner. Twice, with mutual friends.”
“And now you’re here in Kentucky looking for your next big scoop?”
“I’m in Kentucky because this is the assignment the network offered, and it’s a good one. Don’t think I haven’t thanked my lucky stars—”
“And your father’s connections—”
Brooks crossed her arms over her chest. “His connections are less than you’d imagine, but yes, I am the daughter of a Kentucky football legend. I grew up on a football field, remember? I’ve probably attended more games than you’ve played in, wrapped my share of jacked-up ankles and wrists and was seriously considering a degree in sports medicine before the journalism bug bit me.” She took a breath. “I just want to tell your story. Your way.”
“You wanted to be a trainer?” Jonas laughed as he said the words.
Brooks straightened, stepped closer to him and jabbed her index finger at his chest. “I’d have been a kick-ass sports doc. If I could have just passed the fainting test.”
“Fainting test?”
“Me, blood. Don’t mix so much.” Saying those words aloud, to Jonas Nash who had probably never failed at anything, rankled.
Laughter shot from his mouth, but seemed to come from all over his body. He doubled over at the waist and the smile splitting his face was a mile wide. “You were going to be a sports doc and you don’t like blood?”
“Has nothing to with not liking blood. Has to do with fainting at the sight of blood,” she said. “Give me bulging ankles, torn hamstrings, even a dislocated finger and I’m fine. One bone protruding from a leg and I’m going to be flat on the ground with the injured player.” He kept laughing. No, no, howling was more like it. Brooks shook her head. “There, I told you something embarrassing about me. Now, you, and it doesn’t even have to be embarrassing. Why do I need to show up here every day for the next couple of weeks before you’ll sit down with me? Your story, remember? I just want to be the one to tell it.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Even though you’re the daughter of a football legend.” Jonas turned toward the track, crossed it and picked up a couple of orange cones. He began setting them up along the cinder track. Brooks hurried to catch up.
“I’m giving your charity much-needed publicity.”
“In exchange for open access to me,” he put in.
“And I’ve been nothing but nice to you since the day we met, while you’ve spent countless hours thinking up ways to avoid even having a phone conversation with me.”
“So you kept calling for personal reasons.” He put down a cone and, before Brooks could back away, drew his finger down the side of her face. Her skin tingled under his touch and she was frozen by the look in his eyes. Little flecks of gold stood out from the brown and her heart began to pound. He wanted her. Not on this field and definitely not in an interview, but Jonas Nash wanted little Brooks Smith. She swallowed, hard. “All you had to do was tell me that.”
“I-it wasn’t personal,” she said, wondering why it was so hard to concentrate while he touched her.
Jonas twisted his mouth as if disappointed and dropped his hand from the side of her face. “That’s too bad. Because I’m real good at personal,” he said.
“Is the injury why your hands trembled when you picked up the trophy at the awards show?” She had to get this conversation back where she understood what was happening. She didn’t date football players, didn’t even find most of them attractive. Yet with this man all she felt was attraction. Attraction and excitement and maybe just a little hint of danger.
“My shoulder is fine,” he said. “How are your ankles?”
Brooks looked down, dumbfounded by the question. “Okay?”
“I thought it would be polite to ask since, you know, you have so many problems staying upright. Might want to invest in some orthopedic shoes if that imbalance keeps up.”
How dare he? She’d slipped on a marble floor in four-inch heels. Even if every other presenter seemed to have no problem with the stage, this was so not the time to bring that up. This was the time to...to...do something else.
“My ankles are just fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Good to know, maybe it’s just me that keeps throwing you off balance, Brook.” He 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. Yes, she was a reporter with a job to do, but that job wasn’t to ruin his life.
She flexed her fingers.
“And it isn’t Brook, 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 yummy 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.
Jonas Nash needed to stay off-limits.
CHAPTER FOUR
JONAS LAY ON his bed at the farm he’d bought the previous year, staring out the window. What if this didn’t go well? What if the kids didn’t want anything to do with a washed-up quarterback? He grimaced. Washed-up was probably a little strong. The boys had seemed excited enough the previous afternoon, but that could have been from just getting off the buses that brought them in and not enthusiasm about two weeks of football.
He sat up and, with his elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands. He’d never really spent time at the Building Blocks of Football Camp before. Sure, he would show up on opening day and give a ten-minute pep talk, but then he’d be back in his car going to whatever vacation or party was on the agenda, and he’d fooled himself that he was doing it for the team. When he was photographed, the team was photographed. Fooled himself into thinking a bunch of party-hard football players could become a winning team when really it meant they were tired on game day. Unreliable to one another and to the fans.
The worst case of entitlement I’ve seen on the football field, ever. Wasn’t that what Walt Zeigler, their former coach, said before walking away from the press conference podium—and football—in February?
And it was Jonas’s fault. He’d led his college team to a National Championship. He didn’t lead the Kentuckians anywhere except to a bar or a beach.
Obsessing on the past wouldn’t change it, though. Action might change the future of the team. Action that included hard work, and it might as well start with a football camp for kids from around the region.
Within a half hour he was showered and dressed and on the highway, heading to the camp. He ate a protein bar in the truck but stayed in the cab, staring at the banner hanging over the field entryway.
Character. Courage. Commitment.
The camp banner. His camp banner. His idea. And not for a photo opportunity, but because he believed it. He grabbed his bag from the passenger seat and slung it over his shoulder. All those years ago, football had given him direction; it would do it again, for him and for the boys coming to the camp. He was through failing.
“Hey, Muscles,” said Brooks from behind him. “I thought we might get to the field before you today.”
“Probably wouldn’t set a good example if I was late to my own camp on the first full day.”
“And you’re worried about setting a good example?” Her green eyes were sharp, but her tone light.
“Yeah. I am.” It was past time he lived up to the promises he made to himself during that first camp with Earl: that he would be the one to decide his worth, no one else. No more swilling Maalox, no more killing himself trying to be something that he simply wasn’t.
She pointed over his shoulder and he turned to see several of the boys filing out from the main gym where they’d built a kind of dorm system for the duration of the camp.
“Then you’d better get ready. Those boys don’t look like they’re here for a tea party,” she said as one boy jostled another. A few separated from the group to pick up balls from the bins on the sidelines and began throwing to one another.
This he understood. The excess of energy early in the morning. The good-natured teasing and jostling. The need to have a football in his hands. Jonas couldn’t stop the smile that spread over his face.
“If they were here for a tea party they’d have dressed better.”
“They are a little underdressed for finger sandwiches and cucumber slices.” Brooks folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side so that her dark blond ponytail brushed past her shoulders. She wore khaki capris and flat-soled shoes that would make walking on the field turf easier than heels. An emerald-green silky top drifted just past her slim hips and set off her eyes. “Do I pass inspection?”
Jonas shrugged. “I was just thinking you made a good shoe choice. Most of the female reporters I’ve known insist on five-inch heels.”
“I’m not most sports reporters.”
“So I’ve gathered.” Her cameraman brushed past them. “I should apologize for getting your name wrong. Somehow I never heard that s on the end.”
“A lot of people get it wrong.”
“So you’ve told off, what, a thousand people in your lifetime because of your name?”
“Not quite a thousand.” She glanced at him from under her lashes and the connection of their gazes tightened the muscles in his belly. Jonas swallowed. “Most of the time I let it slide. Yesterday afternoon I was tired and hot and I snapped at you. So I’ll accept your apology if you’ll accept mine.”
“Technically that wasn’t an apology.” He couldn’t help the little jibe. Not because he wanted to make her angry or keep her off-balance, but because it was fun baiting her. Fun to watch that slow burn of annoyance straighten her spine or light a fire in those green eyes. Or, like now, make her pull the corner of her lower lip between her teeth.
“Technically you didn’t apologize, either,” she said finally. “I thought this little confab was about burying the hatchet.”
“And I thought it was about saying hello before a day filled with sweaty teenage boys, footballs flying through the air and—”
“And you avoiding more questions from me? Don’t worry, I’m writing all the questions down, and I’ll ask you every single one at the end of the camp. Starting with this one—you hinted that I kept calling because of a personal interest, not business. I postulate that, since you always had a ready excuse, you spent a lot of time thinking about me this spring.”
Jonas opened his mouth to rebut her suggestion, but then snapped his mouth closed. Because he had thought about her. A lot. Her scent had stayed with him after the awards show. The sound of her voice over the phone could make him shiver. And sometimes he could still feel the heat from her lower back against his hand.
Brooks put a bit more space between them. “Just how often did you think about me between the awards show and when I arrived at the stadium this week?”
“You barely crossed my mind,” he lied.
She nodded, but a knowing smile spread across her face. Brooks turned and walked away quickly, joining the photographer at the sideline.
Jonas waited a long moment, but Brooks didn’t look his way. He shouldered his bag again and took the track around the other side of the field. He glanced back once. Brooks pointed at a group of boys and said something to the photographer, seemingly oblivious to him. But then her head turned slightly in his direction. For a split second their gazes seemed to meet across the field, and a spark of electricity seemed to ignite along the connection. That small smile spread across her face again.