Taking a Risk

by Jen Talty

  “Get a room, Coach,” a male voice shouted from somewhere in the back.

  He jerked his head back, but the rest of his body remained pressed against hers.

  “That was the third-string quarterback, wasn’t it?” he whispered, forcing his breath to remain even. His mind told him to back away from the woman. His body said something entirely different.

  Currently, his body won the tug of war.

  “Actually, it was the rookie field goal kicker, not that it makes a difference.” She kept her gaze locked with his, which didn’t help the pounding of his heart, nor the thought of scooping her up and carrying her out the door to his car where he doubted he’d be able to control himself.

  “Robert and his wife are heading this way,” Lilliana said.

  “Wife?” Nolan sucked in a breath, remembering his only role was to make another man jealous. The moment he walked out of this bar, his fake relationship would be over, which shouldn’t matter.

  But it did.

  Worse, he’d come here tonight because he’d overheard her saying she’d be here, and he wanted a chance to talk to her in a different setting.

  Nolan eyed Jessica’s ex, making sure he conveyed a strong message to the weasel. The woman he’d married was probably nice enough, but still, don’t cheat, assuming he’d married the woman he’d cheated on Jessica with.

  Robert stole a glance over his shoulder as he ushered his wife out the front door. For good measure, Nolan kissed Jessica’s temple while keeping eye contact with the asshole.

  “Hey, good-looking. Can I buy you a drink?” a man asked as he leaned in next to Lilliana.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Nolan wanted to thank the man for distracting Lilliana so he could focus on Jessica, who had turned her head with questioning eyes.

  “You okay?” He knew he should swivel the barstool, removing himself from between her legs, but he couldn’t any more than he could stop caressing her thigh.

  “I’m just glad they left. Thanks for being a sport about this. I put you in an awkward position with the team, just because I don’t want some asshole who doesn’t deserve me to think I’ve been sitting around pining over him.”

  “Have you?” He carefully studied her facial expressions, hoping he’d be able to read how she really felt about her ex, but she just blinked.

  “I’m still angry at what he did to me.”

  He arched a brow. “What exactly was that?”

  “That, my friend, is a loaded question.”

  Normally, he wasn’t the kind to pry. He valued his privacy and respected others’. “I’m all ears.”

  She shook her head, letting out a long sigh, and looked everywhere but at him. “I didn’t know he was married.”

  “What the fuck?” He stepped back, staring at her. “Does his wife know about you?”

  She eased back on the stool, swiveling toward the bar, shame written all over her face. “I have no idea what she knows or doesn’t know.”

  His phone buzzed. He pulled it from his back pocket and read a text from his dad.

  Call me as soon as you can.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got to take this.” He gave Jessica a quick kiss on the lips before racing outside, pressing the contact information for his father.

  It rang once.

  “Nolan,” his father’s voice boomed from the cell phone speaker.

  “What’s wrong, Dad? Is Heather okay?”

  “I think she’s handling this better than I am.” His father made a sniffling sound. “It’s Mom; she’s not doing well and is asking for you.”

  When Nolan had retired two seasons ago, he knew he wanted to coach, so he spent a year learning from some of the best. When it came time to send out résumés, he’d been looking more up north, until his father had called with the bad news.

  Stage four ovarian cancer.

  “I’ll be there in less than thirty minutes.”

  3

  Jessica stood next to Brad Michaels, the team photographer, as he snapped pictures of specific players that would be featured in this week’s blog and on the website. She had all the interviews done.

  But one.

  She stuffed her hand in her back pocket, pulling out the handwritten note she’d found taped to her office door.

  Jessica,

  Sorry I left without saying goodbye. Family emergency. How about, after practice, I give you that interview you’ve been bugging me about?

  See you on the field,

  Nolan

  “Take a bunch of Coach Greer. I’m going to do a special feature on the newest member of the coaching staff.” She eyed Nolan as he ran some plays with his offense. He wore athletic shorts that came down to his knees and a muscle tank top with the Dolphins’ logo on the front. His thick biceps flexed as he tossed the ball back to the second-string quarterback.

  Ditching her at the bar two nights ago stung more than she cared to admit, especially since he’d left right after she’d told him she’d been a mistress.

  The talk around the water cooler this morning had been about her and Nolan. Not a single person said anything to her about it, which she’d been grateful for since her pride couldn’t take another hit at having to admit she’d just used the sexy coach to make her ex jealous.

  Only now she couldn’t stop thinking about Nolan. She licked her lips.

  “You do know he doesn’t like interviews, right? As a player, he avoided them, even when he’d broken a few league records.” Brad had been the team photographer for the last five years, and he’d been more than helpful to her the first season. “Oh, wait, you must know that since you were making out with him the other night.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she muttered as she raised her pen to her lips, remembering how his hot tongue gently stroked them before roping her tongue into his intoxicating mouth.

  That man could kiss a girl till she fainted as if she’d been out in the sun too long.

  Nolan bent on one knee. Some of his players did the same thing, while others stood, leaning over other players to see the play route. Over the weekend, she’d re-read all the articles about his career. Watched videos of his more memorable moments, both good and bad, along with the few interviews he’d been forced to give over the years.

  Short and to the point, and almost never answering questions about his family or personal life, especially when it came to girlfriends and women. A few pictures surfaced here and there with speculation about the woman in the photos, but either his love life had been nonexistent, or he’d been the only football player she’d ever met that didn’t kiss and tell.

  “Do you want a portrait of Greer?” Brad asked.

  “Just action shots.”

  Nolan stood, smacking the shoulder pads of one of the new recruits as they walked toward the sidelines.

  The sun hung low over the stadium as the dinner hour approached. The players jogged off the field while the coaches stood around, talking to one another.

  She waited patiently in the third row of the stands, her laptop out and opened to the list of questions she had for Nolan. She checked the battery on her phone, making sure it wouldn’t die while she recorded the session.

  “Hey.” Nolan jogged up the steps. “You got my note.”

  “I did.” She raised her hand, shielding the sun from her eyes. “I hope all is well with your family.”

  He sat down, leaving a seat between them. His normally clean-shaven face sported a scruffy new look. Dark circles lined his eyes. He ran his hand down his face, his forefinger and thumb coming together at his squared chin. “I don’t want anything about my family to be in the article unless I say it’s okay, and I won’t answer personal questions.”

  “We’ll just cover your career.” She reached out to touch the side of his face but retracted quickly. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.

  He turned his head, squinting at the sun. “I’m telling you this because I honestly want you to understand why I left the other night.”r />
  “Considering the timing, I figured it had to do with my confession.”

  “I was taken off guard by that, but no. That was not why I left,” he said. “My mother has stage four ovarian cancer, and the other night when I left without saying goodbye, my father called to tell me that my mother was asking for me. We’re trying to make her as comfortable as possible, but the end is near.” He rubbed his eyes harshly. “I’m trying to hold it together for my dad, who is losing it.”

  “Oh, Nolan.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. That can’t be easy on anyone in the family.”

  “It pretty much sucks.” He yanked his baseball cap off and ran his thick fingers through his dark-brown hair. “I’m living at home until she passes. My sister’s there too.”

  “Why aren’t you taking some time off? I’m sure everyone would understand.” She found herself massaging his firm muscles, trying to ease the tension from his body. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him. She had no idea what it was like to lose a parent, and from the sadness etched in his eyes, she dreaded the day she’d have to go through it.

  He turned his head, and they locked gazes. “Because my mother wants me to work, but she knows I’ll come home if she needs me.”

  “You’re a good man, Nolan Greer.”

  “Thank you.” The corners of his lips turned upward slightly. He took her hand and kissed it. “I really am sorry about the other night. I never got the chance to get your number and have felt bad about it all weekend.”

  “I think you’ve had other things on your mind, so don’t think twice about it.”

  “But I did.” He continued to hold her hand, his thumb gently caressing her palm. “When I got in the car to go to my parents, I thought, I need to text Jessica, but then I realized I didn’t have your number, and Alex wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “You actually called Alex Watson?” Her breath hitched.

  He nodded. “I hope you don’t think it’s too creeperish.”

  “No more than me randomly kissing you.” She smiled. “We can do this interview another time, if you want.” She didn’t want to put it off, not because it was so important it had to be done right now, but she was being selfish and wanted to spend a little more time with him, even if it was only asking him about his career and why the change to coaching.

  “Nope. Besides, it would look bad if I was the only coach that you didn’t feature before the season starts.”

  She pulled her hand from his and held up her phone. “Do you mind if I tape it?”

  “Not at all, but would it be possible for me to get a copy before it goes live?”

  “I always send out a proof. If there is anything you don’t like, we can change it.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Okay.” She tapped her phone. “Interview with Nolan Greer, offensive coordinator of the Miami Dolphins. Why’d you want to be a football player?”

  He let out a hearty laugh. “My dad signed me up for Pop Warner when I was six. Not sure there was a reason why, but a bunch of the neighbor kids were doing it. The first game came around, and they had to weigh me.” He shook his head, smiling. “I thought I was something special since I was the only one, but I found out later they were concerned I wasn’t big enough. I forget what you had to weigh, but I was a tiny kid at maybe fifty pounds soaking wet. But from that first weigh-in, I was hooked.”

  “I can’t imagine you being a small kid. Do you have a picture? Would you be willing to let me use it?”

  “I’ll see if I can dig one up.”

  She glanced at her computer screen, scrolling through the questions. “Why a running back?”

  “Like every little boy, I wanted to be the quarterback, but during drills, it turned out I was faster than anyone on the team, so I started at that position. In middle school, they moved me around a bit as I started to grow. But my speed, agility, and the fact it takes a lot to bring me down, brought me back to the position.”

  The majority of the questions she’d put in her Word document had been related to his career, and very little on the personal side because she had already known he’d want it that way. But she wanted to know more about the man and figured the fans of the Dolphins wanted that as well. She could do that without asking anything about family.

  Or girlfriends.

  “My brother played soccer when he was little. He had this pair of underwear that he’d hide because he didn’t want my mother to wash the luck out of them. Did you have any rituals in football growing up?” She looked at him as he cocked his head.

  “I know very few professional athletes that don’t have some kind of ritual.”

  “Will you share with us one of yours?”

  He smiled. “It started with my first game my freshman year in high school when the starter was sick, and Coach put me in. I was scared to death. The quarterback, who was a senior, came up to me and told me to just relax. He smacked my helmet, and for whatever reason, I grabbed his mask and facebutted him. He was not happy with me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “What could he do? I was his teammate and currently the kid he had to count on to step it up.” Nolan smiled. “So, the next game, I had to start again. He walked up to me, and before he could say anything, I grabbed his mask and did it again, and then said, ‘we won last time, so I thought this should be our thing.’ I’ve done that with every quarterback of every game I ever started.”

  The ease at which he spoke should calm her, only it sent her stomach on a tumble. “You won the state champions in high school twice, correct?”

  His big smile quickly lowered into something humble, and he nodded.

  “You were named MVP one year, right?”

  “We win as a team; we lose as a team. For every great play I had, someone else had to do something extraordinary to make it happen.”

  She admired the way he treated his victories versus how he talked about his experiences as a player. She wanted to talk to him about that some more but thought it might be too personal. “There was more than one college that tried to recruit you, and you were high in the draft. How did it feel being one of the top round picks?”

  “Honestly, it felt good, but I don’t like to be the center of attention, and there were many talented football players in that draft, so I focused on the game, not the media circus.”

  For a man who didn’t like interviews, he did them incredibly well.

  “Could you pick one highlight of your career that affected you the deepest?”

  “The game I blew out my knee for the second time. It was bittersweet. There were ten seconds left in the game, and if we didn’t score a touchdown, we’d lose, and that meant we wouldn’t be in the playoffs. Twelve yards from the goal line, fourth down, and the play called for me to charge forward.”

  “I watched the footage from that game.” She cringed, rubbing her own knee.

  He chuckled, then turned somber. “The play didn’t go off as planned, and I had to scramble. I remember running right, then making that quick turn up field. I felt something snap in my leg, but I pushed through it. When I watch that video clip, and the way I was limping, I can’t believe I dodged two tackles.” He shook his head, his hand over his kneecap, massaging it. “But it was the one I didn’t dodge as I crossed the goal line that sealed my fate.”

  “The other player dove at you, tackling you low.”

  “It was a good tackle, and had I not already been injured during the play, it wouldn’t have been but another bruise to an already banged-up body. I think the hardest part about that win was I couldn’t walk off the field, and the victory for my teammates was hushed because of it.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. His green eyes flickered like fireflies on a warm summer night. “People have accused you of retiring too early. That perhaps you had another few good years in you.”

  “I’ve got many good years left in me.” He winked. “As a coach. I’m lucky that I had a plan for when I re
tired, because at some point, it will happen to every player, whether it be injury or age.”

  “It’s rumored that you had a few job opportunities, including a few colleges. Why Miami Dolphins?”

  “I have a lot of respect for the organization and the way they do business. Also, I grew up here, and my parents and sister still live here, so I get to be closer to my family.” He smiled, but there was glimmer of a tear in the corner of his eye.

  She figured it was best to change the direction of the interview. “Being on the field as a player and being a coach are very different. How are you handling that?” She scanned her questions, trying to find ones that would give the readers insight, making Nolan more human and less standoffish, which often pointed the media right at a person.

  “As a player, I focused on two things, running and scoring. As a coach, I need to focus on the bigger picture and work with my offense to make the right calls at the right time, which hasn’t been easy for me.” He smiled, adjusting his baseball cap and looking across the field. “There seem to be bets on how long it will take before I shoot my mouth off in the heat of the game, since as I player I tended to get in the ref’s face when I didn’t like his call.”

  She laughed, remembering some of the footage of his more colorful moments. “You did take a few unsportsmanlike penalties.”

  “My temper was my biggest weakness as a player. I’m hoping I don’t carry that habit into my coaching.” He reached out, resting his hand on the back of her chair.

  She swallowed. “What do you think, as a coach, will be your biggest asset to this team?”

  “I honestly have no idea. It’s my first experience coaching, and I’ve been given a huge role. Ask me that question at the end of the season, and I might have an answer.”

  “I think we can end here.” She turned the voice recorder off and shut her laptop down. She could have kept the conversation going for hours, asking the same question, but in a different way, just so she could listen to his voice and look into his warm eyes. “I should have this done by Wednesday.”