Halftime Husband

by McCarthy, Erin

  This wouldn’t be such a big deal if I were rich. But I was the opposite. I’d gotten another email rejection for a job just thirty minutes ago and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay my rent, let alone the two hundred bucks I still owed for being five days late with February’s rent. I had just wanted this.

  “I don’t think you’re dumb. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I just wanted a win,” I said. “Like that it couldn’t just be an accident that he reappeared in my life, on Valentine’s Day of all times. Like it was meant to be a victory for all the bullshit I’ve been going through lately. I’m so broke and yet I just bought a six-pack of donuts because this sucks. I should have never quit the cheerleading squad. It was a nice side income. Damn Dante. He wanted me to quit because of the alleged conflict of interest and I let him talk me into it. I hate six-months-ago-me for being an idiot.”

  “Can’t you just audition again?”

  “I guess. But I’m old now.” I picked the abandoned donut back up and bit it viciously. “There will be twenty-year-olds trying out.”

  “But the cheer coach knows you. Don’t be so negative. That’s not like you, D.”

  She was right. It normally wasn’t. “I know. I’ll be fine.” I sank down onto my couch and pulled my knees up to my chin. “I guess I’ve just been lonely and worrying about money a whole hell of a lot.”

  “If you need a free meal and some company, come to the restaurant tonight. I don’t have to work, but Sean will be in the kitchen. I’m sure I can talk him into serving us something amazing. He kind of does what I tell him to.”

  There was commotion in the background, obviously Sean objecting to her statement. She laughed. “Stop, Sean. I don’t owe you a blowjob for a meal in a restaurant where I’m assistant chef. Your negotiation skills are terrible.”

  The banter depressed me. I wanted to banter about blowjobs with a guy. With Brandon. I mentally groaned. “Sure, I’d love that. Just tell me what time.” I did not need to be sitting around my apartment feeling sorry for myself.

  “Seven?”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you later. I need to get dressed. I’m still in my shower towel.”

  We said our goodbyes. I did need to put on real clothes.

  But instead, I spent the next thirty minutes trying various combinations of the digits on the envelope Brandon had left.

  After getting lots of “who is this?” texts back and a belligerent woman telling me to fuck off, there were only two possible conclusions.

  Either I had mysteriously become dyslexic overnight and was misinterpreting the numbers or Brandon had given me a fake.

  I didn’t want to believe that. I clung to the hope that it wasn’t true, given that the area code was a Seattle one. Yep. I looked it up.

  That’s when I knew I’d gone too far. I was trying to justify and sleuth my way to an explanation.

  The reality was it didn’t matter.

  I wasn’t going to see Brandon again.

  Donut number four basically winked at me seductively. I picked it up and flicked my tongue across the glaze. “It’s just you and me, kid,” I told it. “How sad is this?”

  Turns out I was totally wrong.

  Brandon wasn’t perfect.

  Chapter Six

  Six Months Later

  “How does it feel to be back in uniform?” Jessica asked me.

  “It actually feels really good,” I told her. We were in the tunnel ready to run out onto the field for the first home game of the football season.

  When I had second thoughts in the winter about having quit, I had called the cheer coach, but she’d let me know I’d missed auditions for the upcoming season. But then one of the girls blew out her knee and the alternate who had been practicing with them got arrested for driving under the influence, so Coach Teri had called me because I knew all the regular routines. I just needed to quickly learn some new choreography she had created for the season and here I was, back at it.

  I needed both the cash and the boost to my confidence.

  The last six months had been rough. Worse than rough. An absolute complete and utter disaster. I was barely making it financially and I had destroyed the remnants of my savings account. My rent was almost three months behind and even my general optimism was feeling a little bruised.

  Being back with the girls was a huge lift to my mood.

  Jessica had been on the team for three years. We had started at the same time and she was easy to get along with. She was also insanely beautiful and talented and looked way better in her uniform than I did. “You look amazing,” I said. The contrast of the white uniform with her dark skin tone was stunning. “I feel like I’ve gained five pounds. My gut looks enormous and I have no tan.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “But don’t downplay yourself. You look amazing, too. There is no gut, sorry.”

  Liana, who was only nineteen, shook her poms at us and changed the subject. “That new coach is so hot.”

  “Shouldn’t you be looking at players, not the coach?” Jessica asked. “A couple of those rookies are like twenty-two years old. That’s your lane, honey.”

  “I have a daddy thing,” Liana said with a grin.

  “Who’s the new coach?” I asked, curious. I had paid zero attention to what was going on with the team, having been super preoccupied with starvation and the prospect of having to move back in with my parents.

  “Are you for real?” Jessica asked. “How can you not know that? He got hired toward the end of last season after we sucked so hard. He’s in his thirties, used to play professionally.”

  I couldn’t explain a lot of things about my life, frankly.

  “Brandon Macnamara,” Liana said dreamily.

  Brandon? Ugh. That was annoying. Now all season I had to be reminded of the Brandon that had gotten away.

  “He was the assistant offensive coordinator in Seattle,” Jessica said.

  Hold on. Seattle? That was where my Brandon had moved from.

  Well. Not my Brandon. Not my Brandon at all. Just briefly, when he had been inside me, but not since that one night. He couldn’t possibly be the head coach. That would be… crazy.

  Then Jessica pushed Liana back. “Oh, time to go, girls.”

  Teri was in front of us giving the go-ahead.

  We ran out onto the field and down the sidelines, cheering and waving our hands. I fell into formation, my heart racing with adrenaline. I needed to catch a glimpse of the coach, but I couldn’t see that far down the sideline. But then I saw the jumbo screen, where they were showing the coaching staff.

  He had a baseball hat with the team logo on, and his head was down, so I couldn’t see his face at all. But that body looked familiar. Right height, same broad shoulders. I was so fixated on the screen, I almost missed a cue but I pulled it together. Dancing was second nature to me. It didn’t need my entire focus.

  Which was how I was able to not miss a beat when the new coach, Brandon Macnamara, lifted his head on the screen.

  It was him.

  Carriage rescue man.

  Hater.

  Giver of multiple orgasms.

  I would have given anything in the universe to walk thirty yards over to him and demand an explanation for the fake number, but that was obviously impossible.

  So instead I was forced to jump and kick and cheer the whole time knowing that the man I had spent the last six months fantasizing about was within reach. The only thing between us was a few suited-up football players and the water boy.

  The first two quarters lasted approximately nine hundred hours. It was brutal. I was pinning everything on halftime. I needed a drink of water and five minutes alone in a bathroom stall to google the crap out of Brandon Macnamara. I wanted to know if he had a girlfriend and otherwise torture myself with details about him.

  Finally, after half my life, the players ran past us to the locker room.

  The coaching staff followed. Normally, I paid them zero attention, but my heart was
racing and my throat was tight as I did our cheer. I was terrified I was going to be in a turn when Brandon walked past. I wanted to see him.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t facing the stands but directly at him when he walked past, studying his laminated chart in his hand, pushing his headset up and away from his mouth. I gave a high kick.

  When my leg was dropping back down, I realized he had glanced at me, then looked away. Damn it. He either hadn’t seen me or he didn’t recognize me. That would be mortifying. I shook my hips. Brandon did a double take almost immediately. It was like his brain had needed two seconds to process he had seen me. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose.

  I smiled. I debated giving him a wink, but I wasn’t sure if there were cameras facing me. I didn’t want to get caught flirting with the coach. I would get kicked off the team.

  His mouth opened and his steps slowed, like he was going to stop and say something. But then he suddenly seemed to remember where he was.

  He gave me a very slight nod to acknowledge that he knew me, then he turned and actually started jogging toward the locker room.

  Damn it, he was still hot. Maybe even more so. He was the friggin’ head coach of a professional football team, was a single dad, and gave oral like he’d been born to go down on me. In other words, perfect.

  Aside from the fact that he’d pretended to leave me his number.

  That aside, he was perfect.

  I followed the other girls off the sidelines to our dressing room and declared I had to pee super bad. Then I snagged my phone out of my locker and ran into a stall, knowing I had all of about three minutes before our break would be over.

  Brandon had been hired after the team had interviewed three or four candidates. The GM had liked that he had worked with the offensive coordinator before and that he had built up the stats in Seattle during his tenure there.

  There were no images or mention of a girlfriend.

  I did find an article about his divorce.

  A picture of him with his daughters at what looked like a press conference, maybe announcing his hiring. They were cute. Both blond, the older one gangly, like she’d just had a growth spurt. The younger one had round cheeks and a devilish grin. He was holding her hand and had his arm around the older one. He looked loving and protective and it made my heart squeeze.

  And a few clips of him speaking about the upcoming season and one video of him at a charity golf event.

  I left the stall, and took a paper towel and dampened it. I put it on the back of my neck.

  “It’s hot out there, isn’t it?” Jessica asked, washing her hands at the sink next to mine.

  “Very hot.” For more reasons than the fact that it was August.

  “I wish we had a dome. It’s humid as hell.”

  “I need some water.” I put my phone away in my locker and drank a long swallow from my water bottle.

  Now what? I couldn’t quit. I needed the paycheck, miniscule though it might be.

  But how was I supposed to just cheer on the sidelines with Brandon a few feet away, calling the shots, being the man in charge, and generally speaking being sexy as hell.

  I didn’t have a choice.

  Maybe if he saw me shaking my ass every week, he would regret giving me a fake number. That would show him. It wasn’t much of a plan, but that was the only one I had.

  Dakota was a cheerleader.

  Holy shit.

  I ran into the locker room, distracted as hell. I wasn’t even sure what had made me glance over at the group of cheerleaders, but I had and there she was, kicking one of those long legs up to her head. I had an instant boner, which was why I had to take off jogging, play sheet over my dick. My gut reaction had been to talk to her, or at least wave.

  But common sense had stopped me. I couldn’t talk to her.

  I was the head coach.

  And I had fucked a cheerleader.

  One who hadn’t texted or called me. So she had obviously thought one night was more than enough and hadn’t wanted to see me again.

  Which sucked.

  And now I had to see her at work, shaking that firm ass and jumping up and down.

  Fuck me. This was a disaster.

  It was my debut season as a head coach. I could not screw up this opportunity. I had moved my girls across the entire country to take this job, and frankly, Willow wasn’t adjusting well at all. I couldn’t do all of this only to blow it by having Dakota break my concentration.

  I needed to put her out of my head.

  But I wasn’t going to do nothing either. I wanted to talk to her. I needed to know that she hadn’t texted me simply because she wasn’t interested in me. I wanted to hear that straight from her mouth.

  Shoving all of that mentally aside, I focused on coaching. I talked to the guys, pumped them up, relayed my game plan for the second half, given we were only up by one touchdown.

  We went back out there and finished it. We won by three. Not what I’d been hoping for, but a victory was a victory. We still had a lot to work on to make the team gel. Monday we would watch film and get where we needed to be.

  I purposefully didn’t look in Dakota’s direction on my way back on the field or off.

  Once I was out of the stadium though and in my car, I called my assistant. I had my phone connected to the car’s speaker so I was hands-free.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “It’s great to start a season with a win.”

  “It is. Listen, I have a problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I fucked a cheerleader,” I said. What kind of a coincidence was that anyway? Insane. Though she was a dancer. Maybe not as insane as you would think.

  “Excuse me?” Carson sounded bewildered.

  “Remember when we went out on Valentine’s Day?”

  “Yes, and you left with someone ten minutes after we got there.”

  “I just saw her today. On the sideline. She’s a cheerleader.” I pulled out of the parking lot. “I fucked a cheerleader.”

  “Can you please stop saying that? It’s freaking me out.”

  “It’s freaking me out. I can’t let anyone catch wind of this. I need you to research her and figure out some reason to call her into my office so I can talk to her. I need to make sure she’s not going to trash me publicly.”

  “Did you ghost her?”

  “No! She ghosted me.”

  “Then why would she trash you?”

  “I have no idea. I just need to make sure everything is cool between us. This would look bad, right? I mean, the coach shouldn’t be having sex with a cheerleader.” And damn, that sex. That repeated, dirty, hotter-than-hell sex.

  “Please tell me she’s not like nineteen or twenty. That would raise a few eyebrows.”

  Carson was my liaison to the media. He knew protocol and was there to guide and give me advice.

  “No, I would say she’s more like twenty-seven or twenty-eight. I didn’t ask, but she mentioned that she moved to New York ten years ago, plus she said something about having to compete with eighteen-year-olds auditioning for the same jobs she does.” I didn’t think for one minute we would have had anything to talk about if she had only been nineteen. Then again, we hadn’t done much talking. “Oh, and she dated Dante Marksman about a year ago. She left him at the altar.” In a manner of speaking. “I was the guy who helped her get out of there when she ran.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Carson said.

  “To be fair, I didn’t know who she was at the time. I had no idea she was Marksman’s girlfriend.”

  “You mean when you had sex with her? That’s a whole new layer.”

  “No, they broke up the night of the wedding. We didn’t do anything that night other than go ice-skating.” We had kissed, but that was none of Carson’s business. “I ran into her on Valentine’s Day like I said and, well, I went home with her.”

  I got on the highway, heading toward Manhattan. I knew people thought I was insane living in Manhattan when the team played
in New Jersey, but I had wanted the whole New York City experience. Living in New Jersey wouldn’t have been much different than living in suburban Washington. But Willow’s social issues had me questioning my decision.

  “Okay. Got it. I’m on it. What’s her name?”

  “Dakota.”

  “Last name?”

  “I have no idea. She’s tall and blonde. She’s probably six foot. She has really, really long legs.” That had wrapped around me while I had been inside her. I cleared my throat.

  “If there’s more than one Dakota I’ll make sure to focus on the one with really, really long legs.”

  I couldn’t even get mad at his tone. I was being ridiculous. “Sarcasm looks good on you, buddy. Keep it up.”

  “I’m sorry. I just couldn't help myself. You sound kind of into this woman.”

  “Oh, I was into her alright,” I said. “Eight inches into her.”

  Carson laughed. “I didn’t need that visual, thanks. Is there anything else you need?”

  Film of her performing so I could replay her leg kick over and over again. The very thought of it made my mouth water. “No, I’m good.”

  “I got that information you wanted.” Carson gave me a look and side-eyed my secretary, Pam.

  That wasn’t obvious or anything. We were in my office on Wednesday going over my schedule. “Great, thanks. Pam, that’s all I need right now. Can you order me my lunch?”

  “Of course, Mr. Macnamara.” She stood up, holding her phone. She gave Carson a look of disapproval.

  For whatever reason they didn’t like each other. Pam had a mom-ish quality to her. She was around fifty-five and seemed to resent that Carson thought he was her boss. It was something I needed to sort out. Later. First I had to deal with the fact that Dakota was a very hot, very tempting cheerleader.

  When Pam left, I sat back in my chair. “What did you find out about her?”

  “Her last name is Tanner, in case you were wondering.”

  I rolled my eyes at Carson. “Got it, thanks.” Maybe it wasn’t such a shocker that Pam didn’t like him. He could be a dick.