Mr. Fiancé

by Lauren Landish

  "Looks like Touchdown is here. Surprise, surprise. That man-slut is never in here unless it's a mandatory team workout. What's his deal today?"

  I turn around and see the same guy who knocked me down yesterday coming in and heading to Coach Taylor's office. Of course, I recognize him. He's Duncan Hart, the star of the football team and one of the hottest guys on campus. Six four, two forty, with a body that looks more like it was designed by science and sculpted instead of grown. He’s the sort of guy who can look at you and make you feel like you're a fly in a spider's web. After that, it’s only a matter of time.

  Not that he's ever noticed me. I'm a year behind him, and I doubt I’m his type. I'm pretty much invisible, now that I think about it. Only Coach Taylor, a few of my classmates, and the athletes I work with know me, and even then, only partially. I'm too busy busting my ass and making grades to worry about a social life.

  "Don't know," I say to Alicia, turning back and looping the pre-wrap around her ankle. That's the easy part, and I yank the spongy wrap to cut it quickly. "Hey, you're a rising senior like Duncan, right?"

  "Yep. But I've got two years of eligibility left, since I redshirted my freshman year. I'm going to use it to get started on my Master's while still under scholarship. Why, what's up?"

  "Why is he called Touchdown? Linda from the volleyball team called him that yesterday, right before he nearly ran me over in the hallway upstairs. He didn’t even help me up."

  Alicia chuckles and nods. "That's Touchdown. A lot of us girls around campus that know him call him Touchdown for two reasons. One, of course, is the connection to football. When you're the man who creates more points than anyone else, you get nicknames like that."

  “I should probably know who he is, but the football team's the pickiest with student trainers, and I haven’t gone to any games in what little free time I have. Studying, you know?" I say honestly. Maintaining a full-ride academic scholarship is hard, and spots in the training community are few and far between. I don't want to graduate only to face a job market where the best I can do is compete for clients at the local Globo-Gym. Most of them are housewives, and who would choose me to train them over some hot guy who can really motivate you?

  "Well, the other reason is a bit of a joke, too. There's debate on the exact details of the particular number, but he’s got a reputation around campus with the girls. I once jokingly called him Eighty-Three, since that's his jersey number. I bet that guy sees more ass than a proctologist."

  "Ew." I laugh at Alicia's disgusting joke. "Still, Touchdown? That's just . . . I mean, I'm not sure I've had eighty-three orgasms in my life," I joke back as I wrap another strip of tape around her ankle. I quickly finish the job and give her foot a squeeze. "How does that feel?"

  She circles her foot to the inside and then the outside, then smiles. "Good. You seriously know how I like it—not too tight, not too loose. Thanks."

  "No worries. Make sure you do your warmups," I say, helping her on with her sock. Alicia thanks me and gets her shoe on, walking out of the training room while I put my stuff away. Just as I put the tape back in its bin, I hear a knock at the door, and I turn around to see Chelsea Brown, one of the other student trainers and another rising senior, at the door. "Hey, Chels, what's up?"

  "Coach Taylor wants to see you in the office. He sent me to take care of the rest. Who's been by?"

  "Just Alicia—got her ankle done."

  "Okay. Thanks. Anything I should be aware of?”

  I check my clipboard and shake my head. "No, just ankle tapes. Thanks, Chels."

  I go through the weight room, noticing a couple of hot guys from the baseball team getting in some work with the midsection routine that Coach Taylor likes to call 'Puke City,' and I admire their builds before one of them gives me a wink. Really? Was he just winking to make me blush, or was he checking me out?

  "Hey, Carrie?" Coach Taylor calls from his office, startling me. "You forget something?"

  Yeah, my brain, which is not where it should be. I shake my head and go into his office. "Sorry, Coach. Just had a brain fart. Chelsea said you wanted to see me?"

  He nods and indicates Duncan, who's sitting in one of the other chairs, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands behind his head. This close, he's even sexier than I'd seen from a distance, with coal black hair and gray eyes that can only be described as smoky. There are flecks of something in his eyes that glitter and shine, like gold or diamonds hidden in the midst of all that smoke. "This is Duncan Hart, from the football team. Duncan, have you met Carrie before?"

  "Hi, Carrie Mittel," I say, offering my hand, but Duncan just sits there with his little cocky smile, his hands not moving as he just undresses me with his eyes. I suspect he does that with every woman he sees between the ages of eighteen and forty, but I could be wrong. It could be fifty from how Alicia described him. I drop my hand and turn to Coach. "What do you need, Coach Taylor?"

  "Duncan here is coming off elbow surgery. Nothing too major, just a debridement and some partial fractures of his ulna. I remember that in the course you took with me, you did a paper on elbow rehabilitation, didn’t you?”

  I nod, seeing where this is going. "Yes, Coach, on rehabilitation protocols after Tommy John surgery."

  "Good paper. While Duncan's rehab won't be anywhere near as extensive, I'm assigning him to you. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, four thirty start. Duncan, Carrie may be only a rising junior, but she's one of the best I've got. You give her any of your shit, and I'll be the one breaking a barbell off in your ass. Got it?"

  Duncan's cocky little smile slips slightly, and he scowls before nodding his head. "Whatever. So, Carly—"

  "Carrie. My name's Carrie," I correct him. I hate getting my name screwed up. It pisses me off. "Unless you want me to start calling you Dunc."

  "No, thanks," Duncan says, getting to his feet. I'm not short for a woman, but he towers over me. I'm tempted to back down, but instead, I stand my ground, looking up at his sexy gray eyes and trying not to let the flush that I feel in my chest creep up my neck. "So I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

  "Four thirty. Be ready to work," I reply, not moving when Duncan steps to move past me. He stops, and I raise an eyebrow. "What?"

  "Can you let me out?" he huffs, and I step to the side. Duncan doesn’t make contact when he leaves, but only by the slimmest of margins.

  I wait for him to go out, then turn back to Coach Taylor, who's giving me an amused look. "How was that?"

  "Good start," Coach says. "Stick around a bit. How are you on your elbow rehab knowledge?"

  "Bit rusty since this last semester didn't touch on them, but I'll brush up this evening. Do you want me to script the exercises too?"

  Coach shakes his head and nods at the chair Duncan just left. "Have a seat. Carrie, I assigned Duncan to you for two reasons. First, the rehab protocol is actually pretty simple. The reason Duncan was sent down here by Coach B from the football team is because he wants Duncan to learn a little bit about hard work and sacrifice before he declares for the draft next winter. So I get to write something that'll put him through his paces. The main thing he needs is a babysitter, and since you're still pretty green, I thought he'd be a good case for you to start with, since there isn't anything training-wise that'll be too difficult."

  "But . . ." I say, noticing his expression, "you have something else you want to tell me."

  "Yeah," Coach Taylor says. "I chose you because you can be tough when you want to be. That's what Duncan needs. He'd try to intimidate any of the male students I could assign to him, and to put it frankly, the female students . . ."

  "He'd seduce,” I finish, and Coach Taylor raises an eyebrow. "Alicia Torres was getting her ankle wrapped when Duncan came in. She filled me in on Touchdown."

  Coach Taylor nods, then laughs. "We get one like him around here every few years. He's not the first football player to be called Touchdown. In any case, he's probably going to make a pass at you. Watch yourself, okay? You'
re a good kid. I don't want to see you getting yourself all emotionally busted up for a guy like Duncan Hart."

  "Don't worry, Coach. I won't," I say. "Did you know he nearly ran me over in the hallway yesterday afternoon and didn't even stop to help me up? You can tell by his face that he didn't recognize me either. You think I'm going to let someone like that get to my emotions?"

  "Still, be careful. All right, I'll get you the protocol for him by the time you leave this evening. Thanks."

  I go back to work, finishing up my taping duties with Chelsea before she goes on to monitor tennis practice, since the tennis team doesn't practice near the Pavilion. When I'm done, I go get my backpack and change clothes, grabbing my own workout clipboard from the rack and starting my routine. If I'm going to get Duncan's respect, I need to show him that I can hang in here and that I know what I'm doing.

  And of course, I'll have to not back down from him. Which is hard, because even as I do my kettlebell swings, I'm still seeing those gray eyes flecked with reddish gold and diamonds and that face framed by coal black hair.

  Chapter 3

  Duncan

  I get a rising junior as my rehab specialist? Even worse, my specialist is a chick? Is this some sort of joke, or is Coach Taylor just fucking with me?

  Thoughts run through my head as I get back to my apartment, fuming as I sling my backpack against the couch. I have a two-bedroom spread in the Vista Towers, not the best set of condos around, but good and close to campus. Best of all, I could bring just about any woman here and it won't be a problem. College chicks are impressed by the hardwood floors and handcrafted furniture, while any professional woman thinks that I'm doing well for my age, like they expected their college stud to be living in some frat house or something like that.

  Not that I have a problem with frats. Some of the guys that I can possibly call friends are in frats. I say possibly because, to me, well, a guy in my position can’t be sure if they’re just being my friend because they know I’ll be big time someday. Still, at least frats are up front with their aims, so they aren't quite as insufferable as the others.

  "Speaking of insufferable," I mutter, thinking back to Coach Taylor and that assistant . . . Carrie. Yeah, that's it, Carrie Mittel. All bitchy attitude and arrogance. Oh, she did a paper on Tommy John surgery. Big fucking deal. I've caused two Tommy John surgeries so far in my football career, laying bitches out.

  Still, she has a cute face. I'll give her that. And despite hiding her body underneath a t-shirt that looked like it should have been set aside for someone my size, there was no hiding that rack. Those are prime, that's for sure.

  I sigh and look around my apartment, trying to figure out what to do to get my mind off things. My eyes see my helmet, and I grin. Fuck what Dr. Lefort said yesterday. I've been flexing and moving my arm for days now around the apartment, and I can handle my bike. It's not even a real crotch rocket anyway—there's no way that I could get away with that on the team—just a 650 cc Ninja that can walk it out on the freeway, but nothing extreme. Back home in Silicon Valley, I have a 1000 cc Ninja RH that can peel the paint off the road if I want.

  A bike ride could be just what I need. In fact, I know just where to go, and I grab my helmet along with my leather jacket and keys. My arm is feeling mighty bare, and some new ink would help me quite a bit.

  "You did what?"

  Carrie's looking at me with disbelief, her clipboard in her hand and her mouth hanging slightly open, looking at the bandage that's wrapped around my upper arm. "I said I got a tattoo, so I won't be able to go too heavy today," I reply, touching the bandage. "You know, my skin being sensitive and all."

  Carrie taps her pen against her teeth, and I'm struck again at how cute she is. She's still wearing ridiculously oversized clothes though, so my feelings that she's an iceberg are probably true. I mean, we're in the weight room, for fuck's sake, and she's wearing pants like she's getting ready to go out in snow—and we’re in the desert of California, for fuck’s sake!

  "Fine. Then we'll just have to modify some things,” she finally says, scratching through and scribbling. “I’ll make sure nothing touches the skin.”

  "But—" I start, before she cuts me off, jabbing her pen in my direction.

  "It's not my problem that you decided the night before starting a Coach Dave Taylor-written rehab and workout protocol, of all things . . . that you decided to go out and get some ink on your arm. Personally, I don't give a damn if you do the workout shirtless to let it show off to the world and air out, but you’re not getting out of your workout.”

  "Still—" I try, and Carrie cuts me off again. I swear, this girl needs to be put in her place, and quick. But, I catch Coach Taylor giving us a look out of the corner of my eye, and I know he's willing to try to back up his threat of breaking a barbell off in my ass if I do what I want to do, which is say fuck this and walk off.

  "Still nothing. You know, I bet if we put the weights in the middle of the stadium with thirty thousand women watching, you'd be going at this gung-ho. What, you afraid of being shown up by the others?"

  Now she's egging me on? Holy shit. "You know what? You've got a big mouth for a training intern. How about you back it up?"

  Carrie considers it for a moment, then nods. "Fine. Give me two minutes to change into my workout clothes. You . . . don't move."

  Two minutes was all I needed as I pulled off my shirt, just as she practically asked me to do. Turning around, I checked out my best tattoo, a huge set of eagle's wings that stretched from shoulder to shoulder, and the beginnings of my half-sleeve on my left arm. The guys at Downtown Ink only got a little bit done. I mean, there's only so much even a good artist can do in three hours, but they had given me a sketch of what the final product's going to look like, with Celtic symbolism playing a big part in the design.

  "You done showing off for yourself?" Carrie said behind me, and I turned. For the first time, I was struck dumb by her as she stood there with her arms crossed in front of her body.

  Those curves.

  That ass!

  Holy shit, Carrie Mittel's fucking stacked! She's not skinny, but with a guy my size, she’s exactly how I like it.

  Her hips flare out from her trim-ish waist in a set that lets you know those hips do not lie at all, before drawing down into legs that I just want to pour some gravy over and gobble. Every man's got a body part they like best, and I've always been one for a strong, toned set of thighs, and Carrie . . . she's got the sexiest set of legs I've ever seen.

  My cock twitches in my shorts, and I have to remind myself that I'm supposed to be pissed at her. "Is that for motivation?" I finally get out. "Because you know, I'm wearing less than you."

  "We're not playing strip poker," Carrie retorts, but I see her eyes flicker over my torso. She likes what she sees. Still, she's all business, at least on the outside. Give it time, she can’t keep this up for long. “Let's get that hex bar over there. We're starting with trap bar deadlifts."

  "The fuck you say?" I ask, surprised. "This is an elbow rehab session, not a full-on workout.”

  Carrie looks at me like I'm an idiot, and I shut my mouth again. How is she doing this to me? "Holding the weight in your hands allows you to strengthen your biceps tendon and muscles without putting direct strain on the cleared out areas. Besides, you're a football player. You guys are supposed to have strong hips and lower backs for your sport, right?"

  We get started, and I'm surprised when she brings over another hex bar, sliding plates on it herself. "What's that for?"

  "You told me to put my money where my mouth is," she replies. "I'm not stupid enough to try to lift the weight you can. But I'm not a prissy princess either."

  I watch as Carrie grabs the two handles of the bar and starts copying the motion I was just doing, and even though I'm not as much an expert in weight training as I am in football, I know that she's barely getting started. Setting the bar down, she grins and tosses me a glance with her eyes, which I notice are strikingl
y pretty for their being brown. They’re gleaming at me right now, and she's smirking. "By the way, pound-for-pound, that's more than what you just lifted. So how about you stop fucking around and we get to work?"

  By the end of the workout, not only does my arm ache, but my entire spine aches from my neck to my tailbone. Deadlifts, hip lifts, pullups, pulldowns . . . I swear, I didn't know there were so many ways to work the back. I guess I’ve been taking it a bit too easy.

  Through it all though, Carrie was right there with me, going nearly rep for rep even if the weights were lower. She even grunts sexy, and my cock is stirring in my shorts again as I watch her in her now sweat-soaked workout shirt that's clinging to her every curve. She hits the switch on the machine that my elbow is resting in, and a low hum starts up. "All right, that oil's going to warm up here in about two minutes. You've got ten minutes in there before we get you in the whirlpool. Ten minutes in there for a general full-body soak, and you'll be done."

  "Think you can hang out while I sit here in this thing?" I ask. "I'd have brought a book if I thought ahead."

  "You don't strike me as someone who thinks ahead a lot," Carrie says with a smirk, but she sits down. "Or someone who reads, for that matter.”

  "Actually, I'm carrying a 3.2 GPA. Not Dean's List or anything, but I'm not just some dumbass ball player who doesn't know shit outside of pass routes and how to play beer pong." It's true. I'm not an idiot. If I’m going to be in control of my life, and I will be, I need to be smart enough to not get ass-fucked by an agent. Not to mention, when your father is one of the biggest businessmen in the Silicon Valley, you don't grow up without learning a thing or two. "What about you?"

  "3.95," Carrie replies, but without taunting. "I'm here full-ride academic, so I've gotta keep the grades up."

  "That's impressive," I grudgingly admit. "Those are the sort of grades that you hear about from the engineering geeks or something. What's your deal?"