The Rookie (Calling the Signals Book 1)

by Ann Jacobs

  Chapter 8

  Tina seemed surprised but not disturbed when Bobby told her about Keith and mentioned he needed a live-in nanny for his baby. Marly couldn’t believe it! Tina might have been Bobby’s girl when they were kids, but she didn’t start breathing hard at the prospect of living in the same house with Keith Connors, the way most unattached women their age would.

  Maybe she didn’t know who Keith was. After all, he was eight or nine years older than Bobby. Marly herself didn’t remember guys who’d grown up in her neighborhood but were that much older, but then none of her neighborhood guys had become household names. “Didn’t you watch football when you were a kid?”

  Tina smiled. “Of course. There wasn’t much else to do in Hedgecock during the football season. I didn’t know Keith, though. He wasn’t interested in snot-nose brats, the way I remember him calling us kids when Bobby and the other boys were trying to get him to play catch with us.”

  “He has a little boy he needs a nanny for,” Bobby said.

  Marly figured Tina could use a little more information than that. “His wife died this spring when the baby was born. Little Jack’s a cutie, but he’s apparently too much of a handful for the housekeeper to handle. He said he needed a young, energetic woman who’d love Jack like her own and be there for him while he has to be away.”

  “He doesn’t want this nanny to take care of him, too?” The idea seemed to disturb Tina, not thrill her the way it would excite most of the girls Marly knew.

  “No. He told Marly and me he wasn’t looking for that.” Bobby’s expression turned serious. “Tina, the man lost his wife less than eight months ago. Don’t you think he needs some time to grieve?”

  “I guess so.” But she didn’t sound certain.

  Marly reached over and patted Tina’s hand. “Keith’s a decent man. He’d never force himself on any woman. Let me tell you, if he gets horny, there are hundreds of groupies who’d be thrilled to spend an hour in his arms and walk away. A dozen or more on the Gamblers’ cheerleading squad would die to find out if he’s as hot in bed as he is on the football field, but I’ve never heard any of them say anything about scoring with him.”

  “Oh. He must really have loved his wife.”

  When Bobby picked up Marly’s hand and brought it to his lips, she bent and kissed his knuckles. “I wasn’t around here when Jackie was alive, but from all the guys have said, he was one of the good ones, never taking groupies up on invitations for sex while on the road. He’s probably one of the best-known athletes in the country, but from all I’ve heard, he was totally faithful to his wife.”

  “The baby’s adorable. I think you’ll like him a lot.” Marly sensed that Tina needed love but didn’t want it tied in with sex, not after the experiences with her stepfather that she’d confided when they first started their talk. Although she didn’t come out and say it, Marly thought the filthy creep had probably raped her. “And I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about with Keith.”

  “Well, I do need a job and a place to live. I guess this would take care of both. After all, it’s not as if we’re total strangers. I used to play sometimes with the girl who lived across the road from his mom’s ranch. And I’ve talked with his sister several times when we ran into each other at the grocery store.” Tina looked around the condo. “He doesn’t live in a place as fancy as this, does he?”

  Bobby laughed. “Keith Connors is one of the biggest names in football. He lives in a huge place behind gates with burly guards. The man’s last contract was for a hundred million dollars. His furniture is more traditional than this, but I’m pretty sure that if his wife wasn’t an interior decorator, they had a professional lay out the place—and that it cost a bundle more than what I’ve got here. Right, Marly?”

  “You’re right. From the gossip columns I read before they got married, Jackie Connors was a socialite from up around Chicago. As far as I know she never worked at all, and I’d say just by looking that her house was put together by professionals.” She wondered if Bobby would expect her to go all out in making their home a showplace, hoped not because she wanted a home that felt like home.

  Tina smiled. “I think I might like this job. At least it would get me out of your hair so you can enjoy being engaged, doing whatever it is that engaged couples do.”

  “It’s not that we’re trying to get rid of you, Tina.” Bobby’s voice was hearty, but he didn’t sound very sincere. Marly was sure he seemed less so when he laid a big, roughened hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze.

  “Yes you are, but that’s okay. I tried to talk your mom out of sending me here, but she insisted. I don’t know how she thought it was going to work, the three of us. And once I saw Marly and you together I knew you’d found the perfect match.”

  “Yeah, I found Marly. She’s the only woman in the world for me. But I want you to be happy, too. If you’d rather, I’ll send you to college so you can get a better job.” He turned toward Marly, as if to gauge her reaction.

  Tina didn’t show any surprise when Bobby made that offer, but it set off alarms in Marly’s head. “No need to waste your money. If I’d been a good student, I’d have found a way to do it myself. I find I like the idea of being a nanny.”

  Her response made Marly reluctantly start to like the woman and realize, just possibly, that the situation was exactly what Bobby had said it was. She just wasn’t used to a decent guy, she guessed. They were old friends, and unlike a lot of players, Bobby apparently remembered his roots enough to offer a hand up to friends in need.

  “As long as you’re sure you’ll be okay.” Marly’s antennae went up when Bobby seemed to press his offer, but she hadn’t seen any indication that keeping Bobby away from Tina was likely to be a problem.

  “I’ll be fine, as long as Edgar Garcia’s hundreds of miles away.” Tina paused for a minute. “Taking care of a baby whose father’s still in love with his dead wife sounds like an ideal job, especially if he’ll toss in tickets to home games so I can teach his son to love the game.”

  “See, baby, I told you that talking to Tina wouldn’t end up being a disaster.” Bobby slid off his jeans and laid them neatly on the chair beside the bed. “Wanna play?”

  “I always want to play with you, big guy.” Marly stretched out, naked, on the middle of the bed, reaching into the bag of toys she’d left in easy reach. “Lie down before your knee starts hurting again.”

  “It’s already hurting, but not as bad as my cock. Ever since we were in that store, I’ve been thinking about using that dildo to fill your sweet, hot sheath.”

  Marly laughed. “Then do it.”

  He’d never used toys and that scared him a little, but Bobby took the purple gel dildo. It seemed huge, bigger than his sex. “Give me that tube of lubricant. I’ve got the feeling this monster may hurt you.”

  “It’s not as big as you, honey,” she said as she handed him some cherry-flavored lube. “I bet this stuff tastes good.”

  He took a little on his finger and brought it to his lips. Like Marly said, it tasted sweet and tart, sort of like cherry pie filling. Instead of spreading it on the dildo, he smeared some on her tight little nipples and bent to taste it for real. “I like your own taste better, but this is cool. Wanna taste it?”

  Marly rolled on her side and grasped his erection. “Put some on here.”

  The red gel felt cool on his heated flesh, but then she took his cock head into her mouth and began to suck. “Yeah, baby, that feels great. Don’t stop.” The pressure had his balls tightening, but the heat of her mouth felt fantastic. Maybe he could contort himself enough so he could sample her.

  There was no way, they’d tried it before. But he could make her feel good. Trying to maintain control and not come before he’d given her an orgasm, he smeared some of the gel on the dildo and lay back until he could see her inviting sex. “Keep sucking me. I’m gonna give you some store-bought pleasure.”

  The dildo slid in easier than he’d imagined, and
he absorbed the trembling that resounded against his own flesh. Slowly, carefully, he moved in and out as she moved her lips up and down on him, sucking harder with each inward motion. It felt great. Different. “Feel good, baby?”

  “Oh, yes.” The vibrations of her words against him got him even hotter.

  “Then grab one of those plugs for me. Imagine I have three cocks and each one of them is inside you.” When she found a plug and handed it to him, he lubed it before penetrating her tight anal sphincter with it until she cried out. “Does that hurt?”

  She raised her head and looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “It hurts, but it feels good, too.”

  “Relax. This is all new to both of us. Go on sucking me but feel free to bite if it hurts more than it feels good. God but I love you.” He wanted to see her come apart, lose every bit of control and come from the play alone. Very gently he worked the plug up her ass until the flared end was flush with her body. “Okay?” He hoped so because she was sucking him as if she never wanted to quit, so hard that he was going to explode if she didn’t let up.

  “Oooh, yes. Do you want to put this up my ass? You can if you want to.” She punctuated the question by licking lubrication from the slit in his cock head. “Does the idea make you hot?”

  “Yeah, it makes me damn hot. But then I’m about to explode anyhow, from what you’ve been doing to me. I think I’ll get rid of the toys and we’ll have a wild, old-fashioned fuckfest.” Rolling out of Marly’s reach, Bobby came on top of her, kneeling between her legs while he retrieved the dildo. “Maybe I’ll leave the plug.” Stroking her wet, hot flesh, he jiggled the toy and made her squirm.

  “Oh God. Leave it there and come inside me.”

  When she begged that way, he couldn’t say no. Shifting, found her, and plunged inside. “Baby, this feels so damn good.”

  “Oh, yes. I love the way you feel inside me…and how the plug makes me feel like my whole body’s stuffed full.”

  He moved on her, fast and deep, stretching out his legs to take pressure off his knee and lowering his body. “You’ve still got one more hole to fill,” he growled before taking her mouth and devouring it, loving the taste and smell of his own body mingled with cherries and the musk that surrounded them.

  Sensations bombarded him, the silky feel of her body beneath him, her warmth and wetness that caressed his flesh like a velvet glove, the knowledge that he was taking her, claiming her in every way he could envision. When she shuddered and he caught her scream of completion against his throat, he came as he’d never come before.

  It was a hundred times the high of throwing a touchdown pass, the wildest orgasm he’d ever experienced. As he rolled off her and pulled her close, his thoughts moved beyond sex…beyond raw sensation to a realization that Marly was not only his lover but his life. “Let’s go shower, baby. I think the toys are gonna prove a good investment.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Next time maybe they’d try the vibrators. Bobby wondered how much stimulation a man could take. He guessed they’d find out soon enough. As they showered together, he wondered why he’d ever thought having sex under the bleachers did any more than cause the usual physical release. Come to think of it, he doubted that he’d ever given Tina an orgasm.

  He’d been a self-centered high school jock, and he wasn’t proud of it. When they got back in bed, Bobby gathered Marly in his arms and thanked God they’d found each other. He wondered how he’d survive if someday he lost her the way Keith had lost his wife.

  He was pretty sure he wouldn’t—or at least that he wouldn’t want to. “I love you, baby,” he whispered, moving her hair out of the way and placing a soft kiss on her neck just below the hairline.

  “Love you, too. Now we’d better sleep or you’ll have trouble rolling out of bed for practice.”

  How long had it been since he got a decent night’s sleep? Keith stumbled out of bed and into the nursery, stifling a string of curses when he figured out his son didn’t need a diaper change or food—that he just wanted to play. Hauling Jack to his own bed, he lay beside him and talked in a mock-stern voice.

  “Look, bruiser, you need to sleep all night. All the books say so. They also say I shouldn’t put you in my bed and risk smashing you, but we’ve both got to get some sleep.”

  “Da-da-da.” Jack chattered a reply, one Keith thought might be an attempt to say “Daddy”, but he wasn’t sure.

  “Da-da to you, too. If we’re lucky you’re gonna get a nanny so your old dad can go earn us a living.” It irked him that the housekeeper Jackie had hired two years earlier absolutely refused to add child care to her duties, but it seemed as if Bobby Anthony might have come up with a solution. “If we don’t, I may be retiring before my time. You understand?”

  Jack just drooled and kicked his heels on the mattress. Some bed partner! Not that Keith had any desire to replace Jackie in his bed. Not now. Maybe not ever. Still, he envied Bobby for having a hot, gorgeous woman to curl up with at night. A woman who loved football the way Jackie never did. “Come on, kid, doesn’t your motor ever wear down?”

  After fifteen minutes or so, Jack nodded off to sleep, leaving Keith wide awake, wondering what Tina Black looked like now. His vague memory of her was as a disheveled tomboy with mousy light brown hair and clothes that had seen better days. He didn’t imagine she’d stir his dormant libido now, which was good. As he took Jack back to the nursery, he stopped a minute and looked at the last portrait he’d had done of Jackie.

  The wind blew her blonde hair as she stood on a dock by the man-made lake behind their home, seven months pregnant with Jack. And she was smiling at something he’d said. A friend had shot the picture and given them an enlargement that Jackie had refused to have framed. But after she died, Keith framed it himself because it reminded him of the Jackie she never showed to anyone but him. Tell the truth, he hated the formal portrait of her that hung over the living room fireplace—but he knew he’d feel guilty if he had it taken down and stored in the attic.

  “We love you, Mommy.” She’d never know how much Keith had loved her, or how empty his life was now that she was gone, even though their years together had been full of ups and downs, even a couple of separations when she’d gone storming off to her indulgent parents. He looked down at his son. “Let’s get you back to bed now.” His heart aching, Keith laid Jack in his crib and covered him with the blanket he’d decided in the last few weeks was his favorite. Maybe he’d send Tina to the store to buy a dozen more just like it, because Jack was a beast when he didn’t have that “blankie”.

  That is, he’d send her if she was willing to take on a bereaved widower and his baby while he tried to come back from his injury and take his place again as the number-one quarterback for the Gamblers. He’d never realized until he risked losing that place that it defined him as much as it did. Oh, well, he’d know soon enough. He crawled back in bed, tried not to think of what his backup was doing right now with Marly. His third-party fantasy still in his mind, Keith slept.

  And he dreamed about a faceless woman. A woman who’d love Jack and like him. Someone who’d be proud of what he did on the field and teach his son to be proud, too. She wasn’t Jackie, who’d barely tolerated his playing football when he could have taken a job with her father’s company. Keith had no idea who he was seeing up in the stands, screaming when a lineman sacked him, telling Jack his daddy was going to be okay.

  The next afternoon Keith collected Jack from the office where he’d become a distraction for the women who’d volunteered to watch him and went downstairs where Bobby was waiting with Marly and Tina.

  It struck him that Marly was the stereotypical perfect trophy wife for a quarterback on the rise, while the other woman looked more like the stereotypical girl next door. Not ugly, but no stunning beauty, her light brown hair touched her shoulders and framed her small, roundish face. Taller than Marly, she was more slender. Less voluptuous, he thought, revising his first impression. Both of them had on jeans and s
weaters, only Marly filled hers out in a way that made men stop for a second look.

  Tina looked like someone’s mom. Keith had no trouble picturing her growing up in Hedgecock, living in a much simpler world that he had traveled since going away to college and marrying a millionaire’s daughter. Good, he’d have no trouble keeping his hands off her, something he’d wondered about last night. If she’d looked like Marly, his dormant libido would have been more likely to come alive. “Are you-all ready to go get some lunch? I figured we might as well have it at my house, so I ordered some pizzas that should get there about the time we arrive.”

  Once Tina got in the backseat of Keith’s car and started amusing Jack, Bobby led Marly to his truck. “We thought this would work better, so they can see how they get along. Besides, I like having you all to myself. There’s been little enough of that since we got home from LA.”

  “Speaking of LA, how’s that knee feeling?” Marly frowned, because she’d noticed Bobby limping again when he came out from practice. The one downside to having an athlete for a lover was that he was always getting dents and dings that caused him discomfort if not downright agonizing pain.

  Bobby laid a hand on the knee. “It’s okay. The trainer wrapped it again after I spent an hour in the hydrotherapy pool. Coach wouldn’t let me take part in the seven-on-seven drills this morning, but I did get to throw some. Keith looks a little rusty, but I imagine he’ll be good to go by Sunday.”

  That would be good for him, not so good for Bobby. “Does that bother you? You’ve been doing such a great job while he’s been out.”

  “Yeah, it bothers me, but it’s nothing I can’t live with. Keith’s a better quarterback than I am now, but I figure that seven or eight years from now, I’ll be better than him. I came here expecting to get traded unless something bad happened with Keith, and there’s no way I can wish anything horrible on him. He’s gone out of his way to teach me a lot.”